The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
The old adage that the right looks for converts, whereas the left looks for heretics, has never been more apt.
Has anyone told HY?
Has anyone told Boris? The PM whose Stalinist purge of Conservative MPs has itself been airbrushed out of PB Tory history.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
No culture wars??!
You're literally throwing statues into rivers.
It doesn't GET more "culture warsy" than that, apart from maybe re-education camps. I'm sure they're on their way, they might be renamed "schools" and "colleges"
He only says there's no 'culture war' because he's on the winning side of it. They cant see why those on the right and more traditional are annoyed about what is happening. Maybe if he could imagine how he would feel if thousands of Toby Young like minded people started taking over institutions. Organisations that he loves suddenly start insisting that al its patrons and staff should read hannah arendt, and why what she has to say is relevant to their organisation.
As someone said on here maybe a week ago, in a sense, for quite a while, there has been no culture war - but that's only because no one on the right has been brave enough to fight it, so the left has just advanced without battle. Hence, the appearance of "no war"
Suddenly the Tories have said Nah, no more retreat, turn around and put powder in your muskets. And it feels much more like a culture war, which it is. And now we realise the Left has many weaknesses in this conflict, eg it can easily and profitably be portrayed as insane, detached and unpatriotic.
In short, it can now lose this war, badly.
Meanwhile most normal people will simply decide on an issue by issue basis where they stand.
We are at a truly unique spot in our politics, midway through the government giving us a free antidote (or so we hope and presume) to the greatest, in terms of scale, health crisis the planet has faced in the modern era.
Too many of the posts above are extrapolating from current circumstances when all sense suggests that, assuming the virus crisis does end, politics along with the rest of life will return to normal. And, insofar as it doesn’t, many people might be left with hopes and aspirations for a different future, that the Tories aren’t able to deliver.
True punditry is able to imagine a very different climate from the contemporary one. But it’s very difficult to do.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
You think Labour under Starmer are going big on 'culture war' issues? I don't see that myself.
Of course SKS isn't, as his flag campaign shows. There is a discordance with many of his own party though.
The problem is that he is so ineffectual at articulating his vision that the left wing nutters and Tories control the narrative. I suspect he is a decent sincere bloke but needs to master the three word soundbite, and ones that have resonance with the voters, and speak to policy.
Going back to aliens, I am trying to work out a conspiracy theory that might explain those Pentagon videos
The Pentagon claims they are genuine, and they show *real* Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Is it possible they are fake, and the Pentagon and lots of generals and ex-CIA bods are trying to hoodwink us? What would America, or the Pentagon, or the CIA gain from that? Can't see it
But maybe it goes deeper, and someone has hoodwinked the Pentagon, and the CIA directors, with fake videos. But how would you even do that? Hack into navy pilots' brains? And, again, who benefits? China is the obvious culprit, but what does it gain apart from sowing confusion in western ranks or making western military types look mad.....
OK that is quite a motivation, nonetheless I don't see how China could have done this, practically.
Which leaves us with Sherlock Holmes' dictum
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
They are UFOs, which resemble alien spaceships using inexplicably advanced technology
The aliens’ approach to our planet will be based on analysis of the examples of our species that they’ve abducted and examined, who all appear to be people from isolated farmsteads in Colorado, West Virginia and Dakota. Time to worry?
Applying Occams Razor it is clear that these are adolescent aliens who have identified just the dimwitted and are flashing them just for the laughs.
It feels like to me that the labour party is currently in the same situation it was in 1988. They have a competent leader but not one who is going to inspire people to switch. The lack of vision for what they want to do is their biggest problem. You know what the Tories stand for and what they are going to do, even if you don't agree with it.
It took the 1987 defeat to make Labour properly change their mindset and move them towards a credible alternative government but with so much ground to make up it took them two more elections to win. Something similar happened after 2005 for the Tories (but the change started with crowning Michael Howard).
The one thing that could change everything is a Scottish vote for independence. Will voters abandon the Tories? Will Labour be able to convince people that they will be able to negotiate firmly?
It's worth noting that since 1955 Labour has only won a majority of seats in England 4 times. Scottish independence could make it more likely that there's a (more) permanent Tory majority,
Starmer looks the part as a potential PM far more than Kinnock ever did - indeed he looks the part more than Johnson.
SKS looks like a PM, but for a duller age -- the 1960s/1970s, perhaps.
Elections then were between 'the Man with a Pipe' and 'the Man with a Boat'.
SKS could have been 'the Man with a Flag'.
But, I am afraid he is no match for Boris or Nicola, his principal opponents.
(I think this was obvious to most of us from the start. I expect Labour will get there, probably on 3 May 2024).
Scottish secession would as you correctly say mean Boris had to resign having lost Scotland, which is why he will never grant a legal indyref2.
However if it ever happened it would be the end of the Conservative and Unionist Party anyway, they would become the English National Party instead ie the English equivalent of the Scottish National Party and to ensure no compromise with the SNP in Scexit talks, Labour would be out of power for another generation in both England and Scotland and would probably have to reinvent itself in Wales as the Welsh Nationalist Party to see off a Plaid resurgence there
I think the last sentence is very true -- Welsh Labour would reinvent itself as the voice of (English-speaking) Wales in the event of Scottish secession. They would become the WNP.
The real heartlands of Welsh Labour -- the Valleys -- identify as very Welsh.
In the last 2011 census, the highest proportions of the population self-identifying as Welsh, rather than British, were **not** in Gwynedd or Ceredigion -- they were in the Rhondda or in Neath or in Merthyr (all between 70-80 per cent).
The loss of Scotland would change the Welsh Labour Party into the WNP. Because Wales would be a tiny proportion of the rump of the much more prosperous & right-wing UK.
The population of Scotland is in the Central Belt, and they will control the fate of Scotland. They are never going to vote Tory. So, there really are only two options -- either the Labour Party recovers the Central Belt, or Scotland secedes.
And if Scotland secedes, there is no way back for the Labour Party. It will have to change dramatically in both England and in Wales to survive.
Labour seems to have no plan on how to recover their old Scottish citadels.
And SKS doesn't seem to really understand that the loss of Scotland is a terminal event for what we know as the Labour Party.
But Labour did win most seats in England in 2005 - despite only receiving a GB vote share of 36% and just a 3% lead over the Tories.
A bagatelle to distract from the prospect of BJ sitting on your face forever. What I want to know is if they're going to commit this massive act of cultural appropriation, why can't they pronounce 'troosers'?
The Sarah Connor Chronicles was one of the best TV shows out there, unfortunately the writers didnt have enough good filler stories, and when they knew it would be cancelled shoved out all the best material over the last half of the season. A show with huge promise that could have gone up there with Battlestar Galactica and Game of Thrones.
Didn't Japan have 50 yrs of one party rule before it collapsed spectacularly?
Ditto Italy - and it collapsed spectacularly because of corruption scandals - Operazione Mani Pulite.
Though, sadly and ironically enough, that led to the election of one of the most venal leaders Italy has ever had. So even if a regime falls, there is no guarantee that what will replace it will be any better.
My very first case as an in-house investigator related to one of the cases brought by Italian magistrates against various politicians. It involved a Sicilian businessman (concrete was his business), a Swiss bank, an Italian state-owned enterprise and 2 apparently unsuspecting and naive US banks. What fun that was. The main lesson it taught me is that there is nothing people won't believe if they badly want it to be true.
There is every chance that what does replace a long-established party *will* be worse because fraudsters can exploit a vacuum more easily than they can exploit something with a strong institutional sense of self; fraudsters can set up a party they dominate more readily than they can capture a party which already has powerful, independent actors.
Though as Trump proved, capture and rebradning is still entirely possible.
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Scottish secession would as you correctly say mean Boris had to resign having lost Scotland, which is why he will never grant a legal indyref2.
However if it ever happened it would be the end of the Conservative and Unionist Party anyway, they would become the English National Party instead ie the English equivalent of the Scottish National Party and to ensure no compromise with the SNP in Scexit talks, Labour would be out of power for another generation in both England and Scotland and would probably have to reinvent itself in Wales as the Welsh Nationalist Party to see off a Plaid resurgence there
I think the last sentence is very true -- Welsh Labour would reinvent itself as the voice of (English-speaking) Wales in the event of Scottish secession. They would become the WNP.
The real heartlands of Welsh Labour -- the Valleys -- identify as very Welsh.
In the last 2011 census, the highest proportions of the population self-identifying as Welsh, rather than British, were **not** in Gwynedd or Ceredigion -- they were in the Rhondda or in Neath or in Merthyr (all between 70-80 per cent).
The loss of Scotland would change the Welsh Labour Party into the WNP. Because Wales would be a tiny proportion of the rump of the much more prosperous & right-wing UK.
The population of Scotland is in the Central Belt, and they will control the fate of Scotland. They are never going to vote Tory. So, there really are only two options -- either the Labour Party recovers the Central Belt, or Scotland secedes.
And if Scotland secedes, there is no way back for the Labour Party. It will have to change dramatically in both England and in Wales to survive.
Labour seems to have no plan on how to recover their old Scottish citadels.
And SKS doesn't seem to really understand that the loss of Scotland is a terminal event for what we know as the Labour Party.
But Labour did win most seats in England in 2005 - despite only receiving a GB vote share of 36% and just a 3% lead over the Tories.
They did. And it was something to do with the LibDems winning 60 odd seats.
And, a LibDem revival -- which is looking even more remote than a Labour one -- might enable the same result in England again.
Didn't Japan have 50 yrs of one party rule before it collapsed spectacularly?
Ditto Italy - and it collapsed spectacularly because of corruption scandals - Operazione Mani Pulite.
Italian rule was never one-party as the Christian Democrats were always in coalition.
True. But they always led it.
Yes, until (once every ten months on average) one of the parties in the coalition got fed up with them and it collapsed. They always had to accomodate minor parties - not the sign of one-party rule.
The two examples of one-party dominance in democracies since the war are Sweden and Japan, not Italy.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
It is a big problem, and it is very representative
I have quite a few leftwing friends
Gather them in a pub for a few drinks, and they will regularly trot out stuff like "anyone who votes Tory is a racist", knowing full well that several around the table have, on occasion, voted Tory, or like Boris, or whatever
Another friend tells me, in sincere, earnest, condescending tones "you're my only rightwing friend", to which I occasionally reply "well, perhaps you should get a few more, then you wouldn't be constantly surprised and horrified when you lose elections" - this evokes a grimace from her, and she says "ewww, Tories, yuk" - and she means it. I keep her as a friend because she is basically nice and also funny and smart, but, Jesus, the temptation to hit her with a giant cucumber is sometimes hard to resist.
As for my friends at the pub telling me to my face that I am a racist, and Britain is racist, and everyone who votes Tory is a racist, my reaction is to stay quiet, smile politely, move the subject on - but inside I resolve that I will NEVER vote for their party and I actively want their party to lose and lose and lose, again and again and again, until they crumble into a pile of putrid dust. That's what I want to happen to your side.
We just don't say it, coz we have better manners
This sounds like an overly intense bloke - you - taking pub bantz a little too seriously.
@Leon lives in a weird bit of North London. I have never heard such a conversation among either my left wing friends nor my right wing.ones in either multicultural Leicester or true blue Shire Leicestershire.
I suspect there are shy Tories in metrosexual London, but there are also many shy Left wingers and Remainers in pubs in my village. They too keep mum at pub bores, but we do have LDs in our council seats and the parliamentary constituency was pretty much 50/50 in the referendum.
Who would have thought when Labour lost the 2010 general election they would end up out of power for 20 years? But that looks like I real possibility now.
Labour will be back in power at some point. In the end "time for a change" will trump everything else but it doesn't look like it's going to be happening anytime soon does it?
Labour's vote score in 2010 was utterly horrific. True 1997 conservative wipeout, but their seat tally hid it all and they manage to deprive the Cons of a majority. The "they'll clear up the deficit, no party can get re-elected after making the cuts they'll need to make", with just one more heave and we will be back in attitude lost them five solid years to rebuild.
Going back to aliens, I am trying to work out a conspiracy theory that might explain those Pentagon videos
The Pentagon claims they are genuine, and they show *real* Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Is it possible they are fake, and the Pentagon and lots of generals and ex-CIA bods are trying to hoodwink us? What would America, or the Pentagon, or the CIA gain from that? Can't see it
But maybe it goes deeper, and someone has hoodwinked the Pentagon, and the CIA directors, with fake videos. But how would you even do that? Hack into navy pilots' brains? And, again, who benefits? China is the obvious culprit, but what does it gain apart from sowing confusion in western ranks or making western military types look mad.....
OK that is quite a motivation, nonetheless I don't see how China could have done this, practically.
Which leaves us with Sherlock Holmes' dictum
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
They are UFOs, which resemble alien spaceships using inexplicably advanced technology
The aliens’ approach to our planet will be based on analysis of the examples of our species that they’ve abducted and examined, who all appear to be people from isolated farmsteads in Colorado, West Virginia and Dakota. Time to worry?
Applying Occams Razor it is clear that these are adolescent aliens who have identified just the dimwitted and are flashing them just for the laughs.
You are both forgetting the aliens sent to live amongst us over the last several decades, to study us up close, like Denis Rodman, Bjork, David Bowie, JRM and Marty Feldman.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
You think Labour under Starmer are going big on 'culture war' issues? I don't see that myself.
Indeed, I mean Starmer took the knee, if that's not trying to capitalise on culture war issues then I'm not sure what counts. The Tories are the last line of defence for our traditional culture in this country. Until that stops being the case they automatically win elections.
He took the knee that time, yes. And that this is still referred to relentlessly is rather a tell. When looking for 'Starmer at vanguard of culture war' moments one is not exactly spoilt for choice.
This line of yours - "The Tories are the last line of defence for our traditional culture in this country" - reminds me very much of something often heard from Trump and the Trumpers at WH20, that a Joe Biden win would be the end of America as known and loved through the ages. It reminds me of it and I don't see it as having any more merit.
I predict you will think your way out of this well before the next election.
That's the paradox of the culture war.
The worst thing for the government would be to actually win the war, because it's such an important tool at holding the Conservative coalition together right now. Take the culture/Brexit war away, and all you're left with is a fairly mediocre bunch of politicians with not many ideas and a pretty tawdry set of ethics. Waving flags is much more fun than trying to justify the actions of Robert Jenrick or Gavin Williamson.
Starmer is bright enough to realise that, which is why most of the time, he doesn't play.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
The old adage that the right looks for converts, whereas the left looks for heretics, has never been more apt.
Has anyone told HY?
A pretty effective purge of the Heretics in late 2019 Tory party too.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
It is a big problem, and it is very representative
I have quite a few leftwing friends
Gather them in a pub for a few drinks, and they will regularly trot out stuff like "anyone who votes Tory is a racist", knowing full well that several around the table have, on occasion, voted Tory, or like Boris, or whatever
Another friend tells me, in sincere, earnest, condescending tones "you're my only rightwing friend", to which I occasionally reply "well, perhaps you should get a few more, then you wouldn't be constantly surprised and horrified when you lose elections" - this evokes a grimace from her, and she says "ewww, Tories, yuk" - and she means it. I keep her as a friend because she is basically nice and also funny and smart, but, Jesus, the temptation to hit her with a giant cucumber is sometimes hard to resist.
As for my friends at the pub telling me to my face that I am a racist, and Britain is racist, and everyone who votes Tory is a racist, my reaction is to stay quiet, smile politely, move the subject on - but inside I resolve that I will NEVER vote for their party and I actively want their party to lose and lose and lose, again and again and again, until they crumble into a pile of putrid dust. That's what I want to happen to your side.
We just don't say it, coz we have better manners
This sounds like an overly intense bloke - you - taking pub bantz a little too seriously.
@Leon lives in a weird bit of North London. I have never heard such a conversation among either my left wing friends nor my right wing.ones in either multicultural Leicester or true blue Shire Leicestershire.
I suspect there are shy Tories in metrosexual London, but there are also many shy Left wingers and Remainers in pubs in my village. They too keep mum at pub bores, but we do have LDs in our council seats and the parliamentary constituency was pretty much 50/50 in the referendum.
Yes, we sometimes forget that the missives from Leon come to us from the only gay in the village.
On the topic of the pendulum, a reminder of the Matthew Lebo & Stephen Fisher 'PM and the Pendulum' model for 2019, which gave Boris only a 25% chance of any majority at all - they predicted the Tories would have 311 MPs, Labour 268:
When they tried to explain the actual outcome, one of the authors described what happened as the equivalent of holding a pendulum up at a 3 o'clock position, letting it go, and then watching it defy gravity and rise higher on its own. That's what the Conservatives under Boris achieved in 2019.
Who would have thought when Labour lost the 2010 general election they would end up out of power for 20 years? But that looks like I real possibility now.
Labour will be back in power at some point. In the end "time for a change" will trump everything else but it doesn't look like it's going to be happening anytime soon does it?
Labour's vote score in 2010 was utterly horrific. True 1997 conservative wipeout, but their seat tally hid it all and they manage to deprive the Cons of a majority. The "they'll clear up the deficit, no party can get re-elected after making the cuts they'll need to make", with just one more heave and we will be back in attitude lost them five solid years to rebuild.
I hate to admit this, but I actually thought it was a sensible approach at the time! But Scotland and the collapse in oil prices came at just the right time for the Tories.
On the one hand, I agree with a lot of the logic in this header. On the other hand, I'm very aware that this is the sort of thing which is often said just before a long-standing government spectacularly collapses and we all laugh about it later.
Good morning everybody.
What a sensible post to start the thread. Never say never.
Yes, the last time I remember reading so many articles like this was the summer of 1992.
Sure, and it could all go wrong for the Tories. However, after 1992, Labour had broadly accepted what it needed to do to win and was well on the the way to doing it. Even without the ERM, Smith looked a potential PM - and Blair, Brown, Cook and others formed a very strong front bench - and Labour had dropped its loony left stuff from the 1980s. The Tories only had a majority of 21 and by-elections could (and did) erode that.
By contrast, this time, Labour not only is not close to looking like a potential government but could easily go into reverse back to the left. The Tories have a very comfortable majority which will easily last five years if necessary, and far from losing by-elections, at the moment the bookies have them favourite to gain one.
The public has a good nose for when a party is ready for government. Unless Labour can make progress quickly - and they show no signs of being able to - I don't think they'll get the nod next time.
That the public has a good nose for when a party is ready for government is a nice thought but I don't really buy it. Labour in 92 were just incredibly ready, for example. But the public were not ready for them.
Broadly agree with you about long range GE election prospects though. I price the next one thus -
Can Maj 50% Lab Maj 10% No Maj 40%
And for No Maj, an 80% chance of Cons largest party. Which you can back at 1.66. It's the absolute star in the betting firmament right now.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
No culture wars??!
You're literally throwing statues into rivers.
It doesn't GET more "culture warsy" than that, apart from maybe re-education camps. I'm sure they're on their way, they might be renamed "schools" and "colleges"
He only says there's no 'culture war' because he's on the winning side of it. They cant see why those on the right and more traditional are annoyed about what is happening. Maybe if he could imagine how he would feel if thousands of Toby Young like minded people started taking over institutions. Organisations that he loves suddenly start insisting that al its patrons and staff should read hannah arendt, and why what she has to say is relevant to their organisation.
As someone said on here maybe a week ago, in a sense, for quite a while, there has been no culture war - but that's only because no one on the right has been brave enough to fight it, so the left has just advanced without battle. Hence, the appearance of "no war"
Suddenly the Tories have said Nah, no more retreat, turn around and put powder in your muskets. And it feels much more like a culture war, which it is. And now we realise the Left has many weaknesses in this conflict, eg it can easily and profitably be portrayed as insane, detached and unpatriotic.
In short, it can now lose this war, badly.
This this this. I interacted with my MP on a few culture war issue, utterly unaware. To him good governance is about fiscal conservatism. Leaves the culture stuff to the left. That's how we end up with kids been taught white privilege in schools.....
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
I have clashed with all of the foaming-dog fever hard left nutters who infested Corbyn's Labour - but they were absolutely a small but loud majority. However, even the sane activists were a problem in that so many suffered from massive arrogance that they were the only Good politicians and the Tories and indies who were basically Tories were fundamentally Bad. Which means that Labour not really doing anything on places like Teesside was OK because people won't vote for the Bad Tories.
Of course, most Labour members were the silent never seen or heard from type who only ever existed on the membership database.
Finally, I note again HYUFD foaming on about Scotland. In a democracy, people being told that whatever they want or however they vote they will be ignored are not people who stay in that democracy for long. This is Labour's painful lesson in places like Scotland and now the red wall - ignore our opinions and we will get you out.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
OT betting news. The Tote now pays an extra 10 per cent on dividends for pool bets placed via its own website. I'd guess the main attraction is to Placepot players but other pool bets are available, as they say. https://tote.co.uk/racing/info/tote-plus-guide
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Sigh. Your posts are just so dull and partisan mate.
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
They don’t care about the culture war stuff. As I posted upthread, the current polling is best explained by the fact the tories have temporarily ditched austerity.
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Sigh. Your posts are just so dull and partisan mate.
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
Pedant mode, but 67.3%*45% = 30%. When we start going down this particular rabbit hole it becomes clear that no party ever has had the support of 50%+1 of the country.
It feels like to me that the labour party is currently in the same situation it was in 1988. They have a competent leader but not one who is going to inspire people to switch. The lack of vision for what they want to do is their biggest problem. You know what the Tories stand for and what they are going to do, even if you don't agree with it.
It took the 1987 defeat to make Labour properly change their mindset and move them towards a credible alternative government but with so much ground to make up it took them two more elections to win. Something similar happened after 2005 for the Tories (but the change started with crowning Michael Howard).
The one thing that could change everything is a Scottish vote for independence. Will voters abandon the Tories? Will Labour be able to convince people that they will be able to negotiate firmly?
It's worth noting that since 1955 Labour has only won a majority of seats in England 4 times. Scottish independence could make it more likely that there's a (more) permanent Tory majority,
Starmer looks the part as a potential PM far more than Kinnock ever did - indeed he looks the part more than Johnson.
SKS looks like a PM, but for a duller age -- the 1960s/1970s, perhaps.
Elections then were between 'the Man with a Pipe' and 'the Man with a Boat'.
SKS could have been 'the Man with a Flag'.
But, I am afraid he is no match for Boris or Nicola, his principal opponents.
(I think this was obvious to most of us from the start. I expect Labour will get there, probably on 3 May 2024).
Johnson has long struck me as a clownish Herman Goering type figure - many non-Nazis found him quite funny.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
You think Labour under Starmer are going big on 'culture war' issues? I don't see that myself.
Indeed, I mean Starmer took the knee, if that's not trying to capitalise on culture war issues then I'm not sure what counts. The Tories are the last line of defence for our traditional culture in this country. Until that stops being the case they automatically win elections.
How much does the govt actually influence the culture of the country? Imo it only has a small influence, the culture is set by the actions of everyday people across the country and it is largely the younger generations who have the real influence to change it, not the government.
All that is happening is the government are commentating on the culture to win votes and cause division, they are not protecting anything.
I have clashed with all of the foaming-dog fever hard left nutters who infested Corbyn's Labour - but they were absolutely a small but loud majority. However, even the sane activists were a problem in that so many suffered from massive arrogance that they were the only Good politicians and the Tories and indies who were basically Tories were fundamentally Bad. Which means that Labour not really doing anything on places like Teesside was OK because people won't vote for the Bad Tories.
Of course, most Labour members were the silent never seen or heard from type who only ever existed on the membership database.
Finally, I note again HYUFD foaming on about Scotland. In a democracy, people being told that whatever they want or however they vote they will be ignored are not people who stay in that democracy for long. This is Labour's painful lesson in places like Scotland and now the red wall - ignore our opinions and we will get you out.
Not true, as 50% of Scots are still Unionists on the latest polling, far more than now vote Labour nationally or in Scotland.
The Tories are never going to win the 50% of Nationalists in Scotland so can ignore them, just as the Spanish PP conservative government successfully ignored the Catalan Nationalist government in 2017.
As long as we have a Tory majority government we will refuse the Scottish Nationalists a legal and recognised indyref2 for a generation, ironically the only way the SNP will ever get an indyref2 from the UK government is to get a UK Labour government again which relies on them for confidence and supply
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Sigh. Your posts are just so dull and partisan mate.
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
67.3%*45% = 30%. When we start going down this particular rabbit hole it becomes clear that no party ever has had the support of 50%+1 of the country.
You're completely missing the point. I'm not going down any "rabbit hole". I'm not arguing anyone is illegitimate. I'm merely highlighting that it's easy to forget that despite a majority in the commons, a party still represents a minority of voters.
Therefore constant smugness about a party being the arbiter of public opinion is nothing but dross. This applies equally to Labour under Blair and now the Conservatives under Johnson.
It feels like to me that the labour party is currently in the same situation it was in 1988. They have a competent leader but not one who is going to inspire people to switch. The lack of vision for what they want to do is their biggest problem. You know what the Tories stand for and what they are going to do, even if you don't agree with it.
It took the 1987 defeat to make Labour properly change their mindset and move them towards a credible alternative government but with so much ground to make up it took them two more elections to win. Something similar happened after 2005 for the Tories (but the change started with crowning Michael Howard).
The one thing that could change everything is a Scottish vote for independence. Will voters abandon the Tories? Will Labour be able to convince people that they will be able to negotiate firmly?
It's worth noting that since 1955 Labour has only won a majority of seats in England 4 times. Scottish independence could make it more likely that there's a (more) permanent Tory majority,
Starmer looks the part as a potential PM far more than Kinnock ever did - indeed he looks the part more than Johnson.
SKS looks like a PM, but for a duller age -- the 1960s/1970s, perhaps.
Elections then were between 'the Man with a Pipe' and 'the Man with a Boat'.
SKS could have been 'the Man with a Flag'.
But, I am afraid he is no match for Boris or Nicola, his principal opponents.
(I think this was obvious to most of us from the start. I expect Labour will get there, probably on 3 May 2024).
Johnson has long struck me as a clownish Herman Goering type figure - many non-Nazis found him quite funny.
Scottish secession would as you correctly say mean Boris had to resign having lost Scotland, which is why he will never grant a legal indyref2.
However if it ever happened it would be the end of the Conservative and Unionist Party anyway, they would become the English National Party instead ie the English equivalent of the Scottish National Party and to ensure no compromise with the SNP in Scexit talks, Labour would be out of power for another generation in both England and Scotland and would probably have to reinvent itself in Wales as the Welsh Nationalist Party to see off a Plaid resurgence there
I think the last sentence is very true -- Welsh Labour would reinvent itself as the voice of (English-speaking) Wales in the event of Scottish secession. They would become the WNP.
The real heartlands of Welsh Labour -- the Valleys -- identify as very Welsh.
In the last 2011 census, the highest proportions of the population self-identifying as Welsh, rather than British, were **not** in Gwynedd or Ceredigion -- they were in the Rhondda or in Neath or in Merthyr (all between 70-80 per cent).
The loss of Scotland would change the Welsh Labour Party into the WNP. Because Wales would be a tiny proportion of the rump of the much more prosperous & right-wing UK.
The population of Scotland is in the Central Belt, and they will control the fate of Scotland. They are never going to vote Tory. So, there really are only two options -- either the Labour Party recovers the Central Belt, or Scotland secedes.
And if Scotland secedes, there is no way back for the Labour Party. It will have to change dramatically in both England and in Wales to survive.
Labour seems to have no plan on how to recover their old Scottish citadels.
And SKS doesn't seem to really understand that the loss of Scotland is a terminal event for what we know as the Labour Party.
But Labour did win most seats in England in 2005 - despite only receiving a GB vote share of 36% and just a 3% lead over the Tories.
Under Blair still, the only Labour leader to win a majority in England since Wilson in 1966
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Sigh. Your posts are just so dull and partisan mate.
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
67.3%*45% = 30%. When we start going down this particular rabbit hole it becomes clear that no party ever has had the support of 50%+1 of the country.
You're completely missing the point. I'm not going down any "rabbit hole". I'm not arguing anyone is illegitimate. I'm merely highlighting that it's easy to forget that despite a majority in the commons, a party still represents a minority of voters.
Therefore constant smugness about a party being the arbiter of public opinion is nothing but dross. This applies equally to Labour under Blair and now the Conservatives under Johnson.
Sorry, meant to be a pedantic point (I added that), rather than having a go at your point! I had thought it was reinforcing what you said though.
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Sigh. Your posts are just so dull and partisan mate.
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
67.3%*45% = 30%. When we start going down this particular rabbit hole it becomes clear that no party ever has had the support of 50%+1 of the country.
You're completely missing the point. I'm not going down any "rabbit hole". I'm not arguing anyone is illegitimate. I'm merely highlighting that it's easy to forget that despite a majority in the commons, a party still represents a minority of voters.
Therefore constant smugness about a party being the arbiter of public opinion is nothing but dross. This applies equally to Labour under Blair and now the Conservatives under Johnson.
Sorry, meant to be a pedantic point (I added that), rather than having a go at your point! I had thought it was reinforcing what you said though.
Scottish secession would as you correctly say mean Boris had to resign having lost Scotland, which is why he will never grant a legal indyref2.
However if it ever happened it would be the end of the Conservative and Unionist Party anyway, they would become the English National Party instead ie the English equivalent of the Scottish National Party and to ensure no compromise with the SNP in Scexit talks, Labour would be out of power for another generation in both England and Scotland and would probably have to reinvent itself in Wales as the Welsh Nationalist Party to see off a Plaid resurgence there
I think the last sentence is very true -- Welsh Labour would reinvent itself as the voice of (English-speaking) Wales in the event of Scottish secession. They would become the WNP.
The real heartlands of Welsh Labour -- the Valleys -- identify as very Welsh.
In the last 2011 census, the highest proportions of the population self-identifying as Welsh, rather than British, were **not** in Gwynedd or Ceredigion -- they were in the Rhondda or in Neath or in Merthyr (all between 70-80 per cent).
The loss of Scotland would change the Welsh Labour Party into the WNP. Because Wales would be a tiny proportion of the rump of the much more prosperous & right-wing UK.
The population of Scotland is in the Central Belt, and they will control the fate of Scotland. They are never going to vote Tory. So, there really are only two options -- either the Labour Party recovers the Central Belt, or Scotland secedes.
And if Scotland secedes, there is no way back for the Labour Party. It will have to change dramatically in both England and in Wales to survive.
Labour seems to have no plan on how to recover their old Scottish citadels.
And SKS doesn't seem to really understand that the loss of Scotland is a terminal event for what we know as the Labour Party.
But Labour did win most seats in England in 2005 - despite only receiving a GB vote share of 36% and just a 3% lead over the Tories.
They did. And it was something to do with the LibDems winning 60 odd seats.
And, a LibDem revival -- which is looking even more remote than a Labour one -- might enable the same result in England again.
At least SKS is the 'Man with a Flag'.
Ed Davey is 'the Man with Nothing Much'.
That was a factor - though the LDs then held quite a few former Labour seats such as Bermondsey - Yardley - Hornsey & Wood Green - Chesterfield etc.
Scottish secession would as you correctly say mean Boris had to resign having lost Scotland, which is why he will never grant a legal indyref2.
However if it ever happened it would be the end of the Conservative and Unionist Party anyway, they would become the English National Party instead ie the English equivalent of the Scottish National Party and to ensure no compromise with the SNP in Scexit talks, Labour would be out of power for another generation in both England and Scotland and would probably have to reinvent itself in Wales as the Welsh Nationalist Party to see off a Plaid resurgence there
I think the last sentence is very true -- Welsh Labour would reinvent itself as the voice of (English-speaking) Wales in the event of Scottish secession. They would become the WNP.
The real heartlands of Welsh Labour -- the Valleys -- identify as very Welsh.
In the last 2011 census, the highest proportions of the population self-identifying as Welsh, rather than British, were **not** in Gwynedd or Ceredigion -- they were in the Rhondda or in Neath or in Merthyr (all between 70-80 per cent).
The loss of Scotland would change the Welsh Labour Party into the WNP. Because Wales would be a tiny proportion of the rump of the much more prosperous & right-wing UK.
The population of Scotland is in the Central Belt, and they will control the fate of Scotland. They are never going to vote Tory. So, there really are only two options -- either the Labour Party recovers the Central Belt, or Scotland secedes.
And if Scotland secedes, there is no way back for the Labour Party. It will have to change dramatically in both England and in Wales to survive.
Labour seems to have no plan on how to recover their old Scottish citadels.
And SKS doesn't seem to really understand that the loss of Scotland is a terminal event for what we know as the Labour Party.
But Labour did win most seats in England in 2005 - despite only receiving a GB vote share of 36% and just a 3% lead over the Tories.
Under Blair still, the only Labour leader to win a majority in England since Wilson in 1966
It feels like to me that the labour party is currently in the same situation it was in 1988. They have a competent leader but not one who is going to inspire people to switch. The lack of vision for what they want to do is their biggest problem. You know what the Tories stand for and what they are going to do, even if you don't agree with it.
It took the 1987 defeat to make Labour properly change their mindset and move them towards a credible alternative government but with so much ground to make up it took them two more elections to win. Something similar happened after 2005 for the Tories (but the change started with crowning Michael Howard).
The one thing that could change everything is a Scottish vote for independence. Will voters abandon the Tories? Will Labour be able to convince people that they will be able to negotiate firmly?
It's worth noting that since 1955 Labour has only won a majority of seats in England 4 times. Scottish independence could make it more likely that there's a (more) permanent Tory majority,
Starmer looks the part as a potential PM far more than Kinnock ever did - indeed he looks the part more than Johnson.
SKS looks like a PM, but for a duller age -- the 1960s/1970s, perhaps.
Elections then were between 'the Man with a Pipe' and 'the Man with a Boat'.
SKS could have been 'the Man with a Flag'.
But, I am afraid he is no match for Boris or Nicola, his principal opponents.
(I think this was obvious to most of us from the start. I expect Labour will get there, probably on 3 May 2024).
Question is whether, come 2024, Britain decides it would quite like a duller time for a bit.
"Make Britain Calmer" could be quite an attractive pitch.
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Sigh. Your posts are just so dull and partisan mate.
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
As long as Labour people remain in absolute denial about the immense harm their cultural disconnection from mainstream attitudes in this country does to their electoral prospects, I'll continue to try to knock some sense them into them.
On your other items, the electoral value of successive percentage points of electoral support does not scale in anything like a linear fashion. In our political system, there's a term for a party that can maintain 40%+ support while their opponents are stuck in the 30s - we call them the Government. The fact that the Tories have normal cultural values while Labour does not locks in crucial percentage points of support that turn hung parliaments into majorities and landslides. Labour need to learn that lesson, but they seem constitutionally incapable of doing so.
I have clashed with all of the foaming-dog fever hard left nutters who infested Corbyn's Labour - but they were absolutely a small but loud majority. However, even the sane activists were a problem in that so many suffered from massive arrogance that they were the only Good politicians and the Tories and indies who were basically Tories were fundamentally Bad. Which means that Labour not really doing anything on places like Teesside was OK because people won't vote for the Bad Tories.
Of course, most Labour members were the silent never seen or heard from type who only ever existed on the membership database.
Finally, I note again HYUFD foaming on about Scotland. In a democracy, people being told that whatever they want or however they vote they will be ignored are not people who stay in that democracy for long. This is Labour's painful lesson in places like Scotland and now the red wall - ignore our opinions and we will get you out.
Not true, as 50% of Scots are still Unionists on the latest polling, far more than now vote Labour nationally or in Scotland.
The Tories are never going to win the 50% of Nationalists in Scotland so can ignore them, just as the Spanish PP conservative government successfully ignored the Catalan Nationalist government in 2017.
As long as we have a Tory majority government we will refuse the Scottish Nationalists a legal and recognised indyref2 for a generation, ironically the only way the SNP will ever get an indyref2 from the UK government is to get a UK Labour government again which relies on them for confidence and supply
I know that you keep posting the same thing. I know that you are blind to the problem.
The Tory government "refusing the Scottish Nationalists" is the Tories not voted for in Scotland refusing the people of Scotland the right to their opinion. The union becomes a prison with no legal right to exit. Democracy only works with the consent of the people. Deny that and you're in deep shit.
Scottish secession would as you correctly say mean Boris had to resign having lost Scotland, which is why he will never grant a legal indyref2.
However if it ever happened it would be the end of the Conservative and Unionist Party anyway, they would become the English National Party instead ie the English equivalent of the Scottish National Party and to ensure no compromise with the SNP in Scexit talks, Labour would be out of power for another generation in both England and Scotland and would probably have to reinvent itself in Wales as the Welsh Nationalist Party to see off a Plaid resurgence there
I think the last sentence is very true -- Welsh Labour would reinvent itself as the voice of (English-speaking) Wales in the event of Scottish secession. They would become the WNP.
The real heartlands of Welsh Labour -- the Valleys -- identify as very Welsh.
In the last 2011 census, the highest proportions of the population self-identifying as Welsh, rather than British, were **not** in Gwynedd or Ceredigion -- they were in the Rhondda or in Neath or in Merthyr (all between 70-80 per cent).
The loss of Scotland would change the Welsh Labour Party into the WNP. Because Wales would be a tiny proportion of the rump of the much more prosperous & right-wing UK.
The population of Scotland is in the Central Belt, and they will control the fate of Scotland. They are never going to vote Tory. So, there really are only two options -- either the Labour Party recovers the Central Belt, or Scotland secedes.
And if Scotland secedes, there is no way back for the Labour Party. It will have to change dramatically in both England and in Wales to survive.
Labour seems to have no plan on how to recover their old Scottish citadels.
And SKS doesn't seem to really understand that the loss of Scotland is a terminal event for what we know as the Labour Party.
But Labour did win most seats in England in 2005 - despite only receiving a GB vote share of 36% and just a 3% lead over the Tories.
Under Blair still, the only Labour leader to win a majority in England since Wilson in 1966
Indeed - though Brown may well have done better had he been leader in 2005. In many polls Starmer is currently matching the 36% won by Blair that year.
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Sigh. Your posts are just so dull and partisan mate.
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
As long as Labour people remain in absolute denial about the immense harm their cultural disconnection from mainstream attitudes in this country does to their electoral prospects, I'll continue to try to knock some sense them into them.
On your other items, the electoral value of successive percentage points of electoral support does not scale in anything like a linear fashion. In our political system, there's a term for a a party that can maintain 40%+ support while their opponents are stuck in the 30s - we call them the Government. The fact that the Tories have normal cultural values while Labour does not locks in crucial percentage points of support that turn hung parliaments into majorities and landslides.
Right. Yet Labour remains far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Your so called "cultural disconnect" from mainstream attitudes is clearly tolerated by a good 35-40% of voters. "Mainstream" is therefore dubious.
The fact is that @Leon (and you to an extent) constantly bang on about how despite Biden winning, Trump voters are a significant minority and should be ignored at peril.
And yet you don't seem to recognise the hypocrisy about the situation in the reverse in Britain.
The mainstream may not be obsessed with trans issues and statues but that applies equally to both the Conservatives and Labour. A small portion of the left are obsessed with trans issues and statues. A small portion of the right are also obsessed with trans issues and statues.
A timely reminder that the wider cultural war is about far more than Con vs Labour. Robert Tombs in Telegraph.
"But now we are playing with fire. Instead of the Enlightenment narrative of progress, we see a nihilistic rejection of history and culture, creating an intellectual and moral void."
Was Spengler just a century before his time in announcing the West’s decline? Certainly, we can no longer assume that the world is moving inevitably in our direction. If we continue to spurn our own history, culture and ideas, how could we expect it to be otherwise?"
Labour are currently polling higher than the CDU/CSU in Germany. Is anyone claiming that the CDU/CSU are as popular as snot flavoured lollipops?
Only based on the hapless CDU leader Lashcet being chancellor candidate, a poll yesterday showed that if the CSU leader Soder was chancellor candidate then CDU/CSU support would rise from 27% to 38%
However my point is good. Those videos need an explanation. Either someone is conspiring at a very high level (where, how and why?), or they are real and the US Navy pilots have seen some proper mad shit
I was in military aviation from 1988-2005. I know and have flown with literally hundreds of military pilots. I never saw any "mad shit" and I never met anybody who had.
Labour are currently polling higher than the CDU/CSU in Germany. Is anyone claiming that the CDU/CSU are as popular as snot flavoured lollipops?
Only based on the hapless CDU leader Lashcet being chancellor candidate, a poll yesterday showed that if the CSU leader Soder was chancellor candidate then CDU/CSU support would rise from 27% to 38%
I think the point has gone about a mile over your head.
Aliens using Velcro sounds a bit like cosmonauts using pencils when NASA was inventing the space pen.
The American officials (and ex officials) have been quite careful not to sound too outlandish. They’re basically saying “we are seeing things that are not ours, they interfere with our military operations, in a lot of cases they defy our understanding of materials science and physics itself, and we have a lot of multi point evidence backing it up. We need insight on what these things are”.
A multi decades campaign of public ridicule on the subject has meant people have been too scared to engage with it. At least in America, that’s now changing. We’ve yet to catch up here, somewhere between 2-3 years behind the process in America I’d say.
Looking at current Earth politics would be rather fascinating if it was the case that Russia, China, the EU were excluded from a US-Alien technology alliance....
Who says they’ve allied with the US? Maybe it’s the Chinese who are the favoured children and they are the ones who can now break the sound barrier without causing a sonic boom. Or have perfected trans medium transport (equally fast in air and water).
If I were a paranoid US military type figure, these intelligence reports would disturb me greatly. As it is, I just sit back and enjoy the ride, taking comfort from the human story so far being on balance a positive one. Despite them almost certainly being there from our start if they’re with us now (as looks increasingly likely).
The US seem rather more relaxed about it, is all.
If the aliens had allied with say Burundi or Micronesia, perhaps not so much.
It is going to be rather funny if Erich von Däniken ends up getting a huge apology from all those who have taken the piss out of him for decades...
If they have the power and technology to get here, they really don't need to be so elusive. Nor so obsessed with red state America.
That's a strong point. Strong enough to kill the idea in fact. Why on earth would aliens choose the US for their debut appearance? Such a cliche.
Well the answer is that they haven’t. If you look around the world, there are plenty of governments large and small less allergic to the idea, who have formally released some proper mad stuff and made statements that border on full disclosure but for reasons unknown, people haven’t noticed. Mexico, Brazil, Russia, Costa Rica, New Zealand, France etc...
It feels like to me that the labour party is currently in the same situation it was in 1988. They have a competent leader but not one who is going to inspire people to switch. The lack of vision for what they want to do is their biggest problem. You know what the Tories stand for and what they are going to do, even if you don't agree with it.
It took the 1987 defeat to make Labour properly change their mindset and move them towards a credible alternative government but with so much ground to make up it took them two more elections to win. Something similar happened after 2005 for the Tories (but the change started with crowning Michael Howard).
The one thing that could change everything is a Scottish vote for independence. Will voters abandon the Tories? Will Labour be able to convince people that they will be able to negotiate firmly?
It's worth noting that since 1955 Labour has only won a majority of seats in England 4 times. Scottish independence could make it more likely that there's a (more) permanent Tory majority,
Starmer looks the part as a potential PM far more than Kinnock ever did - indeed he looks the part more than Johnson.
SKS looks like a PM, but for a duller age -- the 1960s/1970s, perhaps.
Elections then were between 'the Man with a Pipe' and 'the Man with a Boat'.
SKS could have been 'the Man with a Flag'.
But, I am afraid he is no match for Boris or Nicola, his principal opponents.
(I think this was obvious to most of us from the start. I expect Labour will get there, probably on 3 May 2024).
Johnson has long struck me as a clownish Herman Goering type figure - many non-Nazis found him quite funny.
He's a bit like Goering? Jesus.
His use of the comparison kind of reveals the problem Labour and their supporters find themselves in. Boris is really hard to see as a nazi. To compare him to without any real basis for doing so is like pointing at a jack Russell and insisting they're Rottweiler.
Labour are currently polling higher than the CDU/CSU in Germany. Is anyone claiming that the CDU/CSU are as popular as snot flavoured lollipops?
Only based on the hapless CDU leader Lashcet being chancellor candidate, a poll yesterday showed that if the CSU leader Soder was chancellor candidate then CDU/CSU support would rise from 27% to 38%
.. and Labour are where they are because SKS is hapless. I would say wishy washy was more appropriate.
It feels like to me that the labour party is currently in the same situation it was in 1988. They have a competent leader but not one who is going to inspire people to switch. The lack of vision for what they want to do is their biggest problem. You know what the Tories stand for and what they are going to do, even if you don't agree with it.
It took the 1987 defeat to make Labour properly change their mindset and move them towards a credible alternative government but with so much ground to make up it took them two more elections to win. Something similar happened after 2005 for the Tories (but the change started with crowning Michael Howard).
The one thing that could change everything is a Scottish vote for independence. Will voters abandon the Tories? Will Labour be able to convince people that they will be able to negotiate firmly?
It's worth noting that since 1955 Labour has only won a majority of seats in England 4 times. Scottish independence could make it more likely that there's a (more) permanent Tory majority,
Starmer looks the part as a potential PM far more than Kinnock ever did - indeed he looks the part more than Johnson.
SKS looks like a PM, but for a duller age -- the 1960s/1970s, perhaps.
Elections then were between 'the Man with a Pipe' and 'the Man with a Boat'.
SKS could have been 'the Man with a Flag'.
But, I am afraid he is no match for Boris or Nicola, his principal opponents.
(I think this was obvious to most of us from the start. I expect Labour will get there, probably on 3 May 2024).
Question is whether, come 2024, Britain decides it would quite like a duller time for a bit.
"Make Britain Calmer" could be quite an attractive pitch.
Make Britain more wishy washy has a certain ring to it.
Labour are currently polling higher than the CDU/CSU in Germany. Is anyone claiming that the CDU/CSU are as popular as snot flavoured lollipops?
Only based on the hapless CDU leader Lashcet being chancellor candidate, a poll yesterday showed that if the CSU leader Soder was chancellor candidate then CDU/CSU support would rise from 27% to 38%
.. and Labour are where they are because SKS is hapless. I would say wishy washy was more appropriate.
The CDU/CSU has a charismatic and popular alternative leader in waiting that is the point, Labour at the moment does not
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Sigh. Your posts are just so dull and partisan mate.
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
As long as Labour people remain in absolute denial about the immense harm their cultural disconnection from mainstream attitudes in this country does to their electoral prospects, I'll continue to try to knock some sense them into them.
On your other items, the electoral value of successive percentage points of electoral support does not scale in anything like a linear fashion. In our political system, there's a term for a a party that can maintain 40%+ support while their opponents are stuck in the 30s - we call them the Government. The fact that the Tories have normal cultural values while Labour does not locks in crucial percentage points of support that turn hung parliaments into majorities and landslides.
Right. Yet Labour remains far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Your so called "cultural disconnect" from mainstream attitudes is clearly tolerated by a good 35-40% of voters. "Mainstream" is therefore dubious.
The fact is that @Leon (and you to an extent) constantly bang on about how despite Biden winning, Trump voters are a significant minority and should be ignored at peril.
And yet you don't seem to recognise the hypocrisy about the situation in the reverse in Britain.
The mainstream may not be obsessed with trans issues and statues but that applies equally to both the Conservatives and Labour. A small portion of the left are obsessed with trans issues and statues. A small portion of the right are also obsessed with trans issues and statues.
Fortunately, Biden himself is really quite conservative on cultural issues, to the fury of US progressives - that's one of the reasons he won. In electoral terms, the USA and Britain, despite a number of similarities, still have vastly different demographics - the fact that Trump was able to eke out a win at all in 2016 and was only beaten narrowly in crucial states this time speaks to the ruthless efficiency of the Republican machine. If the Tories were as effective, we'd be in power until about 2050.
As for statues, nothing would please me more than never having to mention them again outside of an art-historical context - the moment the left stop trying to vandalize, remove, or conceal them, I'll never raise the subject again. Their move.
I have clashed with all of the foaming-dog fever hard left nutters who infested Corbyn's Labour - but they were absolutely a small but loud majority. However, even the sane activists were a problem in that so many suffered from massive arrogance that they were the only Good politicians and the Tories and indies who were basically Tories were fundamentally Bad. Which means that Labour not really doing anything on places like Teesside was OK because people won't vote for the Bad Tories.
Of course, most Labour members were the silent never seen or heard from type who only ever existed on the membership database.
Finally, I note again HYUFD foaming on about Scotland. In a democracy, people being told that whatever they want or however they vote they will be ignored are not people who stay in that democracy for long. This is Labour's painful lesson in places like Scotland and now the red wall - ignore our opinions and we will get you out.
Not true, as 50% of Scots are still Unionists on the latest polling, far more than now vote Labour nationally or in Scotland.
The Tories are never going to win the 50% of Nationalists in Scotland so can ignore them, just as the Spanish PP conservative government successfully ignored the Catalan Nationalist government in 2017.
As long as we have a Tory majority government we will refuse the Scottish Nationalists a legal and recognised indyref2 for a generation, ironically the only way the SNP will ever get an indyref2 from the UK government is to get a UK Labour government again which relies on them for confidence and supply
I know that you keep posting the same thing. I know that you are blind to the problem.
The Tory government "refusing the Scottish Nationalists" is the Tories not voted for in Scotland refusing the people of Scotland the right to their opinion. The union becomes a prison with no legal right to exit. Democracy only works with the consent of the people. Deny that and you're in deep shit.
No it is refusing the Nationalists the right to try and overturn the 2014 once in a generation referendum result.
As Spain has proved in Catalonia where opinions on independence are roughly equally divided (as they are still in Scotland) nationalists can be ignored and we Tories will, we will not give the SNP another legal indyref2 as long as we remain in power at Westminster for a generation no matter how much they complain
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
It is a big problem, and it is very representative
I have quite a few leftwing friends
Gather them in a pub for a few drinks, and they will regularly trot out stuff like "anyone who votes Tory is a racist", knowing full well that several around the table have, on occasion, voted Tory, or like Boris, or whatever
Another friend tells me, in sincere, earnest, condescending tones "you're my only rightwing friend", to which I occasionally reply "well, perhaps you should get a few more, then you wouldn't be constantly surprised and horrified when you lose elections" - this evokes a grimace from her, and she says "ewww, Tories, yuk" - and she means it. I keep her as a friend because she is basically nice and also funny and smart, but, Jesus, the temptation to hit her with a giant cucumber is sometimes hard to resist.
As for my friends at the pub telling me to my face that I am a racist, and Britain is racist, and everyone who votes Tory is a racist, my reaction is to stay quiet, smile politely, move the subject on - but inside I resolve that I will NEVER vote for their party and I actively want their party to lose and lose and lose, again and again and again, until they crumble into a pile of putrid dust. That's what I want to happen to your side.
We just don't say it, coz we have better manners
This sounds like an overly intense bloke - you - taking pub bantz a little too seriously.
There you go, just wave the problem away.
That should work
The problem is getting worse, partly because the Woke Agenda is driving some lefties bonkers, but also because you keep losing. This makes Labour activists and supporters bitter, and as they grow more embittered, they hate the Tories all the more, thus driving them to say "All Tory voters are racist"
It is the very same partisan divide that we see in America, with a sour polarisation, and growing rancour. The difference in America is that the Dems are just about able to cobble together a winning Coalition, and last time they were facing a grotesque madman. Who still got 70m votes
What I was waving away was your "my left wing friends down the pub" based analysis. Also, the way you continually hyperbolize and twist the trans issue is not respectable. It's a right wing propaganda take. Instead of forging a convoluted linguistic logic chain attempting to link Lisa Nandy's tortured ad hoc musings on this topic to Labour being in favour of abolishing the concept of biological sex, why not take a look at Labour's actual position on gender recognition? Hint. It's a position that meets with much displeasure on the modern metro left.
I have clashed with all of the foaming-dog fever hard left nutters who infested Corbyn's Labour - but they were absolutely a small but loud majority. However, even the sane activists were a problem in that so many suffered from massive arrogance that they were the only Good politicians and the Tories and indies who were basically Tories were fundamentally Bad. Which means that Labour not really doing anything on places like Teesside was OK because people won't vote for the Bad Tories.
Of course, most Labour members were the silent never seen or heard from type who only ever existed on the membership database.
Finally, I note again HYUFD foaming on about Scotland. In a democracy, people being told that whatever they want or however they vote they will be ignored are not people who stay in that democracy for long. This is Labour's painful lesson in places like Scotland and now the red wall - ignore our opinions and we will get you out.
Not true, as 50% of Scots are still Unionists on the latest polling, far more than now vote Labour nationally or in Scotland.
The Tories are never going to win the 50% of Nationalists in Scotland so can ignore them, just as the Spanish PP conservative government successfully ignored the Catalan Nationalist government in 2017.
As long as we have a Tory majority government we will refuse the Scottish Nationalists a legal and recognised indyref2 for a generation, ironically the only way the SNP will ever get an indyref2 from the UK government is to get a UK Labour government again which relies on them for confidence and supply
I know that you keep posting the same thing. I know that you are blind to the problem.
The Tory government "refusing the Scottish Nationalists" is the Tories not voted for in Scotland refusing the people of Scotland the right to their opinion. The union becomes a prison with no legal right to exit. Democracy only works with the consent of the people. Deny that and you're in deep shit.
When I went off to reread the Aubrey-Maturin cycle (apart from a final partial book which I now find exists and is on order), HYUFD was saying that. Returning, I find it's like **** Groundhog Day, and we can't blame the covid for it. Right down to pretending that the SNP is the only pro-indy party in Scotland.
Even Chris Deerin - no "Scottish Nationalist" he - has been warning that that is a disastrous strategy in the [edit] Staggers. .
"Meanwhile, Ciaran Martin, a former constitution director at the Cabinet Office who was involved in agreeing terms for the first independence referendum, said blocking a second vote would “fundamentally” change the nature of the Union, from one based on consent to one “based on force of law”. It is hard to see Scots tolerating such an arrangement in the long term."
His use of the comparison kind of reveals the problem Labour and their supporters find themselves in. Boris is really hard to see as a nazi. To compare him to without any real basis for doing so is like pointing at a jack Russell and insisting they're Rottweiler.
I've seen a few comparisons of the Tories to Nazis in the recent past (mostly on twitter) and they always make me shudder. very few people alive in this country went through the Nazi regime and painfully few have properly studied it. Even the far right groups in europe are nothing like the Nazis.
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
I have clashed with all of the foaming-dog fever hard left nutters who infested Corbyn's Labour - but they were absolutely a small but loud majority. However, even the sane activists were a problem in that so many suffered from massive arrogance that they were the only Good politicians and the Tories and indies who were basically Tories were fundamentally Bad. Which means that Labour not really doing anything on places like Teesside was OK because people won't vote for the Bad Tories.
Of course, most Labour members were the silent never seen or heard from type who only ever existed on the membership database.
Finally, I note again HYUFD foaming on about Scotland. In a democracy, people being told that whatever they want or however they vote they will be ignored are not people who stay in that democracy for long. This is Labour's painful lesson in places like Scotland and now the red wall - ignore our opinions and we will get you out.
Not true, as 50% of Scots are still Unionists on the latest polling, far more than now vote Labour nationally or in Scotland.
The Tories are never going to win the 50% of Nationalists in Scotland so can ignore them, just as the Spanish PP conservative government successfully ignored the Catalan Nationalist government in 2017.
As long as we have a Tory majority government we will refuse the Scottish Nationalists a legal and recognised indyref2 for a generation, ironically the only way the SNP will ever get an indyref2 from the UK government is to get a UK Labour government again which relies on them for confidence and supply
I know that you keep posting the same thing. I know that you are blind to the problem.
The Tory government "refusing the Scottish Nationalists" is the Tories not voted for in Scotland refusing the people of Scotland the right to their opinion. The union becomes a prison with no legal right to exit. Democracy only works with the consent of the people. Deny that and you're in deep shit.
When I went off to reread the Aubrey-Maturin cycle (apart from a final partial book which I now find exists and is on order), HYUFD was saying that. Returning, I find it's like **** Groundhog Day, and we can't blame the covid for it. Right down to pretending that the SNP is the only pro-indy party in Scotland.
Even Chris Deerin - no "Scottish Nationalist" he - has been warning that that is a disastrous strategy in the [edit] Staggers. .
"Meanwhile, Ciaran Martin, a former constitution director at the Cabinet Office who was involved in agreeing terms for the first independence referendum, said blocking a second vote would “fundamentally” change the nature of the Union, from one based on consent to one “based on force of law”. It is hard to see Scots tolerating such an arrangement in the long term."
50% of Scots are Unionists still on the latest polling and the vast majority of them want no indyref2.
We will ignore the Nationalists however for as long as we remain in power, the SNP have to got to learn 2014 was a once in a generation vote and we Tories will ensure they get a firm message 'No Means NO!!'
4 years after the Spanish government refused the Catalan nationalist government an independence referendum it remains part of Spain, that is the template we Tories will follow if necessary as set by our PP cousins in Madrid
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Sigh. Your posts are just so dull and partisan mate.
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
As long as Labour people remain in absolute denial about the immense harm their cultural disconnection from mainstream attitudes in this country does to their electoral prospects, I'll continue to try to knock some sense them into them.
On your other items, the electoral value of successive percentage points of electoral support does not scale in anything like a linear fashion. In our political system, there's a term for a a party that can maintain 40%+ support while their opponents are stuck in the 30s - we call them the Government. The fact that the Tories have normal cultural values while Labour does not locks in crucial percentage points of support that turn hung parliaments into majorities and landslides.
Right. Yet Labour remains far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Your so called "cultural disconnect" from mainstream attitudes is clearly tolerated by a good 35-40% of voters. "Mainstream" is therefore dubious.
The fact is that @Leon (and you to an extent) constantly bang on about how despite Biden winning, Trump voters are a significant minority and should be ignored at peril.
And yet you don't seem to recognise the hypocrisy about the situation in the reverse in Britain.
The mainstream may not be obsessed with trans issues and statues but that applies equally to both the Conservatives and Labour. A small portion of the left are obsessed with trans issues and statues. A small portion of the right are also obsessed with trans issues and statues.
Fortunately, Biden himself is really quite conservative on cultural issues, to the fury of US progressives - that's one of the reasons he won. In electoral terms, the USA and Britain, despite a number of similarities, still have vastly different demographics - the fact that Trump was able to eke out a win at all in 2016 and was only beaten narrowly in crucial states this time speaks to the ruthless efficiency of the Republican machine. If the Tories were as effective, we'd be in power until about 2050.
As for statues, nothing would please me more than never having to mention them again outside of an art-historical context - the moment the left stop trying to vandalize, remove, or conceal them, I'll never raise the subject again. Their move.
Well yeah. Just like Starmer is quite conservative on cultural issues, to the fury of Corbynistas.
The fact is you're incapable of objective analysis because you're always supporting your football team — the Conservative Party.
"The left" are not trying to vandalise statues. A few extremists and yobos are trying to vandalise statues.
His use of the comparison kind of reveals the problem Labour and their supporters find themselves in. Boris is really hard to see as a nazi. To compare him to without any real basis for doing so is like pointing at a jack Russell and insisting they're Rottweiler.
I've seen a few comparisons of the Tories to Nazis in the recent past (mostly on twitter) and they always make me shudder. very few people alive in this country went through the Nazi regime and painfully few have properly studied it. Even the far right groups in europe are nothing like the Nazis.
If the Tories were Nazis, these people wouldn't be free to publish their speech on twitter....
I have little interest in a Labour government running the country in a way that Tory voters approve of.
That's how Tony Blair won in 1997 and probably the only way for Labour to ever win a majority in England again.
I don't mind winning that way. But not when it comes to governing.
if it looks like Labour don't mean it then people will see it for the sham it actually is.
People aren't that perceptive. Don't kid yourself.
They are and Blair and Brown knew it. in 1997 they went more Tory economically than the Tories were actually planning to be. in the end they maintained a reputation for economic competence (with policies the Tories didn't disagree with on the whole) until the GFC in 2007/8
Mmm. "Sticking to Tory spending plans for 3 years". That was an unforced error. They were paranoid about spooking Middle England. It was understandable after so long in the cold but they didn't need to do it to win. Maybe it turned a 150 landslide into the 179 but at a big price. It became a ball and chain in government and led to the "famine then feast" spending which was inefficient and provided ammo for the "feckless" smear later used to such effect by the cynical Cons.
Labour most certainly is not full of left-wing nutters, the majority are not. It is just that those that shout loudest, are the nutters.
Keir Starmer however is however quite successfully allowing them to become irrelevant. He just needs more time.
And we are very generously prepared to give him all the time he needs. Would another 10 years suffice, or do you need 20?
The whole point of this site is to analyse evidence, statistical or anecdotal in order to determine likely election outcomes. Some because they bet on it and others because they have some partisan, historical or social interest. I think HYUFD is particularly interesting because he is partisan but analyses the evidence and offers situations which may not be optimal for his party. He uses that evidence to consider ways for his party to offset these sub- optimal outcomes, which seems to be sensible for a serious political operative.
I come on here with no particular axe to grind. I have fallen out of love with the Labour party, but I nonetheless detest Johnson for his morally questionable backstory and (my perception) his cynically using Brexit for personal self-aggrandisement. As such I do make quips about Johnson (although in the past, I have done so with Corbyn too) but I try to base my critique on some sort of empirical evidence. My comments might piss some people off, but that is not my intention. I suppose in order to get a particular point through, complaining about Johnson or Corbyn ( or Andrew RT Davies) supports my case.
We can all be partisan, and I think that is fair enough. But coming on here post after post and trolling one's opponents with no better analyse than 'your party is s***, your leader is a moron, and my leader and my party rock, just because they do', is a little tiresome.
His use of the comparison kind of reveals the problem Labour and their supporters find themselves in. Boris is really hard to see as a nazi. To compare him to without any real basis for doing so is like pointing at a jack Russell and insisting they're Rottweiler.
I've seen a few comparisons of the Tories to Nazis in the recent past (mostly on twitter) and they always make me shudder. very few people alive in this country went through the Nazi regime and painfully few have properly studied it. Even the far right groups in europe are nothing like the Nazis.
If the Tories were Nazis, these people wouldn't be free to publish their speech on twitter....
Going back to aliens, I am trying to work out a conspiracy theory that might explain those Pentagon videos
The Pentagon claims they are genuine, and they show *real* Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Is it possible they are fake, and the Pentagon and lots of generals and ex-CIA bods are trying to hoodwink us? What would America, or the Pentagon, or the CIA gain from that? Can't see it
But maybe it goes deeper, and someone has hoodwinked the Pentagon, and the CIA directors, with fake videos. But how would you even do that? Hack into navy pilots' brains? And, again, who benefits? China is the obvious culprit, but what does it gain apart from sowing confusion in western ranks or making western military types look mad.....
OK that is quite a motivation, nonetheless I don't see how China could have done this, practically.
Which leaves us with Sherlock Holmes' dictum
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
They are UFOs, which resemble alien spaceships using inexplicably advanced technology
Yup. We’ve reached the point where you have to concoct a far bigger conspiracy theory to explain away the evidence and public statements, rather than just accepting that they’re non human tech.
Fermi’s Paradox was “where are they?”. Essentially, given the age and size of the Milky Way and what we’ve seen on Earth, intelligent life should be everywhere but appears to be nowhere. It’s a fun game to dream up reasons why that is. Wikipedia has several dozen answers. The answer appears to be simple. Intelligent extra terrestrial life is basically everywhere, including here, and it likely has been here all along.
We are currently in Jan 2020, when everyone (including the British government) looked at Wuhan, and said huh, anyway what’s on telly. Or on here, were discussing pay models in the social care sector. I’m not saying the reality will come crashing into people’s lives as quickly as it did then. But it’s conceivable that it might, given the now fairly unstoppable congressional process.
To take issue with Musk, “they sure are shy”. Well no Elon, they’re not. Because if they were why is there such a growing body of evidence? Cloaking would be trivial. Which means either they don’t care if they’re seen, or it’s a deliberate drip drip exposure. Which appears to be a strategy replicated by the politicians and media. A few videos here. Another leak there. Former relatively junior officials and military personnel free to speak all over the internet. Then A NY Times front page. Increasingly senior ex officials saying things in public, with ever greater certainty. Senior serving senators repeating it.
We’ve now reached the point where the last Director of National Intelligence can go on network tv and announce there’s multi point evidence (including satellite imagery) of non American craft breaking the sound barrier without creating sonic booms. And just about no one on planet earth seems to have noticed or cares.
It feels like to me that the labour party is currently in the same situation it was in 1988. They have a competent leader but not one who is going to inspire people to switch. The lack of vision for what they want to do is their biggest problem. You know what the Tories stand for and what they are going to do, even if you don't agree with it.
It took the 1987 defeat to make Labour properly change their mindset and move them towards a credible alternative government but with so much ground to make up it took them two more elections to win. Something similar happened after 2005 for the Tories (but the change started with crowning Michael Howard).
The one thing that could change everything is a Scottish vote for independence. Will voters abandon the Tories? Will Labour be able to convince people that they will be able to negotiate firmly?
It's worth noting that since 1955 Labour has only won a majority of seats in England 4 times. Scottish independence could make it more likely that there's a (more) permanent Tory majority,
Starmer looks the part as a potential PM far more than Kinnock ever did - indeed he looks the part more than Johnson.
SKS looks like a PM, but for a duller age -- the 1960s/1970s, perhaps.
Elections then were between 'the Man with a Pipe' and 'the Man with a Boat'.
SKS could have been 'the Man with a Flag'.
But, I am afraid he is no match for Boris or Nicola, his principal opponents.
(I think this was obvious to most of us from the start. I expect Labour will get there, probably on 3 May 2024).
Question is whether, come 2024, Britain decides it would quite like a duller time for a bit.
"Make Britain Calmer" could be quite an attractive pitch.
I think we can all sign up to 2022 onwards being "calmer" years than 2020-1, regardless of the shade of Government.
It feels like to me that the labour party is currently in the same situation it was in 1988. They have a competent leader but not one who is going to inspire people to switch. The lack of vision for what they want to do is their biggest problem. You know what the Tories stand for and what they are going to do, even if you don't agree with it.
It took the 1987 defeat to make Labour properly change their mindset and move them towards a credible alternative government but with so much ground to make up it took them two more elections to win. Something similar happened after 2005 for the Tories (but the change started with crowning Michael Howard).
The one thing that could change everything is a Scottish vote for independence. Will voters abandon the Tories? Will Labour be able to convince people that they will be able to negotiate firmly?
It's worth noting that since 1955 Labour has only won a majority of seats in England 4 times. Scottish independence could make it more likely that there's a (more) permanent Tory majority,
Starmer looks the part as a potential PM far more than Kinnock ever did - indeed he looks the part more than Johnson.
SKS looks like a PM, but for a duller age -- the 1960s/1970s, perhaps.
Elections then were between 'the Man with a Pipe' and 'the Man with a Boat'.
SKS could have been 'the Man with a Flag'.
But, I am afraid he is no match for Boris or Nicola, his principal opponents.
(I think this was obvious to most of us from the start. I expect Labour will get there, probably on 3 May 2024).
Question is whether, come 2024, Britain decides it would quite like a duller time for a bit.
"Make Britain Calmer" could be quite an attractive pitch.
I think we can all sign up to 2022 onwards being "calmer" years than 2020-1, regardless of the shade of Government.
Or 2016-9. Remember them? We were a laughing stock when we voted for something but the politicians failed repeatedly to deliver it.
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Sigh. Your posts are just so dull and partisan mate.
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
As long as Labour people remain in absolute denial about the immense harm their cultural disconnection from mainstream attitudes in this country does to their electoral prospects, I'll continue to try to knock some sense them into them.
On your other items, the electoral value of successive percentage points of electoral support does not scale in anything like a linear fashion. In our political system, there's a term for a a party that can maintain 40%+ support while their opponents are stuck in the 30s - we call them the Government. The fact that the Tories have normal cultural values while Labour does not locks in crucial percentage points of support that turn hung parliaments into majorities and landslides.
Right. Yet Labour remains far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Your so called "cultural disconnect" from mainstream attitudes is clearly tolerated by a good 35-40% of voters. "Mainstream" is therefore dubious.
The fact is that @Leon (and you to an extent) constantly bang on about how despite Biden winning, Trump voters are a significant minority and should be ignored at peril.
And yet you don't seem to recognise the hypocrisy about the situation in the reverse in Britain.
The mainstream may not be obsessed with trans issues and statues but that applies equally to both the Conservatives and Labour. A small portion of the left are obsessed with trans issues and statues. A small portion of the right are also obsessed with trans issues and statues.
Fortunately, Biden himself is really quite conservative on cultural issues, to the fury of US progressives - that's one of the reasons he won. In electoral terms, the USA and Britain, despite a number of similarities, still have vastly different demographics - the fact that Trump was able to eke out a win at all in 2016 and was only beaten narrowly in crucial states this time speaks to the ruthless efficiency of the Republican machine. If the Tories were as effective, we'd be in power until about 2050.
As for statues, nothing would please me more than never having to mention them again outside of an art-historical context - the moment the left stop trying to vandalize, remove, or conceal them, I'll never raise the subject again. Their move.
Well yeah. Just like Starmer is quite conservative on cultural issues, to the fury of Corbynistas.
The fact is you're incapable of objective analysis because you're always supporting your football team — the Conservative Party.
"The left" are not trying to vandalise statues. A few extremists and yobos are trying to vandalise statues.
"The left" are not trying to vandalise statues. A few extremists and yobos are trying to vandalise statues.
And there comes the reality denial again. There's an all-out assault on Western culture and Enlightenment values taking place right now on the left, amplified by their fellow-travellers in the academy and in the media, of which statues are but one visible manifestation. You either don't see it or approve of it, so it doesn't matter to you; but it matters a lot to a significant chunk of the population. As they will continue to make clear whenever they are asked at the ballot box.
It feels like to me that the labour party is currently in the same situation it was in 1988. They have a competent leader but not one who is going to inspire people to switch. The lack of vision for what they want to do is their biggest problem. You know what the Tories stand for and what they are going to do, even if you don't agree with it.
It took the 1987 defeat to make Labour properly change their mindset and move them towards a credible alternative government but with so much ground to make up it took them two more elections to win. Something similar happened after 2005 for the Tories (but the change started with crowning Michael Howard).
The one thing that could change everything is a Scottish vote for independence. Will voters abandon the Tories? Will Labour be able to convince people that they will be able to negotiate firmly?
It's worth noting that since 1955 Labour has only won a majority of seats in England 4 times. Scottish independence could make it more likely that there's a (more) permanent Tory majority,
Starmer looks the part as a potential PM far more than Kinnock ever did - indeed he looks the part more than Johnson.
SKS looks like a PM, but for a duller age -- the 1960s/1970s, perhaps.
Elections then were between 'the Man with a Pipe' and 'the Man with a Boat'.
SKS could have been 'the Man with a Flag'.
But, I am afraid he is no match for Boris or Nicola, his principal opponents.
(I think this was obvious to most of us from the start. I expect Labour will get there, probably on 3 May 2024).
Johnson has long struck me as a clownish Herman Goering type figure - many non-Nazis found him quite funny.
He's a bit like Goering? Jesus.
His use of the comparison kind of reveals the problem Labour and their supporters find themselves in. Boris is really hard to see as a nazi. To compare him to without any real basis for doing so is like pointing at a jack Russell and insisting they're Rottweiler.
Question is whether, come 2024, Britain decides it would quite like a duller time for a bit.
"Make Britain Calmer" could be quite an attractive pitch.
I am very, very doubtful whether 'Make Britain Boring' is a winning pitch.
There are harsh, ineradicable reasons why the times are not dull, why the United Kingdom is under strain, why the bricks in the Red Wall fell away, why London is moving one way and much of the rest of the country another.
Those reasons won't go way just because Keir wants us to kiss & make amends .... and be calm.
My guess is SKS will not do as well as Corbyn in 2017, certainly in votes, probably in seats.
Because Corbyn did have a vision, he articulated it clearly and he did reach parts of the electorate who had been disenchanted for a long time.
SKS's vision seems to be a drowsy numbness, as if he had emptied some dull opiate into our veins.
I have clashed with all of the foaming-dog fever hard left nutters who infested Corbyn's Labour - but they were absolutely a small but loud majority. However, even the sane activists were a problem in that so many suffered from massive arrogance that they were the only Good politicians and the Tories and indies who were basically Tories were fundamentally Bad. Which means that Labour not really doing anything on places like Teesside was OK because people won't vote for the Bad Tories.
Of course, most Labour members were the silent never seen or heard from type who only ever existed on the membership database.
Finally, I note again HYUFD foaming on about Scotland. In a democracy, people being told that whatever they want or however they vote they will be ignored are not people who stay in that democracy for long. This is Labour's painful lesson in places like Scotland and now the red wall - ignore our opinions and we will get you out.
Not true, as 50% of Scots are still Unionists on the latest polling, far more than now vote Labour nationally or in Scotland.
The Tories are never going to win the 50% of Nationalists in Scotland so can ignore them, just as the Spanish PP conservative government successfully ignored the Catalan Nationalist government in 2017.
As long as we have a Tory majority government we will refuse the Scottish Nationalists a legal and recognised indyref2 for a generation, ironically the only way the SNP will ever get an indyref2 from the UK government is to get a UK Labour government again which relies on them for confidence and supply
I know that you keep posting the same thing. I know that you are blind to the problem.
The Tory government "refusing the Scottish Nationalists" is the Tories not voted for in Scotland refusing the people of Scotland the right to their opinion. The union becomes a prison with no legal right to exit. Democracy only works with the consent of the people. Deny that and you're in deep shit.
When I went off to reread the Aubrey-Maturin cycle (apart from a final partial book which I now find exists and is on order), HYUFD was saying that. Returning, I find it's like **** Groundhog Day, and we can't blame the covid for it. Right down to pretending that the SNP is the only pro-indy party in Scotland.
Even Chris Deerin - no "Scottish Nationalist" he - has been warning that that is a disastrous strategy in the [edit] Staggers. .
"Meanwhile, Ciaran Martin, a former constitution director at the Cabinet Office who was involved in agreeing terms for the first independence referendum, said blocking a second vote would “fundamentally” change the nature of the Union, from one based on consent to one “based on force of law”. It is hard to see Scots tolerating such an arrangement in the long term."
50% of Scots are Unionists still on the latest polling and the vast majority of them want no indyref2.
We will ignore the Nationalists however for as long as we remain in power, the SNP have to got to learn 2014 was a once in a generation vote and we Tories will ensure they get a firm message 'No Means NO!!'
4 years after the Spanish government refused the Catalan nationalist government an independence referendum it remains part of Spain, that is the template we Tories will follow if necessary as set by our PP cousins in Madrid
Amongst all your Scotch idiocies, the idea that 50% of Scots are 'Nationalists' and 50% Unionists/British nationalists is the most cretinous. Luckily for the indy cause, a similar, tone deaf cluelessness infects your leader which bodes well for us. Still, bring on the flegs and torch lit parades, they're sure to work a treat.
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Sigh. Your posts are just so dull and partisan mate.
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
As long as Labour people remain in absolute denial about the immense harm their cultural disconnection from mainstream attitudes in this country does to their electoral prospects, I'll continue to try to knock some sense them into them.
On your other items, the electoral value of successive percentage points of electoral support does not scale in anything like a linear fashion. In our political system, there's a term for a party that can maintain 40%+ support while their opponents are stuck in the 30s - we call them the Government. The fact that the Tories have normal cultural values while Labour does not locks in crucial percentage points of support that turn hung parliaments into majorities and landslides. Labour need to learn that lesson, but they seem constitutionally incapable of doing so.
I don't think they can be described as "normal cultural values" when they are held by only a minority of the country. A plurality at best, and looking at the fluctuation over the last couple of years, about as solid as a blue blancmange.
The electorate will sicken of vacuous free spending populism in time, but I expect not until we have suffered it a bit longer.
Labour most certainly is not full of left-wing nutters, the majority are not. It is just that those that shout loudest, are the nutters.
Keir Starmer however is however quite successfully allowing them to become irrelevant. He just needs more time.
And we are very generously prepared to give him all the time he needs. Would another 10 years suffice, or do you need 20?
The whole point of this site is to analyse evidence, statistical or anecdotal in order to determine likely election outcomes. Some because they bet on it and others because they have some partisan, historical or social interest. I think HYUFD is particularly interesting because he is partisan but analyses the evidence and offers situations which may not be optimal for his party. He uses that evidence to consider ways for his party to offset these sub- optimal outcomes, which seems to be sensible for a serious political operative.
I come on here with no particular axe to grind. I have fallen out of love with the Labour party, but I nonetheless detest Johnson for his morally questionable backstory and (my perception) his cynically using Brexit for personal self-aggrandisement. As such I do make quips about Johnson (although in the past, I have done so with Corbyn too) but I try to base my critique on some sort of empirical evidence. My comments might piss some people off, but that is not my intention. I suppose in order to get a particular point through, complaining about Johnson or Corbyn ( or Andrew RT Davies) supports my case.
We can all be partisan, and I think that is fair enough. But coming on here post after post and trolling one's opponents with no better analyse than 'your party is s***, your leader is a moron, and my leader and my party rock, just because they do', is a little tiresome.
The user in question clearly has very little in the way of social life, so they come on here to escape the real world.
I suspect they have so few friends is because they treat them like shit.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
It is a big problem, and it is very representative
I have quite a few leftwing friends
Gather them in a pub for a few drinks, and they will regularly trot out stuff like "anyone who votes Tory is a racist", knowing full well that several around the table have, on occasion, voted Tory, or like Boris, or whatever
Another friend tells me, in sincere, earnest, condescending tones "you're my only rightwing friend", to which I occasionally reply "well, perhaps you should get a few more, then you wouldn't be constantly surprised and horrified when you lose elections" - this evokes a grimace from her, and she says "ewww, Tories, yuk" - and she means it. I keep her as a friend because she is basically nice and also funny and smart, but, Jesus, the temptation to hit her with a giant cucumber is sometimes hard to resist.
As for my friends at the pub telling me to my face that I am a racist, and Britain is racist, and everyone who votes Tory is a racist, my reaction is to stay quiet, smile politely, move the subject on - but inside I resolve that I will NEVER vote for their party and I actively want their party to lose and lose and lose, again and again and again, until they crumble into a pile of putrid dust. That's what I want to happen to your side.
We just don't say it, coz we have better manners
This sounds like an overly intense bloke - you - taking pub bantz a little too seriously.
@Leon lives in a weird bit of North London. I have never heard such a conversation among either my left wing friends nor my right wing.ones in either multicultural Leicester or true blue Shire Leicestershire.
I suspect there are shy Tories in metrosexual London, but there are also many shy Left wingers and Remainers in pubs in my village. They too keep mum at pub bores, but we do have LDs in our council seats and the parliamentary constituency was pretty much 50/50 in the referendum.
Well I live almost next door to him so I can relate to some of the stuff he says goes on. In this case, however, I think his lefty friends like to rib him a bit - since there aren't many gammons round here - and he takes it to heart and thinks they're being serious.
I have clashed with all of the foaming-dog fever hard left nutters who infested Corbyn's Labour - but they were absolutely a small but loud majority. However, even the sane activists were a problem in that so many suffered from massive arrogance that they were the only Good politicians and the Tories and indies who were basically Tories were fundamentally Bad. Which means that Labour not really doing anything on places like Teesside was OK because people won't vote for the Bad Tories.
Of course, most Labour members were the silent never seen or heard from type who only ever existed on the membership database.
Finally, I note again HYUFD foaming on about Scotland. In a democracy, people being told that whatever they want or however they vote they will be ignored are not people who stay in that democracy for long. This is Labour's painful lesson in places like Scotland and now the red wall - ignore our opinions and we will get you out.
Not true, as 50% of Scots are still Unionists on the latest polling, far more than now vote Labour nationally or in Scotland.
The Tories are never going to win the 50% of Nationalists in Scotland so can ignore them, just as the Spanish PP conservative government successfully ignored the Catalan Nationalist government in 2017.
As long as we have a Tory majority government we will refuse the Scottish Nationalists a legal and recognised indyref2 for a generation, ironically the only way the SNP will ever get an indyref2 from the UK government is to get a UK Labour government again which relies on them for confidence and supply
I know that you keep posting the same thing. I know that you are blind to the problem.
The Tory government "refusing the Scottish Nationalists" is the Tories not voted for in Scotland refusing the people of Scotland the right to their opinion. The union becomes a prison with no legal right to exit. Democracy only works with the consent of the people. Deny that and you're in deep shit.
When I went off to reread the Aubrey-Maturin cycle (apart from a final partial book which I now find exists and is on order), HYUFD was saying that. Returning, I find it's like **** Groundhog Day, and we can't blame the covid for it. Right down to pretending that the SNP is the only pro-indy party in Scotland.
Even Chris Deerin - no "Scottish Nationalist" he - has been warning that that is a disastrous strategy in the [edit] Staggers. .
"Meanwhile, Ciaran Martin, a former constitution director at the Cabinet Office who was involved in agreeing terms for the first independence referendum, said blocking a second vote would “fundamentally” change the nature of the Union, from one based on consent to one “based on force of law”. It is hard to see Scots tolerating such an arrangement in the long term."
50% of Scots are Unionists still on the latest polling and the vast majority of them want no indyref2.
We will ignore the Nationalists however for as long as we remain in power, the SNP have to got to learn 2014 was a once in a generation vote and we Tories will ensure they get a firm message 'No Means NO!!'
4 years after the Spanish government refused the Catalan nationalist government an independence referendum it remains part of Spain, that is the template we Tories will follow if necessary as set by our PP cousins in Madrid
Amongst all your Scotch idiocies, the idea that 50% of Scots are 'Nationalists' and 50% Unionists/British nationalists is the most cretinous. Luckily for the indy cause, a similar, tone deaf cluelessness infects your leader which bodes well for us. Still, bring on the flegs and torch lit parades, they're sure to work a treat.
The polling actually shows less than a third of Scots want indyref2 within a year, the majority don't want one for up to 5 years which takes us past the 2024 general election anyway.
So as I said for the rest of our term in power we Tories can and will ignore you
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Sigh. Your posts are just so dull and partisan mate.
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
As long as Labour people remain in absolute denial about the immense harm their cultural disconnection from mainstream attitudes in this country does to their electoral prospects, I'll continue to try to knock some sense them into them.
On your other items, the electoral value of successive percentage points of electoral support does not scale in anything like a linear fashion. In our political system, there's a term for a a party that can maintain 40%+ support while their opponents are stuck in the 30s - we call them the Government. The fact that the Tories have normal cultural values while Labour does not locks in crucial percentage points of support that turn hung parliaments into majorities and landslides.
Right. Yet Labour remains far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Your so called "cultural disconnect" from mainstream attitudes is clearly tolerated by a good 35-40% of voters. "Mainstream" is therefore dubious.
The fact is that @Leon (and you to an extent) constantly bang on about how despite Biden winning, Trump voters are a significant minority and should be ignored at peril.
And yet you don't seem to recognise the hypocrisy about the situation in the reverse in Britain.
The mainstream may not be obsessed with trans issues and statues but that applies equally to both the Conservatives and Labour. A small portion of the left are obsessed with trans issues and statues. A small portion of the right are also obsessed with trans issues and statues.
Fortunately, Biden himself is really quite conservative on cultural issues, to the fury of US progressives - that's one of the reasons he won. In electoral terms, the USA and Britain, despite a number of similarities, still have vastly different demographics - the fact that Trump was able to eke out a win at all in 2016 and was only beaten narrowly in crucial states this time speaks to the ruthless efficiency of the Republican machine. If the Tories were as effective, we'd be in power until about 2050.
As for statues, nothing would please me more than never having to mention them again outside of an art-historical context - the moment the left stop trying to vandalize, remove, or conceal them, I'll never raise the subject again. Their move.
Well yeah. Just like Starmer is quite conservative on cultural issues, to the fury of Corbynistas.
The fact is you're incapable of objective analysis because you're always supporting your football team — the Conservative Party.
"The left" are not trying to vandalise statues. A few extremists and yobos are trying to vandalise statues.
"The left" are not trying to vandalise statues. A few extremists and yobos are trying to vandalise statues.
And there comes the reality denial again. There's an all-out assault on Western culture and Enlightenment values taking place right now on the left, amplified by their fellow-travellers in the academy and in the media, of which statues are but one visible manifestation. You either don't see it or approve of it, so it doesn't matter to you; but it matters a lot to a significant chunk of the population. As they will continue to make clear whenever they are asked at the ballot box.
Aliens using Velcro sounds a bit like cosmonauts using pencils when NASA was inventing the space pen.
The American officials (and ex officials) have been quite careful not to sound too outlandish. They’re basically saying “we are seeing things that are not ours, they interfere with our military operations, in a lot of cases they defy our understanding of materials science and physics itself, and we have a lot of multi point evidence backing it up. We need insight on what these things are”.
A multi decades campaign of public ridicule on the subject has meant people have been too scared to engage with it. At least in America, that’s now changing. We’ve yet to catch up here, somewhere between 2-3 years behind the process in America I’d say.
Looking at current Earth politics would be rather fascinating if it was the case that Russia, China, the EU were excluded from a US-Alien technology alliance....
Who says they’ve allied with the US? Maybe it’s the Chinese who are the favoured children and they are the ones who can now break the sound barrier without causing a sonic boom. Or have perfected trans medium transport (equally fast in air and water).
If I were a paranoid US military type figure, these intelligence reports would disturb me greatly. As it is, I just sit back and enjoy the ride, taking comfort from the human story so far being on balance a positive one. Despite them almost certainly being there from our start if they’re with us now (as looks increasingly likely).
The US seem rather more relaxed about it, is all.
If the aliens had allied with say Burundi or Micronesia, perhaps not so much.
It is going to be rather funny if Erich von Däniken ends up getting a huge apology from all those who have taken the piss out of him for decades...
If they have the power and technology to get here, they really don't need to be so elusive. Nor so obsessed with red state America.
That's a strong point. Strong enough to kill the idea in fact. Why on earth would aliens choose the US for their debut appearance? Such a cliche.
Because since the start of radio and TV transmissions, they would have seen the US as being the dominant nation. Like I said, they are logically going to make for the White House, rather than Burundi.
They might be disappointed that the world is not as it was at the time of I Love Lucy, but they will have to take America as they find it.
Aliens using Velcro sounds a bit like cosmonauts using pencils when NASA was inventing the space pen.
The American officials (and ex officials) have been quite careful not to sound too outlandish. They’re basically saying “we are seeing things that are not ours, they interfere with our military operations, in a lot of cases they defy our understanding of materials science and physics itself, and we have a lot of multi point evidence backing it up. We need insight on what these things are”.
A multi decades campaign of public ridicule on the subject has meant people have been too scared to engage with it. At least in America, that’s now changing. We’ve yet to catch up here, somewhere between 2-3 years behind the process in America I’d say.
Looking at current Earth politics would be rather fascinating if it was the case that Russia, China, the EU were excluded from a US-Alien technology alliance....
Who says they’ve allied with the US? Maybe it’s the Chinese who are the favoured children and they are the ones who can now break the sound barrier without causing a sonic boom. Or have perfected trans medium transport (equally fast in air and water).
If I were a paranoid US military type figure, these intelligence reports would disturb me greatly. As it is, I just sit back and enjoy the ride, taking comfort from the human story so far being on balance a positive one. Despite them almost certainly being there from our start if they’re with us now (as looks increasingly likely).
The US seem rather more relaxed about it, is all.
If the aliens had allied with say Burundi or Micronesia, perhaps not so much.
It is going to be rather funny if Erich von Däniken ends up getting a huge apology from all those who have taken the piss out of him for decades...
If they have the power and technology to get here, they really don't need to be so elusive. Nor so obsessed with red state America.
Being elusive is presumably quite easy too - when you have the power and technology to get here....
Perhaps the aliens have a sense of mischief, or humour
Just landing on the White House Lawn and killing everyone in sight with ultra-lasers, and then raping everyone else with special helium-powered ano-probes is so predictable. Passe indeed
Instead, tease the poor humans. Flash a bit of ET thigh, by flying at 50,000 mph across the sky, then disappear for thirty years. THEN come back with the helium-powered ano-probes
Going back to aliens, I am trying to work out a conspiracy theory that might explain those Pentagon videos
The Pentagon claims they are genuine, and they show *real* Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Is it possible they are fake, and the Pentagon and lots of generals and ex-CIA bods are trying to hoodwink us? What would America, or the Pentagon, or the CIA gain from that? Can't see it
But maybe it goes deeper, and someone has hoodwinked the Pentagon, and the CIA directors, with fake videos. But how would you even do that? Hack into navy pilots' brains? And, again, who benefits? China is the obvious culprit, but what does it gain apart from sowing confusion in western ranks or making western military types look mad.....
OK that is quite a motivation, nonetheless I don't see how China could have done this, practically.
Which leaves us with Sherlock Holmes' dictum
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
They are UFOs, which resemble alien spaceships using inexplicably advanced technology
Yup. We’ve reached the point where you have to concoct a far bigger conspiracy theory to explain away the evidence and public statements, rather than just accepting that they’re non human tech.
Fermi’s Paradox was “where are they?”. Essentially, given the age and size of the Milky Way and what we’ve seen on Earth, intelligent life should be everywhere but appears to be nowhere. It’s a fun game to dream up reasons why that is. Wikipedia has several dozen answers. The answer appears to be simple. Intelligent extra terrestrial life is basically everywhere, including here, and it likely has been here all along.
We are currently in Jan 2020, when everyone (including the British government) looked at Wuhan, and said huh, anyway what’s on telly. Or on here, were discussing pay models in the social care sector. I’m not saying the reality will come crashing into people’s lives as quickly as it did then. But it’s conceivable that it might, given the now fairly unstoppable congressional process.
To take issue with Musk, “they sure are shy”. Well no Elon, they’re not. Because if they were why is there such a growing body of evidence? Cloaking would be trivial. Which means either they don’t care if they’re seen, or it’s a deliberate drip drip exposure. Which appears to be a strategy replicated by the politicians and media. A few videos here. Another leak there. Former relatively junior officials and military personnel free to speak all over the internet. Then A NY Times front page. Increasingly senior ex officials saying things in public, with ever greater certainty. Senior serving senators repeating it.
We’ve now reached the point where the last Director of National Intelligence can go on network tv and announce there’s multi point evidence (including satellite imagery) of non American craft breaking the sound barrier without creating sonic booms. And just about no one on planet earth seems to have noticed or cares.
What a fascinating species we must be to observe.
Yes, that's the key.
There is now hard evidence which has to be explained. My Normalcy Bias agrees with @Dura_Ace and the skeptics. Surely if they are out there loads of pilots would have seen them, why do they only go to America, why don't they just beam down and say Hi
And yet, the videos. How, what, where and why do you conspire to fake those, and apparently get the Pentagon to believe them? Or is the Pentagon trying to prank us?
It could easily be fake, but if it is a fake, it is deeply mysterious in provenance and construct. And I believe the giggle critique is an issue. People are embarrassed to believe this, even when there is concrete evidence
Alternatively - and quite seriously - maybe this is a mass hallucination. After all, fearful portents generally appear in the heavens around the time of great plagues. I believe there is a recording of such in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle
Labour most certainly is not full of left-wing nutters, the majority are not. It is just that those that shout loudest, are the nutters.
Keir Starmer however is however quite successfully allowing them to become irrelevant. He just needs more time.
And we are very generously prepared to give him all the time he needs. Would another 10 years suffice, or do you need 20?
The whole point of this site is to analyse evidence, statistical or anecdotal in order to determine likely election outcomes. Some because they bet on it and others because they have some partisan, historical or social interest. I think HYUFD is particularly interesting because he is partisan but analyses the evidence and offers situations which may not be optimal for his party. He uses that evidence to consider ways for his party to offset these sub- optimal outcomes, which seems to be sensible for a serious political operative.
I come on here with no particular axe to grind. I have fallen out of love with the Labour party, but I nonetheless detest Johnson for his morally questionable backstory and (my perception) his cynically using Brexit for personal self-aggrandisement. As such I do make quips about Johnson (although in the past, I have done so with Corbyn too) but I try to base my critique on some sort of empirical evidence. My comments might piss some people off, but that is not my intention. I suppose in order to get a particular point through, complaining about Johnson or Corbyn ( or Andrew RT Davies) supports my case.
We can all be partisan, and I think that is fair enough. But coming on here post after post and trolling one's opponents with no better analyse than 'your party is s***, your leader is a moron, and my leader and my party rock, just because they do', is a little tiresome.
I always appreciate criticism of my partisanship from someone whose own posts are mostly witless anti-Tory guff.
If you bother to read what I and others of my perspective have posted today, you'll see that we have a similar analysis and go into quite a bit of detail about why Labour is so far from power, and the government so entrenched. The views we represent are currently in a historical ascendancy in this country - you might be better served trying to work out why that is and adapting to it instead of tediously whining about the messenger.
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Sigh. Your posts are just so dull and partisan mate.
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
As long as Labour people remain in absolute denial about the immense harm their cultural disconnection from mainstream attitudes in this country does to their electoral prospects, I'll continue to try to knock some sense them into them.
On your other items, the electoral value of successive percentage points of electoral support does not scale in anything like a linear fashion. In our political system, there's a term for a a party that can maintain 40%+ support while their opponents are stuck in the 30s - we call them the Government. The fact that the Tories have normal cultural values while Labour does not locks in crucial percentage points of support that turn hung parliaments into majorities and landslides.
Right. Yet Labour remains far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Your so called "cultural disconnect" from mainstream attitudes is clearly tolerated by a good 35-40% of voters. "Mainstream" is therefore dubious.
The fact is that @Leon (and you to an extent) constantly bang on about how despite Biden winning, Trump voters are a significant minority and should be ignored at peril.
And yet you don't seem to recognise the hypocrisy about the situation in the reverse in Britain.
The mainstream may not be obsessed with trans issues and statues but that applies equally to both the Conservatives and Labour. A small portion of the left are obsessed with trans issues and statues. A small portion of the right are also obsessed with trans issues and statues.
Fortunately, Biden himself is really quite conservative on cultural issues, to the fury of US progressives - that's one of the reasons he won. In electoral terms, the USA and Britain, despite a number of similarities, still have vastly different demographics - the fact that Trump was able to eke out a win at all in 2016 and was only beaten narrowly in crucial states this time speaks to the ruthless efficiency of the Republican machine. If the Tories were as effective, we'd be in power until about 2050.
As for statues, nothing would please me more than never having to mention them again outside of an art-historical context - the moment the left stop trying to vandalize, remove, or conceal them, I'll never raise the subject again. Their move.
Well yeah. Just like Starmer is quite conservative on cultural issues, to the fury of Corbynistas.
The fact is you're incapable of objective analysis because you're always supporting your football team — the Conservative Party.
"The left" are not trying to vandalise statues. A few extremists and yobos are trying to vandalise statues.
"The left" are not trying to vandalise statues. A few extremists and yobos are trying to vandalise statues.
And there comes the reality denial again. There's an all-out assault on Western culture and Enlightenment values taking place right now on the left, amplified by their fellow-travellers in the academy and in the media, of which statues are but one visible manifestation. You either don't see it or approve of it, so it doesn't matter to you; but it matters a lot to a significant chunk of the population. As they will continue to make clear whenever they are asked at the ballot box.
But you're constantly conflating "the left" with the Labour party. The (far) left has always been there, even in Blair's times, inciting a culture war - Class War, the SWP, anarchists, and so on. The people you're talking about are their descendants, in a new guise. It's nothing new; though a minority of them did join the Labour Party under Corbyn, most have since disappeared. But I think you'd struggle to provide evidence that the Labour Party is behind, or in any way encouraging or approving of, the destruction of statues. Where's your evidence?
His use of the comparison kind of reveals the problem Labour and their supporters find themselves in. Boris is really hard to see as a nazi. To compare him to without any real basis for doing so is like pointing at a jack Russell and insisting they're Rottweiler.
I've seen a few comparisons of the Tories to Nazis in the recent past (mostly on twitter) and they always make me shudder. very few people alive in this country went through the Nazi regime and painfully few have properly studied it. Even the far right groups in europe are nothing like the Nazis.
If the Tories were Nazis, these people wouldn't be free to publish their speech on twitter....
and they don't see the irony in that position
I am not suggesting that Tories are Nazis. There may be individual exceptions within their ranks who do not fall far short of the the term - just as there may be extreme Leftists in Maoist groups who have much in common with Pol Pot. Goering was not the worst of the Nazis - when compared with Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich etc. He was though utterly ruthless and established the Gestapo in 1933. He was also seen by the wider public as a funny , clownish character who connected with them in a different way to Hitler's other disciples. He did not wish to see war in 1939 and opposed the attack on the USSR in June 1941 - though he followed Hitler's orders with little hesitation.Beyond that , he was self obsessed and always prioritised his own gratification with no regard to others. That may well ring a few bells today.
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Sigh. Your posts are just so dull and partisan mate.
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
As long as Labour people remain in absolute denial about the immense harm their cultural disconnection from mainstream attitudes in this country does to their electoral prospects, I'll continue to try to knock some sense them into them.
On your other items, the electoral value of successive percentage points of electoral support does not scale in anything like a linear fashion. In our political system, there's a term for a a party that can maintain 40%+ support while their opponents are stuck in the 30s - we call them the Government. The fact that the Tories have normal cultural values while Labour does not locks in crucial percentage points of support that turn hung parliaments into majorities and landslides.
Right. Yet Labour remains far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Your so called "cultural disconnect" from mainstream attitudes is clearly tolerated by a good 35-40% of voters. "Mainstream" is therefore dubious.
The fact is that @Leon (and you to an extent) constantly bang on about how despite Biden winning, Trump voters are a significant minority and should be ignored at peril.
And yet you don't seem to recognise the hypocrisy about the situation in the reverse in Britain.
The mainstream may not be obsessed with trans issues and statues but that applies equally to both the Conservatives and Labour. A small portion of the left are obsessed with trans issues and statues. A small portion of the right are also obsessed with trans issues and statues.
The Tories spend a lot of time thinking about these fringe issues and trying to convince the public that Labour spend a lot of time thinking about these fringe issues.
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
'People in the real world don't care' - indeed, that must be why the, er, Tories are defying political gravity and hold thumping leads after 11 years in power, while woke Labour remain as popular as a snot-flavoured lollipop.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Sigh. Your posts are just so dull and partisan mate.
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
As long as Labour people remain in absolute denial about the immense harm their cultural disconnection from mainstream attitudes in this country does to their electoral prospects, I'll continue to try to knock some sense them into them.
On your other items, the electoral value of successive percentage points of electoral support does not scale in anything like a linear fashion. In our political system, there's a term for a a party that can maintain 40%+ support while their opponents are stuck in the 30s - we call them the Government. The fact that the Tories have normal cultural values while Labour does not locks in crucial percentage points of support that turn hung parliaments into majorities and landslides.
Right. Yet Labour remains far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Your so called "cultural disconnect" from mainstream attitudes is clearly tolerated by a good 35-40% of voters. "Mainstream" is therefore dubious.
The fact is that @Leon (and you to an extent) constantly bang on about how despite Biden winning, Trump voters are a significant minority and should be ignored at peril.
And yet you don't seem to recognise the hypocrisy about the situation in the reverse in Britain.
The mainstream may not be obsessed with trans issues and statues but that applies equally to both the Conservatives and Labour. A small portion of the left are obsessed with trans issues and statues. A small portion of the right are also obsessed with trans issues and statues.
Fortunately, Biden himself is really quite conservative on cultural issues, to the fury of US progressives - that's one of the reasons he won. In electoral terms, the USA and Britain, despite a number of similarities, still have vastly different demographics - the fact that Trump was able to eke out a win at all in 2016 and was only beaten narrowly in crucial states this time speaks to the ruthless efficiency of the Republican machine. If the Tories were as effective, we'd be in power until about 2050.
As for statues, nothing would please me more than never having to mention them again outside of an art-historical context - the moment the left stop trying to vandalize, remove, or conceal them, I'll never raise the subject again. Their move.
Well yeah. Just like Starmer is quite conservative on cultural issues, to the fury of Corbynistas.
The fact is you're incapable of objective analysis because you're always supporting your football team — the Conservative Party.
"The left" are not trying to vandalise statues. A few extremists and yobos are trying to vandalise statues.
"The left" are not trying to vandalise statues. A few extremists and yobos are trying to vandalise statues.
And there comes the reality denial again. There's an all-out assault on Western culture and Enlightenment values taking place right now on the left, amplified by their fellow-travellers in the academy and in the media, of which statues are but one visible manifestation. You either don't see it or approve of it, so it doesn't matter to you; but it matters a lot to a significant chunk of the population. As they will continue to make clear whenever they are asked at the ballot box.
But you're constantly conflating "the left" with the Labour party. The (far) left has always been there, even in Blair's times, inciting a culture war - Class War, the SWP, anarchists, and so on. The people you're talking about are their descendants, in a new guise. It's nothing new; though a minority of them did join the Labour Party under Corbyn, most have since disappeared. But I think you'd struggle to provide evidence that the Labour Party is behind, or in any way encouraging or approving of, the destruction of statues. Where's your evidence?
He doesn't need evidence. It suits his "football team" if he can equate the Labour Party with "hating Britain".
I just spoke to my friend who, in late 2019, predicted the plague in 2020, and then, in early 2020, also predicted the rise of the surveillance state and the production of dangerous vaccines
She has just pointed out that early last year she predicted aliens would make themselves known to us, this decade
I just checked Whatsapp. She's right. She did predict exactly that
I have clashed with all of the foaming-dog fever hard left nutters who infested Corbyn's Labour - but they were absolutely a small but loud majority. However, even the sane activists were a problem in that so many suffered from massive arrogance that they were the only Good politicians and the Tories and indies who were basically Tories were fundamentally Bad. Which means that Labour not really doing anything on places like Teesside was OK because people won't vote for the Bad Tories.
Of course, most Labour members were the silent never seen or heard from type who only ever existed on the membership database.
Finally, I note again HYUFD foaming on about Scotland. In a democracy, people being told that whatever they want or however they vote they will be ignored are not people who stay in that democracy for long. This is Labour's painful lesson in places like Scotland and now the red wall - ignore our opinions and we will get you out.
Not true, as 50% of Scots are still Unionists on the latest polling, far more than now vote Labour nationally or in Scotland.
The Tories are never going to win the 50% of Nationalists in Scotland so can ignore them, just as the Spanish PP conservative government successfully ignored the Catalan Nationalist government in 2017.
As long as we have a Tory majority government we will refuse the Scottish Nationalists a legal and recognised indyref2 for a generation, ironically the only way the SNP will ever get an indyref2 from the UK government is to get a UK Labour government again which relies on them for confidence and supply
I know that you keep posting the same thing. I know that you are blind to the problem.
The Tory government "refusing the Scottish Nationalists" is the Tories not voted for in Scotland refusing the people of Scotland the right to their opinion. The union becomes a prison with no legal right to exit. Democracy only works with the consent of the people. Deny that and you're in deep shit.
When I went off to reread the Aubrey-Maturin cycle (apart from a final partial book which I now find exists and is on order), HYUFD was saying that. Returning, I find it's like **** Groundhog Day, and we can't blame the covid for it. Right down to pretending that the SNP is the only pro-indy party in Scotland.
Even Chris Deerin - no "Scottish Nationalist" he - has been warning that that is a disastrous strategy in the [edit] Staggers. .
"Meanwhile, Ciaran Martin, a former constitution director at the Cabinet Office who was involved in agreeing terms for the first independence referendum, said blocking a second vote would “fundamentally” change the nature of the Union, from one based on consent to one “based on force of law”. It is hard to see Scots tolerating such an arrangement in the long term."
50% of Scots are Unionists still on the latest polling and the vast majority of them want no indyref2.
We will ignore the Nationalists however for as long as we remain in power, the SNP have to got to learn 2014 was a once in a generation vote and we Tories will ensure they get a firm message 'No Means NO!!'
4 years after the Spanish government refused the Catalan nationalist government an independence referendum it remains part of Spain, that is the template we Tories will follow if necessary as set by our PP cousins in Madrid
Amongst all your Scotch idiocies, the idea that 50% of Scots are 'Nationalists' and 50% Unionists/British nationalists is the most cretinous. Luckily for the indy cause, a similar, tone deaf cluelessness infects your leader which bodes well for us. Still, bring on the flegs and torch lit parades, they're sure to work a treat.
The polling actually shows less than a third of Scots want indyref2 within a year, the majority don't want one for up to 5 years which takes us past the 2024 general election anyway.
So as I said for the rest of our term in power we Tories can and will ignore you
You don't seem to be doing very well on the 'ignore you' front on here.
Comments
Too many of the posts above are extrapolating from current circumstances when all sense suggests that, assuming the virus crisis does end, politics along with the rest of life will return to normal. And, insofar as it doesn’t, many people might be left with hopes and aspirations for a different future, that the Tories aren’t able to deliver.
True punditry is able to imagine a very different climate from the contemporary one. But it’s very difficult to do.
The problem is that he is so ineffectual at articulating his vision that the left wing nutters and Tories control the narrative. I suspect he is a decent sincere bloke but needs to master the three word soundbite, and ones that have resonance with the voters, and speak to policy.
Elections then were between 'the Man with a Pipe' and 'the Man with a Boat'.
SKS could have been 'the Man with a Flag'.
But, I am afraid he is no match for Boris or Nicola, his principal opponents.
(I think this was obvious to most of us from the start. I expect Labour will get there, probably on 3 May 2024).
Though as Trump proved, capture and rebradning is still entirely possible.
I don’t think theres much cut through
People, on the whole, don’t care. It fires up the partisans and the twitterati but that is not the real world. These aren’t the “wedge issues” that the activists (& their opponents) think they are.
Like - who actually cares about the correct-gendering of the handful of trans people in the prison population? I can’t get angry enough about it to form much of an opinion - and I’m a massive politics/current affairs geek.
Same thing with the statues.
People in the real world don’t care
And, a LibDem revival -- which is looking even more remote than a Labour one -- might enable the same result in England again.
At least SKS is the 'Man with a Flag'.
Ed Davey is 'the Man with Nothing Much'.
The two examples of one-party dominance in democracies since the war are Sweden and Japan, not Italy.
I suspect there are shy Tories in metrosexual London, but there are also many shy Left wingers and Remainers in pubs in my village. They too keep mum at pub bores, but we do have LDs in our council seats and the parliamentary constituency was pretty much 50/50 in the referendum.
The worst thing for the government would be to actually win the war, because it's such an important tool at holding the Conservative coalition together right now. Take the culture/Brexit war away, and all you're left with is a fairly mediocre bunch of politicians with not many ideas and a pretty tawdry set of ethics. Waving flags is much more fun than trying to justify the actions of Robert Jenrick or Gavin Williamson.
Starmer is bright enough to realise that, which is why most of the time, he doesn't play.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/ge2019-pm-and-the-pendulum/
When they tried to explain the actual outcome, one of the authors described what happened as the equivalent of holding a pendulum up at a 3 o'clock position, letting it go, and then watching it defy gravity and rise higher on its own. That's what the Conservatives under Boris achieved in 2019.
Broadly agree with you about long range GE election prospects though. I price the next one thus -
Can Maj 50%
Lab Maj 10%
No Maj 40%
And for No Maj, an 80% chance of Cons largest party. Which you can back at 1.66. It's the absolute star in the betting firmament right now.
Hmm... people seem to care a little bit after all, don't they?
Of course, most Labour members were the silent never seen or heard from type who only ever existed on the membership database.
Finally, I note again HYUFD foaming on about Scotland. In a democracy, people being told that whatever they want or however they vote they will be ignored are not people who stay in that democracy for long. This is Labour's painful lesson in places like Scotland and now the red wall - ignore our opinions and we will get you out.
https://tote.co.uk/racing/info/tote-plus-guide
The Conservatives are winning elections, and winning them comprehensively. Nobody is disputing that.
But let's not forget that (1) they still *only* representing 45% of the population, and (2) one can vote Conservative and still not have massive opinions on various "culture war" issues.
Labour still commands support of a good 30-35% of the population. Far more popular than "snot-flavoured lollipops".
Our system makes it easy to forget that one can lose an election yet still have significant support. In fact @Leon constantly bangs on about Trump's support in the US DESPITE losing handsomely.
That, and the vaccines.
It can’t last.
All that is happening is the government are commentating on the culture to win votes and cause division, they are not protecting anything.
The Tories are never going to win the 50% of Nationalists in Scotland so can ignore them, just as the Spanish PP conservative government successfully ignored the Catalan Nationalist government in 2017.
As long as we have a Tory majority government we will refuse the Scottish Nationalists a legal and recognised indyref2 for a generation, ironically the only way the SNP will ever get an indyref2 from the UK government is to get a UK Labour government again which relies on them for confidence and supply
Therefore constant smugness about a party being the arbiter of public opinion is nothing but dross. This applies equally to Labour under Blair and now the Conservatives under Johnson.
"Make Britain Calmer" could be quite an attractive pitch.
On your other items, the electoral value of successive percentage points of electoral support does not scale in anything like a linear fashion. In our political system, there's a term for a party that can maintain 40%+ support while their opponents are stuck in the 30s - we call them the Government. The fact that the Tories have normal cultural values while Labour does not locks in crucial percentage points of support that turn hung parliaments into majorities and landslides. Labour need to learn that lesson, but they seem constitutionally incapable of doing so.
The Tory government "refusing the Scottish Nationalists" is the Tories not voted for in Scotland refusing the people of Scotland the right to their opinion. The union becomes a prison with no legal right to exit. Democracy only works with the consent of the people. Deny that and you're in deep shit.
Your so called "cultural disconnect" from mainstream attitudes is clearly tolerated by a good 35-40% of voters. "Mainstream" is therefore dubious.
The fact is that @Leon (and you to an extent) constantly bang on about how despite Biden winning, Trump voters are a significant minority and should be ignored at peril.
And yet you don't seem to recognise the hypocrisy about the situation in the reverse in Britain.
The mainstream may not be obsessed with trans issues and statues but that applies equally to both the Conservatives and Labour. A small portion of the left are obsessed with trans issues and statues. A small portion of the right are also obsessed with trans issues and statues.
"But now we are playing with fire. Instead of the Enlightenment narrative of progress, we see a nihilistic rejection of history and culture, creating an intellectual and moral void."
Was Spengler just a century before his time in announcing the West’s decline? Certainly, we can no longer assume that the world is moving inevitably in our direction. If we continue to spurn our own history, culture and ideas, how could we expect it to be otherwise?"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/16/west-playing-fire-rejecting-enlightenment-values-created/
Super Joe
As for statues, nothing would please me more than never having to mention them again outside of an art-historical context - the moment the left stop trying to vandalize, remove, or conceal them, I'll never raise the subject again. Their move.
As Spain has proved in Catalonia where opinions on independence are roughly equally divided (as they are still in Scotland) nationalists can be ignored and we Tories will, we will not give the SNP another legal indyref2 as long as we remain in power at Westminster for a generation no matter how much they complain
Even Chris Deerin - no "Scottish Nationalist" he - has been warning that that is a disastrous strategy in the [edit] Staggers. .
"Meanwhile, Ciaran Martin, a former constitution director at the Cabinet Office who was involved in agreeing terms for the first independence referendum, said blocking a second vote would “fundamentally” change the nature of the Union, from one based on consent to one “based on force of law”. It is hard to see Scots tolerating such an arrangement in the long term."
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2021/04/should-boris-johnson-call-snap-scottish-independence-referendum
50% of Scots are Unionists still on the latest polling and the vast majority of them want no indyref2.
We will ignore the Nationalists however for as long as we remain in power, the SNP have to got to learn 2014 was a once in a generation vote and we Tories will ensure they get a firm message 'No Means NO!!'
4 years after the Spanish government refused the Catalan nationalist government an independence referendum it remains part of Spain, that is the template we Tories will follow if necessary as set by our PP cousins in Madrid
He's actually quite similar to Starmer.
The fact is you're incapable of objective analysis because you're always supporting your football team — the Conservative Party.
"The left" are not trying to vandalise statues. A few extremists and yobos are trying to vandalise statues.
I come on here with no particular axe to grind. I have fallen out of love with the Labour party, but I nonetheless detest Johnson for his morally questionable backstory and (my perception) his cynically using Brexit for personal self-aggrandisement. As such I do make quips about Johnson (although in the past, I have done so with Corbyn too) but I try to base my critique on some sort of empirical evidence. My comments might piss some people off, but that is not my intention. I suppose in order to get a particular point through, complaining about Johnson or Corbyn ( or Andrew RT Davies) supports my case.
We can all be partisan, and I think that is fair enough. But coming on here post after post and trolling one's opponents with no better analyse than 'your party is s***, your leader is a moron, and my leader and my party rock, just because they do', is a little tiresome.
Fermi’s Paradox was “where are they?”. Essentially, given the age and size of the Milky Way and what we’ve seen on Earth, intelligent life should be everywhere but appears to be nowhere. It’s a fun game to dream up reasons why that is. Wikipedia has several dozen answers. The answer appears to be simple. Intelligent extra terrestrial life is basically everywhere, including here, and it likely has been here all along.
We are currently in Jan 2020, when everyone (including the British government) looked at Wuhan, and said huh, anyway what’s on telly. Or on here, were discussing pay models in the social care sector. I’m not saying the reality will come crashing into people’s lives as quickly as it did then. But it’s conceivable that it might, given the now fairly unstoppable congressional process.
To take issue with Musk, “they sure are shy”. Well no Elon, they’re not. Because if they were why is there such a growing body of evidence? Cloaking would be trivial. Which means either they don’t care if they’re seen, or it’s a deliberate drip drip exposure. Which appears to be a strategy replicated by the politicians and media. A few videos here. Another leak there. Former relatively junior officials and military personnel free to speak all over the internet. Then A NY Times front page. Increasingly senior ex officials saying things in public, with ever greater certainty. Senior serving senators repeating it.
We’ve now reached the point where the last Director of National Intelligence can go on network tv and announce there’s multi point evidence (including satellite imagery) of non American craft breaking the sound barrier without creating sonic booms. And just about no one on planet earth seems to have noticed or cares.
What a fascinating species we must be to observe.
And there comes the reality denial again. There's an all-out assault on Western culture and Enlightenment values taking place right now on the left, amplified by their fellow-travellers in the academy and in the media, of which statues are but one visible manifestation. You either don't see it or approve of it, so it doesn't matter to you; but it matters a lot to a significant chunk of the population. As they will continue to make clear whenever they are asked at the ballot box.
There are harsh, ineradicable reasons why the times are not dull, why the United Kingdom is under strain, why the bricks in the Red Wall fell away, why London is moving one way and much of the rest of the country another.
Those reasons won't go way just because Keir wants us to kiss & make amends .... and be calm.
My guess is SKS will not do as well as Corbyn in 2017, certainly in votes, probably in seats.
Because Corbyn did have a vision, he articulated it clearly and he did reach parts of the electorate who had been disenchanted for a long time.
SKS's vision seems to be a drowsy numbness, as if he had emptied some dull opiate into our veins.
The electorate will sicken of vacuous free spending populism in time, but I expect not until we have suffered it a bit longer.
I suspect they have so few friends is because they treat them like shit.
So as I said for the rest of our term in power we Tories can and will ignore you
In 2012 the government's data said EU migration made up less than a third of all migration, when it actually accounted for more than two thirds.
They might be disappointed that the world is not as it was at the time of I Love Lucy, but they will have to take America as they find it.
"The right hasn't engaged in a culture war" is exactly the kind of crock of shit a reactionary out of touch old fogey would say
There is now hard evidence which has to be explained. My Normalcy Bias agrees with @Dura_Ace and the skeptics. Surely if they are out there loads of pilots would have seen them, why do they only go to America, why don't they just beam down and say Hi
And yet, the videos. How, what, where and why do you conspire to fake those, and apparently get the Pentagon to believe them? Or is the Pentagon trying to prank us?
It could easily be fake, but if it is a fake, it is deeply mysterious in provenance and construct. And I believe the giggle critique is an issue. People are embarrassed to believe this, even when there is concrete evidence
Alternatively - and quite seriously - maybe this is a mass hallucination. After all, fearful portents generally appear in the heavens around the time of great plagues. I believe there is a recording of such in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle
If you bother to read what I and others of my perspective have posted today, you'll see that we have a similar analysis and go into quite a bit of detail about why Labour is so far from power, and the government so entrenched. The views we represent are currently in a historical ascendancy in this country - you might be better served trying to work out why that is and adapting to it instead of tediously whining about the messenger.
Goering was not the worst of the Nazis - when compared with Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich etc. He was though utterly ruthless and established the Gestapo in 1933. He was also seen by the wider public as a funny , clownish character who connected with them in a different way to Hitler's other disciples. He did not wish to see war in 1939 and opposed the attack on the USSR in June 1941 - though he followed Hitler's orders with little hesitation.Beyond that , he was self obsessed and always prioritised his own gratification with no regard to others. That may well ring a few bells today.
It's nothing but partisan guff.
She has just pointed out that early last year she predicted aliens would make themselves known to us, this decade
I just checked Whatsapp. She's right. She did predict exactly that
CUE TWILIGHT ZONE THEME TUNE