Taking out Cheney (R-Wyo.) as conference chair was never going to be clean and easy for [US House GOP Minority Leader Kevin] McCarthy. And this week, we’re starting to pick up on a bit of backlash against the minority leader behind the scenes. Some House Republicans are privately griping about how the California Republican has fed a colleague to the MAGA wolves in his quest to become speaker.
And no, we’re not just hearing this from ADAM KINZINGER types.
McCarthy has sought to cast doubt on Cheney’s leadership ability, arguing that it is essentially selfish to call out Trump instead of prioritizing GOP unity. But other House Republicans question his own leadership qualities.
One of them — a Republican long seen as an ally of leadership — told us Monday night he may oppose McCarthy for speaker because of all the recent drama. This person accused McCarthy of having no moral compass as he moves to punish Cheney while allowing members like Reps. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-Ga.) and MATT GAETZ (R-Fla.) to run wild.
“Kevin McCarthy has pissed off enough members of his own conference that he’s going to have to go back to his former days as a whip to try to figure out where his votes are” to become speaker, said the member, who is neither a member of the Freedom Caucus nor a moderate. “I’d be worried if I was him. … You have people like me — who are here to do the right thing for all the right reasons and have an expectation of leadership — that are, shall we say, disgusted with the internal squabbling that results from having weak leadership. And it is weak leadership. Straight up.”
A senior GOP aide to a conservative member put it this way: “He’s flip-flopped on [Jan. 6 and whether it’s] Trump’s fault, it’s not Trump’s fault. … It seems like he doesn’t have the backbone to lead. He bends to political pressure. It’s tough to do when you’re speaker. You have to lead.”
On the other end of the ideological spectrum, a group of conservatives feel like they’ve been boxed in with Rep. ELISE STEFANIK (R-N.Y.), as McCarthy moved to lock her in as Cheney’s replacement. McCarthy’s move to clear the field when others wanted to run for the job has upset some on the right, though Stefanik’s announcement that she would only serve for one term has assuaged some of these concerns.
McCarthy’s move against Cheney has arguably helped his standing with Trump, who was angered by the GOP leader’s initial decision to stand by her. But the former president is still lukewarm on McCarthy, we’re told, and loyalty with Trump often runs only one way.
Of course, the midterms are a long ways away, and helping to lead Republicans back to the House majority could go a long way with his critics. But while Cheney is the one getting canned this week, McCarthy won’t come out unscathed, either.
I think the second issue might be the problem rather than the first, namely there was a chosen candidate. Re the criticism of McCarthy, Politico could only find one Congress member plus an aide. I suspect he will be fine, especially as Cheney has managed to p1ss off so many people in her party, and not just Trumpsters.
Hilary Benn would be a good leader - but appears not to be interested.
Yeah he will definitely do the trick in the red wall.......shakes head.
Boris will have a bus in every leave seat with Benn face on saying "his man did everything he could to stop Brexit".
HB is almost as wooden as Starmer.
I like Hilary Benn. I met him in a lift once, which got briefly stuck. It was one of those awkward situations you get when you meet a famous person: all the normal pleasantries you might make go out of the window because YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE. Where are you from? What do you do? All useless. You already know the answer. Nor can you just launch into an introduction of yourself bringing the famous person up to speed with who you are to even up the imbalance, because that would feel insane, and they are already slightly nervous about who they are in the lift with and for how long they will be there. In the end we shared mild quips about what we hoped to have for lunch. Anyway, I like Hilary, Do you remember that speech about the bombing of Syria? It was quite good. Though not necessarily one to endear him to the membership.
He was my MP for a time. Seeing him in the flesh at CLP meetings, dealing with the nonsense from our resident Momentumites was a joy. A very good communicator, and a very deep thinker.
And now my MP is.... Philip Davies. Less of a joy.
Is that really true? Kier Starmer's dad owned the factory?
I mean, of course, I don't think ill of him for having a middle class background. I have a middle class background. But he's always seemed fairly keen to let it be known he came from working class (sorry) origins.
He comes from a pretty ordinary background. Corbyn's was more comfortable.
What's happening right now is you have a guy who's down and under pressure, and people from all sides are piling in.
Excuse me while I don't.
Well that's what happens unfortunately. A leader does a bit badly, and gets any number of headlines about how badly he's doing, citing as evidence the fact that he's getting any number of headlines about how badly he's doing, which makes people think he's not doing very well, which leads to poorer opinion polls. All quite unfair and the same thing happened to IDS and indeed Ed Miliband.
His background doesn't really matter of course. I'm sure we agree on that. Effective politicians can come from any background; those from tougher backgrounds have more hurdles to getting to the top, but those that do have a valuable insight. He's certainly from 'ordinary' origins, for a value of 'ordinary' that encompasses the middle 60% of the population - as am I, probably. Nothing wrong with that. But it wasn't quite the background I had been led to believe he was from. I'm not piling in, inasmuch as what I say or do has any impact at all, which it doesn't. I think he's ok. Not great, but ok. Exudes dull competence, which is a much underrated quality (is he competent? I've no idea). Has done some stuff that I've welcomed and some stuff I've lamented. This does, though, put a slightly different take on the discussion from last night in which we were mildly incredulous that he rated lower than Boris for honesty.
EDIT: Note that all the evidence we have for this snippet so far is a Guido tweet, so this is all a bit speculative. Not enough to base any sort of case on!
I am a bit worried, in truth. I'm not going with the flow right now because I think there's some mindless herd stuff going on, which I dislike, and is also potentially bad for betting. My fear about Starmer (who I didn't vote for) is he might be too corporate to connect with the public. People want some "shirt out" these days. Whatever policies come forth, left or centrist, have to be sold and if he can't do that we'll have to make a change.
Starmer seeks to be a second Blair. He has Mandelson and Mattison working closely with him. See Mandleson's words the other day: "lose, lose, lose, lose, Blair, Blair, Blair, Lose, Lose, lose, lose".
The direction he is going is the right one if you want the LP to maximise electability but the wrong one if you seek honesty and authenticity.
Times move on and, while I would agree Starmer is Blair-esque in his approach, 2021 is not 1997.
Do we know who exactly is banned from PB , either temporarily or permanently?
Can think of at least one rather prolific poster who is nowhere to be seen at present.
Of course people can and do got AWOL for various reasons of their own, ranging from ennui (me), computer trouble (ditto), long vacations, even longer custodial sentences or seemingly endless expeditions to the wilds of East Africa or West Wokeshire.
If you click on their profile their avatar will say User Banned if they are. I think
Interesting. So where do you find a list of avatars, since they will by definition not be on threads from which they are banned? Just scan through past posts?
(Think there used to be a link for PB archives, but don't see it now.)
Is that really true? Kier Starmer's dad owned the factory?
I mean, of course, I don't think ill of him for having a middle class background. I have a middle class background. But he's always seemed fairly keen to let it be known he came from working class (sorry) origins.
He comes from a pretty ordinary background. Corbyn's was more comfortable.
What's happening right now is you have a guy who's down and under pressure, and people from all sides are piling in.
Excuse me while I don't.
Well that's what happens unfortunately. A leader does a bit badly, and gets any number of headlines about how badly he's doing, citing as evidence the fact that he's getting any number of headlines about how badly he's doing, which makes people think he's not doing very well, which leads to poorer opinion polls. All quite unfair and the same thing happened to IDS and indeed Ed Miliband.
His background doesn't really matter of course. I'm sure we agree on that. Effective politicians can come from any background; those from tougher backgrounds have more hurdles to getting to the top, but those that do have a valuable insight. He's certainly from 'ordinary' origins, for a value of 'ordinary' that encompasses the middle 60% of the population - as am I, probably. Nothing wrong with that. But it wasn't quite the background I had been led to believe he was from. I'm not piling in, inasmuch as what I say or do has any impact at all, which it doesn't. I think he's ok. Not great, but ok. Exudes dull competence, which is a much underrated quality (is he competent? I've no idea). Has done some stuff that I've welcomed and some stuff I've lamented. This does, though, put a slightly different take on the discussion from last night in which we were mildly incredulous that he rated lower than Boris for honesty.
EDIT: Note that all the evidence we have for this snippet so far is a Guido tweet, so this is all a bit speculative. Not enough to base any sort of case on!
I am a bit worried, in truth. I'm not going with the flow right now because I think there's some mindless herd stuff going on, which I dislike, and is also potentially bad for betting. My fear about Starmer (who I didn't vote for) is he might be too corporate to connect with the public. People want some "shirt out" these days. Whatever policies come forth, left or centrist, have to be sold and if he can't do that we'll have to make a change.
Starmer seeks to be a second Blair. He has Mandelson and Mattison working closely with him. See Mandleson's words the other day: "lose, lose, lose, lose, Blair, Blair, Blair, Lose, Lose, lose, lose".
The direction he is going is the right one if you want the LP to maximise electability but the wrong one if you seek honesty and authenticity.
More authenticity would make him more electable.
See Andy Burnham. Sans eyeliner, expensive suit and poshed up accent. People don't like fake. Not these days anyways.
Seattle Times ($) - Halt to 737 MAX deliveries stymies Boeing’s recovery effort
Boeing delivered just four 737 MAXs in April before an electrical problem grounded the jet again, halting further deliveries until a fix is approved. The setback frustrated Boeing’s effort to begin to climb out of the pandemic downturn as air travel slowly recovers.
The company’s monthly update to its jet orders and deliveries figures, posted online Tuesday, otherwise showed marginal progress.
Deliveries of the 787 Dreamliner, which resumed in March after a more than four-month halt due to a separate production quality issue, picked up in April. And while last year was dominated by order cancellations, Boeing for the third straight month showed a small positive net order total.
However, as U.S. airlines look to a recovery in domestic travel, the 737 MAX is the Boeing jet in most demand, so the stoppage in deliveries is a major blow that drastically cuts much-needed cash flow.
Due to a change in the manufacturing process, various panels and power control units on the MAX flight deck built since early 2019 are not properly grounded electrically, which can potentially affect operation of certain systems, including engine ice protection.
COMMENT - Boeing USED to be run by engineers and aviation experts. For last several decades, has been run by bankers and bean counters. Right into the ground, or close enough.
You should hear what the old Boeing mangers & employees from my neighborhood have to say about it!
On the working class/middle class blurred lines, my parents were both 2nd generation immigrants. My dad grew up on a North Shields council estate and was the first in his family to go to university. His younger brother went to prison for steeling cars because he got involved in the wrong crowd.
My mum grew up in North London and was the daughter of a black cab driver. She was also the first in her family to go to university. It is at university where my parents met.
Because of the nature of the time, 2 university graduates (with low degree classifications, I might add) had well paid graduate jobs and could afford to buy a house together in affluent Solihull and I grew up fairly middle class by all accounts. My dad was the stereotypical "Mondeo man".
I of course went to University myself (twice, as you all know).
Now obviously I am middle class by most definitions but I don't feel wealthy whatsoever. I only managed to buy a house because my mum had the gall to die of cancer so I got a little inheritance early.
That level of social mobility is pretty much gone I reckon.
When I graduated, only 10% went to university but there was plenty of social mobility.
As university proportions ballooned it seems social mobility plunged.
I'm not sure the two are even linked, but it makes you think.
It has killed the non-degree entry routes into the top jobs.
And created a two-tiered degree system. If you have a degree from the bottom group of universities (roughly non-Russell Group), you are not getting a top job either.
So, previously, investment banks hired high end graduates and a few barrow boys. Now they just hire high end graduates.
As a Conservative, I am pleased that the people of Greater Manchester have a regional champion. For too long they were entirely taken for granted, and Burnham isn't going that. Sure, I don't agree with him on everything, but busses in Harpurhey is hardly a party political issue.
I am not sure how Liverpool ended up with two mayors (Bristol as well), but red blue or other I like the model.
Yet again, I'd like to thank the PB Tories for their regular advice on who should be the next Labour leader. Today there have been recommendations for Andy Burnham, Ed Balls and Dan Jarvis - interesting, it ebbs and flows a bit but they all have something in common. You Tories should have taken our advice and gone for Jeremy Hunt - we kept telling you Boris was a bad 'un.
Speculation is interesting, of course, but we are stuck with Starmer, for good or bad, for at least another year - he needs more than 14 months as Leader in a pandemic before fair and full assessment.
I'm also grateful for the advice that any mention, let alone discussion, of Israel/Palestine should not pass the lips of anybody connected to the Labour Party. The bad things going on over there are all over the news, but lefties should maintain a a Trappist silence, because Corbyn I assume. I take it we're still allowed to talk about China, as long as we say the right things?
Don't know about other PB Tories, but you'll get no such silly arguments from me. Dear Keir should be given all the time he needs as LOTO - a decade, if he wants it - and the more of it he spends talking about Palestine, the better.
When labour get a leader who says to their MPs when did you become the member for Gaza Strip South? the tories need to worry.
"We pride ourselves on not shying away from sensitive issues that other local politicians prefer not to discuss."
"Promotion of a unifying shared British identity."
Sufficient provision for the essential needs of the populace, otherwise preserving individual liberty."
No Labour votes here. Plenty for the "Eng Nat" Cons.
Seems a bit "motherhood and Apple Pie" as the Americans would say.
Are you against the British identity?
Are you against individual liberty?
Are you against discussing sensitive issues?
All meaningless phrases. Where's the beef?
I have little interest in them other than from the by-election betting angle. They have the air of hardcore Ukip to me (the guy who formed them certainly is) and I think they'll be breaking heavily Con. If you wish to make another bad call by thinking something else, by all means go for it.
I'm not making a call this time. I know nothing about them and if BXP were prepared to go Tory and not be neverTories then there seems to be little reason these won't do the same.
UKIP is dead so hardcore UKIP is meaningless, just as those words in bold you highlighted are meaningless. You've not said what they mean to you that Labour should be against instead of being meaningless guff.
It's dead as a party but not as an attitude. In this sense it's still a lot of people and where their votes are going these days is a significant factor shaping our politics.
Its dead as an attitude, we've left the EU. That was the unifying feature, beyond that they were just cranks.
What's left of the attitude?
What remains of their attitude is that its imagined nature forms a convenient balustrade behind which @kini can feel better about himself and condemn others.
What is the matter with you?
Ukip attracted a big vote in their prime. Not so long ago either. So where is that vote going now and what's driving it?
Surely a more fascinating topic for a politics site than how I happen to be feeling about myself.
Absolutely. So let the latter go as it manifests itself in a need to denigrate others insidiously and not so insidiously (depending upon how much prep you have done).
There really is no need to be insecure on here goodness knows we've all got our problems (me excepted). Just go with the political debate. We love you, really. You had cracking views on Trump and Hartlepool. Go with that.
I seem to have upset you and I genuinely don't know why. If you wish to drop the obliquery and tell me what it is, I'll take it seriously and see if I can uncross the wires.
LOL! Just can't help yourself.
As I said, relax, enjoy PB and grace us with your political insight which is not insubstantial rather than worrying about what we think of you. I have already noted, and I think I speak for all of PB, we love you.
I came here for the political insight, but I stay for the entertainment value of Philip and Kinabalu winding each other up/bickering in a (generally) good natured fashion. Like an old married couple. You winding Kinabalu up - which you seem to have a gift for - is simply a bonus
I'm not sure this is the zinger you think it is. The self-employed and small business owners are the bedrock of the new northern Conservative vote. They still think they're working class. What matters is getting "stuck in" to the graft.
Oh, absolutely. The backbone of our economy. I think it's hugely positive to have a LOTO with a background with an understanding of small business. I certainly don't want to get all class war. But if it's true, it's a jarringly different picture to the one I understood to be true - presumably because it was how Kier wanted to be portrayed, though I grant I don't think I've ever heard about his background from him personally.
The problem with it, is that the Tory Facebook campaign ads at the next election write themselves. Sir Keir likes you tell you he grew up in a factory worker’s house, but didn’t tell you his father owned the factory and sent him to the good school. What is he offering today’s working classes other than sneering contempt?
That isn't fatal. Boris Johnson is quite literally the elite. What is he offering today's working classes?
If Keir can sort the Labour Party out (unlikely, but still), his background is not going to be relevant.
Boris isn't trying to hide that he's of the elite or pretend otherwise. It's one of the reasons he comes across as genuine despite every word he says being a pack of lies. When Sir Keir Starmer QC tries to tell us he's the son of a working class toolmaker it just isn't genuine because about three seconds of fact checking shows that he's the son of an industrialist factory owner. Dave struggled with this as well, he always tried to do his "call me Dave, I support West Ham, wait I mean Aston Villa" schtick and it didn't really hit home then either and people were easily able to see he was a but of a fake. It was actually on the NHS when he was strongest because he has that very personal experience with it due to the extensive care they gave to his disabled son. You could genuinely see that he really cared about the NHS and would ensure that the NHS was spared the worst of the coming austerity.
There isn't a single subject where Starmer has that impact. He hasn't got personal experiences that speak to the nation. To my mind, he's never really faced personal or professional adversity and it gives him lack of character/authenticity. One thing voters are very good at is spotting a fraud. Starmer is fake working class trying to appeal to them with learned lines and unknown experiences. Boris just doesn't bother to try, which is probably the better route IMO.
He was great on Desert Island Discs. Really came over well. Intelligent, empathetic, interesting, modest, confident, humane.
I remember listening to it and thinking, "Gosh what a fabulous contrast to the shallow facetious 'show phony' he's up against."
Sadly I haven't seen that translated into LoTo performance as yet. And it does need to PDQ.
Opposition Leader Satisfied Dissatisfied Net satisfaction Date of poll % % % Thatcher 38 51 -13 Nov 1978 Foot 13 69 -56 Aug 1982 Kinnock 27 61 -34 Dec 1988 Smith 33 41 -8 May 1993 Blair 42 35 +7 Sep 1996 Hague 19 56 -37 Jan 2000 Duncan Smith 16 53 -37 Feb 2003 Howard 23 49 -26 Jun 2005 Cameron 23 45 -22 Sep 2007 Miliband 25 63 -38 Dec 2014 Corbyn 17 72 -55 Feb 2019 Either it's a blip, or Starmer's toast.
The only saving grace for Starmer is that the last 14 months the polls have been largely driven by the pandemic.
If this is the norm for the post pandemic phase then he's like a stepmom on Pornhub.
The only question is does the PLP have the desire to remove him?
I keep coming back to the question, that nobody's really answered - who would you replace him with?
Major Dan Jarvis.
Well quite. Personable, sane, doesn't keep banging on about Palestine. But does he want the job? All the signs I've seen are that he doesn't.
I've never heard Dan Jarvis speak, or what he really is like. All I know is that he was in the armed forces and that is why many think he could be good for Labour. The image of an ex squaddie might play well with the public. Other than that I don't know.
He's not strictly speaking a squaddie. He was an officer. BUT, and it's quite a big but, no one really thinks like that when you're talking about a Para or a Marine. He was the former. Pretty hard core.
I've a Labour friend from Barnsley who has been banging on about Jarvis for what feels like years and years.
How's Jarvis going to get past the membership vote though? Surely he will be viewed with suspicion by the bien pensants of N London and Middling University Labour club?
I just looked ta his Wiki page. he looks far too electable to be elected to Labour Leader. Absolutely no chance.
The next leader absolutely must be a woman apparently.
Hope you're not somebody who manages to ridicule Labour (i) for never having a woman leader and (ii) for thinking they have to pick a woman leader.
Because some people do manage that, would you believe.
On the working class/middle class blurred lines, my parents were both 2nd generation immigrants. My dad grew up on a North Shields council estate and was the first in his family to go to university. His younger brother went to prison for steeling cars because he got involved in the wrong crowd.
My mum grew up in North London and was the daughter of a black cab driver. She was also the first in her family to go to university. It is at university where my parents met.
Because of the nature of the time, 2 university graduates (with low degree classifications, I might add) had well paid graduate jobs and could afford to buy a house together in affluent Solihull and I grew up fairly middle class by all accounts. My dad was the stereotypical "Mondeo man".
I of course went to University myself (twice, as you all know).
Now obviously I am middle class by most definitions but I don't feel wealthy whatsoever. I only managed to buy a house because my mum had the gall to die of cancer so I got a little inheritance early.
That level of social mobility is pretty much gone I reckon.
When I graduated, only 10% went to university but there was plenty of social mobility.
As university proportions ballooned it seems social mobility plunged.
I'm not sure the two are even linked, but it makes you think.
It has killed the non-degree entry routes into the top jobs.
And created a two-tiered degree system. If you have a degree from the bottom group of universities (roughly non-Russell Group), you are not getting a top job either.
So, previously, investment banks hired high end graduates and a few barrow boys. Now they just hire high end graduates.
I'm not sure that's quite true anymore.
In law, for example, most of the big firms I have come across now (within the last few years) hire "solicitor apprentices" as well as graduates.
Is that really true? Kier Starmer's dad owned the factory?
I mean, of course, I don't think ill of him for having a middle class background. I have a middle class background. But he's always seemed fairly keen to let it be known he came from working class (sorry) origins.
He comes from a pretty ordinary background. Corbyn's was more comfortable.
What's happening right now is you have a guy who's down and under pressure, and people from all sides are piling in.
Excuse me while I don't.
Well that's what happens unfortunately. A leader does a bit badly, and gets any number of headlines about how badly he's doing, citing as evidence the fact that he's getting any number of headlines about how badly he's doing, which makes people think he's not doing very well, which leads to poorer opinion polls. All quite unfair and the same thing happened to IDS and indeed Ed Miliband.
His background doesn't really matter of course. I'm sure we agree on that. Effective politicians can come from any background; those from tougher backgrounds have more hurdles to getting to the top, but those that do have a valuable insight. He's certainly from 'ordinary' origins, for a value of 'ordinary' that encompasses the middle 60% of the population - as am I, probably. Nothing wrong with that. But it wasn't quite the background I had been led to believe he was from. I'm not piling in, inasmuch as what I say or do has any impact at all, which it doesn't. I think he's ok. Not great, but ok. Exudes dull competence, which is a much underrated quality (is he competent? I've no idea). Has done some stuff that I've welcomed and some stuff I've lamented. This does, though, put a slightly different take on the discussion from last night in which we were mildly incredulous that he rated lower than Boris for honesty.
EDIT: Note that all the evidence we have for this snippet so far is a Guido tweet, so this is all a bit speculative. Not enough to base any sort of case on!
I am a bit worried, in truth. I'm not going with the flow right now because I think there's some mindless herd stuff going on, which I dislike, and is also potentially bad for betting. My fear about Starmer (who I didn't vote for) is he might be too corporate to connect with the public. People want some "shirt out" these days. Whatever policies come forth, left or centrist, have to be sold and if he can't do that we'll have to make a change.
Starmer seeks to be a second Blair. He has Mandelson and Mattison working closely with him. See Mandleson's words the other day: "lose, lose, lose, lose, Blair, Blair, Blair, Lose, Lose, lose, lose".
The direction he is going is the right one if you want the LP to maximise electability but the wrong one if you seek honesty and authenticity.
More authenticity would make him more electable.
See Andy Burnham. Sans eyeliner, expensive suit and poshed up accent. People don't like fake. Not these days anyways.
You could say that Boris is mocking the working class by pretending to act like them. I'm going to have a pint down the pub after lockdown, and all that. Garage was good at pretending to be be something he isn't too. A jack the lad working class act.
I'm not sure this is the zinger you think it is. The self-employed and small business owners are the bedrock of the new northern Conservative vote. They still think they're working class. What matters is getting "stuck in" to the graft.
Oh, absolutely. The backbone of our economy. I think it's hugely positive to have a LOTO with a background with an understanding of small business. I certainly don't want to get all class war. But if it's true, it's a jarringly different picture to the one I understood to be true - presumably because it was how Kier wanted to be portrayed, though I grant I don't think I've ever heard about his background from him personally.
The problem with it, is that the Tory Facebook campaign ads at the next election write themselves. Sir Keir likes you tell you he grew up in a factory worker’s house, but didn’t tell you his father owned the factory and sent him to the good school. What is he offering today’s working classes other than sneering contempt?
That isn't fatal. Boris Johnson is quite literally the elite. What is he offering today's working classes?
If Keir can sort the Labour Party out (unlikely, but still), his background is not going to be relevant.
Boris isn't trying to hide that he's of the elite or pretend otherwise. It's one of the reasons he comes across as genuine despite every word he says being a pack of lies. When Sir Keir Starmer QC tries to tell us he's the son of a working class toolmaker it just isn't genuine because about three seconds of fact checking shows that he's the son of an industrialist factory owner. Dave struggled with this as well, he always tried to do his "call me Dave, I support West Ham, wait I mean Aston Villa" schtick and it didn't really hit home then either and people were easily able to see he was a but of a fake. It was actually on the NHS when he was strongest because he has that very personal experience with it due to the extensive care they gave to his disabled son. You could genuinely see that he really cared about the NHS and would ensure that the NHS was spared the worst of the coming austerity.
There isn't a single subject where Starmer has that impact. He hasn't got personal experiences that speak to the nation. To my mind, he's never really faced personal or professional adversity and it gives him lack of character/authenticity. One thing voters are very good at is spotting a fraud. Starmer is fake working class trying to appeal to them with learned lines and unknown experiences. Boris just doesn't bother to try, which is probably the better route IMO.
He was great on Desert Island Discs. Really came over well. Intelligent, empathetic, interesting, modest, confident, humane.
I remember listening to it and thinking, "Gosh what a fabulous contrast to the shallow facetious 'show phony' he's up against."
Sadly I haven't seen that translated into LoTo performance as yet. And it does need to PDQ.
Yes. I heard that and was impressed. It doesn't come across. He's being advised to project an image I reckon. And it shows. Very New Labour. But this is now, not then.
"The Tories' stonking super-majority is built on sand Johnson's uneasy coalition between Red Wall voters and Tory libertarians may yet implode as spectacularly as the Labour Party
Is that really true? Kier Starmer's dad owned the factory?
I mean, of course, I don't think ill of him for having a middle class background. I have a middle class background. But he's always seemed fairly keen to let it be known he came from working class (sorry) origins.
He comes from a pretty ordinary background. Corbyn's was more comfortable.
What's happening right now is you have a guy who's down and under pressure, and people from all sides are piling in.
Excuse me while I don't.
Well that's what happens unfortunately. A leader does a bit badly, and gets any number of headlines about how badly he's doing, citing as evidence the fact that he's getting any number of headlines about how badly he's doing, which makes people think he's not doing very well, which leads to poorer opinion polls. All quite unfair and the same thing happened to IDS and indeed Ed Miliband.
His background doesn't really matter of course. I'm sure we agree on that. Effective politicians can come from any background; those from tougher backgrounds have more hurdles to getting to the top, but those that do have a valuable insight. He's certainly from 'ordinary' origins, for a value of 'ordinary' that encompasses the middle 60% of the population - as am I, probably. Nothing wrong with that. But it wasn't quite the background I had been led to believe he was from. I'm not piling in, inasmuch as what I say or do has any impact at all, which it doesn't. I think he's ok. Not great, but ok. Exudes dull competence, which is a much underrated quality (is he competent? I've no idea). Has done some stuff that I've welcomed and some stuff I've lamented. This does, though, put a slightly different take on the discussion from last night in which we were mildly incredulous that he rated lower than Boris for honesty.
EDIT: Note that all the evidence we have for this snippet so far is a Guido tweet, so this is all a bit speculative. Not enough to base any sort of case on!
I am a bit worried, in truth. I'm not going with the flow right now because I think there's some mindless herd stuff going on, which I dislike, and is also potentially bad for betting. My fear about Starmer (who I didn't vote for) is he might be too corporate to connect with the public. People want some "shirt out" these days. Whatever policies come forth, left or centrist, have to be sold and if he can't do that we'll have to make a change.
Starmer seeks to be a second Blair. He has Mandelson and Mattison working closely with him. See Mandleson's words the other day: "lose, lose, lose, lose, Blair, Blair, Blair, Lose, Lose, lose, lose".
The direction he is going is the right one if you want the LP to maximise electability but the wrong one if you seek honesty and authenticity.
I think you know fairly quickly when you meet a Blair. They are pretty rare. By definition they are good enough and determined enough to get to the top, so a search doesn't take long. Blair. Kennedy. Bill Clinton. Obama. Reagan (just). Thatcher.
But not anyone in Labour at the moment. Boris and Nicola stand out a mile from the rest of the crowd, with no-one from Labour anywhere close. Including Starmer and Burnham.
On the working class/middle class blurred lines, my parents were both 2nd generation immigrants. My dad grew up on a North Shields council estate and was the first in his family to go to university. His younger brother went to prison for steeling cars because he got involved in the wrong crowd.
My mum grew up in North London and was the daughter of a black cab driver. She was also the first in her family to go to university. It is at university where my parents met.
Because of the nature of the time, 2 university graduates (with low degree classifications, I might add) had well paid graduate jobs and could afford to buy a house together in affluent Solihull and I grew up fairly middle class by all accounts. My dad was the stereotypical "Mondeo man".
I of course went to University myself (twice, as you all know).
Now obviously I am middle class by most definitions but I don't feel wealthy whatsoever. I only managed to buy a house because my mum had the gall to die of cancer so I got a little inheritance early.
That level of social mobility is pretty much gone I reckon.
When I graduated, only 10% went to university but there was plenty of social mobility.
As university proportions ballooned it seems social mobility plunged.
I'm not sure the two are even linked, but it makes you think.
It has killed the non-degree entry routes into the top jobs.
And created a two-tiered degree system. If you have a degree from the bottom group of universities (roughly non-Russell Group), you are not getting a top job either.
So, previously, investment banks hired high end graduates and a few barrow boys. Now they just hire high end graduates.
Indeed. To counter this, a further trick is to flog the unsuspecting lower tier uni graduate an expensive post grad qualification.
I'm not sure this is the zinger you think it is. The self-employed and small business owners are the bedrock of the new northern Conservative vote. They still think they're working class. What matters is getting "stuck in" to the graft.
Oh, absolutely. The backbone of our economy. I think it's hugely positive to have a LOTO with a background with an understanding of small business. I certainly don't want to get all class war. But if it's true, it's a jarringly different picture to the one I understood to be true - presumably because it was how Kier wanted to be portrayed, though I grant I don't think I've ever heard about his background from him personally.
The problem with it, is that the Tory Facebook campaign ads at the next election write themselves. Sir Keir likes you tell you he grew up in a factory worker’s house, but didn’t tell you his father owned the factory and sent him to the good school. What is he offering today’s working classes other than sneering contempt?
That isn't fatal. Boris Johnson is quite literally the elite. What is he offering today's working classes?
If Keir can sort the Labour Party out (unlikely, but still), his background is not going to be relevant.
Boris isn't trying to hide that he's of the elite or pretend otherwise. It's one of the reasons he comes across as genuine despite every word he says being a pack of lies. When Sir Keir Starmer QC tries to tell us he's the son of a working class toolmaker it just isn't genuine because about three seconds of fact checking shows that he's the son of an industrialist factory owner. Dave struggled with this as well, he always tried to do his "call me Dave, I support West Ham, wait I mean Aston Villa" schtick and it didn't really hit home then either and people were easily able to see he was a but of a fake. It was actually on the NHS when he was strongest because he has that very personal experience with it due to the extensive care they gave to his disabled son. You could genuinely see that he really cared about the NHS and would ensure that the NHS was spared the worst of the coming austerity.
There isn't a single subject where Starmer has that impact. He hasn't got personal experiences that speak to the nation. To my mind, he's never really faced personal or professional adversity and it gives him lack of character/authenticity. One thing voters are very good at is spotting a fraud. Starmer is fake working class trying to appeal to them with learned lines and unknown experiences. Boris just doesn't bother to try, which is probably the better route IMO.
Where is the actual quote/source that his father owned the factory. All I can find is "ran the factory".
AIUI his father was a toolmaker who became manager of a small factory.
"We pride ourselves on not shying away from sensitive issues that other local politicians prefer not to discuss."
"Promotion of a unifying shared British identity."
Sufficient provision for the essential needs of the populace, otherwise preserving individual liberty."
No Labour votes here. Plenty for the "Eng Nat" Cons.
What about the above is "Eng Nat"? The only nationality mentioned is British.
Yes, it could be written by Gordon "British jobs for British workers" Brown.
Not really.
"British jobs for British workers" is infinitely more xenophobic than anything written there.
"British jobs for British workers" versus "Promoting a Unifying British Identity".
Depends on intent and context. You can imagine both being said by the Far Right. And it's hard to imagine anyone but the Far Right pushing the 2nd one.
Are you are into the promotion of a "unifying national identity" btw?
What on earth is far right about wanting to unify rather than divide people? 🤔
I could imagine anyone pushing the second. A unifying national identity should include the best bits of your country - that is Tony Blair did with his flag waving "Cool Britannia".
What's the best of Britain that unifies us to you? Yes that's what politicians tend to put forwards in any mainstream party in any country around the globe. If you consider that "off" rather than "meaningless guff everyone should find agreeable" then I think your political antenna is a bit broken.
I was merely wondering if "promoting a unifying national identity" warmed your cockles. Seems it does. Doesn't do much for me, I must confess. But my cockles and yours are dissimilar, we know that. So no surprise there.
As to whether it's "off", this depends on what's meant by "identity".
And one has to get specific about it in order to tell. So, eg, if you wish a political party to promote a "Unifying English Identity" - which you do - what exactly does this mean to you?
Happy to defer any judgement until you flesh it out for me.
What does it mean to be united to be English? What does that mean to me?
A lot along the lines of stuff @Cyclefree has a tendency to put in her thread headers.
Equality before the law.
A free and fair judicial system.
A free and fair Parliamentary democracy.
That all people, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion or anything else are free and equal.
Welcoming anyone who comes to make this country their home.
Generosity of spirit both at home and abroad. Giving aid to those who need it.
That anyone who gets sick in this country will be looked after.
Respecting the rights of others.
Treating each other with respect.
Settling our differences politely and democratically.
Accepting that we may not always win or get our way, with grace and generosity of spirit.
On a more fun level.
Complaining about the weather, then losing our minds and enjoying ourselves when its sunny.
Cheering on the Three Lions, only to see them eliminated by penalties.
The England Cricket Team and taking on the Aussies in The Ashes.
Wanting to beat the other Home Nations but coming together with them with Team GB.
And most importantly for all
A healthy respect that what it means to be united to be English might be different between different people.
That others may disagree with any or all of my list or have other priorities and be just as English.
Well @kinabalu you asked me what my interpretation of a Unifying English Identity is but then haven't responded.
To you what is a Unifying English Identity?
Or since you find the term offensive, are you against politicians unifying people instead of dividing them?
Or are you against the notion of identity?
Or is the idea of English or British you find offensive?
"We pride ourselves on not shying away from sensitive issues that other local politicians prefer not to discuss."
"Promotion of a unifying shared British identity."
Sufficient provision for the essential needs of the populace, otherwise preserving individual liberty."
No Labour votes here. Plenty for the "Eng Nat" Cons.
What about the above is "Eng Nat"? The only nationality mentioned is British.
Yes, it could be written by Gordon "British jobs for British workers" Brown.
Not really.
"British jobs for British workers" is infinitely more xenophobic than anything written there.
"British jobs for British workers" versus "Promoting a Unifying British Identity".
Depends on intent and context. You can imagine both being said by the Far Right. And it's hard to imagine anyone but the Far Right pushing the 2nd one.
Are you are into the promotion of a "unifying national identity" btw?
What on earth is far right about wanting to unify rather than divide people? 🤔
I could imagine anyone pushing the second. A unifying national identity should include the best bits of your country - that is Tony Blair did with his flag waving "Cool Britannia".
What's the best of Britain that unifies us to you? Yes that's what politicians tend to put forwards in any mainstream party in any country around the globe. If you consider that "off" rather than "meaningless guff everyone should find agreeable" then I think your political antenna is a bit broken.
I was merely wondering if "promoting a unifying national identity" warmed your cockles. Seems it does. Doesn't do much for me, I must confess. But my cockles and yours are dissimilar, we know that. So no surprise there.
As to whether it's "off", this depends on what's meant by "identity".
And one has to get specific about it in order to tell. So, eg, if you wish a political party to promote a "Unifying English Identity" - which you do - what exactly does this mean to you?
Happy to defer any judgement until you flesh it out for me.
What does it mean to be united to be English? What does that mean to me?
A lot along the lines of stuff @Cyclefree has a tendency to put in her thread headers.
Equality before the law.
A free and fair judicial system.
A free and fair Parliamentary democracy.
That all people, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion or anything else are free and equal.
Welcoming anyone who comes to make this country their home.
Generosity of spirit both at home and abroad. Giving aid to those who need it.
That anyone who gets sick in this country will be looked after.
Respecting the rights of others.
Treating each other with respect.
Settling our differences politely and democratically.
Accepting that we may not always win or get our way, with grace and generosity of spirit.
On a more fun level.
Complaining about the weather, then losing our minds and enjoying ourselves when its sunny.
Cheering on the Three Lions, only to see them eliminated by penalties.
The England Cricket Team and taking on the Aussies in The Ashes.
Wanting to beat the other Home Nations but coming together with them with Team GB.
And most importantly for all
A healthy respect that what it means to be united to be English might be different between different people.
That others may disagree with any or all of my list or have other priorities and be just as English.
That's all a bit motherhood and apple pie.
Give me a couple of actual distinctive policies you'd implement in order to "Promote A Unified English Identity".
"We pride ourselves on not shying away from sensitive issues that other local politicians prefer not to discuss."
"Promotion of a unifying shared British identity."
Sufficient provision for the essential needs of the populace, otherwise preserving individual liberty."
No Labour votes here. Plenty for the "Eng Nat" Cons.
Seems a bit "motherhood and Apple Pie" as the Americans would say.
Are you against the British identity?
Are you against individual liberty?
Are you against discussing sensitive issues?
All meaningless phrases. Where's the beef?
I have little interest in them other than from the by-election betting angle. They have the air of hardcore Ukip to me (the guy who formed them certainly is) and I think they'll be breaking heavily Con. If you wish to make another bad call by thinking something else, by all means go for it.
I'm not making a call this time. I know nothing about them and if BXP were prepared to go Tory and not be neverTories then there seems to be little reason these won't do the same.
UKIP is dead so hardcore UKIP is meaningless, just as those words in bold you highlighted are meaningless. You've not said what they mean to you that Labour should be against instead of being meaningless guff.
It's dead as a party but not as an attitude. In this sense it's still a lot of people and where their votes are going these days is a significant factor shaping our politics.
Its dead as an attitude, we've left the EU. That was the unifying feature, beyond that they were just cranks.
What's left of the attitude?
What remains of their attitude is that its imagined nature forms a convenient balustrade behind which @kini can feel better about himself and condemn others.
What is the matter with you?
Ukip attracted a big vote in their prime. Not so long ago either. So where is that vote going now and what's driving it?
Surely a more fascinating topic for a politics site than how I happen to be feeling about myself.
Absolutely. So let the latter go as it manifests itself in a need to denigrate others insidiously and not so insidiously (depending upon how much prep you have done).
There really is no need to be insecure on here goodness knows we've all got our problems (me excepted). Just go with the political debate. We love you, really. You had cracking views on Trump and Hartlepool. Go with that.
I seem to have upset you and I genuinely don't know why. If you wish to drop the obliquery and tell me what it is, I'll take it seriously and see if I can uncross the wires.
LOL! Just can't help yourself.
As I said, relax, enjoy PB and grace us with your political insight which is not insubstantial rather than worrying about what we think of you. I have already noted, and I think I speak for all of PB, we love you.
I came here for the political insight, but I stay for the entertainment value of Philip and Kinabalu winding each other up/bickering in a (generally) good natured fashion. Like an old married couple. You winding Kinabalu up - which you seem to have a gift for - is simply a bonus
I must say, kinbalu's politics are not mine; nor are they those of many on here. But I do enjoy watching him spar with all comers, single-handedly holding his end up, always deftly and with grace and style. I picture him as Errol Flynn, stylishly swashbuckling against several foes at once, always with a winning smile to camera on the way. It would seem unsporting to join in against him except that he is so clearly able to manage insurgencies from all corners at the same time as sparring with his main foe, Philip.
Taking out Cheney (R-Wyo.) as conference chair was never going to be clean and easy for [US House GOP Minority Leader Kevin] McCarthy. And this week, we’re starting to pick up on a bit of backlash against the minority leader behind the scenes. Some House Republicans are privately griping about how the California Republican has fed a colleague to the MAGA wolves in his quest to become speaker.
And no, we’re not just hearing this from ADAM KINZINGER types.
McCarthy has sought to cast doubt on Cheney’s leadership ability, arguing that it is essentially selfish to call out Trump instead of prioritizing GOP unity. But other House Republicans question his own leadership qualities.
One of them — a Republican long seen as an ally of leadership — told us Monday night he may oppose McCarthy for speaker because of all the recent drama. This person accused McCarthy of having no moral compass as he moves to punish Cheney while allowing members like Reps. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-Ga.) and MATT GAETZ (R-Fla.) to run wild.
“Kevin McCarthy has pissed off enough members of his own conference that he’s going to have to go back to his former days as a whip to try to figure out where his votes are” to become speaker, said the member, who is neither a member of the Freedom Caucus nor a moderate. “I’d be worried if I was him. … You have people like me — who are here to do the right thing for all the right reasons and have an expectation of leadership — that are, shall we say, disgusted with the internal squabbling that results from having weak leadership. And it is weak leadership. Straight up.”
A senior GOP aide to a conservative member put it this way: “He’s flip-flopped on [Jan. 6 and whether it’s] Trump’s fault, it’s not Trump’s fault. … It seems like he doesn’t have the backbone to lead. He bends to political pressure. It’s tough to do when you’re speaker. You have to lead.”
On the other end of the ideological spectrum, a group of conservatives feel like they’ve been boxed in with Rep. ELISE STEFANIK (R-N.Y.), as McCarthy moved to lock her in as Cheney’s replacement. McCarthy’s move to clear the field when others wanted to run for the job has upset some on the right, though Stefanik’s announcement that she would only serve for one term has assuaged some of these concerns.
McCarthy’s move against Cheney has arguably helped his standing with Trump, who was angered by the GOP leader’s initial decision to stand by her. But the former president is still lukewarm on McCarthy, we’re told, and loyalty with Trump often runs only one way.
Of course, the midterms are a long ways away, and helping to lead Republicans back to the House majority could go a long way with his critics. But while Cheney is the one getting canned this week, McCarthy won’t come out unscathed, either.
I think the second issue might be the problem rather than the first, namely there was a chosen candidate. Re the criticism of McCarthy, Politico could only find one Congress member plus an aide. I suspect he will be fine, especially as Cheney has managed to p1ss off so many people in her party, and not just Trumpsters.
McCarthy is a mega-dwebel, notable for being forgettable. Not even up to Paul Ryan's tremendous stature (that's a joke, by the way). Let alone to the likes of Nancy "She Who Must Be Obeyed" Pelosi.
My guess is that the two sources quoted are tip of the iceberg.
AND there are ALWAYS others in ANY caucus who would willingly defenestrate their beloved leader IF they think they could get away with it AND take the perks & pickles for themselves.
Plus, as the article notes, Trumpsky's loyalty to ANYONE besides himself is truly a fleeting thing. Just ask Ivanka and Beauregard.
On the working class/middle class blurred lines, my parents were both 2nd generation immigrants. My dad grew up on a North Shields council estate and was the first in his family to go to university. His younger brother went to prison for steeling cars because he got involved in the wrong crowd.
My mum grew up in North London and was the daughter of a black cab driver. She was also the first in her family to go to university. It is at university where my parents met.
Because of the nature of the time, 2 university graduates (with low degree classifications, I might add) had well paid graduate jobs and could afford to buy a house together in affluent Solihull and I grew up fairly middle class by all accounts. My dad was the stereotypical "Mondeo man".
I of course went to University myself (twice, as you all know).
Now obviously I am middle class by most definitions but I don't feel wealthy whatsoever. I only managed to buy a house because my mum had the gall to die of cancer so I got a little inheritance early.
That level of social mobility is pretty much gone I reckon.
My family is a mixture of working-class and middle-class people. I don't think that happens now. Very strange. Middle-class people today seem to have suddenly become very intolerant of having anything to do with working-class people, which wasn't the case in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
"We pride ourselves on not shying away from sensitive issues that other local politicians prefer not to discuss."
"Promotion of a unifying shared British identity."
Sufficient provision for the essential needs of the populace, otherwise preserving individual liberty."
No Labour votes here. Plenty for the "Eng Nat" Cons.
What about the above is "Eng Nat"? The only nationality mentioned is British.
Yes, it could be written by Gordon "British jobs for British workers" Brown.
Not really.
"British jobs for British workers" is infinitely more xenophobic than anything written there.
"British jobs for British workers" versus "Promoting a Unifying British Identity".
Depends on intent and context. You can imagine both being said by the Far Right. And it's hard to imagine anyone but the Far Right pushing the 2nd one.
Are you are into the promotion of a "unifying national identity" btw?
What on earth is far right about wanting to unify rather than divide people? 🤔
I could imagine anyone pushing the second. A unifying national identity should include the best bits of your country - that is Tony Blair did with his flag waving "Cool Britannia".
What's the best of Britain that unifies us to you? Yes that's what politicians tend to put forwards in any mainstream party in any country around the globe. If you consider that "off" rather than "meaningless guff everyone should find agreeable" then I think your political antenna is a bit broken.
I was merely wondering if "promoting a unifying national identity" warmed your cockles. Seems it does. Doesn't do much for me, I must confess. But my cockles and yours are dissimilar, we know that. So no surprise there.
As to whether it's "off", this depends on what's meant by "identity".
And one has to get specific about it in order to tell. So, eg, if you wish a political party to promote a "Unifying English Identity" - which you do - what exactly does this mean to you?
Happy to defer any judgement until you flesh it out for me.
What does it mean to be united to be English? What does that mean to me?
A lot along the lines of stuff @Cyclefree has a tendency to put in her thread headers.
Equality before the law.
A free and fair judicial system.
A free and fair Parliamentary democracy.
That all people, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion or anything else are free and equal.
Welcoming anyone who comes to make this country their home.
Generosity of spirit both at home and abroad. Giving aid to those who need it.
That anyone who gets sick in this country will be looked after.
Respecting the rights of others.
Treating each other with respect.
Settling our differences politely and democratically.
Accepting that we may not always win or get our way, with grace and generosity of spirit.
On a more fun level.
Complaining about the weather, then losing our minds and enjoying ourselves when its sunny.
Cheering on the Three Lions, only to see them eliminated by penalties.
The England Cricket Team and taking on the Aussies in The Ashes.
Wanting to beat the other Home Nations but coming together with them with Team GB.
And most importantly for all
A healthy respect that what it means to be united to be English might be different between different people.
That others may disagree with any or all of my list or have other priorities and be just as English.
Well @kinabalu you asked me what my interpretation of a Unifying English Identity is but then haven't responded.
To you what is a Unifying English Identity?
Or since you find the term offensive, are you against politicians unifying people instead of dividing them?
Or are you against the notion of identity?
Or is the idea of English or British you find offensive?
None of those things I suspect. I imagine he just finds your posts very boring, or finds your attempts to justify your adherence to the unpleasant creed of English nationalism obnoxious. Good to see you took my advice on the skull motif though. Best to not advertise your extremism when you are trying hard to cover it up
Labour's Batley And Spen Candidate 'Must Be Working Class', Keir Starmer Told
Ian Lavery, Jon Trickett and Laura Smith draw battle lines as fallout from Hartlepool defeat continue
The joint statement from Lavery’s No Holding Back group, said Starmer must select someone with a working class background, and ideally a key worker, and “not repeat the errors that brought us such a humiliating defeat” in Hartlepool.
While unable to categorically define what was meant by “working class”, the group said it welcomed a debate with the Labour leadership on the issue.
One definition being looked at by the group was “people who have to work in order to provide sufficiently for themselves and their families”.
That's a remarkably wide definition of working class. Must encompass 80% plus of the working age population.
Was the Labour candidate in Hartlepool a key worker?
He's a GP so yes.
Only the Labour party in its current crisis could decide to spend the time post-local elections having an internal debate about what is meant by the term 'working class'.
Beyond parody now.
It's completely ridiculous. How have Labour got into a position where they don't even know what it is to be working class.
I don't think that's fair. As I've previously argued here, "working class" now means different things to different people. A plumber in Durham earning 50k+ and owns a 3 bed semi probably thinks they're working class. A vegan paralegal in London earning 20k and renting with 6 other people probably thinks they're working class too...
The vegan paralegal definitely doesn't think they're working class.
They certainly do, like, and why shouldn't they?
As in their eyes it would mean identifying themselves as the same class as non graduate, Brexit voting, now Tory voting, oiks
That doesn't even make sense.
What even is "working class"? Is it just down to education? So even if you're from a Hartlepool ex-council estate you become middle class as soon as you graduate?
It's a nonsense.
Working class is just an identity and if rich self-employed plumbers from Co. Durham can claim to be working class, why not a low-paid graduate sharing with 6 other people and living from pay check to pay check?
In British terms it is largely down to education and social background, eg Alan Sugar will always be considered to be more working class than a public school educated philosophy professor however much money he has made.
A vegan leftie would now no longer identify as working class anyway, as that would mean they identified with Brexit voting oiks, back when the working classes were also leftie and mainly Labour voting it was more cool to identify as working class against Thatcher, now if you identify as working class that means you are likely to be a Boris fan, yuck for the average leftie Londoner
I feel like you haven't got a clue what you're talking about. You've literally invented a caricature.
I have never known a Labour supporter who is proudly "middle class". They are always proudly "working class" or silent on the matter.
Labour is no longer the party of the working class, first it lost many of them to UKIP and now it has lost lots of them to the Boris Tories, indeed under Starmer Labour members and voters are more middle class than the average Tory voter
It isn't as simple as that. The line between working class and middle class is significantly blurred.
I think a problem Labour has had since Blair, they too often frame everything as the rich vs the poor oppressed. Thatcher and Blair framed it as we want the working class to move to middle class, we are comfortable about people getting rich, work hard, be rewarded, that's fine with us.
There seem too often the Labour narrative especially of people up North they are all poor (plus whisper thick racists) and they need our help. They need the free wifi, the free this, the free that. Rather than people wanting the safety net to be there should it goes tits up, but we really just to know if I work hard, my kids school will be decent, crime won't be out of control etc.
There is much in that. One point I'd add, and this is not just a Labour problem, is the talk of jobs needed. Jobs aren't in short supply. (Full employment for the first time in several generations is part of the explanation for Tory success in the NE). London had the highest unemployment in the country pre-pandemic. Opportunities to go to University, return to your home town and get a graduate job. That's what's in short supply.
Labour has concentrated on highlighting poverty and the taking away of benefits for too much. They need to concentrate on that huge chunk in the middle from the lower paid and past the medium wage. Everyone knows Labour will help the people stuck at the bottom, they always do. I believe there was a quote from G Brown saying something like, we don't keep mentioning the least we'll off, we keep quiet. He and Blair knew too much emphasis on this turned more people away.
As a Conservative, I am pleased that the people of Greater Manchester have a regional champion. For too long they were entirely taken for granted, and Burnham isn't going that. Sure, I don't agree with him on everything, but busses in Harpurhey is hardly a party political issue.
I am not sure how Liverpool ended up with two mayors (Bristol as well), but red blue or other I like the model.
Personally, I have my reservations about Andy Burnham. I'm no Labourite, but I was/am a big fan of Sir Richard Leese; I think his collaborative approach has done wonders for Manchester. He doesn't court the limelight as much as Andy Burnham, and is definitely less party political, but I think he deserves a lot of credit. Andy Burnham has done ok, but a large share of the credit should go to Sir Richard Leese and his counterparts at the other GM authorities.
"The Tories' stonking super-majority is built on sand Johnson's uneasy coalition between Red Wall voters and Tory libertarians may yet implode as spectacularly as the Labour Party
All majorities are built on sand. Look what happened to Thatcher's and Blair's once the tide came in.
All you can do is be ahead at the last election. However, if speculating on the future, Boris can do without the libertarian vote - it's too small and has nowhere else to go. Yes there is a contest for the Red wall, which currently is the contested ground, being where a lot of seats can change hands. This happens all the time somewhere - that's called democratic politics in a FPTP system.
In my view Boris has a much more coherent support base, being wide and linked and not dependent on special interest groups. He hold all the boring seats - neither urban nor vibrant not super posh nor super poor. His 40%+ vote is all in the 80% centre ground.
Boris has a 45-50% chance of an overall majority at the next election. Labour about 5-8% (the bookies are far too generous). Which would you rather be?
"The Tories' stonking super-majority is built on sand Johnson's uneasy coalition between Red Wall voters and Tory libertarians may yet implode as spectacularly as the Labour Party
On the working class/middle class blurred lines, my parents were both 2nd generation immigrants. My dad grew up on a North Shields council estate and was the first in his family to go to university. His younger brother went to prison for steeling cars because he got involved in the wrong crowd.
My mum grew up in North London and was the daughter of a black cab driver. She was also the first in her family to go to university. It is at university where my parents met.
Because of the nature of the time, 2 university graduates (with low degree classifications, I might add) had well paid graduate jobs and could afford to buy a house together in affluent Solihull and I grew up fairly middle class by all accounts. My dad was the stereotypical "Mondeo man".
I of course went to University myself (twice, as you all know).
Now obviously I am middle class by most definitions but I don't feel wealthy whatsoever. I only managed to buy a house because my mum had the gall to die of cancer so I got a little inheritance early.
That level of social mobility is pretty much gone I reckon.
My family is a mixture of working-class and middle-class people. I don't think that happens now. Very strange. Middle-class people today seem to have suddenly become very intolerant of having anything to do with working-class people, which wasn't the case in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
I feel that's a very stereotypical view. What makes you say that? Are you sure it's not just that shared experiences bring people together?
"We pride ourselves on not shying away from sensitive issues that other local politicians prefer not to discuss."
"Promotion of a unifying shared British identity."
Sufficient provision for the essential needs of the populace, otherwise preserving individual liberty."
No Labour votes here. Plenty for the "Eng Nat" Cons.
What about the above is "Eng Nat"? The only nationality mentioned is British.
Yes, it could be written by Gordon "British jobs for British workers" Brown.
Not really.
"British jobs for British workers" is infinitely more xenophobic than anything written there.
"British jobs for British workers" versus "Promoting a Unifying British Identity".
Depends on intent and context. You can imagine both being said by the Far Right. And it's hard to imagine anyone but the Far Right pushing the 2nd one.
Are you are into the promotion of a "unifying national identity" btw?
What on earth is far right about wanting to unify rather than divide people? 🤔
I could imagine anyone pushing the second. A unifying national identity should include the best bits of your country - that is Tony Blair did with his flag waving "Cool Britannia".
What's the best of Britain that unifies us to you? Yes that's what politicians tend to put forwards in any mainstream party in any country around the globe. If you consider that "off" rather than "meaningless guff everyone should find agreeable" then I think your political antenna is a bit broken.
I was merely wondering if "promoting a unifying national identity" warmed your cockles. Seems it does. Doesn't do much for me, I must confess. But my cockles and yours are dissimilar, we know that. So no surprise there.
As to whether it's "off", this depends on what's meant by "identity".
And one has to get specific about it in order to tell. So, eg, if you wish a political party to promote a "Unifying English Identity" - which you do - what exactly does this mean to you?
Happy to defer any judgement until you flesh it out for me.
What does it mean to be united to be English? What does that mean to me?
A lot along the lines of stuff @Cyclefree has a tendency to put in her thread headers.
Equality before the law.
A free and fair judicial system.
A free and fair Parliamentary democracy.
That all people, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion or anything else are free and equal.
Welcoming anyone who comes to make this country their home.
Generosity of spirit both at home and abroad. Giving aid to those who need it.
That anyone who gets sick in this country will be looked after.
Respecting the rights of others.
Treating each other with respect.
Settling our differences politely and democratically.
Accepting that we may not always win or get our way, with grace and generosity of spirit.
On a more fun level.
Complaining about the weather, then losing our minds and enjoying ourselves when its sunny.
Cheering on the Three Lions, only to see them eliminated by penalties.
The England Cricket Team and taking on the Aussies in The Ashes.
Wanting to beat the other Home Nations but coming together with them with Team GB.
And most importantly for all
A healthy respect that what it means to be united to be English might be different between different people.
That others may disagree with any or all of my list or have other priorities and be just as English.
That's all a bit motherhood and apple pie.
Give me a couple of actual distinctive policies you'd implement in order to "Promote A Unified English Identity".
No shit it's motherhood and apple pie. That was my first response too, but you found it offensive instead of that.
"We pride ourselves on not shying away from sensitive issues that other local politicians prefer not to discuss."
"Promotion of a unifying shared British identity."
Sufficient provision for the essential needs of the populace, otherwise preserving individual liberty."
No Labour votes here. Plenty for the "Eng Nat" Cons.
Seems a bit "motherhood and Apple Pie" as the Americans would say.
Are you against the British identity?
Are you against individual liberty?
Are you against discussing sensitive issues?
All meaningless phrases. Where's the beef?
Of course unifying people should be motherhood and apple pie. It's what all good politicians should aim to do instead of dividing them ideally. At least they claim to want that.
The worst politicians are those who seek to divide people for the sake of divisions like Trump. Yet you find the term unifying British Identity to be off rather than bog standard to be expected. Why?
On the working class/middle class blurred lines, my parents were both 2nd generation immigrants. My dad grew up on a North Shields council estate and was the first in his family to go to university. His younger brother went to prison for steeling cars because he got involved in the wrong crowd.
My mum grew up in North London and was the daughter of a black cab driver. She was also the first in her family to go to university. It is at university where my parents met.
Because of the nature of the time, 2 university graduates (with low degree classifications, I might add) had well paid graduate jobs and could afford to buy a house together in affluent Solihull and I grew up fairly middle class by all accounts. My dad was the stereotypical "Mondeo man".
I of course went to University myself (twice, as you all know).
Now obviously I am middle class by most definitions but I don't feel wealthy whatsoever. I only managed to buy a house because my mum had the gall to die of cancer so I got a little inheritance early.
That level of social mobility is pretty much gone I reckon.
My family is a mixture of working-class and middle-class people. I don't think that happens now. Very strange. Middle-class people today seem to have suddenly become very intolerant of having anything to do with working-class people, which wasn't the case in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
I feel that's a very stereotypical view. What makes you say that? Are you sure it's not just that shared experiences bring people together?
Totally agree with Gallowgate here. It is not true of this bit of the north of England.
"We pride ourselves on not shying away from sensitive issues that other local politicians prefer not to discuss."
"Promotion of a unifying shared British identity."
Sufficient provision for the essential needs of the populace, otherwise preserving individual liberty."
No Labour votes here. Plenty for the "Eng Nat" Cons.
Seems a bit "motherhood and Apple Pie" as the Americans would say.
Are you against the British identity?
Are you against individual liberty?
Are you against discussing sensitive issues?
All meaningless phrases. Where's the beef?
I have little interest in them other than from the by-election betting angle. They have the air of hardcore Ukip to me (the guy who formed them certainly is) and I think they'll be breaking heavily Con. If you wish to make another bad call by thinking something else, by all means go for it.
I'm not making a call this time. I know nothing about them and if BXP were prepared to go Tory and not be neverTories then there seems to be little reason these won't do the same.
UKIP is dead so hardcore UKIP is meaningless, just as those words in bold you highlighted are meaningless. You've not said what they mean to you that Labour should be against instead of being meaningless guff.
It's dead as a party but not as an attitude. In this sense it's still a lot of people and where their votes are going these days is a significant factor shaping our politics.
Its dead as an attitude, we've left the EU. That was the unifying feature, beyond that they were just cranks.
What's left of the attitude?
What remains of their attitude is that its imagined nature forms a convenient balustrade behind which @kini can feel better about himself and condemn others.
What is the matter with you?
Ukip attracted a big vote in their prime. Not so long ago either. So where is that vote going now and what's driving it?
Surely a more fascinating topic for a politics site than how I happen to be feeling about myself.
Absolutely. So let the latter go as it manifests itself in a need to denigrate others insidiously and not so insidiously (depending upon how much prep you have done).
There really is no need to be insecure on here goodness knows we've all got our problems (me excepted). Just go with the political debate. We love you, really. You had cracking views on Trump and Hartlepool. Go with that.
I seem to have upset you and I genuinely don't know why. If you wish to drop the obliquery and tell me what it is, I'll take it seriously and see if I can uncross the wires.
LOL! Just can't help yourself.
As I said, relax, enjoy PB and grace us with your political insight which is not insubstantial rather than worrying about what we think of you. I have already noted, and I think I speak for all of PB, we love you.
I came here for the political insight, but I stay for the entertainment value of Philip and Kinabalu winding each other up/bickering in a (generally) good natured fashion. Like an old married couple. You winding Kinabalu up - which you seem to have a gift for - is simply a bonus
No idea what you're talking about. I'm a give love kind of guy.
Hilary Benn would be a good leader - but appears not to be interested.
Yeah he will definitely do the trick in the red wall.......shakes head.
Boris will have a bus in every leave seat with Benn face on saying "his man did everything he could to stop Brexit".
HB is almost as wooden as Starmer.
I like Hilary Benn. I met him in a lift once, which got briefly stuck. It was one of those awkward situations you get when you meet a famous person: all the normal pleasantries you might make go out of the window because YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE. Where are you from? What do you do? All useless. You already know the answer. Nor can you just launch into an introduction of yourself bringing the famous person up to speed with who you are to even up the imbalance, because that would feel insane, and they are already slightly nervous about who they are in the lift with and for how long they will be there. In the end we shared mild quips about what we hoped to have for lunch. Anyway, I like Hilary, Do you remember that speech about the bombing of Syria? It was quite good. Though not necessarily one to endear him to the membership.
His attempt in that speech to identify the PLP with fighting against Franco was a load of slippery, ahistorical whitewash.
On the working class/middle class blurred lines, my parents were both 2nd generation immigrants. My dad grew up on a North Shields council estate and was the first in his family to go to university. His younger brother went to prison for steeling cars because he got involved in the wrong crowd.
My mum grew up in North London and was the daughter of a black cab driver. She was also the first in her family to go to university. It is at university where my parents met.
Because of the nature of the time, 2 university graduates (with low degree classifications, I might add) had well paid graduate jobs and could afford to buy a house together in affluent Solihull and I grew up fairly middle class by all accounts. My dad was the stereotypical "Mondeo man".
I of course went to University myself (twice, as you all know).
Now obviously I am middle class by most definitions but I don't feel wealthy whatsoever. I only managed to buy a house because my mum had the gall to die of cancer so I got a little inheritance early.
That level of social mobility is pretty much gone I reckon.
My family is a mixture of working-class and middle-class people. I don't think that happens now. Very strange. Middle-class people today seem to have suddenly become very intolerant of having anything to do with working-class people, which wasn't the case in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
I thought there was a never ending fight to prove how humble your background was, even if it wasn't. As sort of Four Yorkshireman effect.
As a Conservative, I am pleased that the people of Greater Manchester have a regional champion. For too long they were entirely taken for granted, and Burnham isn't going that. Sure, I don't agree with him on everything, but busses in Harpurhey is hardly a party political issue.
I am not sure how Liverpool ended up with two mayors (Bristol as well), but red blue or other I like the model.
Personally, I have my reservations about Andy Burnham. I'm no Labourite, but I was/am a big fan of Sir Richard Leese; I think his collaborative approach has done wonders for Manchester. He doesn't court the limelight as much as Andy Burnham, and is definitely less party political, but I think he deserves a lot of credit. Andy Burnham has done ok, but a large share of the credit should go to Sir Richard Leese and his counterparts at the other GM authorities.
Manchester mayoralty is a stepping stone for Burnham. Keeping his feet dry while others are swept away in the current.
"We pride ourselves on not shying away from sensitive issues that other local politicians prefer not to discuss."
"Promotion of a unifying shared British identity."
Sufficient provision for the essential needs of the populace, otherwise preserving individual liberty."
No Labour votes here. Plenty for the "Eng Nat" Cons.
Seems a bit "motherhood and Apple Pie" as the Americans would say.
Are you against the British identity?
Are you against individual liberty?
Are you against discussing sensitive issues?
All meaningless phrases. Where's the beef?
I have little interest in them other than from the by-election betting angle. They have the air of hardcore Ukip to me (the guy who formed them certainly is) and I think they'll be breaking heavily Con. If you wish to make another bad call by thinking something else, by all means go for it.
I'm not making a call this time. I know nothing about them and if BXP were prepared to go Tory and not be neverTories then there seems to be little reason these won't do the same.
UKIP is dead so hardcore UKIP is meaningless, just as those words in bold you highlighted are meaningless. You've not said what they mean to you that Labour should be against instead of being meaningless guff.
It's dead as a party but not as an attitude. In this sense it's still a lot of people and where their votes are going these days is a significant factor shaping our politics.
Its dead as an attitude, we've left the EU. That was the unifying feature, beyond that they were just cranks.
What's left of the attitude?
What remains of their attitude is that its imagined nature forms a convenient balustrade behind which @kini can feel better about himself and condemn others.
What is the matter with you?
Ukip attracted a big vote in their prime. Not so long ago either. So where is that vote going now and what's driving it?
Surely a more fascinating topic for a politics site than how I happen to be feeling about myself.
Absolutely. So let the latter go as it manifests itself in a need to denigrate others insidiously and not so insidiously (depending upon how much prep you have done).
There really is no need to be insecure on here goodness knows we've all got our problems (me excepted). Just go with the political debate. We love you, really. You had cracking views on Trump and Hartlepool. Go with that.
I seem to have upset you and I genuinely don't know why. If you wish to drop the obliquery and tell me what it is, I'll take it seriously and see if I can uncross the wires.
LOL! Just can't help yourself.
As I said, relax, enjoy PB and grace us with your political insight which is not insubstantial rather than worrying about what we think of you. I have already noted, and I think I speak for all of PB, we love you.
I came here for the political insight, but I stay for the entertainment value of Philip and Kinabalu winding each other up/bickering in a (generally) good natured fashion. Like an old married couple. You winding Kinabalu up - which you seem to have a gift for - is simply a bonus
I must say, kinbalu's politics are not mine; nor are they those of many on here. But I do enjoy watching him spar with all comers, single-handedly holding his end up, always deftly and with grace and style. I picture him as Errol Flynn, stylishly swashbuckling against several foes at once, always with a winning smile to camera on the way. It would seem unsporting to join in against him except that he is so clearly able to manage insurgencies from all corners at the same time as sparring with his main foe, Philip.
On the working class/middle class blurred lines, my parents were both 2nd generation immigrants. My dad grew up on a North Shields council estate and was the first in his family to go to university. His younger brother went to prison for steeling cars because he got involved in the wrong crowd.
My mum grew up in North London and was the daughter of a black cab driver. She was also the first in her family to go to university. It is at university where my parents met.
Because of the nature of the time, 2 university graduates (with low degree classifications, I might add) had well paid graduate jobs and could afford to buy a house together in affluent Solihull and I grew up fairly middle class by all accounts. My dad was the stereotypical "Mondeo man".
I of course went to University myself (twice, as you all know).
Now obviously I am middle class by most definitions but I don't feel wealthy whatsoever. I only managed to buy a house because my mum had the gall to die of cancer so I got a little inheritance early.
That level of social mobility is pretty much gone I reckon.
My family is a mixture of working-class and middle-class people. I don't think that happens now. Very strange. Middle-class people today seem to have suddenly become very intolerant of having anything to do with working-class people, which wasn't the case in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
I feel that's a very stereotypical view. What makes you say that? Are you sure it's not just that shared experiences bring people together?
No, I think there is some truth in what he says. My father was from an upper middle class family, my mother from an upper working class family (married in the 1950s). They both had snobbery problems from both families but each was accepted in the end, though my mother did take elocution which didn't go down well with her family.
Interesting to see that, with the proposed voter ID law, Tory Party is returning to its roots. Namely, voter suppression.
For example, it's long proud history during 19th century of hiring squads of lawyers specifically to challenge voters for myriad technical violations in order to knock them off the voter rolls.
Even as late as 1945, Winston Churchill insisted on calling that year's general election before the updating of voter registers, thus depriving plenty of folks of their right to vote. In hopes that Conservatives would win a few more seats to pad what he (and others) assumed would be a reduced Tory majority.
Of course it did NOT quite work out that way. But the thought was still there.
Favourite celebrity encounter: when Jeremy Beadle's cash card for eaten during panto season in Ashton-under-Lyne. Good humour was not in evidence.
The cash card was eaten by a cash machine, I need to add, not by a hungry lioness.
I could count the number of celebrities of any sort I've seen on the fingers of, ooh, no more than three or four hands. But Lionel Blair has passed me in the street TWICE. Once in Stockport, once near Estepona in Spain.
I could accept a disproportionate number of Lionel Blairs if I happened to live next door to him. But it was beginning to feel like he was stalking me.
On the working class/middle class blurred lines, my parents were both 2nd generation immigrants. My dad grew up on a North Shields council estate and was the first in his family to go to university. His younger brother went to prison for steeling cars because he got involved in the wrong crowd.
My mum grew up in North London and was the daughter of a black cab driver. She was also the first in her family to go to university. It is at university where my parents met.
Because of the nature of the time, 2 university graduates (with low degree classifications, I might add) had well paid graduate jobs and could afford to buy a house together in affluent Solihull and I grew up fairly middle class by all accounts. My dad was the stereotypical "Mondeo man".
I of course went to University myself (twice, as you all know).
Now obviously I am middle class by most definitions but I don't feel wealthy whatsoever. I only managed to buy a house because my mum had the gall to die of cancer so I got a little inheritance early.
That level of social mobility is pretty much gone I reckon.
My family is a mixture of working-class and middle-class people. I don't think that happens now. Very strange. Middle-class people today seem to have suddenly become very intolerant of having anything to do with working-class people, which wasn't the case in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
I feel that's a very stereotypical view. What makes you say that? Are you sure it's not just that shared experiences bring people together?
No, I think there is some truth in what he says. My father was from an upper middle class family, my mother from an upper working class family (married in the 1950s). They both had snobbery problems from both families but each was accepted in the end, though my mother did take elocution which didn't go down well with her family.
But he's saying the problem exists now when it hasn't in the past. Surely snobbery has always existed in some circles?
"We pride ourselves on not shying away from sensitive issues that other local politicians prefer not to discuss."
"Promotion of a unifying shared British identity."
Sufficient provision for the essential needs of the populace, otherwise preserving individual liberty."
No Labour votes here. Plenty for the "Eng Nat" Cons.
What about the above is "Eng Nat"? The only nationality mentioned is British.
Yes, it could be written by Gordon "British jobs for British workers" Brown.
Not really.
"British jobs for British workers" is infinitely more xenophobic than anything written there.
"British jobs for British workers" versus "Promoting a Unifying British Identity".
Depends on intent and context. You can imagine both being said by the Far Right. And it's hard to imagine anyone but the Far Right pushing the 2nd one.
Are you are into the promotion of a "unifying national identity" btw?
What on earth is far right about wanting to unify rather than divide people? 🤔
I could imagine anyone pushing the second. A unifying national identity should include the best bits of your country - that is Tony Blair did with his flag waving "Cool Britannia".
What's the best of Britain that unifies us to you? Yes that's what politicians tend to put forwards in any mainstream party in any country around the globe. If you consider that "off" rather than "meaningless guff everyone should find agreeable" then I think your political antenna is a bit broken.
I was merely wondering if "promoting a unifying national identity" warmed your cockles. Seems it does. Doesn't do much for me, I must confess. But my cockles and yours are dissimilar, we know that. So no surprise there.
As to whether it's "off", this depends on what's meant by "identity".
And one has to get specific about it in order to tell. So, eg, if you wish a political party to promote a "Unifying English Identity" - which you do - what exactly does this mean to you?
Happy to defer any judgement until you flesh it out for me.
What does it mean to be united to be English? What does that mean to me?
A lot along the lines of stuff @Cyclefree has a tendency to put in her thread headers.
Equality before the law.
A free and fair judicial system.
A free and fair Parliamentary democracy.
That all people, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion or anything else are free and equal.
Welcoming anyone who comes to make this country their home.
Generosity of spirit both at home and abroad. Giving aid to those who need it.
That anyone who gets sick in this country will be looked after.
Respecting the rights of others.
Treating each other with respect.
Settling our differences politely and democratically.
Accepting that we may not always win or get our way, with grace and generosity of spirit.
On a more fun level.
Complaining about the weather, then losing our minds and enjoying ourselves when its sunny.
Cheering on the Three Lions, only to see them eliminated by penalties.
The England Cricket Team and taking on the Aussies in The Ashes.
Wanting to beat the other Home Nations but coming together with them with Team GB.
And most importantly for all
A healthy respect that what it means to be united to be English might be different between different people.
That others may disagree with any or all of my list or have other priorities and be just as English.
Well @kinabalu you asked me what my interpretation of a Unifying English Identity is but then haven't responded.
To you what is a Unifying English Identity?
Or since you find the term offensive, are you against politicians unifying people instead of dividing them?
Or are you against the notion of identity?
Or is the idea of English or British you find offensive?
None of those things I suspect. I imagine he just finds your posts very boring, or finds your attempts to justify your adherence to the unpleasant creed of English nationalism obnoxious. Good to see you took my advice on the skull motif though. Best to not advertise your extremism when you are trying hard to cover it up
We are in fact making progress. Philip is about to offer up some distinctive policies he'd like to see implemented to "Promote A Unified English Identity". I'm genuinely looking forward to seeing what he comes up with. Or am I? Yes, let's say I am.
Boris directing a kidney punch to Labour's Brechtian tendency:
He quotes the defeated Amber Valley Labour council leader who responded to defeat by saying: “The voters have let us down. I hope they don’t live to regret it.” Johnson says that is Labour’s approach; they want to change, not themselves, but the electorate.
Sounds like another "no money left" scenario, ripe for ruthless distortion. Sigh.
Lots of people have said that sort of thing, many more have thought it, so while it always sounds bad I think some nobody council leader's words are not going to become an enduring meme.
"We pride ourselves on not shying away from sensitive issues that other local politicians prefer not to discuss."
"Promotion of a unifying shared British identity."
Sufficient provision for the essential needs of the populace, otherwise preserving individual liberty."
No Labour votes here. Plenty for the "Eng Nat" Cons.
What about the above is "Eng Nat"? The only nationality mentioned is British.
Yes, it could be written by Gordon "British jobs for British workers" Brown.
Not really.
"British jobs for British workers" is infinitely more xenophobic than anything written there.
"British jobs for British workers" versus "Promoting a Unifying British Identity".
Depends on intent and context. You can imagine both being said by the Far Right. And it's hard to imagine anyone but the Far Right pushing the 2nd one.
Are you are into the promotion of a "unifying national identity" btw?
What on earth is far right about wanting to unify rather than divide people? 🤔
I could imagine anyone pushing the second. A unifying national identity should include the best bits of your country - that is Tony Blair did with his flag waving "Cool Britannia".
What's the best of Britain that unifies us to you? Yes that's what politicians tend to put forwards in any mainstream party in any country around the globe. If you consider that "off" rather than "meaningless guff everyone should find agreeable" then I think your political antenna is a bit broken.
I was merely wondering if "promoting a unifying national identity" warmed your cockles. Seems it does. Doesn't do much for me, I must confess. But my cockles and yours are dissimilar, we know that. So no surprise there.
As to whether it's "off", this depends on what's meant by "identity".
And one has to get specific about it in order to tell. So, eg, if you wish a political party to promote a "Unifying English Identity" - which you do - what exactly does this mean to you?
Happy to defer any judgement until you flesh it out for me.
What does it mean to be united to be English? What does that mean to me?
A lot along the lines of stuff @Cyclefree has a tendency to put in her thread headers.
Equality before the law.
A free and fair judicial system.
A free and fair Parliamentary democracy.
That all people, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion or anything else are free and equal.
Welcoming anyone who comes to make this country their home.
Generosity of spirit both at home and abroad. Giving aid to those who need it.
That anyone who gets sick in this country will be looked after.
Respecting the rights of others.
Treating each other with respect.
Settling our differences politely and democratically.
Accepting that we may not always win or get our way, with grace and generosity of spirit.
On a more fun level.
Complaining about the weather, then losing our minds and enjoying ourselves when its sunny.
Cheering on the Three Lions, only to see them eliminated by penalties.
The England Cricket Team and taking on the Aussies in The Ashes.
Wanting to beat the other Home Nations but coming together with them with Team GB.
And most importantly for all
A healthy respect that what it means to be united to be English might be different between different people.
That others may disagree with any or all of my list or have other priorities and be just as English.
That's all a bit motherhood and apple pie.
Give me a couple of actual distinctive policies you'd implement in order to "Promote A Unified English Identity".
No shit it's motherhood and apple pie. That was my first response too, but you found it offensive instead of that.
"We pride ourselves on not shying away from sensitive issues that other local politicians prefer not to discuss."
"Promotion of a unifying shared British identity."
Sufficient provision for the essential needs of the populace, otherwise preserving individual liberty."
No Labour votes here. Plenty for the "Eng Nat" Cons.
Seems a bit "motherhood and Apple Pie" as the Americans would say.
Are you against the British identity?
Are you against individual liberty?
Are you against discussing sensitive issues?
All meaningless phrases. Where's the beef?
Of course unifying people should be motherhood and apple pie. It's what all good politicians should aim to do instead of dividing them ideally. At least they claim to want that.
The worst politicians are those who seek to divide people for the sake of divisions like Trump. Yet you find the term unifying British Identity to be off rather than bog standard to be expected. Why?
So says the chap that spends most of his day (and night as well perhaps) spouting divisive simplistic right wing crap that could have been written by Donald Trump or one of his less worldly wise loyal followers.
Opposition Leader Satisfied Dissatisfied Net satisfaction Date of poll % % % Thatcher 38 51 -13 Nov 1978 Foot 13 69 -56 Aug 1982 Kinnock 27 61 -34 Dec 1988 Smith 33 41 -8 May 1993 Blair 42 35 +7 Sep 1996 Hague 19 56 -37 Jan 2000 Duncan Smith 16 53 -37 Feb 2003 Howard 23 49 -26 Jun 2005 Cameron 23 45 -22 Sep 2007 Miliband 25 63 -38 Dec 2014 Corbyn 17 72 -55 Feb 2019 Either it's a blip, or Starmer's toast.
The only saving grace for Starmer is that the last 14 months the polls have been largely driven by the pandemic.
If this is the norm for the post pandemic phase then he's like a stepmom on Pornhub.
The only question is does the PLP have the desire to remove him?
I keep coming back to the question, that nobody's really answered - who would you replace him with?
Major Dan Jarvis.
Well quite. Personable, sane, doesn't keep banging on about Palestine. But does he want the job? All the signs I've seen are that he doesn't.
I've never heard Dan Jarvis speak, or what he really is like. All I know is that he was in the armed forces and that is why many think he could be good for Labour. The image of an ex squaddie might play well with the public. Other than that I don't know.
He's not strictly speaking a squaddie. He was an officer. BUT, and it's quite a big but, no one really thinks like that when you're talking about a Para or a Marine. He was the former. Pretty hard core.
I've a Labour friend from Barnsley who has been banging on about Jarvis for what feels like years and years.
How's Jarvis going to get past the membership vote though? Surely he will be viewed with suspicion by the bien pensants of N London and Middling University Labour club?
I just looked ta his Wiki page. he looks far too electable to be elected to Labour Leader. Absolutely no chance.
The next leader absolutely must be a woman apparently.
Hope you're not somebody who manages to ridicule Labour (i) for never having a woman leader and (ii) for thinking they have to pick a woman leader.
Because some people do manage that, would you believe.
Its entirely possible and consistent to ridicule Labour for both. The Tories have had a woman leader elected who was a tremendous success who was elected because of her own merits, not because she was a woman.
Labour should not pick a leader just because she's female, but equally true to say there ought to have been plenty of good quality female MPs who could have become leader down the years.
My dad said Labour missed a chance with Barbara Castle.
I'm not sure this is the zinger you think it is. The self-employed and small business owners are the bedrock of the new northern Conservative vote. They still think they're working class. What matters is getting "stuck in" to the graft.
Oh, absolutely. The backbone of our economy. I think it's hugely positive to have a LOTO with a background with an understanding of small business. I certainly don't want to get all class war. But if it's true, it's a jarringly different picture to the one I understood to be true - presumably because it was how Kier wanted to be portrayed, though I grant I don't think I've ever heard about his background from him personally.
The problem with it, is that the Tory Facebook campaign ads at the next election write themselves. Sir Keir likes you tell you he grew up in a factory worker’s house, but didn’t tell you his father owned the factory and sent him to the good school. What is he offering today’s working classes other than sneering contempt?
That isn't fatal. Boris Johnson is quite literally the elite. What is he offering today's working classes?
If Keir can sort the Labour Party out (unlikely, but still), his background is not going to be relevant.
Boris isn't trying to hide that he's of the elite or pretend otherwise. It's one of the reasons he comes across as genuine despite every word he says being a pack of lies. When Sir Keir Starmer QC tries to tell us he's the son of a working class toolmaker it just isn't genuine because about three seconds of fact checking shows that he's the son of an industrialist factory owner. Dave struggled with this as well, he always tried to do his "call me Dave, I support West Ham, wait I mean Aston Villa" schtick and it didn't really hit home then either and people were easily able to see he was a but of a fake. It was actually on the NHS when he was strongest because he has that very personal experience with it due to the extensive care they gave to his disabled son. You could genuinely see that he really cared about the NHS and would ensure that the NHS was spared the worst of the coming austerity.
There isn't a single subject where Starmer has that impact. He hasn't got personal experiences that speak to the nation. To my mind, he's never really faced personal or professional adversity and it gives him lack of character/authenticity. One thing voters are very good at is spotting a fraud. Starmer is fake working class trying to appeal to them with learned lines and unknown experiences. Boris just doesn't bother to try, which is probably the better route IMO.
Where is the actual quote/source that his father owned the factory. All I can find is "ran the factory".
AIUI his father was a toolmaker who became manager of a small factory.
The burning question is: Was the Man in the Corner Shop Jealous of Starmer's dad...
Puts up the 'Closed' sign Does the man in the Corner Shop Serves his last Then he says goodbye to him He knows it is a hard life But it's nice to be your own boss, really
Walks off home Does the last customer He is jealous Of the man in the Corner Shop He's sick of working at the Factory He says it must be nice To be your own boss, really
Sells cigars to the boss from the Factory He is jealous Is the man in the Corner Shop He is sick of struggling so hard Says it must be nice to own a Factory
Go to Church Do the people from the area All shapes and classes Sit and pray together For here they are all one For God created all men equal
Go to Church Do the people from the area Go to Church Do the people from the area Go to Church Do the people from the area For God created all men equal
They know, that God created all men equal They know, that God created all men equal They know, that God created all men equal They know, that God created all men equal They know
"We pride ourselves on not shying away from sensitive issues that other local politicians prefer not to discuss."
"Promotion of a unifying shared British identity."
Sufficient provision for the essential needs of the populace, otherwise preserving individual liberty."
No Labour votes here. Plenty for the "Eng Nat" Cons.
What about the above is "Eng Nat"? The only nationality mentioned is British.
Yes, it could be written by Gordon "British jobs for British workers" Brown.
Not really.
"British jobs for British workers" is infinitely more xenophobic than anything written there.
"British jobs for British workers" versus "Promoting a Unifying British Identity".
Depends on intent and context. You can imagine both being said by the Far Right. And it's hard to imagine anyone but the Far Right pushing the 2nd one.
Are you are into the promotion of a "unifying national identity" btw?
What on earth is far right about wanting to unify rather than divide people? 🤔
I could imagine anyone pushing the second. A unifying national identity should include the best bits of your country - that is Tony Blair did with his flag waving "Cool Britannia".
What's the best of Britain that unifies us to you? Yes that's what politicians tend to put forwards in any mainstream party in any country around the globe. If you consider that "off" rather than "meaningless guff everyone should find agreeable" then I think your political antenna is a bit broken.
I was merely wondering if "promoting a unifying national identity" warmed your cockles. Seems it does. Doesn't do much for me, I must confess. But my cockles and yours are dissimilar, we know that. So no surprise there.
As to whether it's "off", this depends on what's meant by "identity".
And one has to get specific about it in order to tell. So, eg, if you wish a political party to promote a "Unifying English Identity" - which you do - what exactly does this mean to you?
Happy to defer any judgement until you flesh it out for me.
What does it mean to be united to be English? What does that mean to me?
A lot along the lines of stuff @Cyclefree has a tendency to put in her thread headers.
Equality before the law.
A free and fair judicial system.
A free and fair Parliamentary democracy.
That all people, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion or anything else are free and equal.
Welcoming anyone who comes to make this country their home.
Generosity of spirit both at home and abroad. Giving aid to those who need it.
That anyone who gets sick in this country will be looked after.
Respecting the rights of others.
Treating each other with respect.
Settling our differences politely and democratically.
Accepting that we may not always win or get our way, with grace and generosity of spirit.
On a more fun level.
Complaining about the weather, then losing our minds and enjoying ourselves when its sunny.
Cheering on the Three Lions, only to see them eliminated by penalties.
The England Cricket Team and taking on the Aussies in The Ashes.
Wanting to beat the other Home Nations but coming together with them with Team GB.
And most importantly for all
A healthy respect that what it means to be united to be English might be different between different people.
That others may disagree with any or all of my list or have other priorities and be just as English.
Well @kinabalu you asked me what my interpretation of a Unifying English Identity is but then haven't responded.
To you what is a Unifying English Identity?
Or since you find the term offensive, are you against politicians unifying people instead of dividing them?
Or are you against the notion of identity?
Or is the idea of English or British you find offensive?
None of those things I suspect. I imagine he just finds your posts very boring, or finds your attempts to justify your adherence to the unpleasant creed of English nationalism obnoxious. Good to see you took my advice on the skull motif though. Best to not advertise your extremism when you are trying hard to cover it up
I don't want to hide my views, I'm quite open and forthright with my thoughts and logic.
I didn't think there was anything wrong with the prior avatar, and others who are sane agreed, but I don't want to give the likes of you any rope to wilfully mislead or misrepresent things so I thought I'd change it.
"The Tories' stonking super-majority is built on sand Johnson's uneasy coalition between Red Wall voters and Tory libertarians may yet implode as spectacularly as the Labour Party
Labour's Batley And Spen Candidate 'Must Be Working Class', Keir Starmer Told
Ian Lavery, Jon Trickett and Laura Smith draw battle lines as fallout from Hartlepool defeat continue
The joint statement from Lavery’s No Holding Back group, said Starmer must select someone with a working class background, and ideally a key worker, and “not repeat the errors that brought us such a humiliating defeat” in Hartlepool.
While unable to categorically define what was meant by “working class”, the group said it welcomed a debate with the Labour leadership on the issue.
One definition being looked at by the group was “people who have to work in order to provide sufficiently for themselves and their families”.
That's a remarkably wide definition of working class. Must encompass 80% plus of the working age population.
Was the Labour candidate in Hartlepool a key worker?
He's a GP so yes.
Only the Labour party in its current crisis could decide to spend the time post-local elections having an internal debate about what is meant by the term 'working class'.
Beyond parody now.
It's completely ridiculous. How have Labour got into a position where they don't even know what it is to be working class.
I don't think that's fair. As I've previously argued here, "working class" now means different things to different people. A plumber in Durham earning 50k+ and owns a 3 bed semi probably thinks they're working class. A vegan paralegal in London earning 20k and renting with 6 other people probably thinks they're working class too...
The vegan paralegal definitely doesn't think they're working class.
They certainly do, like, and why shouldn't they?
As in their eyes it would mean identifying themselves as the same class as non graduate, Brexit voting, now Tory voting, oiks
That doesn't even make sense.
What even is "working class"? Is it just down to education? So even if you're from a Hartlepool ex-council estate you become middle class as soon as you graduate?
It's a nonsense.
Working class is just an identity and if rich self-employed plumbers from Co. Durham can claim to be working class, why not a low-paid graduate sharing with 6 other people and living from pay check to pay check?
In British terms it is largely down to education and social background, eg Alan Sugar will always be considered to be more working class than a public school educated philosophy professor however much money he has made and despite the fact he is a life peer.
A vegan leftie would now no longer identify as working class anyway, as that would mean they identified with Brexit voting oiks, back when the working classes were also leftie and mainly Labour voting it was more cool to identify as working class against Thatcher, now if you identify as working class that means you are likely to be a Boris fan, yuck for the average leftie Londoner
Aren't a lot of the new working class Tories actually quite left wing in their attitudes on the economy? It is the Tories who have now to cater for left wing economic ideas to keep this voting group on their side.
Hilary Benn would be a good leader - but appears not to be interested.
Yeah he will definitely do the trick in the red wall.......shakes head.
Boris will have a bus in every leave seat with Benn face on saying "his man did everything he could to stop Brexit".
HB is almost as wooden as Starmer.
I like Hilary Benn. I met him in a lift once, which got briefly stuck. It was one of those awkward situations you get when you meet a famous person: all the normal pleasantries you might make go out of the window because YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE. Where are you from? What do you do? All useless. You already know the answer. Nor can you just launch into an introduction of yourself bringing the famous person up to speed with who you are to even up the imbalance, because that would feel insane, and they are already slightly nervous about who they are in the lift with and for how long they will be there. In the end we shared mild quips about what we hoped to have for lunch. Anyway, I like Hilary, Do you remember that speech about the bombing of Syria? It was quite good. Though not necessarily one to endear him to the membership.
His attempt in that speech to identify the PLP with fighting against Franco was a load of slippery, ahistorical whitewash.
Party and national mythmaking is almost always bollocks, or at the least a lot more complicated than made out afterwards.
Opposition Leader Satisfied Dissatisfied Net satisfaction Date of poll % % % Thatcher 38 51 -13 Nov 1978 Foot 13 69 -56 Aug 1982 Kinnock 27 61 -34 Dec 1988 Smith 33 41 -8 May 1993 Blair 42 35 +7 Sep 1996 Hague 19 56 -37 Jan 2000 Duncan Smith 16 53 -37 Feb 2003 Howard 23 49 -26 Jun 2005 Cameron 23 45 -22 Sep 2007 Miliband 25 63 -38 Dec 2014 Corbyn 17 72 -55 Feb 2019 Either it's a blip, or Starmer's toast.
The only saving grace for Starmer is that the last 14 months the polls have been largely driven by the pandemic.
If this is the norm for the post pandemic phase then he's like a stepmom on Pornhub.
The only question is does the PLP have the desire to remove him?
I keep coming back to the question, that nobody's really answered - who would you replace him with?
Major Dan Jarvis.
Well quite. Personable, sane, doesn't keep banging on about Palestine. But does he want the job? All the signs I've seen are that he doesn't.
I've never heard Dan Jarvis speak, or what he really is like. All I know is that he was in the armed forces and that is why many think he could be good for Labour. The image of an ex squaddie might play well with the public. Other than that I don't know.
He's not strictly speaking a squaddie. He was an officer. BUT, and it's quite a big but, no one really thinks like that when you're talking about a Para or a Marine. He was the former. Pretty hard core.
I've a Labour friend from Barnsley who has been banging on about Jarvis for what feels like years and years.
How's Jarvis going to get past the membership vote though? Surely he will be viewed with suspicion by the bien pensants of N London and Middling University Labour club?
I just looked ta his Wiki page. he looks far too electable to be elected to Labour Leader. Absolutely no chance.
The next leader absolutely must be a woman apparently.
Hope you're not somebody who manages to ridicule Labour (i) for never having a woman leader and (ii) for thinking they have to pick a woman leader.
Because some people do manage that, would you believe.
Yes that's me.
- Thought so. Just so long as you're not proud of it.
"We pride ourselves on not shying away from sensitive issues that other local politicians prefer not to discuss."
"Promotion of a unifying shared British identity."
Sufficient provision for the essential needs of the populace, otherwise preserving individual liberty."
No Labour votes here. Plenty for the "Eng Nat" Cons.
What about the above is "Eng Nat"? The only nationality mentioned is British.
Yes, it could be written by Gordon "British jobs for British workers" Brown.
Not really.
"British jobs for British workers" is infinitely more xenophobic than anything written there.
"British jobs for British workers" versus "Promoting a Unifying British Identity".
Depends on intent and context. You can imagine both being said by the Far Right. And it's hard to imagine anyone but the Far Right pushing the 2nd one.
Are you are into the promotion of a "unifying national identity" btw?
What on earth is far right about wanting to unify rather than divide people? 🤔
I could imagine anyone pushing the second. A unifying national identity should include the best bits of your country - that is Tony Blair did with his flag waving "Cool Britannia".
What's the best of Britain that unifies us to you? Yes that's what politicians tend to put forwards in any mainstream party in any country around the globe. If you consider that "off" rather than "meaningless guff everyone should find agreeable" then I think your political antenna is a bit broken.
I was merely wondering if "promoting a unifying national identity" warmed your cockles. Seems it does. Doesn't do much for me, I must confess. But my cockles and yours are dissimilar, we know that. So no surprise there.
As to whether it's "off", this depends on what's meant by "identity".
And one has to get specific about it in order to tell. So, eg, if you wish a political party to promote a "Unifying English Identity" - which you do - what exactly does this mean to you?
Happy to defer any judgement until you flesh it out for me.
What does it mean to be united to be English? What does that mean to me?
A lot along the lines of stuff @Cyclefree has a tendency to put in her thread headers.
Equality before the law.
A free and fair judicial system.
A free and fair Parliamentary democracy.
That all people, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion or anything else are free and equal.
Welcoming anyone who comes to make this country their home.
Generosity of spirit both at home and abroad. Giving aid to those who need it.
That anyone who gets sick in this country will be looked after.
Respecting the rights of others.
Treating each other with respect.
Settling our differences politely and democratically.
Accepting that we may not always win or get our way, with grace and generosity of spirit.
On a more fun level.
Complaining about the weather, then losing our minds and enjoying ourselves when its sunny.
Cheering on the Three Lions, only to see them eliminated by penalties.
The England Cricket Team and taking on the Aussies in The Ashes.
Wanting to beat the other Home Nations but coming together with them with Team GB.
And most importantly for all
A healthy respect that what it means to be united to be English might be different between different people.
That others may disagree with any or all of my list or have other priorities and be just as English.
Well @kinabalu you asked me what my interpretation of a Unifying English Identity is but then haven't responded.
To you what is a Unifying English Identity?
Or since you find the term offensive, are you against politicians unifying people instead of dividing them?
Or are you against the notion of identity?
Or is the idea of English or British you find offensive?
None of those things I suspect. I imagine he just finds your posts very boring, or finds your attempts to justify your adherence to the unpleasant creed of English nationalism obnoxious. Good to see you took my advice on the skull motif though. Best to not advertise your extremism when you are trying hard to cover it up
I don't want to hide my views, I'm quite open and forthright with my thoughts and logic.
I didn't think there was anything wrong with the prior avatar, and others who are sane agreed, but I don't want to give the likes of you any rope to wilfully mislead or misrepresent things so I thought I'd change it.
Your first sentence was very accurate until the last word. Made me chuckle. Thank you
Interesting to see that, with the proposed voter ID law, Tory Party is returning to its roots. Namely, voter suppression.
For example, it's long proud history during 19th century of hiring squads of lawyers specifically to challenge voters for myriad technical violations in order to knock them off the voter rolls.
Even as late as 1945, Winston Churchill insisted on calling that year's general election before the updating of voter registers, thus depriving plenty of folks of their right to vote. In hopes that Conservatives would win a few more seats to pad what he (and others) assumed would be a reduced Tory majority.
Of course it did NOT quite work out that way. But the thought was still there.
Back to basics, indeed.
And of course the tories under the Duke of Wellington were the main bulwark against the first Great Reform Act of 1832.
Though suppressing the vote by keeping it illegal for many is a radical strategy, you have to admit.
Hilary Benn would be a good leader - but appears not to be interested.
Yeah he will definitely do the trick in the red wall.......shakes head.
Boris will have a bus in every leave seat with Benn face on saying "his man did everything he could to stop Brexit".
HB is almost as wooden as Starmer.
I like Hilary Benn. I met him in a lift once, which got briefly stuck. It was one of those awkward situations you get when you meet a famous person: all the normal pleasantries you might make go out of the window because YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE. Where are you from? What do you do? All useless. You already know the answer. Nor can you just launch into an introduction of yourself bringing the famous person up to speed with who you are to even up the imbalance, because that would feel insane, and they are already slightly nervous about who they are in the lift with and for how long they will be there. In the end we shared mild quips about what we hoped to have for lunch. Anyway, I like Hilary, Do you remember that speech about the bombing of Syria? It was quite good. Though not necessarily one to endear him to the membership.
His attempt in that speech to identify the PLP with fighting against Franco was a load of slippery, ahistorical whitewash.
Party and national mythmaking is almost always bollocks, or at the least a lot more complicated than made out afterwards.
Nonetheless, it was an excellent speech - particularly for the audience it was tailored towards. Not in the least bit wooden.
Yet again, I'd like to thank the PB Tories for their regular advice on who should be the next Labour leader. Today there have been recommendations for Andy Burnham, Ed Balls and Dan Jarvis - interesting, it ebbs and flows a bit but they all have something in common. You Tories should have taken our advice and gone for Jeremy Hunt - we kept telling you Boris was a bad 'un.
I hate to tell you this but PB Tories do in fact give good and sincere advice to Labour supporters when it comes to picking leaders. If Labour listened to PB Tories they would probably be in government now, but instead Labour keeps picking people PB Tories laugh at.
Fair enough. But I recall that most PB Tories recommended last year that we select Starmer rather than Long-Bailey or Nandy. Most Labour members on here I think, including me, voted for Nandy. We lost; that's democracy for you.
Boris directing a kidney punch to Labour's Brechtian tendency:
He quotes the defeated Amber Valley Labour council leader who responded to defeat by saying: “The voters have let us down. I hope they don’t live to regret it.” Johnson says that is Labour’s approach; they want to change, not themselves, but the electorate.
Sounds like another "no money left" scenario, ripe for ruthless distortion. Sigh.
Lots of people have said that sort of thing, many more have thought it, so while it always sounds bad I think some nobody council leader's words are not going to become an enduring meme.
I hope not. But the Byrne note was benign too and look what happened. Tories are absolute bastards remember. They do what's necessary.
I'm not sure this is the zinger you think it is. The self-employed and small business owners are the bedrock of the new northern Conservative vote. They still think they're working class. What matters is getting "stuck in" to the graft.
Oh, absolutely. The backbone of our economy. I think it's hugely positive to have a LOTO with a background with an understanding of small business. I certainly don't want to get all class war. But if it's true, it's a jarringly different picture to the one I understood to be true - presumably because it was how Kier wanted to be portrayed, though I grant I don't think I've ever heard about his background from him personally.
The problem with it, is that the Tory Facebook campaign ads at the next election write themselves. Sir Keir likes you tell you he grew up in a factory worker’s house, but didn’t tell you his father owned the factory and sent him to the good school. What is he offering today’s working classes other than sneering contempt?
That isn't fatal. Boris Johnson is quite literally the elite. What is he offering today's working classes?
If Keir can sort the Labour Party out (unlikely, but still), his background is not going to be relevant.
He’s offering the working classes his ear, and investment in working-class areas that have been neglected for years.
Labour are talking to and about the bottom 10% and the top 10%.
The bottom 10% aren’t working, and the top 10% are at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and like talking about Palestine and trans rights, because they’re not worried about owning a house or saving for retirement.
The Conservatives are talking to the 80% in the middle. Those who get up and go to work in the morning.
Of course. But now Brexit is over he is going to have to deliver the arbitrary "rocket fuel" which is a lot harder to "deliver" than Brexit because it's completely subjective.
The problem with promising everything to everyone is that you can't please everyone. That's why I don't think it's going to be plain sailing. When the conservatives are in power both locally and nationally and things don't improve, it's going to be a lot harder to blame Labour.
Of course they now have to deliver, but it’s a low bar to cross and the signs so far are positive.
But it isn't a low bar at all.
Labour 1997-2010 piled record sums into education, healthcare, infrastructure, and yet got zero thanks. That's just politics. It will never be enough.
And then at what point does the spending need to be reined in?
Labour 1997 saw spending as the end rather than the means, and an awful lot of it was on expensive fancy buildings mortgaged for the next 40 years.
The Conservative attitude is to provide free enterprise zones subject to tax breaks, with the brivate sector creating most of the jobs and public money limited to infrastructure.
On the working class/middle class blurred lines, my parents were both 2nd generation immigrants. My dad grew up on a North Shields council estate and was the first in his family to go to university. His younger brother went to prison for steeling cars because he got involved in the wrong crowd.
My mum grew up in North London and was the daughter of a black cab driver. She was also the first in her family to go to university. It is at university where my parents met.
Because of the nature of the time, 2 university graduates (with low degree classifications, I might add) had well paid graduate jobs and could afford to buy a house together in affluent Solihull and I grew up fairly middle class by all accounts. My dad was the stereotypical "Mondeo man".
I of course went to University myself (twice, as you all know).
Now obviously I am middle class by most definitions but I don't feel wealthy whatsoever. I only managed to buy a house because my mum had the gall to die of cancer so I got a little inheritance early.
That level of social mobility is pretty much gone I reckon.
My family is a mixture of working-class and middle-class people. I don't think that happens now. Very strange. Middle-class people today seem to have suddenly become very intolerant of having anything to do with working-class people, which wasn't the case in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
I feel that's a very stereotypical view. What makes you say that? Are you sure it's not just that shared experiences bring people together?
No, I think there is some truth in what he says. My father was from an upper middle class family, my mother from an upper working class family (married in the 1950s). They both had snobbery problems from both families but each was accepted in the end, though my mother did take elocution which didn't go down well with her family.
But he's saying the problem exists now when it hasn't in the past. Surely snobbery has always existed in some circles?
I think snobbery has just morphed into something quite different. From a personal point of view I always hate the class obsession. It is probably because of my mixed background. I can never understand someone saying "I am proud to be working class". For a start it was not something you chose, but secondly the whole concept of what working class is is incredibly nebulous.
Yet again, I'd like to thank the PB Tories for their regular advice on who should be the next Labour leader. Today there have been recommendations for Andy Burnham, Ed Balls and Dan Jarvis - interesting, it ebbs and flows a bit but they all have something in common. You Tories should have taken our advice and gone for Jeremy Hunt - we kept telling you Boris was a bad 'un.
I hate to tell you this but PB Tories do in fact give good and sincere advice to Labour supporters when it comes to picking leaders. If Labour listened to PB Tories they would probably be in government now, but instead Labour keeps picking people PB Tories laugh at.
Fair enough. But I recall that most PB Tories recommended last year that we select Starmer rather than Long-Bailey or Nandy. Most Labour members on here I think, including me, voted for Nandy.
They were trying to keep you lot in the game give them some credit for that. Nandy or RLB would have seen you in a worse position yet.
On class. It is based a lot more on where you are from than where you are now. It is a sense of identity, developed in your formative years.
Putting the graft in to do well for yourself, get a well paid job and live in a nice house doesn't change your state of mind. What your values are. What matters to you. What sort of society you want us all to live in. Your political outlook. When you eat your dinner.
Just because you shop at Waitrose, it doesn't make you 'A Waitrose Shopper'.
Marina Hyde, as ever, puts it better then I ever could:
‘In 2019 there was ONE conviction for in-person voter fraud in the entire UK, handed to a man who had voted twice in the European parliament elections (arguably even more pointless than it was to vote once). Yet the government is pressing ahead with legislation to spend a conservatively estimated £20m per election on stopping something that isn’t even meaningfully occurring. What sort of a return on your investment is that for the party of business? The only reasonable conclusion is that the investment is in fact in a system that will end up favouring the Conservatives. Think of them as the party of funny business, and it all makes common sense.’
Off topic apology. Anyone else watching the Greensill Capital Committee evidence? They are definitely trying to paint him as a fraudster but I get the impression he was an innovator doing some complex stuff, with insufficient reserves to cope with the pandemic and alleged fraud within a significant customer. A lot of mud is being thrown at him but in my view it isn't sticking. What do our corporate PB members think?
Boris directing a kidney punch to Labour's Brechtian tendency:
He quotes the defeated Amber Valley Labour council leader who responded to defeat by saying: “The voters have let us down. I hope they don’t live to regret it.” Johnson says that is Labour’s approach; they want to change, not themselves, but the electorate.
Sounds like another "no money left" scenario, ripe for ruthless distortion. Sigh.
Lots of people have said that sort of thing, many more have thought it, so while it always sounds bad I think some nobody council leader's words are not going to become an enduring meme.
I hope not. But the Byrne note was benign too and look what happened. Tories are absolute bastards remember. They do what's necessary.
Ther Byrne note seemed to perfectly capture the times. A defeated candidate saying the voters are bastards is just normal.
"The Tories' stonking super-majority is built on sand Johnson's uneasy coalition between Red Wall voters and Tory libertarians may yet implode as spectacularly as the Labour Party
Paywall. Could you summarize the thrust of Sherelle's argument? Because I have been arguing this myself.
Unsurprising that she used to write for the Guardian .
Sherelle has long argued that the Conservatives are getting the red wall all wrong - that the Conservatives are drawing the conclusion that what red wall voters want is Labour-ish policies, when what they actually want is low taxes and low interference in their lives. I don't know if she's right or not.
Interesting...in the CH4 documentary, they said they bought the.vials last April and despite all the headlines they knew they had millions. Again, of they hadn't, would have been at the back of the queue.
Hilary Benn would be a good leader - but appears not to be interested.
Yeah he will definitely do the trick in the red wall.......shakes head.
Boris will have a bus in every leave seat with Benn face on saying "his man did everything he could to stop Brexit".
HB is almost as wooden as Starmer.
I like Hilary Benn. I met him in a lift once, which got briefly stuck. It was one of those awkward situations you get when you meet a famous person: all the normal pleasantries you might make go out of the window because YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE. Where are you from? What do you do? All useless. You already know the answer. Nor can you just launch into an introduction of yourself bringing the famous person up to speed with who you are to even up the imbalance, because that would feel insane, and they are already slightly nervous about who they are in the lift with and for how long they will be there. In the end we shared mild quips about what we hoped to have for lunch. Anyway, I like Hilary, Do you remember that speech about the bombing of Syria? It was quite good. Though not necessarily one to endear him to the membership.
His attempt in that speech to identify the PLP with fighting against Franco was a load of slippery, ahistorical whitewash.
Party and national mythmaking is almost always bollocks, or at the least a lot more complicated than made out afterwards.
And yet kind of important, up to a point. The need for stories was a key part of the excellent book 'Watling Street'.
Opposition Leader Satisfied Dissatisfied Net satisfaction Date of poll % % % Thatcher 38 51 -13 Nov 1978 Foot 13 69 -56 Aug 1982 Kinnock 27 61 -34 Dec 1988 Smith 33 41 -8 May 1993 Blair 42 35 +7 Sep 1996 Hague 19 56 -37 Jan 2000 Duncan Smith 16 53 -37 Feb 2003 Howard 23 49 -26 Jun 2005 Cameron 23 45 -22 Sep 2007 Miliband 25 63 -38 Dec 2014 Corbyn 17 72 -55 Feb 2019 Either it's a blip, or Starmer's toast.
The only saving grace for Starmer is that the last 14 months the polls have been largely driven by the pandemic.
If this is the norm for the post pandemic phase then he's like a stepmom on Pornhub.
The only question is does the PLP have the desire to remove him?
I keep coming back to the question, that nobody's really answered - who would you replace him with?
Major Dan Jarvis.
Well quite. Personable, sane, doesn't keep banging on about Palestine. But does he want the job? All the signs I've seen are that he doesn't.
I've never heard Dan Jarvis speak, or what he really is like. All I know is that he was in the armed forces and that is why many think he could be good for Labour. The image of an ex squaddie might play well with the public. Other than that I don't know.
He's not strictly speaking a squaddie. He was an officer. BUT, and it's quite a big but, no one really thinks like that when you're talking about a Para or a Marine. He was the former. Pretty hard core.
I've a Labour friend from Barnsley who has been banging on about Jarvis for what feels like years and years.
How's Jarvis going to get past the membership vote though? Surely he will be viewed with suspicion by the bien pensants of N London and Middling University Labour club?
I just looked ta his Wiki page. he looks far too electable to be elected to Labour Leader. Absolutely no chance.
The next leader absolutely must be a woman apparently.
Hope you're not somebody who manages to ridicule Labour (i) for never having a woman leader and (ii) for thinking they have to pick a woman leader.
Because some people do manage that, would you believe.
Its entirely possible and consistent to ridicule Labour for both. The Tories have had a woman leader elected who was a tremendous success who was elected because of her own merits, not because she was a woman.
Labour should not pick a leader just because she's female, but equally true to say there ought to have been plenty of good quality female MPs who could have become leader down the years.
My dad said Labour missed a chance with Barbara Castle.
No disrespect to your dad, but no. IMO, she would have been as electorally attractive as J Corbyn, even though she was, unlike Corbyn, very bright. Shirley Williams was a different matter, except she felt the need to defect. She was highly intelligent and charismatic. She would have given Mrs T a run for her money.
I'm not sure this is the zinger you think it is. The self-employed and small business owners are the bedrock of the new northern Conservative vote. They still think they're working class. What matters is getting "stuck in" to the graft.
Oh, absolutely. The backbone of our economy. I think it's hugely positive to have a LOTO with a background with an understanding of small business. I certainly don't want to get all class war. But if it's true, it's a jarringly different picture to the one I understood to be true - presumably because it was how Kier wanted to be portrayed, though I grant I don't think I've ever heard about his background from him personally.
The problem with it, is that the Tory Facebook campaign ads at the next election write themselves. Sir Keir likes you tell you he grew up in a factory worker’s house, but didn’t tell you his father owned the factory and sent him to the good school. What is he offering today’s working classes other than sneering contempt?
That isn't fatal. Boris Johnson is quite literally the elite. What is he offering today's working classes?
If Keir can sort the Labour Party out (unlikely, but still), his background is not going to be relevant.
He’s offering the working classes his ear, and investment in working-class areas that have been neglected for years.
Labour are talking to and about the bottom 10% and the top 10%.
The bottom 10% aren’t working, and the top 10% are at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and like talking about Palestine and trans rights, because they’re not worried about owning a house or saving for retirement.
The Conservatives are talking to the 80% in the middle. Those who get up and go to work in the morning.
Of course. But now Brexit is over he is going to have to deliver the arbitrary "rocket fuel" which is a lot harder to "deliver" than Brexit because it's completely subjective.
The problem with promising everything to everyone is that you can't please everyone. That's why I don't think it's going to be plain sailing. When the conservatives are in power both locally and nationally and things don't improve, it's going to be a lot harder to blame Labour.
Of course they now have to deliver, but it’s a low bar to cross and the signs so far are positive.
But it isn't a low bar at all.
Labour 1997-2010 piled record sums into education, healthcare, infrastructure, and yet got zero thanks. That's just politics. It will never be enough.
And then at what point does the spending need to be reined in?
Labour 1997 saw spending as the end rather than the means, and an awful lot of it was on expensive fancy buildings mortgaged for the next 40 years.
The Conservative attitude is to provide free enterprise zones subject to tax breaks, with the brivate sector creating most of the jobs and public money limited to infrastructure.
For all the talk of levelling up, the Tories are going to have to spend on a lot and alot of new builds. Remember the 40 hospitals. Also this training and continues education ethos is going to have to have money. Who's pays for it? I think the Tories are going to have to raise taxes if levelling up is to succeed.
Favourite celebrity encounter: when Jeremy Beadle's cash card for eaten during panto season in Ashton-under-Lyne. Good humour was not in evidence.
The cash card was eaten by a cash machine, I need to add, not by a hungry lioness.
Have YOU ever had YOUR cash card eaten, by a lion OR a cash machine? I have (the latter, not the former).
My own good humor was sadly lacking! As I'm guessing yours would be too.
BTW, am saddened by the sexism of your last sentence. Have you leaned NOTHING here o PB???
Lol, I fear the anecdote has flown straight over your head here, and you a student of all things British and all.
Jeremy Beadle - UK host of Candid Camera type programmes. Lioness - as Boris termed Angela Rayner today, MP for said town.
You've got me! Am a humble student NOT a learned expert, as you've just made obvious.
EDIT - By the way, wonder how many PBers or Brits in general, have ever heard of Richard Dawkins? Who for many years was one of the most visible & popular of your countryman on US television.
Boris directing a kidney punch to Labour's Brechtian tendency:
He quotes the defeated Amber Valley Labour council leader who responded to defeat by saying: “The voters have let us down. I hope they don’t live to regret it.” Johnson says that is Labour’s approach; they want to change, not themselves, but the electorate.
Sounds like another "no money left" scenario, ripe for ruthless distortion. Sigh.
Lots of people have said that sort of thing, many more have thought it, so while it always sounds bad I think some nobody council leader's words are not going to become an enduring meme.
I hope not. But the Byrne note was benign too and look what happened. Tories are absolute bastards remember. They do what's necessary.
And the Thorneberry picture. It was quite an innocent picture but it was turned into something completely different.
Hilary Benn would be a good leader - but appears not to be interested.
Yeah he will definitely do the trick in the red wall.......shakes head.
Boris will have a bus in every leave seat with Benn face on saying "his man did everything he could to stop Brexit".
HB is almost as wooden as Starmer.
I like Hilary Benn. I met him in a lift once, which got briefly stuck. It was one of those awkward situations you get when you meet a famous person: all the normal pleasantries you might make go out of the window because YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE. Where are you from? What do you do? All useless. You already know the answer. Nor can you just launch into an introduction of yourself bringing the famous person up to speed with who you are to even up the imbalance, because that would feel insane, and they are already slightly nervous about who they are in the lift with and for how long they will be there. In the end we shared mild quips about what we hoped to have for lunch. Anyway, I like Hilary, Do you remember that speech about the bombing of Syria? It was quite good. Though not necessarily one to endear him to the membership.
His attempt in that speech to identify the PLP with fighting against Franco was a load of slippery, ahistorical whitewash.
Party and national mythmaking is almost always bollocks, or at the least a lot more complicated than made out afterwards.
And yet kind of important, up to a point. The need for stories was a key part of the excellent book 'Watling Street'.
Oh I agree, symbols and stories are often not entirely 'true', but are very important and useful, even though they can also be misused.
I'm not sure this is the zinger you think it is. The self-employed and small business owners are the bedrock of the new northern Conservative vote. They still think they're working class. What matters is getting "stuck in" to the graft.
Oh, absolutely. The backbone of our economy. I think it's hugely positive to have a LOTO with a background with an understanding of small business. I certainly don't want to get all class war. But if it's true, it's a jarringly different picture to the one I understood to be true - presumably because it was how Kier wanted to be portrayed, though I grant I don't think I've ever heard about his background from him personally.
The problem with it, is that the Tory Facebook campaign ads at the next election write themselves. Sir Keir likes you tell you he grew up in a factory worker’s house, but didn’t tell you his father owned the factory and sent him to the good school. What is he offering today’s working classes other than sneering contempt?
That isn't fatal. Boris Johnson is quite literally the elite. What is he offering today's working classes?
If Keir can sort the Labour Party out (unlikely, but still), his background is not going to be relevant.
He’s offering the working classes his ear, and investment in working-class areas that have been neglected for years.
Labour are talking to and about the bottom 10% and the top 10%.
The bottom 10% aren’t working, and the top 10% are at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and like talking about Palestine and trans rights, because they’re not worried about owning a house or saving for retirement.
The Conservatives are talking to the 80% in the middle. Those who get up and go to work in the morning.
Of course. But now Brexit is over he is going to have to deliver the arbitrary "rocket fuel" which is a lot harder to "deliver" than Brexit because it's completely subjective.
The problem with promising everything to everyone is that you can't please everyone. That's why I don't think it's going to be plain sailing. When the conservatives are in power both locally and nationally and things don't improve, it's going to be a lot harder to blame Labour.
Of course they now have to deliver, but it’s a low bar to cross and the signs so far are positive.
But it isn't a low bar at all.
Labour 1997-2010 piled record sums into education, healthcare, infrastructure, and yet got zero thanks. That's just politics. It will never be enough.
And then at what point does the spending need to be reined in?
Labour 1997 saw spending as the end rather than the means, and an awful lot of it was on expensive fancy buildings mortgaged for the next 40 years.
The Conservative attitude is to provide free enterprise zones subject to tax breaks, with the brivate sector creating most of the jobs and public money limited to infrastructure.
And what if those "free enterprise zones" don't actually create good jobs?
In any case, the headline "job creation in the North" so far is public sector treasury jobs in Darlington.
On the working class/middle class blurred lines, my parents were both 2nd generation immigrants. My dad grew up on a North Shields council estate and was the first in his family to go to university. His younger brother went to prison for steeling cars because he got involved in the wrong crowd.
My mum grew up in North London and was the daughter of a black cab driver. She was also the first in her family to go to university. It is at university where my parents met.
Because of the nature of the time, 2 university graduates (with low degree classifications, I might add) had well paid graduate jobs and could afford to buy a house together in affluent Solihull and I grew up fairly middle class by all accounts. My dad was the stereotypical "Mondeo man".
I of course went to University myself (twice, as you all know).
Now obviously I am middle class by most definitions but I don't feel wealthy whatsoever. I only managed to buy a house because my mum had the gall to die of cancer so I got a little inheritance early.
That level of social mobility is pretty much gone I reckon.
My family is a mixture of working-class and middle-class people. I don't think that happens now. Very strange. Middle-class people today seem to have suddenly become very intolerant of having anything to do with working-class people, which wasn't the case in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
I feel that's a very stereotypical view. What makes you say that? Are you sure it's not just that shared experiences bring people together?
No, I think there is some truth in what he says. My father was from an upper middle class family, my mother from an upper working class family (married in the 1950s). They both had snobbery problems from both families but each was accepted in the end, though my mother did take elocution which didn't go down well with her family.
But he's saying the problem exists now when it hasn't in the past. Surely snobbery has always existed in some circles?
I think snobbery has just morphed into something quite different. From a personal point of view I always hate the class obsession. It is probably because of my mixed background. I can never understand someone saying "I am proud to be working class". For a start it was not something you chose, but secondly the whole concept of what working class is is incredibly nebulous.
People say they are proud to be working class to counter some snobby twat looking down on them.
Just like a black person can say they are proud to be black to counter racism.
Seattle Times ($) - Halt to 737 MAX deliveries stymies Boeing’s recovery effort
Boeing delivered just four 737 MAXs in April before an electrical problem grounded the jet again, halting further deliveries until a fix is approved. The setback frustrated Boeing’s effort to begin to climb out of the pandemic downturn as air travel slowly recovers.
The company’s monthly update to its jet orders and deliveries figures, posted online Tuesday, otherwise showed marginal progress.
Deliveries of the 787 Dreamliner, which resumed in March after a more than four-month halt due to a separate production quality issue, picked up in April. And while last year was dominated by order cancellations, Boeing for the third straight month showed a small positive net order total.
However, as U.S. airlines look to a recovery in domestic travel, the 737 MAX is the Boeing jet in most demand, so the stoppage in deliveries is a major blow that drastically cuts much-needed cash flow.
Due to a change in the manufacturing process, various panels and power control units on the MAX flight deck built since early 2019 are not properly grounded electrically, which can potentially affect operation of certain systems, including engine ice protection.
COMMENT - Boeing USED to be run by engineers and aviation experts. For last several decades, has been run by bankers and bean counters. Right into the ground, or close enough.
You should hear what the old Boeing mangers & employees from my neighborhood have to say about it!
It was the McDonnell Douglas merger that did it. The old Boeing was run by engineers, the new McD management now in charge are all MBAs with no engineering experience, who don’t even live and work near the factory any more.
On the working class/middle class blurred lines, my parents were both 2nd generation immigrants. My dad grew up on a North Shields council estate and was the first in his family to go to university. His younger brother went to prison for steeling cars because he got involved in the wrong crowd.
My mum grew up in North London and was the daughter of a black cab driver. She was also the first in her family to go to university. It is at university where my parents met.
Because of the nature of the time, 2 university graduates (with low degree classifications, I might add) had well paid graduate jobs and could afford to buy a house together in affluent Solihull and I grew up fairly middle class by all accounts. My dad was the stereotypical "Mondeo man".
I of course went to University myself (twice, as you all know).
Now obviously I am middle class by most definitions but I don't feel wealthy whatsoever. I only managed to buy a house because my mum had the gall to die of cancer so I got a little inheritance early.
That level of social mobility is pretty much gone I reckon.
My family is a mixture of working-class and middle-class people. I don't think that happens now. Very strange. Middle-class people today seem to have suddenly become very intolerant of having anything to do with working-class people, which wasn't the case in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
I feel that's a very stereotypical view. What makes you say that? Are you sure it's not just that shared experiences bring people together?
No, I think there is some truth in what he says. My father was from an upper middle class family, my mother from an upper working class family (married in the 1950s). They both had snobbery problems from both families but each was accepted in the end, though my mother did take elocution which didn't go down well with her family.
But he's saying the problem exists now when it hasn't in the past. Surely snobbery has always existed in some circles?
I think snobbery has just morphed into something quite different. From a personal point of view I always hate the class obsession. It is probably because of my mixed background. I can never understand someone saying "I am proud to be working class". For a start it was not something you chose, but secondly the whole concept of what working class is is incredibly nebulous.
Labour would benefit from a woman as leader, but neither of those two. The challenge is I can't think of any of the Labour front bench women that would stand a chance of reaching the various parts of the electorate, and the men are much the same. From the recent past Yvette Cooper might cut it.
On class. It is based a lot more on where you are from than where you are now. It is a sense of identity, developed in your formative years.
Putting the graft in to do well for yourself, get a well paid job and live in a nice house doesn't change your state of mind. What your values are. What matters to you. What sort of society you want us all to live in. Your political outlook. When you eat your dinner.
Just because you shop at Waitrose, it doesn't make you 'A Waitrose Shopper'.
It's one of those things that we know what it is when we see it, but find it impossible to define.
On the working class/middle class blurred lines, my parents were both 2nd generation immigrants. My dad grew up on a North Shields council estate and was the first in his family to go to university. His younger brother went to prison for steeling cars because he got involved in the wrong crowd.
My mum grew up in North London and was the daughter of a black cab driver. She was also the first in her family to go to university. It is at university where my parents met.
Because of the nature of the time, 2 university graduates (with low degree classifications, I might add) had well paid graduate jobs and could afford to buy a house together in affluent Solihull and I grew up fairly middle class by all accounts. My dad was the stereotypical "Mondeo man".
I of course went to University myself (twice, as you all know).
Now obviously I am middle class by most definitions but I don't feel wealthy whatsoever. I only managed to buy a house because my mum had the gall to die of cancer so I got a little inheritance early.
That level of social mobility is pretty much gone I reckon.
My family is a mixture of working-class and middle-class people. I don't think that happens now. Very strange. Middle-class people today seem to have suddenly become very intolerant of having anything to do with working-class people, which wasn't the case in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
I feel that's a very stereotypical view. What makes you say that? Are you sure it's not just that shared experiences bring people together?
No, I think there is some truth in what he says. My father was from an upper middle class family, my mother from an upper working class family (married in the 1950s). They both had snobbery problems from both families but each was accepted in the end, though my mother did take elocution which didn't go down well with her family.
But he's saying the problem exists now when it hasn't in the past. Surely snobbery has always existed in some circles?
I think snobbery has just morphed into something quite different. From a personal point of view I always hate the class obsession. It is probably because of my mixed background. I can never understand someone saying "I am proud to be working class". For a start it was not something you chose, but secondly the whole concept of what working class is is incredibly nebulous.
Labour would benefit from a woman as leader, but neither of those two. The challenge is I can't think of any of the Labour front bench women that would stand a chance of reaching the various parts of the electorate, and the men are much the same. From the recent past Yvette Cooper might cut it.
whoops hit the wrong reply and replied to myself. I am in an echo chamber lol.
Yet again, I'd like to thank the PB Tories for their regular advice on who should be the next Labour leader. Today there have been recommendations for Andy Burnham, Ed Balls and Dan Jarvis - interesting, it ebbs and flows a bit but they all have something in common. You Tories should have taken our advice and gone for Jeremy Hunt - we kept telling you Boris was a bad 'un.
I hate to tell you this but PB Tories do in fact give good and sincere advice to Labour supporters when it comes to picking leaders. If Labour listened to PB Tories they would probably be in government now, but instead Labour keeps picking people PB Tories laugh at.
Fair enough. But I recall that most PB Tories recommended last year that we select Starmer rather than Long-Bailey or Nandy. Most Labour members on here I think, including me, voted for Nandy. We lost; that's democracy for you.
I don't think Nandy would be any good either. She maybe bright and clever but as a leader I have my doubts.
Boris directing a kidney punch to Labour's Brechtian tendency:
He quotes the defeated Amber Valley Labour council leader who responded to defeat by saying: “The voters have let us down. I hope they don’t live to regret it.” Johnson says that is Labour’s approach; they want to change, not themselves, but the electorate.
Sounds like another "no money left" scenario, ripe for ruthless distortion. Sigh.
Lots of people have said that sort of thing, many more have thought it, so while it always sounds bad I think some nobody council leader's words are not going to become an enduring meme.
I hope not. But the Byrne note was benign too and look what happened. Tories are absolute bastards remember. They do what's necessary.
It was a Lib Dem (David Laws) who picked up the letter.
I'm not sure this is the zinger you think it is. The self-employed and small business owners are the bedrock of the new northern Conservative vote. They still think they're working class. What matters is getting "stuck in" to the graft.
Oh, absolutely. The backbone of our economy. I think it's hugely positive to have a LOTO with a background with an understanding of small business. I certainly don't want to get all class war. But if it's true, it's a jarringly different picture to the one I understood to be true - presumably because it was how Kier wanted to be portrayed, though I grant I don't think I've ever heard about his background from him personally.
The problem with it, is that the Tory Facebook campaign ads at the next election write themselves. Sir Keir likes you tell you he grew up in a factory worker’s house, but didn’t tell you his father owned the factory and sent him to the good school. What is he offering today’s working classes other than sneering contempt?
That isn't fatal. Boris Johnson is quite literally the elite. What is he offering today's working classes?
If Keir can sort the Labour Party out (unlikely, but still), his background is not going to be relevant.
Boris isn't trying to hide that he's of the elite or pretend otherwise. It's one of the reasons he comes across as genuine despite every word he says being a pack of lies. When Sir Keir Starmer QC tries to tell us he's the son of a working class toolmaker it just isn't genuine because about three seconds of fact checking shows that he's the son of an industrialist factory owner. Dave struggled with this as well, he always tried to do his "call me Dave, I support West Ham, wait I mean Aston Villa" schtick and it didn't really hit home then either and people were easily able to see he was a but of a fake. It was actually on the NHS when he was strongest because he has that very personal experience with it due to the extensive care they gave to his disabled son. You could genuinely see that he really cared about the NHS and would ensure that the NHS was spared the worst of the coming austerity.
There isn't a single subject where Starmer has that impact. He hasn't got personal experiences that speak to the nation. To my mind, he's never really faced personal or professional adversity and it gives him lack of character/authenticity. One thing voters are very good at is spotting a fraud. Starmer is fake working class trying to appeal to them with learned lines and unknown experiences. Boris just doesn't bother to try, which is probably the better route IMO.
Where is the actual quote/source that his father owned the factory. All I can find is "ran the factory".
AIUI his father was a toolmaker who became manager of a small factory.
The burning question is: Was the Man in the Corner Shop Jealous of Starmer's dad...
Puts up the 'Closed' sign Does the man in the Corner Shop Serves his last Then he says goodbye to him He knows it is a hard life But it's nice to be your own boss, really
Walks off home Does the last customer He is jealous Of the man in the Corner Shop He's sick of working at the Factory He says it must be nice To be your own boss, really
Sells cigars to the boss from the Factory He is jealous Is the man in the Corner Shop He is sick of struggling so hard Says it must be nice to own a Factory
Go to Church Do the people from the area All shapes and classes Sit and pray together For here they are all one For God created all men equal
Go to Church Do the people from the area Go to Church Do the people from the area Go to Church Do the people from the area For God created all men equal
They know, that God created all men equal They know, that God created all men equal They know, that God created all men equal They know, that God created all men equal They know
An absolute classic, such wisdom from one so young!
Boris directing a kidney punch to Labour's Brechtian tendency:
He quotes the defeated Amber Valley Labour council leader who responded to defeat by saying: “The voters have let us down. I hope they don’t live to regret it.” Johnson says that is Labour’s approach; they want to change, not themselves, but the electorate.
Sounds like another "no money left" scenario, ripe for ruthless distortion. Sigh.
Lots of people have said that sort of thing, many more have thought it, so while it always sounds bad I think some nobody council leader's words are not going to become an enduring meme.
I hope not. But the Byrne note was benign too and look what happened. Tories are absolute bastards remember. They do what's necessary.
And the Thorneberry picture. It was quite an innocent picture but it was turned into something completely different.
Innocent? Sneering North London contempt for those who prefer cheddar to Good Brie.
"The Tories' stonking super-majority is built on sand Johnson's uneasy coalition between Red Wall voters and Tory libertarians may yet implode as spectacularly as the Labour Party
Paywall. Could you summarize the thrust of Sherelle's argument? Because I have been arguing this myself.
Unsurprising that she used to write for the Guardian .
Sherelle has long argued that the Conservatives are getting the red wall all wrong - that the Conservatives are drawing the conclusion that what red wall voters want is Labour-ish policies, when what they actually want is low taxes and low interference in their lives. I don't know if she's right or not.
There was a Hugo Rifkind piece in The Times this morning, arguing something similar;
He quoted James Kanagasooriam, who came up with the idea of the “Red Wall” in the first place. Basically, the RW switchers aren't normal working people as such. They're older, either near the top of their workplace or retired, biggish house, decent money. Basically, the kind of people who, if they lived in Northamptonshire, would have voted Conservative for ages. The miracle is that they didn't switch before.
The thing we sometimes forget is that constituencies don't vote, people do. And even in a safe seat and good year for party X, there are probably a decent slice of voters for party Y.
Is that really true? Kier Starmer's dad owned the factory?
I mean, of course, I don't think ill of him for having a middle class background. I have a middle class background. But he's always seemed fairly keen to let it be known he came from working class (sorry) origins.
He comes from a pretty ordinary background. Corbyn's was more comfortable.
What's happening right now is you have a guy who's down and under pressure, and people from all sides are piling in.
Excuse me while I don't.
Well that's what happens unfortunately. A leader does a bit badly, and gets any number of headlines about how badly he's doing, citing as evidence the fact that he's getting any number of headlines about how badly he's doing, which makes people think he's not doing very well, which leads to poorer opinion polls. All quite unfair and the same thing happened to IDS and indeed Ed Miliband.
His background doesn't really matter of course. I'm sure we agree on that. Effective politicians can come from any background; those from tougher backgrounds have more hurdles to getting to the top, but those that do have a valuable insight. He's certainly from 'ordinary' origins, for a value of 'ordinary' that encompasses the middle 60% of the population - as am I, probably. Nothing wrong with that. But it wasn't quite the background I had been led to believe he was from. I'm not piling in, inasmuch as what I say or do has any impact at all, which it doesn't. I think he's ok. Not great, but ok. Exudes dull competence, which is a much underrated quality (is he competent? I've no idea). Has done some stuff that I've welcomed and some stuff I've lamented. This does, though, put a slightly different take on the discussion from last night in which we were mildly incredulous that he rated lower than Boris for honesty.
EDIT: Note that all the evidence we have for this snippet so far is a Guido tweet, so this is all a bit speculative. Not enough to base any sort of case on!
I am a bit worried, in truth. I'm not going with the flow right now because I think there's some mindless herd stuff going on, which I dislike, and is also potentially bad for betting. My fear about Starmer (who I didn't vote for) is he might be too corporate to connect with the public. People want some "shirt out" these days. Whatever policies come forth, left or centrist, have to be sold and if he can't do that we'll have to make a change.
Starmer seeks to be a second Blair. He has Mandelson and Mattison working closely with him. See Mandleson's words the other day: "lose, lose, lose, lose, Blair, Blair, Blair, Lose, Lose, lose, lose".
The direction he is going is the right one if you want the LP to maximise electability but the wrong one if you seek honesty and authenticity.
But it's only the right direction electorally if he can cut through. Blair was a bit of a phenom in that regard. I'd rather see Starmer being Starmer than him trying to be something he's not. Which is the irony - "corporate" is not how he is, I bet. Who's like that in real life? Nobody. He's probably hiding a vote winning machine of a personality mistakenly thinking he needs to be all "careful".
I'm not sure this is the zinger you think it is. The self-employed and small business owners are the bedrock of the new northern Conservative vote. They still think they're working class. What matters is getting "stuck in" to the graft.
Oh, absolutely. The backbone of our economy. I think it's hugely positive to have a LOTO with a background with an understanding of small business. I certainly don't want to get all class war. But if it's true, it's a jarringly different picture to the one I understood to be true - presumably because it was how Kier wanted to be portrayed, though I grant I don't think I've ever heard about his background from him personally.
The problem with it, is that the Tory Facebook campaign ads at the next election write themselves. Sir Keir likes you tell you he grew up in a factory worker’s house, but didn’t tell you his father owned the factory and sent him to the good school. What is he offering today’s working classes other than sneering contempt?
That isn't fatal. Boris Johnson is quite literally the elite. What is he offering today's working classes?
If Keir can sort the Labour Party out (unlikely, but still), his background is not going to be relevant.
He’s offering the working classes his ear, and investment in working-class areas that have been neglected for years.
Labour are talking to and about the bottom 10% and the top 10%.
The bottom 10% aren’t working, and the top 10% are at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and like talking about Palestine and trans rights, because they’re not worried about owning a house or saving for retirement.
The Conservatives are talking to the 80% in the middle. Those who get up and go to work in the morning.
Of course. But now Brexit is over he is going to have to deliver the arbitrary "rocket fuel" which is a lot harder to "deliver" than Brexit because it's completely subjective.
The problem with promising everything to everyone is that you can't please everyone. That's why I don't think it's going to be plain sailing. When the conservatives are in power both locally and nationally and things don't improve, it's going to be a lot harder to blame Labour.
Of course they now have to deliver, but it’s a low bar to cross and the signs so far are positive.
But it isn't a low bar at all.
Labour 1997-2010 piled record sums into education, healthcare, infrastructure, and yet got zero thanks. That's just politics. It will never be enough.
And then at what point does the spending need to be reined in?
Labour 1997 saw spending as the end rather than the means, and an awful lot of it was on expensive fancy buildings mortgaged for the next 40 years.
The Conservative attitude is to provide free enterprise zones subject to tax breaks, with the brivate sector creating most of the jobs and public money limited to infrastructure.
For all the talk of levelling up, the Tories are going to have to spend on a lot and alot of new builds. Remember the 40 hospitals. Also this training and continues education ethos is going to have to have money. Who's pays for it? I think the Tories are going to have to raise taxes if levelling up is to succeed.
Training and education. Who delivers it? The entire FE sector has been gutted. The buildings sold off. The staff laid off. ZHC staff in industrial units right now. Students with no access to grants, loans or UC. And the fees have gone through the roof too. If you don't have a job already, or savings, you can't upskill.
On the working class/middle class blurred lines, my parents were both 2nd generation immigrants. My dad grew up on a North Shields council estate and was the first in his family to go to university. His younger brother went to prison for steeling cars because he got involved in the wrong crowd.
My mum grew up in North London and was the daughter of a black cab driver. She was also the first in her family to go to university. It is at university where my parents met.
Because of the nature of the time, 2 university graduates (with low degree classifications, I might add) had well paid graduate jobs and could afford to buy a house together in affluent Solihull and I grew up fairly middle class by all accounts. My dad was the stereotypical "Mondeo man".
I of course went to University myself (twice, as you all know).
Now obviously I am middle class by most definitions but I don't feel wealthy whatsoever. I only managed to buy a house because my mum had the gall to die of cancer so I got a little inheritance early.
That level of social mobility is pretty much gone I reckon.
It's tricky, 'cause the St Pancras hotel rather gets in the way. But from there the British Library looks likes a cruise liner! I think that's quite a nice touch from Sir Colin Wilson, who served in the Navy in WW2.
Easier to see from the model in the British Library than from outside..
Same as the British Library (the "new" one on Euston Road). Lovely lush interiors, but the exterior? Pff. A great public building like THE BRITISH LIBRARY should resonate with a welcoming grandeur, a proper sonority. A confident embrace of the street
It looks like a mildly fortified Tesco in Croydon with extra arty bits. It is not in Holyrood's league for actual howling ugliness, but it is so disappointing. So timid and pathetic.
As I said earlier the Senedd in Cardiff shows we can still design lovely AND impressive public buildings, but too often we get them wrong. A cultural decay
Labour ideally needs a two stage strategy with leaders. First it needs someone with a bit of personality and energy to rough Boris up a bit and force him to make errors, even if that leader is not universally popular in the country. Then, when the time is right (realistically after a narrower loss at the next election) the new unifying Blair / Trudeau / Ardern figure can emerge. They don't currently exist as far as I can see. But Burnham would do well in that first role, as would Jess Phillips.
You could argue the SNP did that successfully with Salmond then Sturgeon. Or the even the Democrats with Pelosi then Biden.
Hilary Benn would be a good leader - but appears not to be interested.
Yeah he will definitely do the trick in the red wall.......shakes head.
Boris will have a bus in every leave seat with Benn face on saying "his man did everything he could to stop Brexit".
HB is almost as wooden as Starmer.
I like Hilary Benn. I met him in a lift once, which got briefly stuck. It was one of those awkward situations you get when you meet a famous person: all the normal pleasantries you might make go out of the window because YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE. Where are you from? What do you do? All useless. You already know the answer. Nor can you just launch into an introduction of yourself bringing the famous person up to speed with who you are to even up the imbalance, because that would feel insane, and they are already slightly nervous about who they are in the lift with and for how long they will be there. In the end we shared mild quips about what we hoped to have for lunch. Anyway, I like Hilary, Do you remember that speech about the bombing of Syria? It was quite good. Though not necessarily one to endear him to the membership.
He was my MP for a time. Seeing him in the flesh at CLP meetings, dealing with the nonsense from our resident Momentumites was a joy. A very good communicator, and a very deep thinker.
And now my MP is.... Philip Davies. Less of a joy.
Comments
And now my MP is.... Philip Davies. Less of a joy.
Or if you don't mind disclosing who it is you are worried about linking to them like so @SeaShantyIrish2 and clicking the link might work
People don't like fake. Not these days anyways.
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2021/may/11/what-is-the-dangerous-black-fungus-being-seen-in-covid-patients-in-india-mucormycosis
Boeing delivered just four 737 MAXs in April before an electrical problem grounded the jet again, halting further deliveries until a fix is approved. The setback frustrated Boeing’s effort to begin to climb out of the pandemic downturn as air travel slowly recovers.
The company’s monthly update to its jet orders and deliveries figures, posted online Tuesday, otherwise showed marginal progress.
Deliveries of the 787 Dreamliner, which resumed in March after a more than four-month halt due to a separate production quality issue, picked up in April. And while last year was dominated by order cancellations, Boeing for the third straight month showed a small positive net order total.
However, as U.S. airlines look to a recovery in domestic travel, the 737 MAX is the Boeing jet in most demand, so the stoppage in deliveries is a major blow that drastically cuts much-needed cash flow.
Due to a change in the manufacturing process, various panels and power control units on the MAX flight deck built since early 2019 are not properly grounded electrically, which can potentially affect operation of certain systems, including engine ice protection.
COMMENT - Boeing USED to be run by engineers and aviation experts. For last several decades, has been run by bankers and bean counters. Right into the ground, or close enough.
You should hear what the old Boeing mangers & employees from my neighborhood have to say about it!
And created a two-tiered degree system. If you have a degree from the bottom group of universities (roughly non-Russell Group), you are not getting a top job either.
So, previously, investment banks hired high end graduates and a few barrow boys. Now they just hire high end graduates.
I am not sure how Liverpool ended up with two mayors (Bristol as well), but red blue or other I like the model.
https://twitter.com/JasonGroves1/status/1392134825432211461?s=20
And there was less in it.....
I remember listening to it and thinking, "Gosh what a fabulous contrast to the shallow facetious 'show phony' he's up against."
Sadly I haven't seen that translated into LoTo performance as yet. And it does need to PDQ.
In law, for example, most of the big firms I have come across now (within the last few years) hire "solicitor apprentices" as well as graduates.
Garage was good at pretending to be be something he isn't too. A jack the lad working class act.
He's being advised to project an image I reckon. And it shows. Very New Labour. But this is now, not then.
Johnson's uneasy coalition between Red Wall voters and Tory libertarians may yet implode as spectacularly as the Labour Party
Sherelle Jacobs"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/05/10/tories-stonking-super-majority-built-sand/
But not anyone in Labour at the moment. Boris and Nicola stand out a mile from the rest of the crowd, with no-one from Labour anywhere close. Including Starmer and Burnham.
The cash card was eaten by a cash machine, I need to add, not by a hungry lioness.
To you what is a Unifying English Identity?
Or since you find the term offensive, are you against politicians unifying people instead of dividing them?
Or are you against the notion of identity?
Or is the idea of English or British you find offensive?
Give me a couple of actual distinctive policies you'd implement in order to "Promote A Unified English Identity".
My guess is that the two sources quoted are tip of the iceberg.
AND there are ALWAYS others in ANY caucus who would willingly defenestrate their beloved leader IF they think they could get away with it AND take the perks & pickles for themselves.
Plus, as the article notes, Trumpsky's loyalty to ANYONE besides himself is truly a fleeting thing. Just ask Ivanka and Beauregard.
Everyone knows Labour will help the people stuck at the bottom, they always do.
I believe there was a quote from G Brown saying something like, we don't keep mentioning the least we'll off, we keep quiet. He and Blair knew too much emphasis on this turned more people away.
Andy Burnham has done ok, but a large share of the credit should go to Sir Richard Leese and his counterparts at the other GM authorities.
All you can do is be ahead at the last election. However, if speculating on the future, Boris can do without the libertarian vote - it's too small and has nowhere else to go. Yes there is a contest for the Red wall, which currently is the contested ground, being where a lot of seats can change hands. This happens all the time somewhere - that's called democratic politics in a FPTP system.
In my view Boris has a much more coherent support base, being wide and linked and not dependent on special interest groups. He hold all the boring seats - neither urban nor vibrant not super posh nor super poor. His 40%+ vote is all in the 80% centre ground.
Boris has a 45-50% chance of an overall majority at the next election. Labour about 5-8% (the bookies are far too generous). Which would you rather be?
The worst politicians are those who seek to divide people for the sake of divisions like Trump. Yet you find the term unifying British Identity to be off rather than bog standard to be expected. Why?
For example, it's long proud history during 19th century of hiring squads of lawyers specifically to challenge voters for myriad technical violations in order to knock them off the voter rolls.
Even as late as 1945, Winston Churchill insisted on calling that year's general election before the updating of voter registers, thus depriving plenty of folks of their right to vote. In hopes that Conservatives would win a few more seats to pad what he (and others) assumed would be a reduced Tory majority.
Of course it did NOT quite work out that way. But the thought was still there.
Back to basics, indeed.
I could accept a disproportionate number of Lionel Blairs if I happened to live next door to him. But it was beginning to feel like he was stalking me.
Puts up the 'Closed' sign
Does the man in the Corner Shop
Serves his last
Then he says goodbye to him
He knows it is a hard life
But it's nice to be your own boss, really
Walks off home
Does the last customer
He is jealous
Of the man in the Corner Shop
He's sick of working at the Factory
He says it must be nice
To be your own boss, really
Sells cigars to the boss from the Factory
He is jealous
Is the man in the Corner Shop
He is sick of struggling so hard
Says it must be nice to own a Factory
Go to Church
Do the people from the area
All shapes and classes
Sit and pray together
For here they are all one
For God created all men equal
Go to Church
Do the people from the area
Go to Church
Do the people from the area
Go to Church
Do the people from the area
For God created all men equal
They know, that God created all men equal
They know, that God created all men equal
They know, that God created all men equal
They know, that God created all men equal
They know
I didn't think there was anything wrong with the prior avatar, and others who are sane agreed, but I don't want to give the likes of you any rope to wilfully mislead or misrepresent things so I thought I'd change it.
.
My own good humor was sadly lacking! As I'm guessing yours would be too.
BTW, am saddened by the sexism of your last sentence. Have you leaned NOTHING here o PB???
Though suppressing the vote by keeping it illegal for many is a radical strategy, you have to admit.
The Conservative attitude is to provide free enterprise zones subject to tax breaks, with the brivate sector creating most of the jobs and public money limited to infrastructure.
Saw among others Jimmy Carter, John Lewis, Katie Couric, Fucker Carlson and Omarosa Manigault (who looked even scarier in person than on TV)
Actually spoke in passing with Carter, Lewis & Couric.
Putting the graft in to do well for yourself, get a well paid job and live in a nice house doesn't change your state of mind. What your values are. What matters to you. What sort of society you want us all to live in. Your political outlook. When you eat your dinner.
Just because you shop at Waitrose, it doesn't make you 'A Waitrose Shopper'.
‘In 2019 there was ONE conviction for in-person voter fraud in the entire UK, handed to a man who had voted twice in the European parliament elections (arguably even more pointless than it was to vote once). Yet the government is pressing ahead with legislation to spend a conservatively estimated £20m per election on stopping something that isn’t even meaningfully occurring. What sort of a return on your investment is that for the party of business? The only reasonable conclusion is that the investment is in fact in a system that will end up favouring the Conservatives. Think of them as the party of funny business, and it all makes common sense.’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/11/johnson-civil-libertarian-voter-id-card-fraud-tories
Jeremy Beadle - UK host of Candid Camera type programmes.
Lioness - as Boris termed Angela Rayner today, MP for said town.
I don't know if she's right or not.
The need for stories was a key part of the excellent book 'Watling Street'.
Also this training and continues education ethos is going to have to have money. Who's pays for it?
I think the Tories are going to have to raise taxes if levelling up is to succeed.
EDIT - By the way, wonder how many PBers or Brits in general, have ever heard of Richard Dawkins? Who for many years was one of the most visible & popular of your countryman on US television.
In any case, the headline "job creation in the North" so far is public sector treasury jobs in Darlington.
Just like a black person can say they are proud to be black to counter racism.
Have also read the condensed version of her Diaries. NOT what you'd call a ripping yarn.
EDIT - Much less entertaining that diaries of Harold Nicholson, Paul Channon, Richard Crossman or (no suprise!) Alan Clark's.
Haven't read Tony Benn's diaries yet but would like to.
either. She maybe bright and clever but as a leader I have my doubts.
There was a Hugo Rifkind piece in The Times this morning, arguing something similar;
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/all-this-levelling-up-will-come-back-and-bite-the-tories-8w8d6hq8z
He quoted James Kanagasooriam, who came up with the idea of the “Red Wall” in the first place. Basically, the RW switchers aren't normal working people as such. They're older, either near the top of their workplace or retired, biggish house, decent money. Basically, the kind of people who, if they lived in Northamptonshire, would have voted Conservative for ages. The miracle is that they didn't switch before.
The thing we sometimes forget is that constituencies don't vote, people do. And even in a safe seat and good year for party X, there are probably a decent slice of voters for party Y.
ZHC staff in industrial units right now.
Students with no access to grants, loans or UC.
And the fees have gone through the roof too.
If you don't have a job already, or savings, you can't upskill.
I want to stick up (slightly) for the British Library.
@Leon have you seen it from the side?
It's tricky, 'cause the St Pancras hotel rather gets in the way. But from there the British Library looks likes a cruise liner! I think that's quite a nice touch from Sir Colin Wilson, who served in the Navy in WW2.
Easier to see from the model in the British Library than from outside..
You could argue the SNP did that successfully with Salmond then Sturgeon. Or the even the Democrats with Pelosi then Biden.