I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
Well, he was elected to oversee a transition...
It reminds me of George Washington freeing his slaves, but only in his will. Carefully making sure he benefited from the institution he pretended to despise until it didn't matter to him any more.
To play Devil’s advocate, he may have been a ‘decent’ master (no idea if he was or not) and didn’t want his slaves sold off as chattels to an uncertain fate.
My Mum used to say of Andy Burnham that he always looked like he needed a "good wash". Which is not good. I haven't heard her say it recently though - so perhaps that particular problem has gone way.
I think he's an ok bet if you think Starmer will fight the next election and lose it badly.
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
It is only difficult to understand if you look at it individually, instead of generally.
If its a comparison between a man and a woman and the majority think the man is best that sounds fair enough.
If nine times out of ten, they prefer the man, maybe the majority are not that good at selecting who is actually best, unless it can be clearly shown men are better at leading countries than women. So the best person for the job may not be the preferred usually male candidate.
Not sure how true it is but heard a few times that countries led by women have had better responses to the covid crisis.
But the election is individual not general.
And elections are based on the majority selecting who is best - otherwise why bother to have them? Why artificially limit your choice? Is Labour so overwhelmed with talent that it can afford to do so?
And on the argument that women handled the epidemic better than men, Chinese leaders in China, Taiwan and Singapore had fewer excess deaths than white or brown leaders. Should we only pick them?
Re: the women in sport argument. Another thing to consider is that extremely rare, even in men’s sports, for different requirements for sporting excellence at the highest level to combine in one individual. Tennis players/golfers/cricketers who base themselves around a “power game” don’t tend to excel at “touch”/finesse. Sprinters with long strides aren’t explosive out of the blocks. Very big rugby players aren’t particularly quick runners etc etc. Where you do see these features combined you get once in a generation stars.
To even hope to get close to competing in high level men’s sport, women would need this. Men can succeed in men’s sport by excelling in one area, whilst surviving with average male characteristics (and some hard work/training) in others. For women it wouldn’t be enough to just excel in one. Average women characteristics plus training would be enough in all the other areas.
Snooker will be interesting next season. Apart from reach and power, there is no particular reason why women shouldn't be just as good. Unfortunately, there is insufficient prize money available. So they can't do the 8 hours a day practice. Now they have been given 2 places on Tour. Will see how they go. Darts should be similar. I understand females do compete with occasional success there.
Just had interesting gossip from my wife. She was at hairdresser this morning and staff and customers were all talking about how good Theresa Mays speech was (this is in a very working class district of Liverpool were nobody would spit on a Tory if he was on fire). They were also all angry about the extended lockdown and those who had not had both jabs were adamant they would not have any or more because “it’s obviously just not worth it”. Staff and clientele. I found that fascinating from a bunch of people who are really not political at all.
The reason for getting vaccinated is not so you can go on a foreign holiday.
Its to massively reduce the risk that you might get (and also infect others with) a potentially fatal virus.
Just had interesting gossip from my wife. She was at hairdresser this morning and staff and customers were all talking about how good Theresa Mays speech was (this is in a very working class district of Liverpool were nobody would spit on a Tory if he was on fire). They were also all angry about the extended lockdown and those who had not had both jabs were adamant they would not have any or more because “it’s obviously just not worth it”. Staff and clientele. I found that fascinating from a bunch of people who are really not political at all.
Interesting hypothesis. Could delay actually be counterproductive by undermine support for getting the jab?
Just had interesting gossip from my wife. She was at hairdresser this morning and staff and customers were all talking about how good Theresa Mays speech was (this is in a very working class district of Liverpool were nobody would spit on a Tory if he was on fire). They were also all angry about the extended lockdown and those who had not had both jabs were adamant they would not have any or more because “it’s obviously just not worth it”. Staff and clientele. I found that fascinating from a bunch of people who are really not political at all.
The reason for getting vaccinated is not so you can go on a foreign holiday.
Its to massively reduce the risk that you might get (and also infect others with) a potentially fatal virus.
That may be the reality. It also may not be how people think.
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
Well, he was elected to oversee a transition...
It reminds me of George Washington freeing his slaves, but only in his will. Carefully making sure he benefited from the institution he pretended to despise until it didn't matter to him any more.
To play Devil’s advocate, he may have been a ‘decent’ master (no idea if he was or not) and didn’t want his slaves sold off as chattels to an uncertain fate.
Between 1723 and 1782, Viginia law was that the colonial (then state) legislature had to approve manumission of slaves. The law was repealed in 1782 to allow their owners to do so without state interference. Washington had a 17 year period between then and his death to free his slaves and thus avoid that fate for them. However, he waited until he died, which is a bit of a dick move IMHO.
My Mum used to say of Andy Burnham that he always looked like he needed a "good wash". Which is not good. I haven't heard her say it recently though - so perhaps that particular problem has gone way.
I think he's an ok bet if you think Starmer will fight the next election and lose it badly.
Ha ha really? He seems pretty clean to me, but maybe your mum has a higher bar than I do. He just seems like a lightweight to me. But maybe that's what people are into now.
Politics is as much about tone and sensibility as policy. Johnson gets that and most people on the left do not, which is why they keeps being surprised by how popular he is. The culture clash pits American-style earnestness and piety against British irreverence and perversity. Johnson’s clownishness happens to have found its perfect foil in the grimly humourless, relentlessly prosecutorial, technocratic and yes, deracinated tone of wokeism. Voters do not necessarily believe Johnson is competent, which will in the end be his downfall, but they do know he will never lecture them. He likes them too much.
The ‘culture war’ is at heart a culture clash, between British traditions and American cultural politics, the latter now exported globally thanks to the internet. Britain’s institutional elites have in recent years swallowed, rather uncritically, a whole set of concepts, slogans and jargon from the US. Many British voters are somewhere between unaware, wary of, or outright resistant to the new discourse, even as it has quickly become second nature to those who have adopted it.
I thought this part was more resonant
The result is that even when elites are talking about something that in substance has widespread support, like anti-racism, the use of this imported lexicon can make the message feel jarring, alienating, and a little bit pathetic, as if we can no longer reflect on our society, or have our own game, without borrowing from - or literally confusing ourselves with - America.
The women's football part is spot on. If something is good people will watch it, you don't have to pretend that everything about it is wonderful and nothing about it is rubbish, people will see through it. Toxic Positivity - great phrase
Is it sexist to point out the standard of some women's sport is terrible e.g cricket ?
There are a whole number of reasons why, and you can sugar coat it as much are you like, but outside a handful of players, none would get near a men's semi-pro local league team.
Women's basketball is another example. They have pushed and pushed and pushed it in the US and nobody watches the WNBA because the standard is crap.
Then there is the other extreme, women's athletes, your average man could train morning, noon and night, and still never compete against that standard.
Cricket seems an interesting one to me - given some of the best players in Cricket are not the biggest, fastest or strongest physically, my gut says that there must be women who, with the same training, could match players in the men's game, since it isn't like sprinting. It feels like there must be other sports that should be the case as well.
Yes, but some aspects are very dependent on physical factors. Though there would be outliers in female physique who would meet it - as eg Serena Williams for tennis.
eg Height of release for fast bowlers, strength for hitting 6s. Access to more and better resources / training will go a chunk of the way, of course.
Sure, I don't think it could end up 50/50. But plenty of great bowlers aren't the tallest or fastest, plenty of great batsmen dont hit lots of sixes, so unlike some other sports it feels like more women besides the Serena Williams level could reach that physical level. A great medium pacer or hurdler for instance.
The fastest female bowler in the world is Ellyse Perry. She bowls at 77mph, which is about the speed of a county 2nd XI pacer edging into retirement.
Her average is roughly comparable to that of Joel Garner. Who bowled at around 95mph from a height of 6 ft 8 inches.
Equally, the fact that sport is played with less physical intensity doesn’t necessarily mean it is less good. The key to entertainment is that there must be a competition. Ideally, of course, competition of the very highest standard, but truthfully, I don’t think I would last long against Perry’s bowling!
In terms of pace, I played semi-pro local league cricket and bowled 75-80 and wasn't really quick enough / didn't move it enough, so was only 2nd change (and really in for my batting) and regularly faced 80-85 and on occasion high 80s e.g. one club I played for our overseas pro was West Indian international and could hit nearly 90 if he could be arsed.
At mid 70s, you had to be either super accurate or make it bend like a banana.
Just to add 77 in women's cricket is a big outlier. Most seam bowlers are in the 60s. That is village cricket stuff.
In comparison there are many male cricketers who are ~90mph and above, but that doesn't mean you even get near an international team. If there is no movement, as we see in T20, it can even be an advantage to the batsman.
I am in the unusual situation on here of saying something nice about Boris Johnson when everyone else is castigating him, but I think he is doing a good job of genial host at G7 in Cornwall.
In diplomatic terms the G7 is a missed opportunity for the UK, but the issues there go beyond event management. The really significant diplomatic shift, the biggest for some years, is Biden's move to establish a new American world order and to bring the remaining liberal democracies into it. His scope is ambitious. A Transatlantic settlement would have been music to the ears of a previous UK administration but the UK burnt the transatlantic bridge role with Brexit. The key prospect for Biden's pitch is the EU with the UK somewhat sidelined.
On Covid measures, I mostly agree with @DavidL. We have to deal with the virus situation as it is, and not as we might hope it to be. I do think the vaccine risk assessments are sound, from what I have seen, and the UK vaccine rollout remains pretty good.
Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
I partly agree - though I wouldn’t class the UK as sidelined. It generally pulls alongside most USA common goals, is usually a dependable ally for them, and at least has a unified foreign policy.
The EU on the other hand..
The EU and its members are the big prize for Biden and possibly decisive for whether his plan works. The UK is in the same pot as Japan and Canada amongst the G7 countries, useful allies in their own right but not gamechangers. This is different from before, where the UK would working its European diplomatic channels to promote the project. All politics is local, but I get the impression in diplomatic and strategic terms that Johnson overinvested in Trump and his worldview. Now that's changed the UK is not well placed to benefit from a move that it would have leveraged in earlier times.
I have to say Biden's project is ambitious in scope, covering areas such as taxation, climate change, security, health, and seems somewhat fleshed out. Despite him being dismissed as senile by many.
Germany, France etc have unified foreign policies. The problem with UK foreign policy right now is that it is incoherent.
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
Well, he was elected to oversee a transition...
It reminds me of George Washington freeing his slaves, but only in his will. Carefully making sure he benefited from the institution he pretended to despise until it didn't matter to him any more.
To play Devil’s advocate, he may have been a ‘decent’ master (no idea if he was or not) and didn’t want his slaves sold off as chattels to an uncertain fate.
He wasn’t a decent master - although as his apologists note he was at least not as bad as many others - and he could have freed them in his lifetime which would have precluded part two.
I am in the unusual situation on here of saying something nice about Boris Johnson when everyone else is castigating him, but I think he is doing a good job of genial host at G7 in Cornwall.
In diplomatic terms the G7 is a missed opportunity for the UK, but the issues there go beyond event management. The really significant diplomatic shift, the biggest for some years, is Biden's move to establish a new American world order and to bring the remaining liberal democracies into it. His scope is ambitious. A Transatlantic settlement would have been music to the ears of a previous UK administration but the UK burnt the transatlantic bridge role with Brexit. The key prospect for Biden's pitch is the EU with the UK somewhat sidelined.
On Covid measures, I mostly agree with @DavidL. We have to deal with the virus situation as it is, and not as we might hope it to be. I do think the vaccine risk assessments are sound, from what I have seen, and the UK vaccine rollout remains pretty good.
Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
Why is the Indian variant much more widely seeded in the UK compared to the rest of the EU? Because we allowed in 20,000 travellers from India. Because we kept the borders open
That’s it. @DavidL is, unusually, talking nonsense
We KNEW this was a race between the virus and our vaccine. By keeping the border with India open, we decided to run the final leg of this race with a 100 pound backpack weighing us down, for absolutely no reason at all. You can’t even argue we did it out of human compassion - because we happily closed the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just not India
This is all on Boris and the government. Their decision. Their fuck-up. And monumental it is
Just had interesting gossip from my wife. She was at hairdresser this morning and staff and customers were all talking about how good Theresa Mays speech was (this is in a very working class district of Liverpool were nobody would spit on a Tory if he was on fire). They were also all angry about the extended lockdown and those who had not had both jabs were adamant they would not have any or more because “it’s obviously just not worth it”. Staff and clientele. I found that fascinating from a bunch of people who are really not political at all.
The reason for getting vaccinated is not so you can go on a foreign holiday.
Its to massively reduce the risk that you might get (and also infect others with) a potentially fatal virus.
Piffle. It's to make some very rich people even richer. If one followed the evidence from RCTs, one would use cheaper, often out-of-patent treatments which don't have serious side-effects & can be discontinued if need be. The UK has restricted or banned them.
The UK govt declared it not to be a 'high-confequence infectious disease' on 19 Mar 2020 but paid for a 15 month advertising campaign which largely aimed to 'raise the fear level', i.e. to terrify people.
Ask ... Where are the piles of bodies? Are undertakers busier than usual? What is the age- & population-adjusted all cause mortality rate? In UK in 2020, about the same as 2008. Less than this in most other European countries, incl Sweden. In UK in 2021, less than a normal recent year.
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
Well, he was elected to oversee a transition...
It reminds me of George Washington freeing his slaves, but only in his will. Carefully making sure he benefited from the institution he pretended to despise until it didn't matter to him any more.
To play Devil’s advocate, he may have been a ‘decent’ master (no idea if he was or not) and didn’t want his slaves sold off as chattels to an uncertain fate.
Between 1723 and 1782, Viginia law was that the colonial (then state) legislature had to approve manumission of slaves. The law was repealed in 1782 to allow their owners to do so without state interference. Washington had a 17 year period between then and his death to free his slaves and thus avoid that fate for them. However, he waited until he died, which is a bit of a dick move IMHO.
I visited Mount Vernon when I was living in DC, about 15 years ago. At that time the volunteer guides (who were elderly white people) were really keen to gloss over Washington's slave holding, emphasising how he was a 'good master' etc. I think I asked some awkward questions, and earned some dirty looks from the patriotic Americans on the tour. I reckoned I could probably have outrun most of them so it seemed worth the risk.
My Mum used to say of Andy Burnham that he always looked like he needed a "good wash". Which is not good. I haven't heard her say it recently though - so perhaps that particular problem has gone way.
I think he's an ok bet if you think Starmer will fight the next election and lose it badly.
Ha ha really? He seems pretty clean to me, but maybe your mum has a higher bar than I do. He just seems like a lightweight to me. But maybe that's what people are into now.
It’s the age of the lightweight. Cf: Trudeau, Ardern.
My Mum used to say of Andy Burnham that he always looked like he needed a "good wash". Which is not good. I haven't heard her say it recently though - so perhaps that particular problem has gone way.
I think he's an ok bet if you think Starmer will fight the next election and lose it badly.
Surely that would add to his appeal in the Red Wall where they are not keen on effete, over manicured southerners?
I agree, Burnham has said he will continue as Greater Manchester Mayor and not stand for Parliament again until the next general election but if Starmer loses it he would be a strong candidate to succeed him
I am in the unusual situation on here of saying something nice about Boris Johnson when everyone else is castigating him, but I think he is doing a good job of genial host at G7 in Cornwall.
In diplomatic terms the G7 is a missed opportunity for the UK, but the issues there go beyond event management. The really significant diplomatic shift, the biggest for some years, is Biden's move to establish a new American world order and to bring the remaining liberal democracies into it. His scope is ambitious. A Transatlantic settlement would have been music to the ears of a previous UK administration but the UK burnt the transatlantic bridge role with Brexit. The key prospect for Biden's pitch is the EU with the UK somewhat sidelined.
On Covid measures, I mostly agree with @DavidL. We have to deal with the virus situation as it is, and not as we might hope it to be. I do think the vaccine risk assessments are sound, from what I have seen, and the UK vaccine rollout remains pretty good.
Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
Why is the Indian variant much more widely seeded in the UK compared to the rest of the EU? Because we allowed in 20,000 travellers from India. Because we kept the borders open
That’s it. @DavidL is, unusually, talking nonsense
We KNEW this was a race between the virus and our vaccine. By keeping the border with India open, we decided to run the final leg of this race with a 100 pound backpack weighing us down, for absolutely no reason at all. You can’t even argue we did it out of human compassion - because we happily closed the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just not India
This is all on Boris and the government. Their decision. Their fuck-up. And monumental it is
Absolutely.
It was said at the time.
On here.
These government apologists are nuts. I know Cummings is disingenuous, but his portrayal of inner government as a largely chaotic function of Boris’s “supermarket trolley” instincts ran true.
My Mum used to say of Andy Burnham that he always looked like he needed a "good wash". Which is not good. I haven't heard her say it recently though - so perhaps that particular problem has gone way.
I think he's an ok bet if you think Starmer will fight the next election and lose it badly.
Ha ha really? He seems pretty clean to me, but maybe your mum has a higher bar than I do. He just seems like a lightweight to me. But maybe that's what people are into now.
It’s the age of the lightweight. Cf: Trudeau, Ardern.
Isn't that a bit harsh on Ardern? Agree on Trudeau though, that guy really grates with me.
Starmer's misfortune as Leader is that he's not faced with an opponent who is interested in either facts or arguments. And he's spent his life surrounded by both, and that's where his strength lies.
Johnson, when challenged, tends to come out with a clever phrase, quite possibly scripted, and turn to his audience for applause, whether or not it answers the question, or even progresses the debate.
One reason for having a female opposition leader is that faced with an informed lady who is immune to his sex appeal Johnson very rapidly appears out of his depth, but can't be abusive. I have no great opinion of the academic or administrative talents of Frau Dr von der Leyen but at least she baffles Johnson.
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
Well, he was elected to oversee a transition...
It reminds me of George Washington freeing his slaves, but only in his will. Carefully making sure he benefited from the institution he pretended to despise until it didn't matter to him any more.
To play Devil’s advocate, he may have been a ‘decent’ master (no idea if he was or not) and didn’t want his slaves sold off as chattels to an uncertain fate.
Between 1723 and 1782, Viginia law was that the colonial (then state) legislature had to approve manumission of slaves. The law was repealed in 1782 to allow their owners to do so without state interference. Washington had a 17 year period between then and his death to free his slaves and thus avoid that fate for them. However, he waited until he died, which is a bit of a dick move IMHO.
I visited Mount Vernon when I was living in DC, about 15 years ago. At that time the volunteer guides (who were elderly white people) were really keen to gloss over Washington's slave holding, emphasising how he was a 'good master' etc. I think I asked some awkward questions, and earned some dirty looks from the patriotic Americans on the tour. I reckoned I could probably have outrun most of them so it seemed worth the risk.
Washington really was quite a useless twat in many ways.
However I have a theory that he mere fact he was an inept, vacillating, useless twat was probably important. Imagine if he’d been a charismatic dictator like Bolivar, O’Higgins or Napoleon. He could easily have made America into a corrupt military dictatorship and we’d speak of it in the same breath as Brazil or Argentina. Precisely because he wasn’t, that didn’t happen.
Which makes his later lionisation all the more ironic, of course.
I am in the unusual situation on here of saying something nice about Boris Johnson when everyone else is castigating him, but I think he is doing a good job of genial host at G7 in Cornwall.
In diplomatic terms the G7 is a missed opportunity for the UK, but the issues there go beyond event management. The really significant diplomatic shift, the biggest for some years, is Biden's move to establish a new American world order and to bring the remaining liberal democracies into it. His scope is ambitious. A Transatlantic settlement would have been music to the ears of a previous UK administration but the UK burnt the transatlantic bridge role with Brexit. The key prospect for Biden's pitch is the EU with the UK somewhat sidelined.
On Covid measures, I mostly agree with @DavidL. We have to deal with the virus situation as it is, and not as we might hope it to be. I do think the vaccine risk assessments are sound, from what I have seen, and the UK vaccine rollout remains pretty good.
Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
Why is the Indian variant much more widely seeded in the UK compared to the rest of the EU? Because we allowed in 20,000 travellers from India. Because we kept the borders open
That’s it. @DavidL is, unusually, talking nonsense
We KNEW this was a race between the virus and our vaccine. By keeping the border with India open, we decided to run the final leg of this race with a 100 pound backpack weighing us down, for absolutely no reason at all. You can’t even argue we did it out of human compassion - because we happily closed the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just not India
This is all on Boris and the government. Their decision. Their fuck-up. And monumental it is
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
Well, he was elected to oversee a transition...
It reminds me of George Washington freeing his slaves, but only in his will. Carefully making sure he benefited from the institution he pretended to despise until it didn't matter to him any more.
To play Devil’s advocate, he may have been a ‘decent’ master (no idea if he was or not) and didn’t want his slaves sold off as chattels to an uncertain fate.
Between 1723 and 1782, Viginia law was that the colonial (then state) legislature had to approve manumission of slaves. The law was repealed in 1782 to allow their owners to do so without state interference. Washington had a 17 year period between then and his death to free his slaves and thus avoid that fate for them. However, he waited until he died, which is a bit of a dick move IMHO.
I visited Mount Vernon when I was living in DC, about 15 years ago. At that time the volunteer guides (who were elderly white people) were really keen to gloss over Washington's slave holding, emphasising how he was a 'good master' etc. I think I asked some awkward questions, and earned some dirty looks from the patriotic Americans on the tour. I reckoned I could probably have outrun most of them so it seemed worth the risk.
And you are not allowed guns in American national parks (or used not to be)
Starmer's misfortune as Leader is that he's not faced with an opponent who is interested in either facts or arguments. And he's spent his life surrounded by both, and that's where his strength lies.
Johnson, when challenged, tends to come out with a clever phrase, quite possibly scripted, and turn to his audience for applause, whether or not it answers the question, or even progresses the debate.
One reason for having a female opposition leader is that faced with an informed lady who is immune to his sex appeal Johnson very rapidly appears out of his depth, but can't be abusive. I have no great opinion of the academic or administrative talents of Frau Dr von der Leyen but at least she baffles Johnson.
TBF, she baffles most of us but not because she’s in any way ‘informed.’
My Mum used to say of Andy Burnham that he always looked like he needed a "good wash". Which is not good. I haven't heard her say it recently though - so perhaps that particular problem has gone way.
I think he's an ok bet if you think Starmer will fight the next election and lose it badly.
Ha ha really? He seems pretty clean to me, but maybe your mum has a higher bar than I do. He just seems like a lightweight to me. But maybe that's what people are into now.
It’s the age of the lightweight. Cf: Trudeau, Ardern.
Isn't that a bit harsh on Ardern? Agree on Trudeau though, that guy really grates with me.
Ardern is the very lightest of the lightweight. Intellectually and managerially speaking.
She does great empathy, and has a world-class PR team.
It is likely Boris will still announce he will allow 50 wedding guests at receptions indoors, 100 outdoors from June 21st on Monday, just there will still not be unlimited wedding guests allowed
Just had interesting gossip from my wife. She was at hairdresser this morning and staff and customers were all talking about how good Theresa Mays speech was (this is in a very working class district of Liverpool were nobody would spit on a Tory if he was on fire). They were also all angry about the extended lockdown and those who had not had both jabs were adamant they would not have any or more because “it’s obviously just not worth it”. Staff and clientele. I found that fascinating from a bunch of people who are really not political at all.
The reason for getting vaccinated is not so you can go on a foreign holiday.
Its to massively reduce the risk that you might get (and also infect others with) a potentially fatal virus.
Errr! You are welcome to go and tell them that. I was reporting on how a group of fairly ordinary people outside of politics have reacted so I have no idea whatsoever why you feel the need to respond in such a manner.
I am in the unusual situation on here of saying something nice about Boris Johnson when everyone else is castigating him, but I think he is doing a good job of genial host at G7 in Cornwall.
In diplomatic terms the G7 is a missed opportunity for the UK, but the issues there go beyond event management. The really significant diplomatic shift, the biggest for some years, is Biden's move to establish a new American world order and to bring the remaining liberal democracies into it. His scope is ambitious. A Transatlantic settlement would have been music to the ears of a previous UK administration but the UK burnt the transatlantic bridge role with Brexit. The key prospect for Biden's pitch is the EU with the UK somewhat sidelined.
On Covid measures, I mostly agree with @DavidL. We have to deal with the virus situation as it is, and not as we might hope it to be. I do think the vaccine risk assessments are sound, from what I have seen, and the UK vaccine rollout remains pretty good.
Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
Why is the Indian variant much more widely seeded in the UK compared to the rest of the EU? Because we allowed in 20,000 travellers from India. Because we kept the borders open
That’s it. @DavidL is, unusually, talking nonsense
We KNEW this was a race between the virus and our vaccine. By keeping the border with India open, we decided to run the final leg of this race with a 100 pound backpack weighing us down, for absolutely no reason at all. You can’t even argue we did it out of human compassion - because we happily closed the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just not India
This is all on Boris and the government. Their decision. Their fuck-up. And monumental it is
Absolutely.
It was said at the time.
On here.
These government apologists are nuts. I know Cummings is disingenuous, but his portrayal of inner government as a largely chaotic function of Boris’s “supermarket trolley” instincts ran true.
I remember saying on here at the time, in these words: ‘if keeping the Indian border open means we blow the vaccine bonus, I will never vote Tory again’
And here we are. As you say, many of us on PB knew this was a calamitous mistake, with no justification. Yet they went ahead and did it. It is as absurd as it is tragic
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
Well, he was elected to oversee a transition...
It reminds me of George Washington freeing his slaves, but only in his will. Carefully making sure he benefited from the institution he pretended to despise until it didn't matter to him any more.
To play Devil’s advocate, he may have been a ‘decent’ master (no idea if he was or not) and didn’t want his slaves sold off as chattels to an uncertain fate.
Between 1723 and 1782, Viginia law was that the colonial (then state) legislature had to approve manumission of slaves. The law was repealed in 1782 to allow their owners to do so without state interference. Washington had a 17 year period between then and his death to free his slaves and thus avoid that fate for them. However, he waited until he died, which is a bit of a dick move IMHO.
I visited Mount Vernon when I was living in DC, about 15 years ago. At that time the volunteer guides (who were elderly white people) were really keen to gloss over Washington's slave holding, emphasising how he was a 'good master' etc. I think I asked some awkward questions, and earned some dirty looks from the patriotic Americans on the tour. I reckoned I could probably have outrun most of them so it seemed worth the risk.
Washington really was quite a useless twat in many ways.
However I have a theory that he mere fact he was an inept, vacillating, useless twat was probably important. Imagine if he’d been a charismatic dictator like Bolivar, O’Higgins or Napoleon. He could easily have made America into a corrupt military dictatorship and we’d speak of it in the same breath as Brazil or Argentina. Precisely because he wasn’t, that didn’t happen.
Which makes his later lionisation all the more ironic, of course.
I was taught Washington's act of genius was in his resignations (plural?). He could have gone on forever as a sort of dictator, and people kind of expected him to.
Burnham is clearly by far Labour's most electable leader. On those Mori figures not only do more voters say that Burnham would make a good PM compared to Starmer by 37% to 24% but Burnham is also narrowly seen as a better potential PM than Sunak by 37% to 36% and Sadiq Khan by 37% to 29%. While Boris still beats Burnham on that basis by 45% to 37%, Burnham beats Boris on a net basis of +11% to +2% for Boris. Burnham has the advantage of being Northern and not especially supportive of the People's vote campaign and more willing to respect the Brexit vote pre 2019 than Starmer was thus appealing more to the Red Wall than Sir Keir does while still being more centrist than Corbyn was too and thus more able to appeal to swing voters.
However OGH is right that for the moment Starmer is safe as Burnham is not an MP and Starmer is still seen as a better potential PM by voters as opposed to those who are Labour MPs. For example 24% think Starmer would make a good PM compared to just 18% who think the same of Angela Rayner and only 15% of voters think Lisa Nandy would make a good PM so the idea Labour needs a female leader is absurd as neither of the main female contenders to lead Labour are very popular, indeed on a net rating too Rayner and Nandy are both on a poor -14% .
Having a female leader does not mean they will automatically be very electable as Hillary Clinton, Theresa May, Julia Gillard and Kim Campbell will tell you. Occasionally there are strong leaders who are femaie and election winners like Thatcher and Merkel and Ardern but none of the current crop in Labour come near them
Burnham has said he could stand for Parliament again at the next general election so is more likely to be a potential Labour leader if Starmer leads Labour to defeat in 2023 or 2024. Until then Burnham will stay Manchester Mayor
Electability is a relativity matter - even TM at her worst did better than Jezza. While Burnham would easily beat a second rate Tory leader I don't think he would beat a good one. Up against Labour greats historically he would not figure at all.
My Mum used to say of Andy Burnham that he always looked like he needed a "good wash". Which is not good. I haven't heard her say it recently though - so perhaps that particular problem has gone way.
I think he's an ok bet if you think Starmer will fight the next election and lose it badly.
Ha ha really? He seems pretty clean to me, but maybe your mum has a higher bar than I do. He just seems like a lightweight to me. But maybe that's what people are into now.
It’s the age of the lightweight. Cf: Trudeau, Ardern.
Plus Biden.
The only heavyweight leaders in the G7 at the moment are Macron and Merkel (and Draghi but he is just a technocrat Italian PM holding together a coalition of parties of right and left, Salvini could easily end up a populist PM after the next Italian elections)
A tiny question. Under Labour's actual rules do you have to be an MP to be leader of the party? I once tried to look it up in Labour's rules and gave up the will to live before finding anything that said you had to be.
Obvs it isn't going to happen but it is still an interesting question. Anyone know?
MP or in HoL as far as i know
Can’t be leader from the Lords. Can’t even lead the Tories from the Lords these days:*
There shall be a Leader of the Party (referred to in this Constitution as “the Leader”) drawn from those elected to the House of Commons, who shall be elected by the Party Members and Scottish Party Members in accordance with the provisions of Schedule 2.
*although in practice since they have only had four overall leaders in the Lords - Derby, Beaconsfield, Salisbury and Home - and three of them were consecutively leader in the nineteenth century, while the fourth was elected on the understanding he would disclaim his peerage, in practice I doubt if this does more than recognise reality.
So definitely over priced then as there are very few winnable Lab seats for KON to stand in.
Plus he would have to resign the mayoralty to stand.
I just do not see a pathway for him.
Not, bluntly, that I see any credible Labour leader at the moment. I know full well how much you despise Starmer but there is a reason why he’s leader.
Did Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern look stellar in March 2017?
A desperate Labour Party polling at historically low values and looking down the barrel of a terrible defeat in a forthcoming election took a huge gamble.
They had nothing left to lose.
Same with UK Labour. SKS is going to lose in 2024. He is nowhere near where he needs to be to win.
Labour might as well gamble now.
Whoever the new leader is, she is very, very unlikely to do worse than SKS. And she could be a star.
My Mum used to say of Andy Burnham that he always looked like he needed a "good wash". Which is not good. I haven't heard her say it recently though - so perhaps that particular problem has gone way.
I think he's an ok bet if you think Starmer will fight the next election and lose it badly.
Ha ha really? He seems pretty clean to me, but maybe your mum has a higher bar than I do. He just seems like a lightweight to me. But maybe that's what people are into now.
It’s the age of the lightweight. Cf: Trudeau, Ardern.
Isn't that a bit harsh on Ardern? Agree on Trudeau though, that guy really grates with me.
Harper was a more heavyweight Canadian PM as was Martin before him but both lacked Trudeau's election winning charisma.
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
Well, he was elected to oversee a transition...
It reminds me of George Washington freeing his slaves, but only in his will. Carefully making sure he benefited from the institution he pretended to despise until it didn't matter to him any more.
To play Devil’s advocate, he may have been a ‘decent’ master (no idea if he was or not) and didn’t want his slaves sold off as chattels to an uncertain fate.
Between 1723 and 1782, Viginia law was that the colonial (then state) legislature had to approve manumission of slaves. The law was repealed in 1782 to allow their owners to do so without state interference. Washington had a 17 year period between then and his death to free his slaves and thus avoid that fate for them. However, he waited until he died, which is a bit of a dick move IMHO.
I visited Mount Vernon when I was living in DC, about 15 years ago. At that time the volunteer guides (who were elderly white people) were really keen to gloss over Washington's slave holding, emphasising how he was a 'good master' etc. I think I asked some awkward questions, and earned some dirty looks from the patriotic Americans on the tour. I reckoned I could probably have outrun most of them so it seemed worth the risk.
Washington really was quite a useless twat in many ways.
However I have a theory that he mere fact he was an inept, vacillating, useless twat was probably important. Imagine if he’d been a charismatic dictator like Bolivar, O’Higgins or Napoleon. He could easily have made America into a corrupt military dictatorship and we’d speak of it in the same breath as Brazil or Argentina. Precisely because he wasn’t, that didn’t happen.
Which makes his later lionisation all the more ironic, of course.
I was taught Washington's act of genius was in his resignations (plural?). He could have gone on forever as a sort of dictator, and people kind of expected him to.
Is that valid?
I think so. There's a very good song in Hamilton all about it.
My Mum used to say of Andy Burnham that he always looked like he needed a "good wash". Which is not good. I haven't heard her say it recently though - so perhaps that particular problem has gone way.
I think he's an ok bet if you think Starmer will fight the next election and lose it badly.
Ha ha really? He seems pretty clean to me, but maybe your mum has a higher bar than I do. He just seems like a lightweight to me. But maybe that's what people are into now.
It’s the age of the lightweight. Cf: Trudeau, Ardern.
Plus Biden.
The only heavyweight leaders in the G7 at the moment are Macron and Merkel (and Draghi but he is just a technocrat Italian PM holding together a coalition of parties of right and left, Salvini could easily end up a populist PM after the next Italian elections)
There seems to be a significant omission from your list..
A tiny question. Under Labour's actual rules do you have to be an MP to be leader of the party? I once tried to look it up in Labour's rules and gave up the will to live before finding anything that said you had to be.
Obvs it isn't going to happen but it is still an interesting question. Anyone know?
MP or in HoL as far as i know
Can’t be leader from the Lords. Can’t even lead the Tories from the Lords these days:*
There shall be a Leader of the Party (referred to in this Constitution as “the Leader”) drawn from those elected to the House of Commons, who shall be elected by the Party Members and Scottish Party Members in accordance with the provisions of Schedule 2.
*although in practice since they have only had four overall leaders in the Lords - Derby, Beaconsfield, Salisbury and Home - and three of them were consecutively leader in the nineteenth century, while the fourth was elected on the understanding he would disclaim his peerage, in practice I doubt if this does more than recognise reality.
So definitely over priced then as there are very few winnable Lab seats for KON to stand in.
Plus he would have to resign the mayoralty to stand.
I just do not see a pathway for him.
Not, bluntly, that I see any credible Labour leader at the moment. I know full well how much you despise Starmer but there is a reason why he’s leader.
Did Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern look stellar in March 2017?
A desperate Labour Party polling at historically low values and looking down the barrel of a terrible defeat in a forthcoming election took a huge gamble.
They had nothing left to lose.
Same with UK Labour. SKS is going to lose in 2024. He is nowhere near where he needs to be to win.
Labour might as well gamble now.
Whoever the new leader is, she is very, very unlikely to do worse than SKS. And she could be a star.
My list of current leaders I have a view on, from serious to lightweight;
1. Merkel 2. Biden 3. Morrison 4. Sturgeon 3. Macron 4. Putin 5. Drakeford 5. Trudeau 6. Von der Leyen 7. Ardern 8. Johnson
You don't think Putin is that serious? He is a lot of things, but he is definitely serious, a serious threat to the world, to anybody who opposes him, any surrounding countries with any land he thinks is useful.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 12h I presume it's been explained to Boris that if he delays 21-June, a decision in mid-July would be at the peak of the (rather large) Step 3 wave?
My list of current leaders I have a view on, from serious to lightweight;
1. Merkel 2. Biden 3. Morrison 4. Sturgeon 3. Macron 4. Putin 5. Drakeford 5. Trudeau 6. Von der Leyen 7. Ardern 8. Johnson
You don't think Putin is that serious? He is a lot of things, but he is definitely serious, a serious threat to the world, to anybody who opposes him, any surrounding countries with any land he thinks is useful.
He is not beyond dumb and desperate attention-grabbing manoeuvres (was my thinking).
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
I can explain, I think.
Labour are the only major political party in this country to have never had a woman leader. The other parties have smashed this glass ceiling. The Tories twice. Labour are also the main party of the progressive left for whom gender equality is (supposedly) an article of faith. Our failure on this has become an embarrassment to us. We are therefore motivated to put it right.
What it means is that along with all the other qualities needed (next time) to make a good party leader - although let's face it you can't know until you see them in the job - the fact of being a woman is a positive and that of being a man a negative.
This doesn't mean gender is the only criteria. It doesn't mean a man is ruled out. Not at all. We saw that last time. The party would have liked a woman then but other factors outweighed this and we (although not me) voted for Starmer. It just means that gender is a factor - and it's a factor for valid reasons.
My list of current leaders I have a view on, from serious to lightweight;
1. Merkel 2. Biden 3. Morrison 4. Sturgeon 5. Macron 6. Putin 7. Drakeford 8. Trudeau 9. Von der Leyen 10. Ardern 11. Johnson
Biden can be serious but he is also lightweight and jovial.
I would put Morrison, Macron, Putin, Drakeford and Sturgeon and even Boris as more heavyweight than Biden.
However US Presidents tend to be more charismatic than heavyweight, in my lifetime only Bush Snr and Obama are what I would consider to be heavyweight US Presidents although Bill Clinton could be on occasion too
A tiny question. Under Labour's actual rules do you have to be an MP to be leader of the party? I once tried to look it up in Labour's rules and gave up the will to live before finding anything that said you had to be.
Obvs it isn't going to happen but it is still an interesting question. Anyone know?
MP or in HoL as far as i know
Can’t be leader from the Lords. Can’t even lead the Tories from the Lords these days:*
There shall be a Leader of the Party (referred to in this Constitution as “the Leader”) drawn from those elected to the House of Commons, who shall be elected by the Party Members and Scottish Party Members in accordance with the provisions of Schedule 2.
*although in practice since they have only had four overall leaders in the Lords - Derby, Beaconsfield, Salisbury and Home - and three of them were consecutively leader in the nineteenth century, while the fourth was elected on the understanding he would disclaim his peerage, in practice I doubt if this does more than recognise reality.
So definitely over priced then as there are very few winnable Lab seats for KON to stand in.
Plus he would have to resign the mayoralty to stand.
I just do not see a pathway for him.
Not, bluntly, that I see any credible Labour leader at the moment. I know full well how much you despise Starmer but there is a reason why he’s leader.
Did Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern look stellar in March 2017?
A desperate Labour Party polling at historically low values and looking down the barrel of a terrible defeat in a forthcoming election took a huge gamble.
They had nothing left to lose.
Same with UK Labour. SKS is going to lose in 2024. He is nowhere near where he needs to be to win.
Labour might as well gamble now.
Whoever the new leader is, she is very, very unlikely to do worse than SKS. And she could be a star.
(Same goes for the LibDems, actually).
Enter Daisy Cooper?
I said it before. Will keep saying it in the hope that senior Lib Dems read these threads.
1. Change your name to the Liberal Greens 2. Make Daisy co-leader
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
Well, he was elected to oversee a transition...
It reminds me of George Washington freeing his slaves, but only in his will. Carefully making sure he benefited from the institution he pretended to despise until it didn't matter to him any more.
To play Devil’s advocate, he may have been a ‘decent’ master (no idea if he was or not) and didn’t want his slaves sold off as chattels to an uncertain fate.
Between 1723 and 1782, Viginia law was that the colonial (then state) legislature had to approve manumission of slaves. The law was repealed in 1782 to allow their owners to do so without state interference. Washington had a 17 year period between then and his death to free his slaves and thus avoid that fate for them. However, he waited until he died, which is a bit of a dick move IMHO.
I visited Mount Vernon when I was living in DC, about 15 years ago. At that time the volunteer guides (who were elderly white people) were really keen to gloss over Washington's slave holding, emphasising how he was a 'good master' etc. I think I asked some awkward questions, and earned some dirty looks from the patriotic Americans on the tour. I reckoned I could probably have outrun most of them so it seemed worth the risk.
Washington really was quite a useless twat in many ways.
However I have a theory that he mere fact he was an inept, vacillating, useless twat was probably important. Imagine if he’d been a charismatic dictator like Bolivar, O’Higgins or Napoleon. He could easily have made America into a corrupt military dictatorship and we’d speak of it in the same breath as Brazil or Argentina. Precisely because he wasn’t, that didn’t happen.
Which makes his later lionisation all the more ironic, of course.
I was taught Washington's act of genius was in his resignations (plural?). He could have gone on forever as a sort of dictator, and people kind of expected him to.
Is that valid?
He resigned as General and resigned (well, declined renomination) as President.
It is true he did later resume the rank of General in 1798 albeit more as an honorary appointment than anything practical.
But both were partly borne out of the frustrated realisation that he wasn’t really up to either role, which was also much more widespread at the time than American authors are willing to admit. At the end of his second term, for example, he was under constant attack for his errors and familial preferment, and while he had led the Continental Army to victory, there were plenty of rivals who commented it was in spite of his leadership rather than because of it. So it’s not as simple as ‘he resigned.’
Would be really fun to write a book from that point of view and watch all the Yanks’ heads explode...
I am in the unusual situation on here of saying something nice about Boris Johnson when everyone else is castigating him, but I think he is doing a good job of genial host at G7 in Cornwall.
In diplomatic terms the G7 is a missed opportunity for the UK, but the issues there go beyond event management. The really significant diplomatic shift, the biggest for some years, is Biden's move to establish a new American world order and to bring the remaining liberal democracies into it. His scope is ambitious. A Transatlantic settlement would have been music to the ears of a previous UK administration but the UK burnt the transatlantic bridge role with Brexit. The key prospect for Biden's pitch is the EU with the UK somewhat sidelined.
On Covid measures, I mostly agree with @DavidL. We have to deal with the virus situation as it is, and not as we might hope it to be. I do think the vaccine risk assessments are sound, from what I have seen, and the UK vaccine rollout remains pretty good.
Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
Why is the Indian variant much more widely seeded in the UK compared to the rest of the EU? Because we allowed in 20,000 travellers from India. Because we kept the borders open
That’s it. @DavidL is, unusually, talking nonsense
We KNEW this was a race between the virus and our vaccine. By keeping the border with India open, we decided to run the final leg of this race with a 100 pound backpack weighing us down, for absolutely no reason at all. You can’t even argue we did it out of human compassion - because we happily closed the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just not India
This is all on Boris and the government. Their decision. Their fuck-up. And monumental it is
Absolutely.
It was said at the time.
On here.
These government apologists are nuts. I know Cummings is disingenuous, but his portrayal of inner government as a largely chaotic function of Boris’s “supermarket trolley” instincts ran true.
I remember saying on here at the time, in these words: ‘if keeping the Indian border open means we blow the vaccine bonus, I will never vote Tory again’
And here we are. As you say, many of us on PB knew this was a calamitous mistake, with no justification. Yet they went ahead and did it. It is as absurd as it is tragic
Wasn't it also while you were whining about the weather and demanding more international travel be opened up ?
My list of current leaders I have a view on, from serious to lightweight;
1. Merkel 2. Biden 3. Morrison 4. Sturgeon 5. Macron 6. Putin 7. Drakeford 8. Trudeau 9. Von der Leyen 10. Ardern 11. Johnson
Biden can be serious but he is also lightweight and jovial.
I would put Morrison, Macron, Putin, Drakeford and Sturgeon and even Boris as more heavyweight than Biden.
However US Presidents tend to be more charismatic than heavyweight, in my lifetime only Bush Snr and Obama are what I would consider to be heavyweight US Presidents although Bill Clinton could be on occasion too
I think you are totally under-rating Biden who has surprised on the upside with the maturity of his executive picks, and the sobriety of his vision.
I am in the unusual situation on here of saying something nice about Boris Johnson when everyone else is castigating him, but I think he is doing a good job of genial host at G7 in Cornwall.
In diplomatic terms the G7 is a missed opportunity for the UK, but the issues there go beyond event management. The really significant diplomatic shift, the biggest for some years, is Biden's move to establish a new American world order and to bring the remaining liberal democracies into it. His scope is ambitious. A Transatlantic settlement would have been music to the ears of a previous UK administration but the UK burnt the transatlantic bridge role with Brexit. The key prospect for Biden's pitch is the EU with the UK somewhat sidelined.
On Covid measures, I mostly agree with @DavidL. We have to deal with the virus situation as it is, and not as we might hope it to be. I do think the vaccine risk assessments are sound, from what I have seen, and the UK vaccine rollout remains pretty good.
Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
Why is the Indian variant much more widely seeded in the UK compared to the rest of the EU? Because we allowed in 20,000 travellers from India. Because we kept the borders open
That’s it. @DavidL is, unusually, talking nonsense
We KNEW this was a race between the virus and our vaccine. By keeping the border with India open, we decided to run the final leg of this race with a 100 pound backpack weighing us down, for absolutely no reason at all. You can’t even argue we did it out of human compassion - because we happily closed the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just not India
This is all on Boris and the government. Their decision. Their fuck-up. And monumental it is
Absolutely.
It was said at the time.
On here.
These government apologists are nuts. I know Cummings is disingenuous, but his portrayal of inner government as a largely chaotic function of Boris’s “supermarket trolley” instincts ran true.
I remember saying on here at the time, in these words: ‘if keeping the Indian border open means we blow the vaccine bonus, I will never vote Tory again’
And here we are. As you say, many of us on PB knew this was a calamitous mistake, with no justification. Yet they went ahead and did it. It is as absurd as it is tragic
Wasn't it also while you were whining about the weather and demanding more international travel be opened up ?
Probably. I was correct, nonetheless, about the Indian border
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
Well, he was elected to oversee a transition...
It reminds me of George Washington freeing his slaves, but only in his will. Carefully making sure he benefited from the institution he pretended to despise until it didn't matter to him any more.
To play Devil’s advocate, he may have been a ‘decent’ master (no idea if he was or not) and didn’t want his slaves sold off as chattels to an uncertain fate.
Between 1723 and 1782, Viginia law was that the colonial (then state) legislature had to approve manumission of slaves. The law was repealed in 1782 to allow their owners to do so without state interference. Washington had a 17 year period between then and his death to free his slaves and thus avoid that fate for them. However, he waited until he died, which is a bit of a dick move IMHO.
I visited Mount Vernon when I was living in DC, about 15 years ago. At that time the volunteer guides (who were elderly white people) were really keen to gloss over Washington's slave holding, emphasising how he was a 'good master' etc. I think I asked some awkward questions, and earned some dirty looks from the patriotic Americans on the tour. I reckoned I could probably have outrun most of them so it seemed worth the risk.
Washington really was quite a useless twat in many ways.
However I have a theory that he mere fact he was an inept, vacillating, useless twat was probably important. Imagine if he’d been a charismatic dictator like Bolivar, O’Higgins or Napoleon. He could easily have made America into a corrupt military dictatorship and we’d speak of it in the same breath as Brazil or Argentina. Precisely because he wasn’t, that didn’t happen.
Which makes his later lionisation all the more ironic, of course.
I was taught Washington's act of genius was in his resignations (plural?). He could have gone on forever as a sort of dictator, and people kind of expected him to.
Is that valid?
He resigned as General and resigned (well, declined renomination) as President.
It is true he did later resume the rank of General in 1798 albeit more as an honorary appointment than anything practical.
But both were partly borne out of the frustrated realisation that he wasn’t really up to either role, which was also much more widespread at the time than American authors are willing to admit. At the end of his second term, for example, he was under constant attack for his errors and familial preferment, and while he had led the Continental Army to victory, there were plenty of rivals who commented it was in spite of his leadership rather than because of it. So it’s not as simple as ‘he resigned.’
Would be really fun to write a book from that point of view and watch all the Yanks’ heads explode...
I've heard it argued that it was the British over-reliance on Hessian (among other) mercenaries and the commitment of the rebels French allies which made the difference.
A tiny question. Under Labour's actual rules do you have to be an MP to be leader of the party? I once tried to look it up in Labour's rules and gave up the will to live before finding anything that said you had to be.
Obvs it isn't going to happen but it is still an interesting question. Anyone know?
MP or in HoL as far as i know
Can’t be leader from the Lords. Can’t even lead the Tories from the Lords these days:*
There shall be a Leader of the Party (referred to in this Constitution as “the Leader”) drawn from those elected to the House of Commons, who shall be elected by the Party Members and Scottish Party Members in accordance with the provisions of Schedule 2.
*although in practice since they have only had four overall leaders in the Lords - Derby, Beaconsfield, Salisbury and Home - and three of them were consecutively leader in the nineteenth century, while the fourth was elected on the understanding he would disclaim his peerage, in practice I doubt if this does more than recognise reality.
So definitely over priced then as there are very few winnable Lab seats for KON to stand in.
Plus he would have to resign the mayoralty to stand.
I just do not see a pathway for him.
Not, bluntly, that I see any credible Labour leader at the moment. I know full well how much you despise Starmer but there is a reason why he’s leader.
Did Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern look stellar in March 2017?
A desperate Labour Party polling at historically low values and looking down the barrel of a terrible defeat in a forthcoming election took a huge gamble.
They had nothing left to lose.
Same with UK Labour. SKS is going to lose in 2024. He is nowhere near where he needs to be to win.
Labour might as well gamble now.
Whoever the new leader is, she is very, very unlikely to do worse than SKS. And she could be a star.
(Same goes for the LibDems, actually).
The only Labour potential leader who would do any better than Starmer is Burnham but he is not even an MP, most of those who are MPs would likely do even worse than Starmer is.
Plus of course Ardern did not win the 2017 New Zealand election anyway, the Nationals won more votes and seats than her Labour Party did, she only became PM through a backroom deal with the Greens and NZ First the New Zealand version of UKIP.
It is likely Boris will still announce he will allow 50 wedding guests at receptions indoors, 100 outdoors from June 21st on Monday, just there will still not be unlimited wedding guests allowed
He has to! He can’t open up football and cricket and not Weddings!
Granddaughter One, aged 32, had to queue for two hours yesterday for her second vaccination. She had an appointment, but they were also doing walk0ins.
It is likely Boris will still announce he will allow 50 wedding guests at receptions indoors, 100 outdoors from June 21st on Monday, just there will still not be unlimited wedding guests allowed
He has to! He can’t open up football and cricket and not Weddings!
True, though football and cricket stadiums are also still not allowed full capacity either
My list of current leaders I have a view on, from serious to lightweight;
1. Merkel 2. Biden 3. Morrison 4. Sturgeon 5. Macron 6. Putin 7. Drakeford 8. Trudeau 9. Von der Leyen 10. Ardern 11. Johnson
Biden can be serious but he is also lightweight and jovial.
I would put Morrison, Macron, Putin, Drakeford and Sturgeon and even Boris as more heavyweight than Biden.
However US Presidents tend to be more charismatic than heavyweight, in my lifetime only Bush Snr and Obama are what I would consider to be heavyweight US Presidents although Bill Clinton could be on occasion too
My list of current leaders I have a view on, from serious to lightweight;
1. Merkel 2. Biden 3. Morrison 4. Sturgeon 5. Macron 6. Putin 7. Drakeford 8. Trudeau 9. Von der Leyen 10. Ardern 11. Johnson
A ludicrous list. Running the devolved region of Wales is not comparable to ruling all of the Russias, or presiding over the global superpower that is USA
Next, ‘why Edwin Poots is a better party leader than Xi Jinping’
I am in the unusual situation on here of saying something nice about Boris Johnson when everyone else is castigating him, but I think he is doing a good job of genial host at G7 in Cornwall.
In diplomatic terms the G7 is a missed opportunity for the UK, but the issues there go beyond event management. The really significant diplomatic shift, the biggest for some years, is Biden's move to establish a new American world order and to bring the remaining liberal democracies into it. His scope is ambitious. A Transatlantic settlement would have been music to the ears of a previous UK administration but the UK burnt the transatlantic bridge role with Brexit. The key prospect for Biden's pitch is the EU with the UK somewhat sidelined.
On Covid measures, I mostly agree with @DavidL. We have to deal with the virus situation as it is, and not as we might hope it to be. I do think the vaccine risk assessments are sound, from what I have seen, and the UK vaccine rollout remains pretty good.
Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
Why is the Indian variant much more widely seeded in the UK compared to the rest of the EU? Because we allowed in 20,000 travellers from India. Because we kept the borders open
That’s it. @DavidL is, unusually, talking nonsense
We KNEW this was a race between the virus and our vaccine. By keeping the border with India open, we decided to run the final leg of this race with a 100 pound backpack weighing us down, for absolutely no reason at all. You can’t even argue we did it out of human compassion - because we happily closed the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just not India
This is all on Boris and the government. Their decision. Their fuck-up. And monumental it is
I agree the apparent reason for keeping India off the red list was stupid, shocking even. Unfortunately that doesn't remove the need to deal with the circumstances of this ghastly disease as they are, whether those circumstances are due to bad luck or negligence.
My list of current leaders I have a view on, from serious to lightweight;
1. Merkel 2. Biden 3. Morrison 4. Sturgeon 5. Macron 6. Putin 7. Drakeford 8. Trudeau 9. Von der Leyen 10. Ardern 11. Johnson
Biden can be serious but he is also lightweight and jovial.
I would put Morrison, Macron, Putin, Drakeford and Sturgeon and even Boris as more heavyweight than Biden.
However US Presidents tend to be more charismatic than heavyweight, in my lifetime only Bush Snr and Obama are what I would consider to be heavyweight US Presidents although Bill Clinton could be on occasion too
I think you are totally under-rating Biden who has surprised on the upside with the maturity of his executive picks, and the sobriety of his vision.
You can be an effective US President without being heavyweight see also Ronald Reagan.
Nixon and Carter were both heavyweight, neither were great Presidents
Just had interesting gossip from my wife. She was at hairdresser this morning and staff and customers were all talking about how good Theresa Mays speech was (this is in a very working class district of Liverpool were nobody would spit on a Tory if he was on fire). They were also all angry about the extended lockdown and those who had not had both jabs were adamant they would not have any or more because “it’s obviously just not worth it”. Staff and clientele. I found that fascinating from a bunch of people who are really not political at all.
The reason for getting vaccinated is not so you can go on a foreign holiday.
Its to massively reduce the risk that you might get (and also infect others with) a potentially fatal virus.
That may be the reality. It also may not be how people think.
And it’s the wrong way around. The reason we can’t go on holiday is to reduce the risk of getting the virus. Once that risk is no greater than being at home (at home effectively meaning on holiday in the UK judging by things at the moment), or when the consequences of catching the virus are hugely reduced, banning travel becomes pointless as well as damaging.
The case rates in most popular holiday destinations are now equivalent (and in some cases lower) than in much of the UK.
A new variant is just as likely to spring into life from an infection in Shanklin as it is in Sagres.
This sounds like a classic Guardian, biased by omission.....you don't get 5 years in prison for just nicking a mobile phone.
Osime Brown was jailed for stealing a friend’s mobile phone, a crime that he and others say he did not commit. He was sentenced to five years for robbery, attempted robbery and perverting the course of justice.
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
Well, he was elected to oversee a transition...
It reminds me of George Washington freeing his slaves, but only in his will. Carefully making sure he benefited from the institution he pretended to despise until it didn't matter to him any more.
To play Devil’s advocate, he may have been a ‘decent’ master (no idea if he was or not) and didn’t want his slaves sold off as chattels to an uncertain fate.
Between 1723 and 1782, Viginia law was that the colonial (then state) legislature had to approve manumission of slaves. The law was repealed in 1782 to allow their owners to do so without state interference. Washington had a 17 year period between then and his death to free his slaves and thus avoid that fate for them. However, he waited until he died, which is a bit of a dick move IMHO.
I visited Mount Vernon when I was living in DC, about 15 years ago. At that time the volunteer guides (who were elderly white people) were really keen to gloss over Washington's slave holding, emphasising how he was a 'good master' etc. I think I asked some awkward questions, and earned some dirty looks from the patriotic Americans on the tour. I reckoned I could probably have outrun most of them so it seemed worth the risk.
So long as they didn't exercise their 2nd Amendment rights.
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
Well, he was elected to oversee a transition...
It reminds me of George Washington freeing his slaves, but only in his will. Carefully making sure he benefited from the institution he pretended to despise until it didn't matter to him any more.
To play Devil’s advocate, he may have been a ‘decent’ master (no idea if he was or not) and didn’t want his slaves sold off as chattels to an uncertain fate.
Between 1723 and 1782, Viginia law was that the colonial (then state) legislature had to approve manumission of slaves. The law was repealed in 1782 to allow their owners to do so without state interference. Washington had a 17 year period between then and his death to free his slaves and thus avoid that fate for them. However, he waited until he died, which is a bit of a dick move IMHO.
I visited Mount Vernon when I was living in DC, about 15 years ago. At that time the volunteer guides (who were elderly white people) were really keen to gloss over Washington's slave holding, emphasising how he was a 'good master' etc. I think I asked some awkward questions, and earned some dirty looks from the patriotic Americans on the tour. I reckoned I could probably have outrun most of them so it seemed worth the risk.
Washington really was quite a useless twat in many ways.
However I have a theory that he mere fact he was an inept, vacillating, useless twat was probably important. Imagine if he’d been a charismatic dictator like Bolivar, O’Higgins or Napoleon. He could easily have made America into a corrupt military dictatorship and we’d speak of it in the same breath as Brazil or Argentina. Precisely because he wasn’t, that didn’t happen.
Which makes his later lionisation all the more ironic, of course.
I was taught Washington's act of genius was in his resignations (plural?). He could have gone on forever as a sort of dictator, and people kind of expected him to.
Is that valid?
He resigned as General and resigned (well, declined renomination) as President.
It is true he did later resume the rank of General in 1798 albeit more as an honorary appointment than anything practical.
But both were partly borne out of the frustrated realisation that he wasn’t really up to either role, which was also much more widespread at the time than American authors are willing to admit. At the end of his second term, for example, he was under constant attack for his errors and familial preferment, and while he had led the Continental Army to victory, there were plenty of rivals who commented it was in spite of his leadership rather than because of it. So it’s not as simple as ‘he resigned.’
Would be really fun to write a book from that point of view and watch all the Yanks’ heads explode...
I've heard it argued that it was the British over-reliance on Hessian (among other) mercenaries and the commitment of the rebels French allies which made the difference.
There were lots of things that made a difference. Logistics in resupply were a problem. The inability of the British to focus solely on the rebellion in the 13 colonies due to their commitments elsewhere was a problem. The sheer size of the area the British were trying to recapture was a problem. French aid was important, and ironically by draining the finances of France led to the French Revolution shortly thereafter.
Washington’s generalship was not, on the whole, a significant factor in the American victory. It had its good points - his astute use of intelligence gathering and misinformation, for example - but pretty well any experienced officer would have done as well when it came to the fighting.
That being said, it should be noted his determination to keep the army in the field at all, when many of his critics were thinking of giving up, certainly was a significant factor. Indeed, again, his constant dithering where more aggressive generals might have attacked and seen their forces wiped out was probably more helpful to the Americans than his often rather feeble attempts at military strategy.
A tiny question. Under Labour's actual rules do you have to be an MP to be leader of the party? I once tried to look it up in Labour's rules and gave up the will to live before finding anything that said you had to be.
Obvs it isn't going to happen but it is still an interesting question. Anyone know?
MP or in HoL as far as i know
Can’t be leader from the Lords. Can’t even lead the Tories from the Lords these days:*
There shall be a Leader of the Party (referred to in this Constitution as “the Leader”) drawn from those elected to the House of Commons, who shall be elected by the Party Members and Scottish Party Members in accordance with the provisions of Schedule 2.
*although in practice since they have only had four overall leaders in the Lords - Derby, Beaconsfield, Salisbury and Home - and three of them were consecutively leader in the nineteenth century, while the fourth was elected on the understanding he would disclaim his peerage, in practice I doubt if this does more than recognise reality.
So definitely over priced then as there are very few winnable Lab seats for KON to stand in.
Plus he would have to resign the mayoralty to stand.
I just do not see a pathway for him.
Not, bluntly, that I see any credible Labour leader at the moment. I know full well how much you despise Starmer but there is a reason why he’s leader.
Did Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern look stellar in March 2017?
A desperate Labour Party polling at historically low values and looking down the barrel of a terrible defeat in a forthcoming election took a huge gamble.
They had nothing left to lose.
Same with UK Labour. SKS is going to lose in 2024. He is nowhere near where he needs to be to win.
Labour might as well gamble now.
Whoever the new leader is, she is very, very unlikely to do worse than SKS. And she could be a star.
(Same goes for the LibDems, actually).
Enter Daisy Cooper?
I said it before. Will keep saying it in the hope that senior Lib Dems read these threads.
1. Change your name to the Liberal Greens 2. Make Daisy co-leader
Wouldn't the Electoral Commission block that name change?
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
Well, he was elected to oversee a transition...
It reminds me of George Washington freeing his slaves, but only in his will. Carefully making sure he benefited from the institution he pretended to despise until it didn't matter to him any more.
To play Devil’s advocate, he may have been a ‘decent’ master (no idea if he was or not) and didn’t want his slaves sold off as chattels to an uncertain fate.
Between 1723 and 1782, Viginia law was that the colonial (then state) legislature had to approve manumission of slaves. The law was repealed in 1782 to allow their owners to do so without state interference. Washington had a 17 year period between then and his death to free his slaves and thus avoid that fate for them. However, he waited until he died, which is a bit of a dick move IMHO.
I visited Mount Vernon when I was living in DC, about 15 years ago. At that time the volunteer guides (who were elderly white people) were really keen to gloss over Washington's slave holding, emphasising how he was a 'good master' etc. I think I asked some awkward questions, and earned some dirty looks from the patriotic Americans on the tour. I reckoned I could probably have outrun most of them so it seemed worth the risk.
Washington really was quite a useless twat in many ways.
However I have a theory that he mere fact he was an inept, vacillating, useless twat was probably important. Imagine if he’d been a charismatic dictator like Bolivar, O’Higgins or Napoleon. He could easily have made America into a corrupt military dictatorship and we’d speak of it in the same breath as Brazil or Argentina. Precisely because he wasn’t, that didn’t happen.
Which makes his later lionisation all the more ironic, of course.
I was taught Washington's act of genius was in his resignations (plural?). He could have gone on forever as a sort of dictator, and people kind of expected him to.
Is that valid?
He resigned as General and resigned (well, declined renomination) as President.
It is true he did later resume the rank of General in 1798 albeit more as an honorary appointment than anything practical.
But both were partly borne out of the frustrated realisation that he wasn’t really up to either role, which was also much more widespread at the time than American authors are willing to admit. At the end of his second term, for example, he was under constant attack for his errors and familial preferment, and while he had led the Continental Army to victory, there were plenty of rivals who commented it was in spite of his leadership rather than because of it. So it’s not as simple as ‘he resigned.’
Would be really fun to write a book from that point of view and watch all the Yanks’ heads explode...
I've heard it argued that it was the British over-reliance on Hessian (among other) mercenaries and the commitment of the rebels French allies which made the difference.
The French tied up much of our Navy in home waters (there was an invasion plan that would, long term, have turned Portsmouth into a French Gibraltar on the south coast of England) meaning we couldn't resupply Cornwallis at Yorktown (there were other tactical cock ups but the fact we couldn't commit as much of our fleet as we would have liked to didn't help) which meant we had no option but to give up. Also we had no allies, as a result of our being dicks after the Seven Years War. The Dutch and Spanish both lined up for the colonists. You don't win wars without allies.
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
Well, he was elected to oversee a transition...
It reminds me of George Washington freeing his slaves, but only in his will. Carefully making sure he benefited from the institution he pretended to despise until it didn't matter to him any more.
To play Devil’s advocate, he may have been a ‘decent’ master (no idea if he was or not) and didn’t want his slaves sold off as chattels to an uncertain fate.
Between 1723 and 1782, Viginia law was that the colonial (then state) legislature had to approve manumission of slaves. The law was repealed in 1782 to allow their owners to do so without state interference. Washington had a 17 year period between then and his death to free his slaves and thus avoid that fate for them. However, he waited until he died, which is a bit of a dick move IMHO.
I visited Mount Vernon when I was living in DC, about 15 years ago. At that time the volunteer guides (who were elderly white people) were really keen to gloss over Washington's slave holding, emphasising how he was a 'good master' etc. I think I asked some awkward questions, and earned some dirty looks from the patriotic Americans on the tour. I reckoned I could probably have outrun most of them so it seemed worth the risk.
Washington really was quite a useless twat in many ways.
However I have a theory that he mere fact he was an inept, vacillating, useless twat was probably important. Imagine if he’d been a charismatic dictator like Bolivar, O’Higgins or Napoleon. He could easily have made America into a corrupt military dictatorship and we’d speak of it in the same breath as Brazil or Argentina. Precisely because he wasn’t, that didn’t happen.
Which makes his later lionisation all the more ironic, of course.
I was taught Washington's act of genius was in his resignations (plural?). He could have gone on forever as a sort of dictator, and people kind of expected him to.
Is that valid?
He resigned as General and resigned (well, declined renomination) as President.
It is true he did later resume the rank of General in 1798 albeit more as an honorary appointment than anything practical.
But both were partly borne out of the frustrated realisation that he wasn’t really up to either role, which was also much more widespread at the time than American authors are willing to admit. At the end of his second term, for example, he was under constant attack for his errors and familial preferment, and while he had led the Continental Army to victory, there were plenty of rivals who commented it was in spite of his leadership rather than because of it. So it’s not as simple as ‘he resigned.’
Would be really fun to write a book from that point of view and watch all the Yanks’ heads explode...
Interesting, thanks. Washington certainly seems to have won on the PR front, so maybe it was genius ...
I am in the unusual situation on here of saying something nice about Boris Johnson when everyone else is castigating him, but I think he is doing a good job of genial host at G7 in Cornwall.
In diplomatic terms the G7 is a missed opportunity for the UK, but the issues there go beyond event management. The really significant diplomatic shift, the biggest for some years, is Biden's move to establish a new American world order and to bring the remaining liberal democracies into it. His scope is ambitious. A Transatlantic settlement would have been music to the ears of a previous UK administration but the UK burnt the transatlantic bridge role with Brexit. The key prospect for Biden's pitch is the EU with the UK somewhat sidelined.
On Covid measures, I mostly agree with @DavidL. We have to deal with the virus situation as it is, and not as we might hope it to be. I do think the vaccine risk assessments are sound, from what I have seen, and the UK vaccine rollout remains pretty good.
Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
Why is the Indian variant much more widely seeded in the UK compared to the rest of the EU? Because we allowed in 20,000 travellers from India. Because we kept the borders open
That’s it. @DavidL is, unusually, talking nonsense
We KNEW this was a race between the virus and our vaccine. By keeping the border with India open, we decided to run the final leg of this race with a 100 pound backpack weighing us down, for absolutely no reason at all. You can’t even argue we did it out of human compassion - because we happily closed the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just not India
This is all on Boris and the government. Their decision. Their fuck-up. And monumental it is
Absolutely.
It was said at the time.
On here.
These government apologists are nuts. I know Cummings is disingenuous, but his portrayal of inner government as a largely chaotic function of Boris’s “supermarket trolley” instincts ran true.
I remember saying on here at the time, in these words: ‘if keeping the Indian border open means we blow the vaccine bonus, I will never vote Tory again’
And here we are. As you say, many of us on PB knew this was a calamitous mistake, with no justification. Yet they went ahead and did it. It is as absurd as it is tragic
Wasn't it also while you were whining about the weather and demanding more international travel be opened up ?
Probably. I was correct, nonetheless, about the Indian border
All of PB was correct about travel from India.
But some of us have been pointing out the dangers from the lack of border control from the start.
While others have been demanding more international travel when it suits them.
Perhaps if the airlines, airports and holiday obsessives had been less reckless during the last year then we'd have more international travel now.
I am in the unusual situation on here of saying something nice about Boris Johnson when everyone else is castigating him, but I think he is doing a good job of genial host at G7 in Cornwall.
In diplomatic terms the G7 is a missed opportunity for the UK, but the issues there go beyond event management. The really significant diplomatic shift, the biggest for some years, is Biden's move to establish a new American world order and to bring the remaining liberal democracies into it. His scope is ambitious. A Transatlantic settlement would have been music to the ears of a previous UK administration but the UK burnt the transatlantic bridge role with Brexit. The key prospect for Biden's pitch is the EU with the UK somewhat sidelined.
On Covid measures, I mostly agree with @DavidL. We have to deal with the virus situation as it is, and not as we might hope it to be. I do think the vaccine risk assessments are sound, from what I have seen, and the UK vaccine rollout remains pretty good.
Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
Why is the Indian variant much more widely seeded in the UK compared to the rest of the EU? Because we allowed in 20,000 travellers from India. Because we kept the borders open
That’s it. @DavidL is, unusually, talking nonsense
We KNEW this was a race between the virus and our vaccine. By keeping the border with India open, we decided to run the final leg of this race with a 100 pound backpack weighing us down, for absolutely no reason at all. You can’t even argue we did it out of human compassion - because we happily closed the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just not India
This is all on Boris and the government. Their decision. Their fuck-up. And monumental it is
Absolutely.
It was said at the time.
On here.
These government apologists are nuts. I know Cummings is disingenuous, but his portrayal of inner government as a largely chaotic function of Boris’s “supermarket trolley” instincts ran true.
I remember saying on here at the time, in these words: ‘if keeping the Indian border open means we blow the vaccine bonus, I will never vote Tory again’
And here we are. As you say, many of us on PB knew this was a calamitous mistake, with no justification.
Never voting Tory again is most unlikely to be a calamitous mistake.
I must say, I've never understood this. Surely you want the best person as your candidate for the most important job in the country, not somebody who happens to have the right genitalia?
Anyway, if Starmer really wants a female leader, there are numerous clinics who could help him out.
Well, he was elected to oversee a transition...
It reminds me of George Washington freeing his slaves, but only in his will. Carefully making sure he benefited from the institution he pretended to despise until it didn't matter to him any more.
To play Devil’s advocate, he may have been a ‘decent’ master (no idea if he was or not) and didn’t want his slaves sold off as chattels to an uncertain fate.
Between 1723 and 1782, Viginia law was that the colonial (then state) legislature had to approve manumission of slaves. The law was repealed in 1782 to allow their owners to do so without state interference. Washington had a 17 year period between then and his death to free his slaves and thus avoid that fate for them. However, he waited until he died, which is a bit of a dick move IMHO.
I visited Mount Vernon when I was living in DC, about 15 years ago. At that time the volunteer guides (who were elderly white people) were really keen to gloss over Washington's slave holding, emphasising how he was a 'good master' etc. I think I asked some awkward questions, and earned some dirty looks from the patriotic Americans on the tour. I reckoned I could probably have outrun most of them so it seemed worth the risk.
Washington really was quite a useless twat in many ways.
However I have a theory that he mere fact he was an inept, vacillating, useless twat was probably important. Imagine if he’d been a charismatic dictator like Bolivar, O’Higgins or Napoleon. He could easily have made America into a corrupt military dictatorship and we’d speak of it in the same breath as Brazil or Argentina. Precisely because he wasn’t, that didn’t happen.
Which makes his later lionisation all the more ironic, of course.
He was unusually tall. And voluntarily relinquished the presidency. The latter of which was massively to his credit, and also to the benefit of US democracy.
I am in the unusual situation on here of saying something nice about Boris Johnson when everyone else is castigating him, but I think he is doing a good job of genial host at G7 in Cornwall.
In diplomatic terms the G7 is a missed opportunity for the UK, but the issues there go beyond event management. The really significant diplomatic shift, the biggest for some years, is Biden's move to establish a new American world order and to bring the remaining liberal democracies into it. His scope is ambitious. A Transatlantic settlement would have been music to the ears of a previous UK administration but the UK burnt the transatlantic bridge role with Brexit. The key prospect for Biden's pitch is the EU with the UK somewhat sidelined.
On Covid measures, I mostly agree with @DavidL. We have to deal with the virus situation as it is, and not as we might hope it to be. I do think the vaccine risk assessments are sound, from what I have seen, and the UK vaccine rollout remains pretty good.
Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
Why is the Indian variant much more widely seeded in the UK compared to the rest of the EU? Because we allowed in 20,000 travellers from India. Because we kept the borders open
That’s it. @DavidL is, unusually, talking nonsense
We KNEW this was a race between the virus and our vaccine. By keeping the border with India open, we decided to run the final leg of this race with a 100 pound backpack weighing us down, for absolutely no reason at all. You can’t even argue we did it out of human compassion - because we happily closed the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just not India
This is all on Boris and the government. Their decision. Their fuck-up. And monumental it is
I agree the apparent reason for keeping India off the red list was stupid, shocking even. Unfortunately that doesn't remove the need to deal with the circumstances of this ghastly disease as they are, whether those circumstances are due to bad luck or negligence.
Sure. But @DavidL was exonerating HMG. That will not do
I also reject the argument that ‘Indian travellers would have made it here anyway, using circuitous routes’
1. Some might, but vastly fewer = fewer seeds, thus buying us precious time
2. We could have been much stricter with those that did arrive from anywhere
3. Australia managed it. It can be done. We didn’t do it
A tiny question. Under Labour's actual rules do you have to be an MP to be leader of the party? I once tried to look it up in Labour's rules and gave up the will to live before finding anything that said you had to be.
Obvs it isn't going to happen but it is still an interesting question. Anyone know?
MP or in HoL as far as i know
Can’t be leader from the Lords. Can’t even lead the Tories from the Lords these days:*
There shall be a Leader of the Party (referred to in this Constitution as “the Leader”) drawn from those elected to the House of Commons, who shall be elected by the Party Members and Scottish Party Members in accordance with the provisions of Schedule 2.
*although in practice since they have only had four overall leaders in the Lords - Derby, Beaconsfield, Salisbury and Home - and three of them were consecutively leader in the nineteenth century, while the fourth was elected on the understanding he would disclaim his peerage, in practice I doubt if this does more than recognise reality.
So definitely over priced then as there are very few winnable Lab seats for KON to stand in.
Plus he would have to resign the mayoralty to stand.
I just do not see a pathway for him.
Not, bluntly, that I see any credible Labour leader at the moment. I know full well how much you despise Starmer but there is a reason why he’s leader.
Did Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern look stellar in March 2017?
A desperate Labour Party polling at historically low values and looking down the barrel of a terrible defeat in a forthcoming election took a huge gamble.
They had nothing left to lose.
Same with UK Labour. SKS is going to lose in 2024. He is nowhere near where he needs to be to win.
Labour might as well gamble now.
Whoever the new leader is, she is very, very unlikely to do worse than SKS. And she could be a star.
(Same goes for the LibDems, actually).
The only Labour potential leader who would do any better than Starmer is Burnham but he is not even an MP, most of those who are MPs would likely do even worse than Starmer is
Jacinda Ardern had one strategy before she became LotO, which was magazine covers.
She held a series of junior, non-roles in the Shadow Cabinet, but became famous for her flashy teeth and women-friendly photo opps (she targeted women’s lifestyle magazines).
She continued doing this even though it created an ongoing media story about her rising popularity versus her hard-working but plodding leader.
Said plodding leader eventually felt he had no option but to stand down, and the rest is history.
Jacinda did not actually win the following election. However she took power through coalition with a Faragiste party that used xenophobic tropes to appeal to elderly white racists.
I am in the unusual situation on here of saying something nice about Boris Johnson when everyone else is castigating him, but I think he is doing a good job of genial host at G7 in Cornwall.
In diplomatic terms the G7 is a missed opportunity for the UK, but the issues there go beyond event management. The really significant diplomatic shift, the biggest for some years, is Biden's move to establish a new American world order and to bring the remaining liberal democracies into it. His scope is ambitious. A Transatlantic settlement would have been music to the ears of a previous UK administration but the UK burnt the transatlantic bridge role with Brexit. The key prospect for Biden's pitch is the EU with the UK somewhat sidelined.
On Covid measures, I mostly agree with @DavidL. We have to deal with the virus situation as it is, and not as we might hope it to be. I do think the vaccine risk assessments are sound, from what I have seen, and the UK vaccine rollout remains pretty good.
Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
Why is the Indian variant much more widely seeded in the UK compared to the rest of the EU? Because we allowed in 20,000 travellers from India. Because we kept the borders open
That’s it. @DavidL is, unusually, talking nonsense
We KNEW this was a race between the virus and our vaccine. By keeping the border with India open, we decided to run the final leg of this race with a 100 pound backpack weighing us down, for absolutely no reason at all. You can’t even argue we did it out of human compassion - because we happily closed the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just not India
This is all on Boris and the government. Their decision. Their fuck-up. And monumental it is
Absolutely.
It was said at the time.
On here.
These government apologists are nuts. I know Cummings is disingenuous, but his portrayal of inner government as a largely chaotic function of Boris’s “supermarket trolley” instincts ran true.
It is likely Boris will still announce he will allow 50 wedding guests at receptions indoors, 100 outdoors from June 21st on Monday, just there will still not be unlimited wedding guests allowed
He has to! He can’t open up football and cricket and not Weddings!
True, though football and cricket stadiums are also still not allowed full capacity either
That means nothing, how often are they at capacity? Xxx thousands of people getting drunk together, dancing, singing their heads off and partying versus you can’t have your wedding will make a dangerous laughing stock of the government guidance.
I am in the unusual situation on here of saying something nice about Boris Johnson when everyone else is castigating him, but I think he is doing a good job of genial host at G7 in Cornwall.
In diplomatic terms the G7 is a missed opportunity for the UK, but the issues there go beyond event management. The really significant diplomatic shift, the biggest for some years, is Biden's move to establish a new American world order and to bring the remaining liberal democracies into it. His scope is ambitious. A Transatlantic settlement would have been music to the ears of a previous UK administration but the UK burnt the transatlantic bridge role with Brexit. The key prospect for Biden's pitch is the EU with the UK somewhat sidelined.
On Covid measures, I mostly agree with @DavidL. We have to deal with the virus situation as it is, and not as we might hope it to be. I do think the vaccine risk assessments are sound, from what I have seen, and the UK vaccine rollout remains pretty good.
Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
Why is the Indian variant much more widely seeded in the UK compared to the rest of the EU? Because we allowed in 20,000 travellers from India. Because we kept the borders open
That’s it. @DavidL is, unusually, talking nonsense
We KNEW this was a race between the virus and our vaccine. By keeping the border with India open, we decided to run the final leg of this race with a 100 pound backpack weighing us down, for absolutely no reason at all. You can’t even argue we did it out of human compassion - because we happily closed the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just not India
This is all on Boris and the government. Their decision. Their fuck-up. And monumental it is
Absolutely.
It was said at the time.
On here.
These government apologists are nuts. I know Cummings is disingenuous, but his portrayal of inner government as a largely chaotic function of Boris’s “supermarket trolley” instincts ran true.
That is right. But it's fuck up, not conspiracy.
Of course it’s a fuck up. This government very largely operates through fuck-ups.
I am in the unusual situation on here of saying something nice about Boris Johnson when everyone else is castigating him, but I think he is doing a good job of genial host at G7 in Cornwall.
In diplomatic terms the G7 is a missed opportunity for the UK, but the issues there go beyond event management. The really significant diplomatic shift, the biggest for some years, is Biden's move to establish a new American world order and to bring the remaining liberal democracies into it. His scope is ambitious. A Transatlantic settlement would have been music to the ears of a previous UK administration but the UK burnt the transatlantic bridge role with Brexit. The key prospect for Biden's pitch is the EU with the UK somewhat sidelined.
On Covid measures, I mostly agree with @DavidL. We have to deal with the virus situation as it is, and not as we might hope it to be. I do think the vaccine risk assessments are sound, from what I have seen, and the UK vaccine rollout remains pretty good.
Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
Why is the Indian variant much more widely seeded in the UK compared to the rest of the EU? Because we allowed in 20,000 travellers from India. Because we kept the borders open
That’s it. @DavidL is, unusually, talking nonsense
We KNEW this was a race between the virus and our vaccine. By keeping the border with India open, we decided to run the final leg of this race with a 100 pound backpack weighing us down, for absolutely no reason at all. You can’t even argue we did it out of human compassion - because we happily closed the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just not India
This is all on Boris and the government. Their decision. Their fuck-up. And monumental it is
Absolutely.
It was said at the time.
On here.
These government apologists are nuts. I know Cummings is disingenuous, but his portrayal of inner government as a largely chaotic function of Boris’s “supermarket trolley” instincts ran true.
I remember saying on here at the time, in these words: ‘if keeping the Indian border open means we blow the vaccine bonus, I will never vote Tory again’
And here we are. As you say, many of us on PB knew this was a calamitous mistake, with no justification. Yet they went ahead and did it. It is as absurd as it is tragic
Wasn't it also while you were whining about the weather and demanding more international travel be opened up ?
Probably. I was correct, nonetheless, about the Indian border
All of PB was correct about travel from India.
But some of us have been pointing out the dangers from the lack of border control from the start.
While others have been demanding more international travel when it suits them.
Perhaps if the airlines, airports and holiday obsessives had been less reckless during the last year then we'd have more international travel now.
I’ve been saying since February 2020 ‘close the fucking borders, Boris’
My whining about the weather - and God it was horrible - was not a desire to throw open flights to everywhere. It was just a lamentation about our fate: being stuck on a cold plaguey island with no means of escape
My list of current leaders I have a view on, from serious to lightweight;
1. Merkel 2. Biden 3. Morrison 4. Sturgeon 5. Macron 6. Putin 7. Drakeford 8. Trudeau 9. Von der Leyen 10. Ardern 11. Johnson
Biden can be serious but he is also lightweight and jovial.
I would put Morrison, Macron, Putin, Drakeford and Sturgeon and even Boris as more heavyweight than Biden.
However US Presidents tend to be more charismatic than heavyweight, in my lifetime only Bush Snr and Obama are what I would consider to be heavyweight US Presidents although Bill Clinton could be on occasion too
My list of current leaders I have a view on, from serious to lightweight;
1. Merkel 2. Biden 3. Morrison 4. Sturgeon 5. Macron 6. Putin 7. Drakeford 8. Trudeau 9. Von der Leyen 10. Ardern 11. Johnson
A ludicrous list. Running the devolved region of Wales is not comparable to ruling all of the Russias, or presiding over the global superpower that is USA
Next, ‘why Edwin Poots is a better party leader than Xi Jinping’
It’s a sunny Saturday and no better time for ludicrous lists.
Though - who would you rather have as your PM - Poots or Xi?
Just had interesting gossip from my wife. She was at hairdresser this morning and staff and customers were all talking about how good Theresa Mays speech was (this is in a very working class district of Liverpool were nobody would spit on a Tory if he was on fire). They were also all angry about the extended lockdown and those who had not had both jabs were adamant they would not have any or more because “it’s obviously just not worth it”. Staff and clientele. I found that fascinating from a bunch of people who are really not political at all.
I mean, I get the frustration, but it’s a really fucking stupid point of view. The entire reason we’re going “stay at Stage 3 for a couple or four more weeks or fully reopen” rather than “Oh shit, back to before March 8th” is because of all the vaccines. As well as the difference in hospitalisation chances between one dose and both doses.
My list of current leaders I have a view on, from serious to lightweight;
1. Merkel 2. Biden 3. Morrison 4. Sturgeon 5. Macron 6. Putin 7. Drakeford 8. Trudeau 9. Von der Leyen 10. Ardern 11. Johnson
Biden can be serious but he is also lightweight and jovial.
I would put Morrison, Macron, Putin, Drakeford and Sturgeon and even Boris as more heavyweight than Biden.
However US Presidents tend to be more charismatic than heavyweight, in my lifetime only Bush Snr and Obama are what I would consider to be heavyweight US Presidents although Bill Clinton could be on occasion too
My list of current leaders I have a view on, from serious to lightweight;
1. Merkel 2. Biden 3. Morrison 4. Sturgeon 5. Macron 6. Putin 7. Drakeford 8. Trudeau 9. Von der Leyen 10. Ardern 11. Johnson
A ludicrous list. Running the devolved region of Wales is not comparable to ruling all of the Russias, or presiding over the global superpower that is USA
Next, ‘why Edwin Poots is a better party leader than Xi Jinping’
It’s a sunny Saturday and no better time for ludicrous lists.
Though - who would you rather have as your PM - Poots or Xi?
I am in the unusual situation on here of saying something nice about Boris Johnson when everyone else is castigating him, but I think he is doing a good job of genial host at G7 in Cornwall.
In diplomatic terms the G7 is a missed opportunity for the UK, but the issues there go beyond event management. The really significant diplomatic shift, the biggest for some years, is Biden's move to establish a new American world order and to bring the remaining liberal democracies into it. His scope is ambitious. A Transatlantic settlement would have been music to the ears of a previous UK administration but the UK burnt the transatlantic bridge role with Brexit. The key prospect for Biden's pitch is the EU with the UK somewhat sidelined.
On Covid measures, I mostly agree with @DavidL. We have to deal with the virus situation as it is, and not as we might hope it to be. I do think the vaccine risk assessments are sound, from what I have seen, and the UK vaccine rollout remains pretty good.
Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
Why is the Indian variant much more widely seeded in the UK compared to the rest of the EU? Because we allowed in 20,000 travellers from India. Because we kept the borders open
That’s it. @DavidL is, unusually, talking nonsense
We KNEW this was a race between the virus and our vaccine. By keeping the border with India open, we decided to run the final leg of this race with a 100 pound backpack weighing us down, for absolutely no reason at all. You can’t even argue we did it out of human compassion - because we happily closed the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just not India
This is all on Boris and the government. Their decision. Their fuck-up. And monumental it is
Absolutely.
It was said at the time.
On here.
These government apologists are nuts. I know Cummings is disingenuous, but his portrayal of inner government as a largely chaotic function of Boris’s “supermarket trolley” instincts ran true.
That is right. But it's fuck up, not conspiracy.
Of course it’s a fuck up. This government very largely operates through fuck-ups.
It is likely Boris will still announce he will allow 50 wedding guests at receptions indoors, 100 outdoors from June 21st on Monday, just there will still not be unlimited wedding guests allowed
He has to! He can’t open up football and cricket and not Weddings!
True, though football and cricket stadiums are also still not allowed full capacity either
That means nothing, how often are they at capacity? Xxx thousands of people getting drunk together, dancing, singing their heads off and partying versus you can’t have your wedding will make a dangerous laughing stock of the government guidance.
They would normally be at full capacity for the big England matches in the Euros, they won't be allowed full capacity this tournament.
You can also still have a wedding, just not with 150, 200+ guests. Large weddings are likely a thing of the past for the foreseeable future anyway, I would imagine the current limit of 30 wedding guests will be increased to 50-100 from June 21st, the rest can either watch on livestream or attend a separate reception event later
Comments
I think he's an ok bet if you think Starmer will fight the next election and lose it badly.
And elections are based on the majority selecting who is best - otherwise why bother to have them? Why artificially limit your choice? Is Labour so overwhelmed with talent that it can afford to do so?
And on the argument that women handled the epidemic better than men, Chinese leaders in China, Taiwan and Singapore had fewer excess deaths than white or brown leaders. Should we only pick them?
Darts should be similar. I understand females do compete with occasional success there.
Its to massively reduce the risk that you might get (and also infect others with) a potentially fatal virus.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/15247405/footy-mad-brits-pack-pubs-fan-parks-euro-2020/
In comparison there are many male cricketers who are ~90mph and above, but that doesn't mean you even get near an international team. If there is no movement, as we see in T20, it can even be an advantage to the batsman.
I have to say Biden's project is ambitious in scope, covering areas such as taxation, climate change, security, health, and seems somewhat fleshed out. Despite him being dismissed as senile by many.
Germany, France etc have unified foreign policies. The problem with UK foreign policy right now is that it is incoherent.
Beckham’s manskirt thing never really took off did it?
That’s it. @DavidL is, unusually, talking nonsense
We KNEW this was a race between the virus and our vaccine. By keeping the border with India open, we decided to run the final leg of this race with a 100 pound backpack weighing us down, for absolutely no reason at all. You can’t even argue we did it out of human compassion - because we happily closed the border with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Just not India
This is all on Boris and the government. Their decision. Their fuck-up. And monumental it is
The UK govt declared it not to be a 'high-confequence infectious disease' on 19 Mar 2020 but paid for a 15 month advertising campaign which largely aimed to 'raise the fear level', i.e. to terrify people.
Ask ...
Where are the piles of bodies?
Are undertakers busier than usual?
What is the age- & population-adjusted all cause mortality rate? In UK in 2020, about the same as 2008. Less than this in most other European countries, incl Sweden. In UK in 2021, less than a normal recent year.
The major vaccine hub.
Cf: Trudeau, Ardern.
I agree, Burnham has said he will continue as Greater Manchester Mayor and not stand for Parliament again until the next general election but if Starmer loses it he would be a strong candidate to succeed him
It was said at the time.
On here.
These government apologists are nuts.
I know Cummings is disingenuous, but his portrayal of inner government as a largely chaotic function of Boris’s “supermarket trolley” instincts ran true.
Johnson, when challenged, tends to come out with a clever phrase, quite possibly scripted, and turn to his audience for applause, whether or not it answers the question, or even progresses the debate.
One reason for having a female opposition leader is that faced with an informed lady who is immune to his sex appeal Johnson very rapidly appears out of his depth, but can't be abusive. I have no great opinion of the academic or administrative talents of Frau Dr von der Leyen but at least she baffles Johnson.
However I have a theory that he mere fact he was an inept, vacillating, useless twat was probably important. Imagine if he’d been a charismatic dictator like Bolivar, O’Higgins or Napoleon. He could easily have made America into a corrupt military dictatorship and we’d speak of it in the same breath as Brazil or Argentina. Precisely because he wasn’t, that didn’t happen.
Which makes his later lionisation all the more ironic, of course.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/11/oxford-dons-boycotting-oriel-funded-imperialists/
And one of those is funded by a suspected murderer of 8 African porters...
Intellectually and managerially speaking.
She does great empathy, and has a world-class PR team.
And here we are. As you say, many of us on PB knew this was a calamitous mistake, with no justification. Yet they went ahead and did it. It is as absurd as it is tragic
Is that valid?
The only heavyweight leaders in the G7 at the moment are Macron and Merkel (and Draghi but he is just a technocrat Italian PM holding together a coalition of parties of right and left, Salvini could easily end up a populist PM after the next Italian elections)
A desperate Labour Party polling at historically low values and looking down the barrel of a terrible defeat in a forthcoming election took a huge gamble.
They had nothing left to lose.
Same with UK Labour. SKS is going to lose in 2024. He is nowhere near where he needs to be to win.
Labour might as well gamble now.
Whoever the new leader is, she is very, very unlikely to do worse than SKS. And she could be a star.
(Same goes for the LibDems, actually).
Approve: 52%
Disapprove: 23%
Neither: 21%
Approval is highest among those aged 25-34 (63%) and 65+ (59%).
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1403668477555232769?s=20
Still think we could lose this by an innings though...
1. Merkel
2. Biden
3. Morrison
4. Sturgeon
5. Macron
6. Putin
7. Drakeford
8. Trudeau
9. Von der Leyen
10. Ardern
11. Johnson
@andrew_lilico
·
12h
I presume it's been explained to Boris that if he delays 21-June, a decision in mid-July would be at the peak of the (rather large) Step 3 wave?
QTWTAIN???
Labour are the only major political party in this country to have never had a woman leader. The other parties have smashed this glass ceiling. The Tories twice. Labour are also the main party of the progressive left for whom gender equality is (supposedly) an article of faith. Our failure on this has become an embarrassment to us. We are therefore motivated to put it right.
What it means is that along with all the other qualities needed (next time) to make a good party leader - although let's face it you can't know until you see them in the job - the fact of being a woman is a positive and that of being a man a negative.
This doesn't mean gender is the only criteria. It doesn't mean a man is ruled out. Not at all. We saw that last time. The party would have liked a woman then but other factors outweighed this and we (although not me) voted for Starmer. It just means that gender is a factor - and it's a factor for valid reasons.
I would put Morrison, Macron, Putin, Drakeford and Sturgeon and even Boris as more heavyweight than Biden.
However US Presidents tend to be more charismatic than heavyweight, in my lifetime only Bush Snr and Obama are what I would consider to be heavyweight US Presidents although Bill Clinton could be on occasion too
Will keep saying it in the hope that senior Lib Dems read these threads.
1. Change your name to the Liberal Greens
2. Make Daisy co-leader
It is true he did later resume the rank of General in 1798 albeit more as an honorary appointment than anything practical.
But both were partly borne out of the frustrated realisation that he wasn’t really up to either role, which was also much more widespread at the time than American authors are willing to admit. At the end of his second term, for example, he was under constant attack for his errors and familial preferment, and while he had led the Continental Army to victory, there were plenty of rivals who commented it was in spite of his leadership rather than because of it. So it’s not as simple as ‘he resigned.’
Would be really fun to write a book from that point of view and watch all the Yanks’ heads explode...
Plus of course Ardern did not win the 2017 New Zealand election anyway, the Nationals won more votes and seats than her Labour Party did, she only became PM through a backroom deal with the Greens and NZ First the New Zealand version of UKIP.
Labour only won a majority last year
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9679291/Extinction-Rebellion-protestors-sea-demand-action-climate-change-G7-summit.html
other nations later/tomorrow
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1403672908090728449?s=20
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No good enough....and to think over 6 million doses are just sitting in a warehouse.
Next, ‘why Edwin Poots is a better party leader than Xi Jinping’
Nixon and Carter were both heavyweight, neither were great Presidents
The case rates in most popular holiday destinations are now equivalent (and in some cases lower) than in much of the UK.
A new variant is just as likely to spring into life from an infection in Shanklin as it is in Sagres.
Osime Brown was jailed for stealing a friend’s mobile phone, a crime that he and others say he did not commit. He was sentenced to five years for robbery, attempted robbery and perverting the course of justice.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/12/protesters-in-london-and-glasgow-call-for-halt-to-osime-brown-deportation
Washington’s generalship was not, on the whole, a significant factor in the American victory. It had its good points - his astute use of intelligence gathering and misinformation, for example - but pretty well any experienced officer would have done as well when it came to the fighting.
That being said, it should be noted his determination to keep the army in the field at all, when many of his critics were thinking of giving up, certainly was a significant factor. Indeed, again, his constant dithering where more aggressive generals might have attacked and seen their forces wiped out was probably more helpful to the Americans than his often rather feeble attempts at military strategy.
But some of us have been pointing out the dangers from the lack of border control from the start.
While others have been demanding more international travel when it suits them.
Perhaps if the airlines, airports and holiday obsessives had been less reckless during the last year then we'd have more international travel now.
The latter of which was massively to his credit, and also to the benefit of US democracy.
I also reject the argument that ‘Indian travellers would have made it here anyway, using circuitous routes’
1. Some might, but vastly fewer = fewer seeds, thus buying us precious time
2. We could have been much stricter with those that did arrive from anywhere
3. Australia managed it. It can be done. We didn’t do it
She held a series of junior, non-roles in the Shadow Cabinet, but became famous for her flashy teeth and women-friendly photo opps (she targeted women’s lifestyle magazines).
She continued doing this even though it created an ongoing media story about her rising popularity versus her hard-working but plodding leader.
Said plodding leader eventually felt he had no option but to stand down, and the rest is history.
Jacinda did not actually win the following election.
However she took power through coalition with a Faragiste party that used xenophobic tropes to appeal to elderly white racists.
This government very largely operates through fuck-ups.
https://twitter.com/sathnam/status/1403623422790443008?s=21
My whining about the weather - and God it was horrible - was not a desire to throw open flights to everywhere. It was just a lamentation about our fate: being stuck on a cold plaguey island with no means of escape
Though - who would you rather have as your PM - Poots or Xi?
The entire reason we’re going “stay at Stage 3 for a couple or four more weeks or fully reopen” rather than “Oh shit, back to before March 8th” is because of all the vaccines.
As well as the difference in hospitalisation chances between one dose and both doses.
You can also still have a wedding, just not with 150, 200+ guests. Large weddings are likely a thing of the past for the foreseeable future anyway, I would imagine the current limit of 30 wedding guests will be increased to 50-100 from June 21st, the rest can either watch on livestream or attend a separate reception event later