Always loved this but can somebody explain the "Tracy emin art" gag?
She was the lady with tent stitched with names of people she had slept with and presumably other modern art work. Given the jumper and old timey moustache together with that comment I assumed that character was meant to be 'befuddled middle aged man confused and angry at modern life' guy, who hates anything he hasn't seen before.
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Tony Blair was the greatest PM of the last thirty years. If a Labour member cannot agree with that, then they should resign from the party immediately.
So by only going back to 1991 are you saying you think Thatcher was a greater PM than Blair?
Owen Jones - There is nothing to recommend Starmer’s leadership. He is, as we have seen, unprincipled. He is not honest. Where Blair and Neil Kinnock were talented orators, Starmer lacks any charisma or warmth. He extolled “integrity” in the leadership election, but as his sacking in May of deputy leader Angela Rayner from her role as Labour chair underlined, he has none. That more Labour voters than not desire his resignation, that more than six in 10 people do not see him as a prime minister in waiting, and that he lost the Hartlepool byelection – a seat Labour retained even in the landslide defeat of 2019 – shows he is unelectable. Starmer is Labour’s version of Theresa May – who was originally lauded as a serious, public-spirited politician before being undone by her own cynicism and woodenness.
Let's be blunt -
Boris has a majority of 90 rather than 120 / 130 because Farage stole enough potential Boris Tory votes that Labour were lucky enough to win those seats.
Boris winning Hartlepool once Farage didn't stand is very understandable once you grasp the point above. And labour needs to before they have any chance of winning back any Red Wall seats.
I don't agree with this. Labour lost a lot of votes to the Lib Dems in 2019, and it's far from clear those votes will stay with the Lib Dems. In fact, the Lib Dems are polling lower and Labour higher than the 2019 result. As things stand today, some of those seats are heading back to Labour.
It is thinking like that that helped make me £4,300 at the C&A by-election. Please continue
Do you actually think what I said translates to thinking that Labour would have won C&A? You watch those seats that in 2019 were CON-LAB 1-2. That Lib Dem vote will go down.
I was basically saying that national polls can be misleading in specific by-elections where the LDs look like the main challenger.
Tony Blair was the greatest PM of the last thirty years. If a Labour member cannot agree with that, then they should resign from the party immediately.
So by only going back to 1991 are you saying you think Thatcher was a greater PM than Blair?
As good as - and I don't like much of what she did (not that I was alive for it)
Tony Blair was the greatest PM of the last thirty years. If a Labour member cannot agree with that, then they should resign from the party immediately.
So by only going back to 1991 are you saying you think Thatcher was a greater PM than Blair?
Obviously, the only 2 great PMs since Churchill were Attlee and Thatcher
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
Not a fan myself but I thought this frontpage headline was a bit harsh on Cressida:
Quite. I mean, she's the boss, and should carry the can. But she didn't appoint him. Nor did she personally take no action about his flashing. I'm sure she was as horrified as the rest of us. And would have had him locked up lickety split had she known what might happen. But she didn't.
It was the first line of the white worded headline that I was referring to..
Many of your posts on this concern the failings within the police force for what must have clearly been a bad apple the ranks were closed around? But is there not a problem in wider society outside the police, making this horrendous crime by man on woman far from a one of?
So what is our way forward cyclefree? You likely have every single man in the country other than Wayne Couzens upset and angry toward this most warped, most selfish and brutal man. What effective action can now be taken, or education and guidance taken on board?
If he is just a rotten apple in a barrel, a bad egg, do we regard it as important still for boys to be allowed to be boys, and girls should welcome what is hardcoded into their DNA too? As per the current and traditional teaching, To become a man a boy needs to know how to have a presence, how to have a power - and their courage must never be demeaned by anybody?
I have been blessed in my life to have had men in my family who behaved like gentlemen - in the proper sense of that word. They were not in any sense lesser men for behaving with decency and respect. And yet they had authority and courage and presence too and, if necessary, did fight. to defend country and family.
There are people who are evil but most of us have the capacity to be both bad and good and what we constantly have to do is to try and reinforce the good side of us and minimise the bad. I think often that bad side is praised or indulged or treated as a bit of a joke or boys being boys etc. And when that is the prevailing culture are we really surprised that some take this to a level which results in harm?
There is a pornification of our society which I find deeply troubling. Women are seen as objects to be used, as something to be screwed, in that revolting phrase, as if sex was like screwing a nail to a wall, something that is done repetitively and brutally to a woman, not with her. I will be told that some women like porn. And maybe some do.
But let me leave you with one thought. Maybe women say they like porn because that is what they think the man wants them to say, because that is how they get the man. They feel they need to say this. They are stroking his ego not expressing their own desires. Watch that Panorama programme about attacks on girls in school. Girls want to be loved and desired by boys so they will do stuff that boys ask. And where are boys getting their ideas from? There is a violence in porn which, to me, seems anathema to what really satisfying sex is like.
Perhaps I am hopelessly old-fashioned in saying this. But it needs saying. In the 12 months to August in London alone the police recorded 8,222 rapes. Whatever "respect" training we've been giving people clearly isn't working.
Just a quick post to say Thank you Cyclefree for the very thoughtful response tackling the question. By the number of likes, it was appreciated by many.
one of the questions you asked, is there Pornification, your word implies new direction, rather than thing older even than Susannah and the elders? Or is it our technological renaissance enables preexisting chauvinism and voyeurism, into a quite new dilemma?
[insert story of Suffragette leader reimagined by pre Raphaelite painter as a nude (as a gentlemen’s club commission) I know is out there but once again can’t find] and ask: Is the patriarchal really encoded into DNA, so only through the most acute nurture the resultant gentlemen triumphs over his inner arrogant sex pest?
Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. Is Berger True today? will it always be true? Is it Something to change? Are we (hopefully) living a zeitgeist that can awake to something previously ignored, and achieve change?
In answer to your last question I don't believe the patriarchal is encoded into the DNA. I don't consider my upbringing or that of any of my friends to have been particularly acute in terms of how we view women. My education in women was one of 'different but equal'. It is the same basic premise that underlies how we treat every section of society whether we differ in terms of gender, race or ability. But it was an education that was delivered by example not lecture. That seems to me to be the key in so many things. Not leading by example but teaching by example.
I'm always very careful about using the words "different but equal", as that is pretty much word-for-word, how the South African government used to describe apartheit.
They were, of course, lying, which you're not.
Also used by the US in Dredd Scott. I don't think the analogy works between race and sex, as there are two pretty clear separate sexes with very few exceptions, and clear, consistent biological differences. With race it's just a gradual variation of various features.
Though the phrase was from Plessy v Ferguson?
Actually that might not be the case, but I only know the names of like 3 Supreme Court cases (Brown v Board of Education, and Citizens United), so felt compelled to mention it.
Plessy v Ferguson (1896) legalized racial segregation by state law provided it was "separate but equal". That's what the doctrine was called, anyway - separate but equal, though was a legal fiction 99 times out of 100.
Dred Scott v Sanford (1857) ruled that Black Americans were NOT US citizens, but rather in the infamous words of Chief Justice Roger Taney "had no rights which the white man was bond to respect".
Always loved this but can somebody explain the "Tracy emin art" gag?
She was the lady with tent stitched with names of people she had slept with and presumably other modern art work. Given the jumper and old timey moustache together with that comment I assumed that character was meant to be 'befuddled middle aged man confused and angry at modern life' guy, who hates anything he hasn't seen before.
So the "it was all a lot better in my day" guy? Daily Mail reader stereotype?
That's what I thought tbh, I just didn't get the reference - but maybe I didn't need to as it turned out!
Many of your posts on this concern the failings within the police force for what must have clearly been a bad apple the ranks were closed around? But is there not a problem in wider society outside the police, making this horrendous crime by man on woman far from a one of?
So what is our way forward cyclefree? You likely have every single man in the country other than Wayne Couzens upset and angry toward this most warped, most selfish and brutal man. What effective action can now be taken, or education and guidance taken on board?
If he is just a rotten apple in a barrel, a bad egg, do we regard it as important still for boys to be allowed to be boys, and girls should welcome what is hardcoded into their DNA too? As per the current and traditional teaching, To become a man a boy needs to know how to have a presence, how to have a power - and their courage must never be demeaned by anybody?
I have been blessed in my life to have had men in my family who behaved like gentlemen - in the proper sense of that word. They were not in any sense lesser men for behaving with decency and respect. And yet they had authority and courage and presence too and, if necessary, did fight. to defend country and family.
There are people who are evil but most of us have the capacity to be both bad and good and what we constantly have to do is to try and reinforce the good side of us and minimise the bad. I think often that bad side is praised or indulged or treated as a bit of a joke or boys being boys etc. And when that is the prevailing culture are we really surprised that some take this to a level which results in harm?
There is a pornification of our society which I find deeply troubling. Women are seen as objects to be used, as something to be screwed, in that revolting phrase, as if sex was like screwing a nail to a wall, something that is done repetitively and brutally to a woman, not with her. I will be told that some women like porn. And maybe some do.
But let me leave you with one thought. Maybe women say they like porn because that is what they think the man wants them to say, because that is how they get the man. They feel they need to say this. They are stroking his ego not expressing their own desires. Watch that Panorama programme about attacks on girls in school. Girls want to be loved and desired by boys so they will do stuff that boys ask. And where are boys getting their ideas from? There is a violence in porn which, to me, seems anathema to what really satisfying sex is like.
Perhaps I am hopelessly old-fashioned in saying this. But it needs saying. In the 12 months to August in London alone the police recorded 8,222 rapes. Whatever "respect" training we've been giving people clearly isn't working.
Just a quick post to say Thank you Cyclefree for the very thoughtful response tackling the question. By the number of likes, it was appreciated by many.
one of the questions you asked, is there Pornification, your word implies new direction, rather than thing older even than Susannah and the elders? Or is it our technological renaissance enables preexisting chauvinism and voyeurism, into a quite new dilemma?
[insert story of Suffragette leader reimagined by pre Raphaelite painter as a nude (as a gentlemen’s club commission) I know is out there but once again can’t find] and ask: Is the patriarchal really encoded into DNA, so only through the most acute nurture the resultant gentlemen triumphs over his inner arrogant sex pest?
Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. Is Berger True today? will it always be true? Is it Something to change? Are we (hopefully) living a zeitgeist that can awake to something previously ignored, and achieve change?
In answer to your last question I don't believe the patriarchal is encoded into the DNA. I don't consider my upbringing or that of any of my friends to have been particularly acute in terms of how we view women. My education in women was one of 'different but equal'. It is the same basic premise that underlies how we treat every section of society whether we differ in terms of gender, race or ability. But it was an education that was delivered by example not lecture. That seems to me to be the key in so many things. Not leading by example but teaching by example.
I'm always very careful about using the words "different but equal", as that is pretty much word-for-word, how the South African government used to describe apartheit.
They were, of course, lying, which you're not.
Also used by the US in Dredd Scott. I don't think the analogy works between race and sex, as there are two pretty clear separate sexes with very few exceptions, and clear, consistent biological differences. With race it's just a gradual variation of various features.
Though the phrase was from Plessy v Ferguson?
Actually that might not be the case, but I only know the names of like 3 Supreme Court cases (Brown v Board of Education, and Citizens United), so felt compelled to mention it.
Plessy v Ferguson (1896) legalized racial segregation by state law provided it was "separate but equal". That's what the doctrine was called, anyway - separate but equal, though was a legal fiction 99 times out of 100.
Dred Scott v Sanford (1857) ruled that Black Americans were NOT US citizens, but rather in the infamous words of Chief Justice Roger Taney "had no rights which the white man was bond to respect".
Not a fan myself but I thought this frontpage headline was a bit harsh on Cressida:
Quite. I mean, she's the boss, and should carry the can. But she didn't appoint him. Nor did she personally take no action about his flashing. I'm sure she was as horrified as the rest of us. And would have had him locked up lickety split had she known what might happen. But she didn't.
It was the first line of the white worded headline that I was referring to..
Well indeed. She's incompetent, possibly serially so. But there is no evidence of malevolent intent, let alone evil. That was my point.
Owen Jones - There is nothing to recommend Starmer’s leadership. He is, as we have seen, unprincipled. He is not honest. Where Blair and Neil Kinnock were talented orators, Starmer lacks any charisma or warmth. He extolled “integrity” in the leadership election, but as his sacking in May of deputy leader Angela Rayner from her role as Labour chair underlined, he has none. That more Labour voters than not desire his resignation, that more than six in 10 people do not see him as a prime minister in waiting, and that he lost the Hartlepool byelection – a seat Labour retained even in the landslide defeat of 2019 – shows he is unelectable. Starmer is Labour’s version of Theresa May – who was originally lauded as a serious, public-spirited politician before being undone by her own cynicism and woodenness.
May did however win enough seats to form a government in 2017
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
Perhaps we should expect the next boring PM to be a Tory then. Hunt is pretty boring.
Not a fan myself but I thought this frontpage headline was a bit harsh on Cressida:
Quite. I mean, she's the boss, and should carry the can. But she didn't appoint him. Nor did she personally take no action about his flashing. I'm sure she was as horrified as the rest of us. And would have had him locked up lickety split had she known what might happen. But she didn't.
It was the first line of the white worded headline that I was referring to..
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
Owen Jones - There is nothing to recommend Starmer’s leadership. He is, as we have seen, unprincipled. He is not honest. Where Blair and Neil Kinnock were talented orators, Starmer lacks any charisma or warmth. He extolled “integrity” in the leadership election, but as his sacking in May of deputy leader Angela Rayner from her role as Labour chair underlined, he has none. That more Labour voters than not desire his resignation, that more than six in 10 people do not see him as a prime minister in waiting, and that he lost the Hartlepool byelection – a seat Labour retained even in the landslide defeat of 2019 – shows he is unelectable. Starmer is Labour’s version of Theresa May – who was originally lauded as a serious, public-spirited politician before being undone by her own cynicism and woodenness.
Let's be blunt -
Boris has a majority of 90 rather than 120 / 130 because Farage stole enough potential Boris Tory votes that Labour were lucky enough to win those seats.
Boris winning Hartlepool once Farage didn't stand is very understandable once you grasp the point above. And labour needs to before they have any chance of winning back any Red Wall seats.
I don't agree with this. Labour lost a lot of votes to the Lib Dems in 2019, and it's far from clear those votes will stay with the Lib Dems. In fact, the Lib Dems are polling lower and Labour higher than the 2019 result. As things stand today, some of those seats are heading back to Labour.
It is thinking like that that helped make me £4,300 at the C&A by-election. Please continue
Do you actually think what I said translates to thinking that Labour would have won C&A? You watch those seats that in 2019 were CON-LAB 1-2. Those Lib Dem percentages will go down.
Well the LibDem vote did fall in the Hartlepool and Batley byelections.
But so did Labour's.
And your 'LibDem voters are really Labour supporters who have got confused' is reminiscent of those who thought you could add half of the the LibDem 2010 vote to Labour's 2010 vote to predict Labour 's 2015 vote.
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
The voters don’t like boring
Not since Clem. And they had a pretty good excuse for craving boredom then.
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
Good point. Wonder who that favours on the Conservative side when they get exhausted by Boris? Not Truss, not really Sunak either. Raab?! (In the chess sense, would that be !? interesting, or ?! dubious?)
Going a bit further back, was Wilson-to-Heath a change to more boring? Before my time, so I don't know. More famously, there was Churchill-to-Attlee. On different levels, I imagine that both the PM and the LotO would be happy with that comparison.
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
Perhaps we should expect the next boring PM to be a Tory then. Hunt is pretty boring.
Things would have to be really desperate for the Conservative party to consider Hunt. Hunt unbellyfeel Brexit.
Well that's 5 police officers who should be gone via gross misconduct followed by the entire management chain above them.
Yes I know Ms Dick knows a lot of bodies are buried but her incompetence is the cause of this entire case.
There was a lot of this kind of rumour about shortly after he was arrested. Doubt this is the only incident. @Cyclefree's point too. He was able to wipe a police mobile phone just before arrest. Either that was spectacular foresight on his part, at precisely the correct moment, or...
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
The voters don’t like boring
Not since Clem. And they had a pretty good excuse for craving boredom then.
Major was more boring than the charismatic Kinnock and won, May was more boring than Corbyn and won most seats. Heath was more boring than Wilson in 1970 and won too.
So 3 times since Attlee the more boring candidate won. Charisma normally wins but not always.
However the last 3 boring election winners have been Tories, if Starmer wins and beats the more charismatic Boris next time he will be the first boring Labour leader to win a general election since the boring Attlee beat the more charismatic Churchill in 1950
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
Good point. Wonder who that favours on the Conservative side when they get exhausted by Boris? Not Truss, not really Sunak either. Raab?! (In the chess sense, would that be !? interesting, or ?! dubious?)
Going a bit further back, was Wilson-to-Heath a change to more boring? Before my time, so I don't know. More famously, there was Churchill-to-Attlee. On different levels, I imagine that both the PM and the LotO would be happy with that comparison.
Neither Wilson nor Heath were boring. Oxford's don at 21, with his pipe and homespun Yorkshire tales, versus a competitive yachtsman of international repute, decent musician and participant in the Normandy Landings mentioned in dispatches. Raab bores me, mind.
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
The voters don’t like boring
Not since Clem. And they had a pretty good excuse for craving boredom then.
Major was more boring than Kinnock and won, May was more boring than Corbyn and won most seats. Heath was more boring than Wilson in 1970 and won too.
So 3 times since Attlee the more boring candidate won. Charisma normally wins but not always.
However the last 3 boring election winners have been Tories, if Starmer wins and beats the more charismatic Boris next time he will be the first boring Labour leader to win a general election since Attlee beat the more charismatic Churchill in 1950
What's also a bit unusual is for a Charisma player to take over because of an internal party process, rather than at a General Election. Perhaps Eden-to-Macmillan was the nearest analogue to that?
Tried to get petrol this evening as we’ve been on reserves since Saturday and we'd like to use the car over the weekend.
Everywhere we tried had no fuel at all. Stories on social media of long queues earlier in the day when some was available.
This fuel story is far from over.
It seems to be a patchy picture. Telegraph running a story industry leaders with serious accusation Ministers are gaslighting the public. There’s a joke in there somewhere, I know, a cynical one.
But unfortunately, due to being unconvinced it’s not quite over yet, we have made the decision to cancel tomorrow nights ‘clap for petrol’. 😕
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
The voters don’t like boring
Not since Clem. And they had a pretty good excuse for craving boredom then.
Major was more boring than Kinnock and won, May was more boring than Corbyn and won most seats. Heath was more boring than Wilson in 1970 and won too.
So 3 times since Attlee the more boring candidate won. Charisma normally wins but not always.
However the last 3 boring election winners have been Tories, if Starmer wins and beats the more charismatic Boris next time he will be the first boring Labour leader to win a general election since Attlee beat the more charismatic Churchill in 1950
What's also a bit unusual is for a Charisma player to take over because of an internal party process, rather than at a General Election. Perhaps Eden-to-Macmillan was the nearest analogue to that?
I suppose Wilson and Blair. But both of those were very unusual and unfortunate circumstances.
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
The voters don’t like boring
Not since Clem. And they had a pretty good excuse for craving boredom then.
Major was more boring than Kinnock and won, May was more boring than Corbyn and won most seats. Heath was more boring than Wilson in 1970 and won too.
So 3 times since Attlee the more boring candidate won. Charisma normally wins but not always.
However the last 3 boring election winners have been Tories, if Starmer wins and beats the more charismatic Boris next time he will be the first boring Labour leader to win a general election since Attlee beat the more charismatic Churchill in 1950
What's also a bit unusual is for a Charisma player to take over because of an internal party process, rather than at a General Election. Perhaps Eden-to-Macmillan was the nearest analogue to that?
For the new leadership the last days of the Conference couldn't have gone better. It started with Long -Bailey walking into a long embrace with Corbyn. Like an establishing shot from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest it reminded anyone who might have forgotten what damage can be caused when a bunch of loonies take over the asylum.
Then there was the dragon with wild grey hair yelling 'traitor' from the floor. She was perfect. Whoever put her in the audience and tipped off the the TV cameras where to find her deserves a pay rise.
Then the hecklers being drowned out by the wild applause. Then the reassuring Sir Keir.... A human being with a brain leading Labour again .....
What rounded it off was the appearance of Pidcock tipped as Corbyn's successor just a year ago!! It was a coup but now it was over.
Owen Jones - There is nothing to recommend Starmer’s leadership. He is, as we have seen, unprincipled. He is not honest. Where Blair and Neil Kinnock were talented orators, Starmer lacks any charisma or warmth. He extolled “integrity” in the leadership election, but as his sacking in May of deputy leader Angela Rayner from her role as Labour chair underlined, he has none. That more Labour voters than not desire his resignation, that more than six in 10 people do not see him as a prime minister in waiting, and that he lost the Hartlepool byelection – a seat Labour retained even in the landslide defeat of 2019 – shows he is unelectable. Starmer is Labour’s version of Theresa May – who was originally lauded as a serious, public-spirited politician before being undone by her own cynicism and woodenness.
Let's be blunt -
Boris has a majority of 90 rather than 120 / 130 because Farage stole enough potential Boris Tory votes that Labour were lucky enough to win those seats.
Boris winning Hartlepool once Farage didn't stand is very understandable once you grasp the point above. And labour needs to before they have any chance of winning back any Red Wall seats.
I don't agree with this. Labour lost a lot of votes to the Lib Dems in 2019, and it's far from clear those votes will stay with the Lib Dems. In fact, the Lib Dems are polling lower and Labour higher than the 2019 result. As things stand today, some of those seats are heading back to Labour.
It is thinking like that that helped make me £4,300 at the C&A by-election. Please continue
Do you actually think what I said translates to thinking that Labour would have won C&A? You watch those seats that in 2019 were CON-LAB 1-2. Those Lib Dem percentages will go down.
Well the LibDem vote did fall in the Hartlepool and Batley byelections.
But so did Labour's.
And your 'LibDem voters are really Labour supporters who have got confused' is reminiscent of those who thought you could add half of the the LibDem 2010 vote to Labour's 2010 vote to predict Labour 's 2015 vote.
That's a very very long way away from what I'm saying. I'm predicting a chunk - no a majority - of the LAB-LIB switchers in 2019 will switch back. I personally voted LIB in 2019 and I certainly do not see myself as a Labour supporter, confused or otherwise. In some cases those switchers - if I am right - will start to turn blue red, and combined with other possible effects I've also predicted, I think more will go the same way.
Can you give us some examples ?
Outside of the unusual case of Kensington nowhere is immediately apparent to me.
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
Good point. Wonder who that favours on the Conservative side when they get exhausted by Boris? Not Truss, not really Sunak either. Raab?! (In the chess sense, would that be !? interesting, or ?! dubious?)
Going a bit further back, was Wilson-to-Heath a change to more boring? Before my time, so I don't know. More famously, there was Churchill-to-Attlee. On different levels, I imagine that both the PM and the LotO would be happy with that comparison.
Neither Wilson nor Heath were boring. Oxford's don at 21, with his pipe and homespun Yorkshire tales, versus a competitive yachtsman of international repute, decent musician and participant in the Normandy Landings mentioned in dispatches. Raab bores me, mind.
Heath had many talents but he was certainly not charismatic
Owen Jones - There is nothing to recommend Starmer’s leadership. He is, as we have seen, unprincipled. He is not honest. Where Blair and Neil Kinnock were talented orators, Starmer lacks any charisma or warmth. He extolled “integrity” in the leadership election, but as his sacking in May of deputy leader Angela Rayner from her role as Labour chair underlined, he has none. That more Labour voters than not desire his resignation, that more than six in 10 people do not see him as a prime minister in waiting, and that he lost the Hartlepool byelection – a seat Labour retained even in the landslide defeat of 2019 – shows he is unelectable. Starmer is Labour’s version of Theresa May – who was originally lauded as a serious, public-spirited politician before being undone by her own cynicism and woodenness.
Let's be blunt -
Boris has a majority of 90 rather than 120 / 130 because Farage stole enough potential Boris Tory votes that Labour were lucky enough to win those seats.
Boris winning Hartlepool once Farage didn't stand is very understandable once you grasp the point above. And labour needs to before they have any chance of winning back any Red Wall seats.
I don't agree with this. Labour lost a lot of votes to the Lib Dems in 2019, and it's far from clear those votes will stay with the Lib Dems. In fact, the Lib Dems are polling lower and Labour higher than the 2019 result. As things stand today, some of those seats are heading back to Labour.
It is thinking like that that helped make me £4,300 at the C&A by-election. Please continue
Do you actually think what I said translates to thinking that Labour would have won C&A? You watch those seats that in 2019 were CON-LAB 1-2. Those Lib Dem percentages will go down.
Well the LibDem vote did fall in the Hartlepool and Batley byelections.
But so did Labour's.
And your 'LibDem voters are really Labour supporters who have got confused' is reminiscent of those who thought you could add half of the the LibDem 2010 vote to Labour's 2010 vote to predict Labour 's 2015 vote.
That's a very very long way away from what I'm saying. I'm predicting a chunk - no a majority - of the LAB-LIB switchers in 2019 will switch back. I personally voted LIB in 2019 and I certainly do not see myself as a Labour supporter, confused or otherwise. In some cases those switchers - if I am right - will start to turn blue red, and combined with other possible effects I've also predicted, I think more will go the same way.
Can you give us some examples ?
Outside of the unusual case of Kensington nowhere is immediately apparent to me.
Wimbledon, Southport. Am struggling for any others off the top of my head. Therefore I'd tend to agree with you.
For the new leadership the last days of the Conference couldn't have gone better. It started with Long -Bailey walking into a long embrace with Corbyn. Like an establishing shot from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest it reminded anyone who might have forgotten what damage can be caused when a bunch of loonies take over the asylum.
Then there was the dragon with wild grey hair yelling 'traitor' from the floor. She was perfect. Whoever put her in the audience and tipped off the the TV cameras where to find her deserves a pay rise.
Then the hecklers being drowned out by the wild applause. Then the reassuring Sir Keir.... A human being with a brain leading Labour again .....
What rounded it off was the appearance of Pidcock tipped as Corbyn's successor just a year ago!! It was a coup but now it was over.
“Dragon” - being a bit misogynistic there, aren’t we Roger?
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
Good point. Wonder who that favours on the Conservative side when they get exhausted by Boris? Not Truss, not really Sunak either. Raab?! (In the chess sense, would that be !? interesting, or ?! dubious?)
Going a bit further back, was Wilson-to-Heath a change to more boring? Before my time, so I don't know. More famously, there was Churchill-to-Attlee. On different levels, I imagine that both the PM and the LotO would be happy with that comparison.
Neither Wilson nor Heath were boring. Oxford's don at 21, with his pipe and homespun Yorkshire tales, versus a competitive yachtsman of international repute, decent musician and participant in the Normandy Landings mentioned in dispatches. Raab bores me, mind.
Heath had many talents but he was certainly not charismatic
He certainly wasn't boring. As a kid, I remember him playing piano on Saturday night TV. And being rescued from the ocean in some yacht race. That ain't dull.
Tony Blair was the greatest PM of the last thirty years. If a Labour member cannot agree with that, then they should resign from the party immediately.
The only Labour leader to win a working majority for the party since Harold Wilson in 1966.
Owen Jones - There is nothing to recommend Starmer’s leadership. He is, as we have seen, unprincipled. He is not honest. Where Blair and Neil Kinnock were talented orators, Starmer lacks any charisma or warmth. He extolled “integrity” in the leadership election, but as his sacking in May of deputy leader Angela Rayner from her role as Labour chair underlined, he has none. That more Labour voters than not desire his resignation, that more than six in 10 people do not see him as a prime minister in waiting, and that he lost the Hartlepool byelection – a seat Labour retained even in the landslide defeat of 2019 – shows he is unelectable. Starmer is Labour’s version of Theresa May – who was originally lauded as a serious, public-spirited politician before being undone by her own cynicism and woodenness.
Let's be blunt -
Boris has a majority of 90 rather than 120 / 130 because Farage stole enough potential Boris Tory votes that Labour were lucky enough to win those seats.
Boris winning Hartlepool once Farage didn't stand is very understandable once you grasp the point above. And labour needs to before they have any chance of winning back any Red Wall seats.
I don't agree with this. Labour lost a lot of votes to the Lib Dems in 2019, and it's far from clear those votes will stay with the Lib Dems. In fact, the Lib Dems are polling lower and Labour higher than the 2019 result. As things stand today, some of those seats are heading back to Labour.
It is thinking like that that helped make me £4,300 at the C&A by-election. Please continue
Do you actually think what I said translates to thinking that Labour would have won C&A? You watch those seats that in 2019 were CON-LAB 1-2. Those Lib Dem percentages will go down.
Well the LibDem vote did fall in the Hartlepool and Batley byelections.
But so did Labour's.
And your 'LibDem voters are really Labour supporters who have got confused' is reminiscent of those who thought you could add half of the the LibDem 2010 vote to Labour's 2010 vote to predict Labour 's 2015 vote.
That's a very very long way away from what I'm saying. I'm predicting a chunk - no a majority - of the LAB-LIB switchers in 2019 will switch back. I personally voted LIB in 2019 and I certainly do not see myself as a Labour supporter, confused or otherwise. In some cases those switchers - if I am right - will start to turn blue red, and combined with other possible effects I've also predicted, I think more will go the same way.
Can you give us some examples ?
Outside of the unusual case of Kensington nowhere is immediately apparent to me.
Wimbledon, Southport. Am struggling for any others off the top of my head. Therefore I'd tend to agree with you.
In Wimbledon there was a big swing from Labour to LibDem - enough to almost give the LibDems victory. So any reversal of that helps the Conservatives.
Southport had a big swing from LibDem to Labour in 2019 (and 2017) so that doesn't apply either.
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
Good point. Wonder who that favours on the Conservative side when they get exhausted by Boris? Not Truss, not really Sunak either. Raab?! (In the chess sense, would that be !? interesting, or ?! dubious?)
Going a bit further back, was Wilson-to-Heath a change to more boring? Before my time, so I don't know. More famously, there was Churchill-to-Attlee. On different levels, I imagine that both the PM and the LotO would be happy with that comparison.
Neither Wilson nor Heath were boring. Oxford's don at 21, with his pipe and homespun Yorkshire tales, versus a competitive yachtsman of international repute, decent musician and participant in the Normandy Landings mentioned in dispatches. Raab bores me, mind.
Heath had many talents but he was certainly not charismatic
He certainly wasn't boring. As a kid, I remember him playing piano on Saturday night TV. And being rescued from the ocean in some yacht race. That ain't dull.
Yes, but he was often prickly, rude and arrogant in person, I understand. I never met him myself (though I saw him once, walking in Oxford. I thought he had died by then, so it was literally a case of feeling like I'd seen a ghost).
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
Good point. Wonder who that favours on the Conservative side when they get exhausted by Boris? Not Truss, not really Sunak either. Raab?! (In the chess sense, would that be !? interesting, or ?! dubious?)
Going a bit further back, was Wilson-to-Heath a change to more boring? Before my time, so I don't know. More famously, there was Churchill-to-Attlee. On different levels, I imagine that both the PM and the LotO would be happy with that comparison.
Neither Wilson nor Heath were boring. Oxford's don at 21, with his pipe and homespun Yorkshire tales, versus a competitive yachtsman of international repute, decent musician and participant in the Normandy Landings mentioned in dispatches. Raab bores me, mind.
Heath had many talents but he was certainly not charismatic
He certainly wasn't boring. As a kid, I remember him playing piano on Saturday night TV. And being rescued from the ocean in some yacht race. That ain't dull.
As I said he had many talents, you still would not want to sit next to him at dinner.
He could be famously rude and sulky and once was sat next to a female guest who bet him she could get him to speak to her at some point during the dinner, she lost
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
Good point. Wonder who that favours on the Conservative side when they get exhausted by Boris? Not Truss, not really Sunak either. Raab?! (In the chess sense, would that be !? interesting, or ?! dubious?)
Going a bit further back, was Wilson-to-Heath a change to more boring? Before my time, so I don't know. More famously, there was Churchill-to-Attlee. On different levels, I imagine that both the PM and the LotO would be happy with that comparison.
Neither Wilson nor Heath were boring. Oxford's don at 21, with his pipe and homespun Yorkshire tales, versus a competitive yachtsman of international repute, decent musician and participant in the Normandy Landings mentioned in dispatches. Raab bores me, mind.
Heath had many talents but he was certainly not charismatic
He certainly wasn't boring. As a kid, I remember him playing piano on Saturday night TV. And being rescued from the ocean in some yacht race. That ain't dull.
As I said he had many talents, you still would not want to sit next to him at dinner.
He could be famously rude and sulky and once was sat next to a female guest who bet him she could get him to speak to her at some point during the dinner, she lost
That sounds rather similar to the anecdote about President Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge. Supposedly a female guest said she had a bet that she could get more than two words out of him during the evening and he replied “You lose”.
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
The voters don’t like boring
Not since Clem. And they had a pretty good excuse for craving boredom then.
Major was more boring than the charismatic Kinnock and won, May was more boring than Corbyn and won most seats. Heath was more boring than Wilson in 1970 and won too.
So 3 times since Attlee the more boring candidate won. Charisma normally wins but not always.
However the last 3 boring election winners have been Tories, if Starmer wins and beats the more charismatic Boris next time he will be the first boring Labour leader to win a general election since the boring Attlee beat the more charismatic Churchill in 1950
"Charismatic" and "Kinnock"
Never thought I'd see those two words in the same sentence. His nickname, as I'm sure you remember was "the Welsh windbag".
Tried to get petrol this evening as we’ve been on reserves since Saturday and we'd like to use the car over the weekend.
Everywhere we tried had no fuel at all. Stories on social media of long queues earlier in the day when some was available.
This fuel story is far from over.
Might be worth ringing around first.
I rang around for my son who was flying on fumes. The woman in the kiosk in Sainsbury's Pontypridd told me she had no unleaded but did have 2 hours worth (?) of Super Unleaded. He duly filled up. I thought it made sense not to waste what petrol he had looking for more.
I could have had plenty of diesel today between Weston Super Mare and home (Cowbridge) but as I still had 2/3 of a tank on arrival home I could hang on until after the weekend, by which time I will be on the quarter mark.
Tried to get petrol this evening as we’ve been on reserves since Saturday and we'd like to use the car over the weekend.
Everywhere we tried had no fuel at all. Stories on social media of long queues earlier in the day when some was available.
This fuel story is far from over.
Might be worth ringing around first.
I rang around for my son who was flying on fumes. The woman in the kiosk in Sainsbury's Pontypridd told me she had no unleaded but did have 2 hours worth (?) of Super Unleaded. He duly filled up. I thought it made sense not to waste what petrol he had looking for more.
I could have had plenty of diesel today between Weston Super Mare and home (Cowbridge) but as I still had 2/3 of a tank on arrival home I could hang on until after the weekend, by which time I will be on the quarter mark.
Not a fan myself but I thought this frontpage headline was a bit harsh on Cressida:
Quite. I mean, she's the boss, and should carry the can. But she didn't appoint him. Nor did she personally take no action about his flashing. I'm sure she was as horrified as the rest of us. And would have had him locked up lickety split had she known what might happen. But she didn't.
Disagree. She's the boss. The buck stops with her.
I told you so on previous threads. He had mates. Who did not speak up. And who may have helped him. Or who he may have thought would help him.
He may be the only one who has raped and murdered in such a horrible way. But he is not the only Met officer who has been guilty of sexual misconduct and is still in the force.
There will be more to come out, I'm certain. Whether we'll be allowed to know it is another matter.
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
The voters don’t like boring
Not since Clem. And they had a pretty good excuse for craving boredom then.
Major was more boring than the charismatic Kinnock and won, May was more boring than Corbyn and won most seats. Heath was more boring than Wilson in 1970 and won too.
So 3 times since Attlee the more boring candidate won. Charisma normally wins but not always.
However the last 3 boring election winners have been Tories, if Starmer wins and beats the more charismatic Boris next time he will be the first boring Labour leader to win a general election since the boring Attlee beat the more charismatic Churchill in 1950
"Charismatic" and "Kinnock"
Never thought I'd see those two words in the same sentence. His nickname, as I'm sure you remember was "the Welsh windbag".
I love the John Major quote about him. He said that the reason Kinnock was so long-winded was that, having nothing to say, he had no idea when he'd finished saying it.
Owen Jones - There is nothing to recommend Starmer’s leadership. He is, as we have seen, unprincipled. He is not honest. Where Blair and Neil Kinnock were talented orators, Starmer lacks any charisma or warmth. He extolled “integrity” in the leadership election, but as his sacking in May of deputy leader Angela Rayner from her role as Labour chair underlined, he has none. That more Labour voters than not desire his resignation, that more than six in 10 people do not see him as a prime minister in waiting, and that he lost the Hartlepool byelection – a seat Labour retained even in the landslide defeat of 2019 – shows he is unelectable. Starmer is Labour’s version of Theresa May – who was originally lauded as a serious, public-spirited politician before being undone by her own cynicism and woodenness.
Let's be blunt -
Boris has a majority of 90 rather than 120 / 130 because Farage stole enough potential Boris Tory votes that Labour were lucky enough to win those seats.
Boris winning Hartlepool once Farage didn't stand is very understandable once you grasp the point above. And labour needs to before they have any chance of winning back any Red Wall seats.
I don't agree with this. Labour lost a lot of votes to the Lib Dems in 2019, and it's far from clear those votes will stay with the Lib Dems. In fact, the Lib Dems are polling lower and Labour higher than the 2019 result. As things stand today, some of those seats are heading back to Labour.
It is thinking like that that helped make me £4,300 at the C&A by-election. Please continue
Do you actually think what I said translates to thinking that Labour would have won C&A? You watch those seats that in 2019 were CON-LAB 1-2. Those Lib Dem percentages will go down.
Well the LibDem vote did fall in the Hartlepool and Batley byelections.
But so did Labour's.
And your 'LibDem voters are really Labour supporters who have got confused' is reminiscent of those who thought you could add half of the the LibDem 2010 vote to Labour's 2010 vote to predict Labour 's 2015 vote.
That's a very very long way away from what I'm saying. I'm predicting a chunk - no a majority - of the LAB-LIB switchers in 2019 will switch back. I personally voted LIB in 2019 and I certainly do not see myself as a Labour supporter, confused or otherwise. In some cases those switchers - if I am right - will start to turn blue red, and combined with other possible effects I've also predicted, I think more will go the same way.
Can you give us some examples ?
Outside of the unusual case of Kensington nowhere is immediately apparent to me.
Wimbledon, Southport. Am struggling for any others off the top of my head. Therefore I'd tend to agree with you.
In Wimbledon there was a big swing from Labour to LibDem - enough to almost give the LibDems victory. So any reversal of that helps the Conservatives.
Southport had a big swing from LibDem to Labour in 2019 (and 2017) so that doesn't apply either.
Still reckon Southport is a value bet to go Labour next time for the first time ever.
Corbyn's supporters have an absolute moral certainty, which, while no doubt comforting for them, is repellant for the wider electorate. They, and to some degree the wider Labour party, need an "are we the baddies?" moment.
I think the electorate has a degree of certainty for politicians who have just a touch of self doubt. Not a lot. Strength and certainty still count. But Boris has traded very well on his whole "blimey, am I really Prime Minister and saying this stuff?" schtick. By contrast, the messianic certainty of the left puts our back up.
It's a pretty fundamental challenge for Labour, because moral certainty is central to the party's self image. Blair managed to prick that bubble, without ever quite letting on that he'd done so, and was rewarded with three election victories. But Iraq gave the wider party licence to rediscover its self-belief and more than a decade in the political wilderness was the result.
Tories don't need the "are we the baddies?" moment. They've got huge sections of the media lined up to tell them that they are every day. Labour might actually suffer from the easy ride that their principles get.
Which likely means the LibDems will win there next May.
Increasing the chance of Labour losing control of Sunderland council.
Can someone please explain the LibDem appeal in Sunderland? Would seem to go completely counter to our 'post brexit' politics?!
Well. They've come from a long way sixth. In a ward that has had BNP, then UKIP, then Indy in second for some time. Was the LD Parliamentary candidate, so quite well known I would have thought. This, and not Labour, but not Tory vote, I surmise.
Always loved this but can somebody explain the "Tracy emin art" gag?
I don't know. It maybe depicting the fustiness of a QT audience or it may be a reference to where she used to store her money. I suspect it could be whatever you want it to be.
Which likely means the LibDems will win there next May.
Increasing the chance of Labour losing control of Sunderland council.
Can someone please explain the LibDem appeal in Sunderland? Would seem to go completely counter to our 'post brexit' politics?!
Well. They've come from a long way sixth. In a ward that has had BNP, then UKIP, then Indy in second for some time. Was the LD Parliamentary candidate, so quite well known I would have thought. This, and not Labour, but not Tory vote, I surmise.
And don't forget that 39% voted Remain in Sunderland. In an FPTP system, if a single party can harness that 39%, it can go a long way.
Not a fan myself but I thought this frontpage headline was a bit harsh on Cressida:
Quite. I mean, she's the boss, and should carry the can. But she didn't appoint him. Nor did she personally take no action about his flashing. I'm sure she was as horrified as the rest of us. And would have had him locked up lickety split had she known what might happen. But she didn't.
Disagree. She's the boss. The buck stops with her.
I told you so on previous threads. He had mates. Who did not speak up. And who may have helped him. Or who he may have thought would help him.
He may be the only one who has raped and murdered in such a horrible way. But he is not the only Met officer who has been guilty of sexual misconduct and is still in the force.
There will be more to come out, I'm certain. Whether we'll be allowed to know it is another matter.
One thing that has come out is that when he was 23 he had a relationship with an under age girl, aged 14. Great. Just great.
As well as a dating profile claiming he was single even after he was married.
Corbyn's supporters have an absolute moral certainty, which, while no doubt comforting for them, is repellant for the wider electorate. They, and to some degree the wider Labour party, need an "are we the baddies?" moment.
I think the electorate has a degree of certainty for politicians who have just a touch of self doubt. Not a lot. Strength and certainty still count. But Boris has traded very well on his whole "blimey, am I really Prime Minister and saying this stuff?" schtick. By contrast, the messianic certainty of the left puts our back up.
It's a pretty fundamental challenge for Labour, because moral certainty is central to the party's self image. Blair managed to prick that bubble, without ever quite letting on that he'd done so, and was rewarded with three election victories. But Iraq gave the wider party licence to rediscover its self-belief and more than a decade in the political wilderness was the result.
Tories don't need the "are we the baddies?" moment. They've got huge sections of the media lined up to tell them that they are every day. Labour might actually suffer from the easy ride that their principles get.
Huge sections of the media tell the Tories they are baddies every day? Which ones? Where? Oh. You mean the Guardian. Not Mail, Express, Sun, Telegraph. They are but puny small fry. Doubtless you're one who thinks the BBC is lefty. Despite the known affiliations of many of its political staff. Also. You think Iraq solidified Labour's moral certainty? I seem to remember it passing on Tory votes, to the cheers of the right-wing press. It shattered New Labour unity and self-confidence. Still hasn't been repaired. Also. Was anything ever more morally certain of itself than Brexit? So bloody certain that nothing, but nothing, can possibly be even the slightest downside. Nor even a result of it. Everything that goes wrong is a total coincidence. Or the fault of the malevolent EU.
An apolitical enquiry - a chap on the local bulletin board claims a surgery in Guildford is now giving boosters to anyone of any age with two vaccinations who turns up and wants a third one. I thought the powers that be were still pondering whether to start that?
He's talking mince. Six months after the second dose is a hard limit for a start. So only folk fully vaccinated in March. And only top categories. See here.
An apolitical enquiry - a chap on the local bulletin board claims a surgery in Guildford is now giving boosters to anyone of any age with two vaccinations who turns up and wants a third one. I thought the powers that be were still pondering whether to start that?
He's talking mince. Six months after the second dose is a hard limit for a start. So only folk fully vaccinated in March. And only top categories. See here.
Not a fan myself but I thought this frontpage headline was a bit harsh on Cressida:
Quite. I mean, she's the boss, and should carry the can. But she didn't appoint him. Nor did she personally take no action about his flashing. I'm sure she was as horrified as the rest of us. And would have had him locked up lickety split had she known what might happen. But she didn't.
Disagree. She's the boss. The buck stops with her.
I told you so on previous threads. He had mates. Who did not speak up. And who may have helped him. Or who he may have thought would help him.
He may be the only one who has raped and murdered in such a horrible way. But he is not the only Met officer who has been guilty of sexual misconduct and is still in the force.
There will be more to come out, I'm certain. Whether we'll be allowed to know it is another matter.
One thing that has come out is that when he was 23 he had a relationship with an under age girl, aged 14. Great. Just great.
As well as a dating profile claiming he was single even after he was married.
Re the dating profile; surely it's having one after one is married (unless one has a very specific agreement with one's partner) that is the issue?
An apolitical enquiry - a chap on the local bulletin board claims a surgery in Guildford is now giving boosters to anyone of any age with two vaccinations who turns up and wants a third one. I thought the powers that be were still pondering whether to start that?
He's talking mince. Six months after the second dose is a hard limit for a start. So only folk fully vaccinated in March. And only top categories. See here.
"Were we always so prone to all this panic, doom and gloom? 70s parents calmed us with a sense of progress. It’s when the world seems to be pedaling backwards that despair sets in JEMIMA LEWIS" (£)
Are you and OJ not factionalists who didn't care that JC was a useless nonentity who would never be PM?
I wouldnt regard myself as a factionalist i voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020 ie the one who said in 2016 she wanted to break Corbyn as a man
There were 3 poor candidates and Nandy was better than the 2 useless nonentities against her.
Corbyns 40% in 2017 will not be matched by this Labour Leader.
My preferred leader would be Andy Burnham he needs a seat quickly.
Try defending SKS without using yeah but Corbyn he has gone and aint coming back.
Genuine winners and contenders like Burnham wouldn't want to lead the party in it's current state as it's still unelectable.
I don't think you really understand the extent of the disaster Labour suffered in 2019... Like they had their worst result (for seats) since 1935 and as @eek says the only reason it wasn't the worst result since 1918 is because of Farage.
Jewish people were genuinely fearful for their futures in this country if Labour had won that election.. that's how bad it was.
Labour won't just bounce back from that in a year or two... By far the best course of action is what they're currently doing with Starmer starting the long hard graft to get Labour back in business again, followed by someone that might actually be able to win an election. I do think 2028/2029 may be winnable for Labour under someone like Burnham, but at the moment it's too soon.
Of course if Labour elects another calamity like Rayner after SKS they could find themselves going into an extinction level election defeat...
Would be going some to have been a worse result than 1931 when Labour were reduced to 50 MPs and all but one of the shadow cabinet (including the leader and deputy leader) lost their seats.
Labour's biggest problem is not factionalism, but rather an absence of positive vision for the future.
I listened to Starmers speech yesterday and am still nome the wiser. Yes he thinks the NHS is a good thing, he thinks technology important and education too. He likes Britain being united and feels Patriotic. No doubt he is in favour of apple pie too, but I really didn't get much feel for what a Starmer government would actually do.
Starmer's middle name is Methodical. He has a plan and he's sticking to it. Year 1: satisfy people that you're sensible. Year 2: (now) set out some broad principles. Year 3: start putting forward detailed policies. Year 4: win. I'm not sure it's a winning formula either, but it's definitely the plan.
Yes, I understand not wanting to go with detailed policies just yet, but I didn't really get the vision thing.
It is quite a risky strategy to just hope Johnson falls into a heffalump trap of his own making.
True, though this is Bozza we're talking about.
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better. So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Noticeable that the three most recent changes to Boring didn't happen at election time. Major, Brown, May.
Good point. Wonder who that favours on the Conservative side when they get exhausted by Boris? Not Truss, not really Sunak either. Raab?! (In the chess sense, would that be !? interesting, or ?! dubious?)
Going a bit further back, was Wilson-to-Heath a change to more boring? Before my time, so I don't know. More famously, there was Churchill-to-Attlee. On different levels, I imagine that both the PM and the LotO would be happy with that comparison.
Neither Wilson nor Heath were boring. Oxford's don at 21, with his pipe and homespun Yorkshire tales, versus a competitive yachtsman of international repute, decent musician and participant in the Normandy Landings mentioned in dispatches. Raab bores me, mind.
Heath had many talents but he was certainly not charismatic
He certainly wasn't boring. As a kid, I remember him playing piano on Saturday night TV. And being rescued from the ocean in some yacht race. That ain't dull.
As I said he had many talents, you still would not want to sit next to him at dinner.
He could be famously rude and sulky and once was sat next to a female guest who bet him she could get him to speak to her at some point during the dinner, she lost
An apolitical enquiry - a chap on the local bulletin board claims a surgery in Guildford is now giving boosters to anyone of any age with two vaccinations who turns up and wants a third one. I thought the powers that be were still pondering whether to start that?
He's talking mince. Six months after the second dose is a hard limit for a start. So only folk fully vaccinated in March. And only top categories. See here.
Are you and OJ not factionalists who didn't care that JC was a useless nonentity who would never be PM?
I wouldnt regard myself as a factionalist i voted for the most right wing Candidate in 2020 ie the one who said in 2016 she wanted to break Corbyn as a man
There were 3 poor candidates and Nandy was better than the 2 useless nonentities against her.
Corbyns 40% in 2017 will not be matched by this Labour Leader.
My preferred leader would be Andy Burnham he needs a seat quickly.
Try defending SKS without using yeah but Corbyn he has gone and aint coming back.
Genuine winners and contenders like Burnham wouldn't want to lead the party in it's current state as it's still unelectable.
I don't think you really understand the extent of the disaster Labour suffered in 2019... Like they had their worst result (for seats) since 1935 and as @eek says the only reason it wasn't the worst result since 1918 is because of Farage.
Jewish people were genuinely fearful for their futures in this country if Labour had won that election.. that's how bad it was.
Labour won't just bounce back from that in a year or two... By far the best course of action is what they're currently doing with Starmer starting the long hard graft to get Labour back in business again, followed by someone that might actually be able to win an election. I do think 2028/2029 may be winnable for Labour under someone like Burnham, but at the moment it's too soon.
Of course if Labour elects another calamity like Rayner after SKS they could find themselves going into an extinction level election defeat...
Would be going some to have been a worse result than 1931 when Labour were reduced to 50 MPs and all but one of the shadow cabinet (including the leader and deputy leader) lost their seats.
Comments
More seriously- and this is coming from someone on the centre-right who just can't vote for the current bunch of shysters- I can sort of see where I think Starmer would like to go. To adapt another famous slogan- Make Britain Boring Again. No Huge Schemes, just lots of incremental changes that will make people's lives better.
So Starmer won't reverse you-know-what, but he will acknowledge reality and undo the most toxic and harmful aspects of it in the framework of the current agreement with you-know-who. And I'm sort of OK with that, because once that process starts, I reckon the step-by-step logic will get the UK to the OK place.
I can sort of see it working, since most new PMs are a reaction against their predecessor. But what I don't see is how you campaign for a change to Boring. Even if it's what the country needs.
As for how long the process takes, it depends how you read the power dynamics between government and opposition. One theory is that parties stay in opposition until they've learned their lesson and then they return to power. The other is that what an opposition does is largely irrelevant. If a government has done a basically good job, it will get re-elected no matter how brilliant the alternative is.
The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but Cameron was floundering pretty badly against Blair then Brown until the 2008 crash came along. Had a Blair-alike been Labour leader in 1987, would that have changed the result much?
The moral, once again, is that being in Opposition sucks because you have no power over anything. It's to be avoided at almost all costs.
Major, Brown, May.
Dred Scott v Sanford (1857) ruled that Black Americans were NOT US citizens, but rather in the infamous words of Chief Justice Roger Taney "had no rights which the white man was bond to respect".
That's what I thought tbh, I just didn't get the reference - but maybe I didn't need to as it turned out!
That was my point.
https://twitter.com/TmorrowsPapers/status/1443691672001564675?s=19
EDIT - I see what you did there
But so did Labour's.
And your 'LibDem voters are really Labour supporters who have got confused' is reminiscent of those who thought you could add half of the the LibDem 2010 vote to Labour's 2010 vote to predict Labour 's 2015 vote.
And they had a pretty good excuse for craving boredom then.
Yes I know Ms Dick knows a lot of bodies are buried but her incompetence is the cause of this entire case.
Going a bit further back, was Wilson-to-Heath a change to more boring? Before my time, so I don't know. More famously, there was Churchill-to-Attlee. On different levels, I imagine that both the PM and the LotO would be happy with that comparison.
@Cyclefree's point too. He was able to wipe a police mobile phone just before arrest.
Either that was spectacular foresight on his part, at precisely the correct moment, or...
So 3 times since Attlee the more boring candidate won. Charisma normally wins but not always.
However the last 3 boring election winners have been Tories, if Starmer wins and beats the more charismatic Boris next time he will be the first boring Labour leader to win a general election since the boring Attlee beat the more charismatic Churchill in 1950
Everywhere we tried had no fuel at all. Stories on social media of long queues earlier in the day when some was available.
This fuel story is far from over.
Raab bores me, mind.
But unfortunately, due to being unconvinced it’s not quite over yet, we have made the decision to cancel tomorrow nights ‘clap for petrol’. 😕
Then there was the dragon with wild grey hair yelling 'traitor' from the floor. She was perfect. Whoever put her in the audience and tipped off the the TV cameras where to find her deserves a pay rise.
Then the hecklers being drowned out by the wild applause. Then the reassuring Sir Keir.... A human being with a brain leading Labour again .....
What rounded it off was the appearance of Pidcock tipped as Corbyn's successor just a year ago!! It was a coup but now it was over.
Outside of the unusual case of Kensington nowhere is immediately apparent to me.
Am struggling for any others off the top of my head.
Therefore I'd tend to agree with you.
Southport had a big swing from LibDem to Labour in 2019 (and 2017) so that doesn't apply either.
Reports Labour won in Sunderland by 27.
He could be famously rude and sulky and once was sat next to a female guest who bet him she could get him to speak to her at some point during the dinner, she lost
Increasing the chance of Labour losing control of Sunderland council.
Never thought I'd see those two words in the same sentence. His nickname, as I'm sure you remember was "the Welsh windbag".
Ind did not contest seat.
I rang around for my son who was flying on fumes. The woman in the kiosk in Sainsbury's Pontypridd told me she had no unleaded but did have 2 hours worth (?) of Super Unleaded. He duly filled up. I thought it made sense not to waste what petrol he had looking for more.
I could have had plenty of diesel today between Weston Super Mare and home (Cowbridge) but as I still had 2/3 of a tank on arrival home I could hang on until after the weekend, by which time I will be on the quarter mark.
He may be the only one who has raped and murdered in such a horrible way. But he is not the only Met officer who has been guilty of sexual misconduct and is still in the force.
There will be more to come out, I'm certain. Whether we'll be allowed to know it is another matter.
I think the electorate has a degree of certainty for politicians who have just a touch of self doubt. Not a lot. Strength and certainty still count. But Boris has traded very well on his whole "blimey, am I really Prime Minister and saying this stuff?" schtick. By contrast, the messianic certainty of the left puts our back up.
It's a pretty fundamental challenge for Labour, because moral certainty is central to the party's self image. Blair managed to prick that bubble, without ever quite letting on that he'd done so, and was rewarded with three election victories. But Iraq gave the wider party licence to rediscover its self-belief and more than a decade in the political wilderness was the result.
Tories don't need the "are we the baddies?" moment. They've got huge sections of the media lined up to tell them that they are every day. Labour might actually suffer from the easy ride that their principles get.
Was the LD Parliamentary candidate, so quite well known I would have thought. This, and not Labour, but not Tory vote, I surmise.
And as we are talking Tracy Emin... to bed!
Easier said than done, of course.
As well as a dating profile claiming he was single even after he was married.
Which ones? Where?
Oh. You mean the Guardian.
Not Mail, Express, Sun, Telegraph. They are but puny small fry. Doubtless you're one who thinks the BBC is lefty. Despite the known affiliations of many of its political staff.
Also. You think Iraq solidified Labour's moral certainty? I seem to remember it passing on Tory votes, to the cheers of the right-wing press. It shattered New Labour unity and self-confidence. Still hasn't been repaired.
Also. Was anything ever more morally certain of itself than Brexit? So bloody certain that nothing, but nothing, can possibly be even the slightest downside. Nor even a result of it. Everything that goes wrong is a total coincidence. Or the fault of the malevolent EU.
It should read: My wife and I have been called in for our booster on 11 October.
In your original, the definite article is redundant and the ordinal indicator obsolete. This crops up a lot, not only on PB.
(P.S. good luck for your booster!)
70s parents calmed us with a sense of progress. It’s when the world seems to be pedaling backwards that despair sets in
JEMIMA LEWIS" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/30/always-prone-panic-doom-gloom/
My wife and I have been called in for our booster on October 11th with the number at the end
Otherwise I end up putting the the in before the number.