After being reminded what TB helped N Ireland achieve I am left even more bewildered why almost no one in today's Labour will give him the time of day.
It was and is a towering political and diplomatic achievement that will long feature in the history books.
Meanwhile, Owen Jones and Aaron whats his name and all the others, fart crap on social media having achieved precisely nothing. *
* edit: other than a Tory 80 seat win of course.
I . R .A. Q
Labour folk generally aren't keen on war criminals
Apart from KL and his obsession with Adolph
Would the outcome in Iraq have been any different if TB hadn't signed up with GW Bush?
I seem to recall one of Bush's ministers/generals saying it didn't matter if UK stays out as it would make no material difference.
After being reminded what TB helped N Ireland achieve I am left even more bewildered why almost no one in today's Labour will give him the time of day.
It was and is a towering political and diplomatic achievement that will long feature in the history books.
Meanwhile, Owen Jones and Aaron whats his name and all the others, fart crap on social media having achieved precisely nothing. *
* edit: other than a Tory 80 seat win of course.
I . R .A. Q
Labour folk generally aren't keen on war criminals
Apart from KL and his obsession with Adolph
All three men to have won general elections for Labour from 1945 onwards are war criminals. It's par for the course.
Attlee's role in the partition of India, Blair in Iraq, and Harold Wilson’s Labour Party government that won power in 1964 armed Iraq’s regime in the mid-1960s as it massacred Kurds and set the process in motion to illegally evict the Chagos Islanders in the Indian Ocean. An even less-known policy was the Wilson government’s support for, and side-role in facilitating, the Indonesian government’s massacre of up to a million people in 1965.
I don't think she leaves. She wouldn't get elected as a Republican in Arizona, but I think she knows she's in a Purple State, and that the electoral geography might not be as favourable to a generic Democrat in 2024, and she therefore is going to be extremely moderate.
It's almost certainly the correct choice.
Except she is losing support with Independents. This seems like a bad thing for her re-election chances.
Sure she's gaining with Republicans but how many of them will vote for her instead of the Trumpster come election day when Trump is on the ballot?
Lets see. I think she will underperform both the Dem nominee (Probably Biden) and the generic house vote in Az
I think she is genuinely at risk of being primaried at the moment.
I think there is a significant chunk of Dem activists who thought they were getting former Green party member, most Left Wing member of the Arizona Statehouse, Sinema elected to the Senate. Not, voted with Trump more often than Joe Manchin, Sinema.
The "moderate" stuff that always gets blocked is never anything the gods, guns and gays Trumpers particularly care about but infrastructure spending that polls well across the spectrum but which the Dems will get it in the neck for if it doesn't pass
Arizona is one of the most fiscally conservative and libertarian states in the USA, it even voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 when LBJ won a landslide nationally and of course it voted for McCain and Romney over Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Biden only won Arizona with socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters who voted Libertarian in 2016 when Trump beat Hillary in the state but for him in 2020 solely to remove Trump. Sinema knows her state. It is not infrastructure spending she is blocking anyway but pork spending and big government expansion beyond that
Strange then that Mark Kelly who is more a mainstream Democrat is far outpolling Sinema then.
Re Aslan’s point, I haven’t actually seen any polling on Sinema, not on 538 anyway.
She won't get past the primary. It's one thing to antagonize the left but she is actively thwarting the party platform and her president. If the Build Back Better plan fails and Biden doesn't get reelected, every Democrat will put it squarely on her and Manchin. She will go off and get some pharma lobbyist job.
My favourite Stones related video is this one of their one-off backing singer Merry Clayton (so named because she was born on Christmas Day) going back to the Gimme Shelter studio (and some chat from Mick about it).
One thing I don’t think has been pondered, despite biggest leads for Tories, it was still only yougov who showed Labour lead, so whatever they are doing differently it’s also the most susceptible to changing wildly in a short space of time? 🤔
After being reminded what TB helped N Ireland achieve I am left even more bewildered why almost no one in today's Labour will give him the time of day.
It was and is a towering political and diplomatic achievement that will long feature in the history books.
Meanwhile, Owen Jones and Aaron whats his name and all the others, fart crap on social media having achieved precisely nothing. *
* edit: other than a Tory 80 seat win of course.
I . R .A. Q
Labour folk generally aren't keen on war criminals
Apart from KL and his obsession with Adolph
Would the outcome in Iraq have been any different if TB hadn't signed up with GW Bush?
I seem to recall one of Bush's ministers/generals saying it didn't matter if UK stays out as it would make no material difference.
Blairs legacy and standing in Labour would have been totally different.
Labour have zero chance of winning Old Bexley and Sidcup.
Bexley was 63% Leave, Chesham and Amersham was Remain by contrast.
There are no HS2 or Nimby issues in Bexley, it is not an area with much greenbelt or with much new housing proposed compared to the Home Counties.
The Tories will romp home, the main question will be whether Labour, ReformUK or the LDs come second. In 2015 UKIP were just 0.8% behind Labour for second place in the seat
I think it could be a very close race for 2nd place between Lab, LD and Reform with the Greens possibly also doing quite well by taking votes from Labour.
I don't think she leaves. She wouldn't get elected as a Republican in Arizona, but I think she knows she's in a Purple State, and that the electoral geography might not be as favourable to a generic Democrat in 2024, and she therefore is going to be extremely moderate.
It's almost certainly the correct choice.
Except she is losing support with Independents. This seems like a bad thing for her re-election chances.
Sure she's gaining with Republicans but how many of them will vote for her instead of the Trumpster come election day when Trump is on the ballot?
Lets see. I think she will underperform both the Dem nominee (Probably Biden) and the generic house vote in Az
I think she is genuinely at risk of being primaried at the moment.
I think there is a significant chunk of Dem activists who thought they were getting former Green party member, most Left Wing member of the Arizona Statehouse, Sinema elected to the Senate. Not, voted with Trump more often than Joe Manchin, Sinema.
The "moderate" stuff that always gets blocked is never anything the gods, guns and gays Trumpers particularly care about but infrastructure spending that polls well across the spectrum but which the Dems will get it in the neck for if it doesn't pass
Arizona is one of the most fiscally conservative and libertarian states in the USA, it even voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 when LBJ won a landslide nationally and of course it voted for McCain and Romney over Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Biden only won Arizona with socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters who voted Libertarian in 2016 when Trump beat Hillary in the state but for him in 2020 solely to remove Trump. Sinema knows her state. It is not infrastructure spending she is blocking anyway but pork spending and big government expansion beyond that
Strange then that Mark Kelly who is more a mainstream Democrat is far outpolling Sinema then.
Re Aslan’s point, I haven’t actually seen any polling on Sinema, not on 538 anyway.
She won't get past the primary. It's one thing to antagonize the left but she is actively thwarting the party platform and her president. If the Build Back Better plan fails and Biden doesn't get reelected, every Democrat will put it squarely on her and Manchin. She will go off and get some pharma lobbyist job.
I don’t think she cares. Her stance is even more remarkable because she couldn’t even use the threat of resignation as AZ is one of the states where the Governor (a Republican) has to pick a candidate from the same party as was elected.
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
We all hate each other, Stuart. We fight for the soul of our party rather than for our party to win. We have principles, see. Principles.
I don't think she leaves. She wouldn't get elected as a Republican in Arizona, but I think she knows she's in a Purple State, and that the electoral geography might not be as favourable to a generic Democrat in 2024, and she therefore is going to be extremely moderate.
It's almost certainly the correct choice.
Except she is losing support with Independents. This seems like a bad thing for her re-election chances.
Sure she's gaining with Republicans but how many of them will vote for her instead of the Trumpster come election day when Trump is on the ballot?
Lets see. I think she will underperform both the Dem nominee (Probably Biden) and the generic house vote in Az
I think she is genuinely at risk of being primaried at the moment.
I think there is a significant chunk of Dem activists who thought they were getting former Green party member, most Left Wing member of the Arizona Statehouse, Sinema elected to the Senate. Not, voted with Trump more often than Joe Manchin, Sinema.
The "moderate" stuff that always gets blocked is never anything the gods, guns and gays Trumpers particularly care about but infrastructure spending that polls well across the spectrum but which the Dems will get it in the neck for if it doesn't pass
Arizona is one of the most fiscally conservative and libertarian states in the USA, it even voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 when LBJ won a landslide nationally and of course it voted for McCain and Romney over Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Biden only won Arizona with socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters who voted Libertarian in 2016 when Trump beat Hillary in the state but for him in 2020 solely to remove Trump. Sinema knows her state. It is not infrastructure spending she is blocking anyway but pork spending and big government expansion beyond that
Yeah, but...
Arizona is changing.
It's both becoming younger (and young'uns vote Democrat) and more Hispanic (who also skew Democrat). Indeed, it looks rather like New Mexico, which also used to be reliable Red, and has become increasingly Blue over time.
Even in 2020 Trump got 49% in Arizona (and Jorgensen the Libertarian go 1.5%) so over 50% of Arizonans voted GOP or Libertarian, US wide 51% voted for Biden.
New Mexico is even more Democrat than nationally however, 54% voted for Biden in New Mexico in 2020
@rcs1000 would know more as I think he lives there but my impression is AZ is getting a lot of people fleeing from California. Not sure how it counterbalances the trends but I think AZ is likely to remain purple for a while to come.
I think 'fleeing' is the wrong word.
But property prices are dramatically more reasonable than in California, and you haven't had the tax system fucked by ballot propositions. If you are a household earning $60,000/year in Arizona, you can live a good middle class lifestyle, and own your own home.
That's simply not true in Los Angeles, San Francisco. San Diego, Orange County, or anywhere in the Bay Area.
Plus lots of people went to University in Arizona and have chosen not to leave.
On topic, for this by-election (and, I think, for the next GE), the only way the left can win is if Lab and LD disband and become part of the Greens.
If the whole of the centre to left of British politics became one Green Party, they'd easily win a majority.
Is there any way it could happen?
Now that the LDs have decisively parted company with any sort of centre to centre right image there can't be much doubt that there is currently a centre left majority among GB voters; basically only Tory votes + right fringe, whatever UKIP/Brexit call themselves this week counts on one side of the scales, and they never really get to 50%, whereas Lab +LD + Gn + SNP always do.
If there were a By Election in Leicester East, the Conservatives could have an interesting candidate…
“ Among those who lost out to Webbe in the party race to become candidate was Sundip Meghani, a former Labour councillor who defected to the Conservatives.
“The good people of Leicester East deserve an MP who isn’t a dodgy liar,” Meghani, a solicitor, said. “It’s time for convicted criminal Claudia Webbe to resign from parliament. People are sick and tired of the dodgy practices of their last two MPs, Keith Vaz and Webbe.
“They have had such dreadful representation over the years and have been taken for granted by the Labour Party. It would be no surprise to me if the electorate of Leicester East go on to show they have had enough of Labour and vote a Conservative as their next MP.”
After being reminded what TB helped N Ireland achieve I am left even more bewildered why almost no one in today's Labour will give him the time of day.
It was and is a towering political and diplomatic achievement that will long feature in the history books.
Meanwhile, Owen Jones and Aaron whats his name and all the others, fart crap on social media having achieved precisely nothing. *
* edit: other than a Tory 80 seat win of course.
I . R .A. Q
Labour folk generally aren't keen on war criminals
Apart from KL and his obsession with Adolph
Would the outcome in Iraq have been any different if TB hadn't signed up with GW Bush?
I seem to recall one of Bush's ministers/generals saying it didn't matter if UK stays out as it would make no material difference.
After being reminded what TB helped N Ireland achieve I am left even more bewildered why almost no one in today's Labour will give him the time of day.
It was and is a towering political and diplomatic achievement that will long feature in the history books.
Meanwhile, Owen Jones and Aaron whats his name and all the others, fart crap on social media having achieved precisely nothing. *
* edit: other than a Tory 80 seat win of course.
I . R .A. Q
Labour folk generally aren't keen on war criminals
Apart from KL and his obsession with Adolph
Would the outcome in Iraq have been any different if TB hadn't signed up with GW Bush?
I seem to recall one of Bush's ministers/generals saying it didn't matter if UK stays out as it would make no material difference.
Iraq is now a democracy and Saddam Hussein is no more, WMD or not.
Blair was also as committed to being the US' closest ally whether the US President was Clinton or Bush as he was for the UK to be part of the EU
In about half an hour the last ever Al Italia flight will touch down in Rome, after which this airline, which started passenger flights in 1947, will be no more.
I flew Alitalia once, between Bangkok and Hong Kong. The service was terrible.
I don't think she leaves. She wouldn't get elected as a Republican in Arizona, but I think she knows she's in a Purple State, and that the electoral geography might not be as favourable to a generic Democrat in 2024, and she therefore is going to be extremely moderate.
It's almost certainly the correct choice.
Except she is losing support with Independents. This seems like a bad thing for her re-election chances.
Sure she's gaining with Republicans but how many of them will vote for her instead of the Trumpster come election day when Trump is on the ballot?
Lets see. I think she will underperform both the Dem nominee (Probably Biden) and the generic house vote in Az
I think she is genuinely at risk of being primaried at the moment.
I think there is a significant chunk of Dem activists who thought they were getting former Green party member, most Left Wing member of the Arizona Statehouse, Sinema elected to the Senate. Not, voted with Trump more often than Joe Manchin, Sinema.
The "moderate" stuff that always gets blocked is never anything the gods, guns and gays Trumpers particularly care about but infrastructure spending that polls well across the spectrum but which the Dems will get it in the neck for if it doesn't pass
Arizona is one of the most fiscally conservative and libertarian states in the USA, it even voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 when LBJ won a landslide nationally and of course it voted for McCain and Romney over Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Biden only won Arizona with socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters who voted Libertarian in 2016 when Trump beat Hillary in the state but for him in 2020 solely to remove Trump. Sinema knows her state. It is not infrastructure spending she is blocking anyway but pork spending and big government expansion beyond that
Yeah, but...
Arizona is changing.
It's both becoming younger (and young'uns vote Democrat) and more Hispanic (who also skew Democrat). Indeed, it looks rather like New Mexico, which also used to be reliable Red, and has become increasingly Blue over time.
Even in 2020 Trump got 49% in Arizona (and Jorgensen the Libertarian go 1.5%) so over 50% of Arizonans voted GOP or Libertarian, US wide 51% voted for Biden.
New Mexico is even more Democrat than nationally however, 54% voted for Biden in New Mexico in 2020
@rcs1000 would know more as I think he lives there but my impression is AZ is getting a lot of people fleeing from California. Not sure how it counterbalances the trends but I think AZ is likely to remain purple for a while to come.
I think 'fleeing' is the wrong word.
But property prices are dramatically more reasonable than in California, and you haven't had the tax system fucked by ballot propositions. If you are a household earning $60,000/year in Arizona, you can live a good middle class lifestyle, and own your own home.
That's simply not true in Los Angeles, San Francisco. San Diego, Orange County, or anywhere in the Bay Area.
Plus lots of people went to University in Arizona and have chosen not to leave.
I like AZ. I used to like CA too but when you visit downtown LA, you realise how messed up things are. Santa Monica is not much better.
I don't think she leaves. She wouldn't get elected as a Republican in Arizona, but I think she knows she's in a Purple State, and that the electoral geography might not be as favourable to a generic Democrat in 2024, and she therefore is going to be extremely moderate.
It's almost certainly the correct choice.
Except she is losing support with Independents. This seems like a bad thing for her re-election chances.
Sure she's gaining with Republicans but how many of them will vote for her instead of the Trumpster come election day when Trump is on the ballot?
Lets see. I think she will underperform both the Dem nominee (Probably Biden) and the generic house vote in Az
I think she is genuinely at risk of being primaried at the moment.
I think there is a significant chunk of Dem activists who thought they were getting former Green party member, most Left Wing member of the Arizona Statehouse, Sinema elected to the Senate. Not, voted with Trump more often than Joe Manchin, Sinema.
The "moderate" stuff that always gets blocked is never anything the gods, guns and gays Trumpers particularly care about but infrastructure spending that polls well across the spectrum but which the Dems will get it in the neck for if it doesn't pass
Arizona is one of the most fiscally conservative and libertarian states in the USA, it even voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 when LBJ won a landslide nationally and of course it voted for McCain and Romney over Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Biden only won Arizona with socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters who voted Libertarian in 2016 when Trump beat Hillary in the state but for him in 2020 solely to remove Trump. Sinema knows her state. It is not infrastructure spending she is blocking anyway but pork spending and big government expansion beyond that
Strange then that Mark Kelly who is more a mainstream Democrat is far outpolling Sinema then.
Re Aslan’s point, I haven’t actually seen any polling on Sinema, not on 538 anyway.
She won't get past the primary. It's one thing to antagonize the left but she is actively thwarting the party platform and her president. If the Build Back Better plan fails and Biden doesn't get reelected, every Democrat will put it squarely on her and Manchin. She will go off and get some pharma lobbyist job.
I don’t think she cares. Her stance is even more remarkable because she couldn’t even use the threat of resignation as AZ is one of the states where the Governor (a Republican) has to pick a candidate from the same party as was elected.
I think people overestimate the chance that Sistema loses a primary challenge, and overestimate the chance that Democrats and Independents would spoil their ballots rather than vote for her.
My predictions:
1/ She'll come to agreement with her caucus and will vote for an infrastructure package 2/ She will win a primary challenge 3/ She will do better than the Democratic Presidential nominee in Arizona in 2024
On topic, for this by-election (and, I think, for the next GE), the only way the left can win is if Lab and LD disband and become part of the Greens.
If the whole of the centre to left of British politics became one Green Party, they'd easily win a majority.
Is there any way it could happen?
Now that the LDs have decisively parted company with any sort of centre to centre right image there can't be much doubt that there is currently a centre left majority among GB voters; basically only Tory votes + right fringe, whatever UKIP/Brexit call themselves this week counts on one side of the scales, and they never really get to 50%, whereas Lab +LD + Gn + SNP always do.
Do LD voters think the same way? Virtually all the LD seats are ex-Tory in one form or another and where Labour generally has never come close.
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
I don't think she leaves. She wouldn't get elected as a Republican in Arizona, but I think she knows she's in a Purple State, and that the electoral geography might not be as favourable to a generic Democrat in 2024, and she therefore is going to be extremely moderate.
It's almost certainly the correct choice.
Except she is losing support with Independents. This seems like a bad thing for her re-election chances.
Sure she's gaining with Republicans but how many of them will vote for her instead of the Trumpster come election day when Trump is on the ballot?
Lets see. I think she will underperform both the Dem nominee (Probably Biden) and the generic house vote in Az
I think she is genuinely at risk of being primaried at the moment.
I think there is a significant chunk of Dem activists who thought they were getting former Green party member, most Left Wing member of the Arizona Statehouse, Sinema elected to the Senate. Not, voted with Trump more often than Joe Manchin, Sinema.
The "moderate" stuff that always gets blocked is never anything the gods, guns and gays Trumpers particularly care about but infrastructure spending that polls well across the spectrum but which the Dems will get it in the neck for if it doesn't pass
Arizona is one of the most fiscally conservative and libertarian states in the USA, it even voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 when LBJ won a landslide nationally and of course it voted for McCain and Romney over Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Biden only won Arizona with socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters who voted Libertarian in 2016 when Trump beat Hillary in the state but for him in 2020 solely to remove Trump. Sinema knows her state. It is not infrastructure spending she is blocking anyway but pork spending and big government expansion beyond that
Yeah, but...
Arizona is changing.
It's both becoming younger (and young'uns vote Democrat) and more Hispanic (who also skew Democrat). Indeed, it looks rather like New Mexico, which also used to be reliable Red, and has become increasingly Blue over time.
Even in 2020 Trump got 49% in Arizona (and Jorgensen the Libertarian go 1.5%) so over 50% of Arizonans voted GOP or Libertarian, US wide 51% voted for Biden.
New Mexico is even more Democrat than nationally however, 54% voted for Biden in New Mexico in 2020
@rcs1000 would know more as I think he lives there but my impression is AZ is getting a lot of people fleeing from California. Not sure how it counterbalances the trends but I think AZ is likely to remain purple for a while to come.
I think 'fleeing' is the wrong word.
But property prices are dramatically more reasonable than in California, and you haven't had the tax system fucked by ballot propositions. If you are a household earning $60,000/year in Arizona, you can live a good middle class lifestyle, and own your own home.
That's simply not true in Los Angeles, San Francisco. San Diego, Orange County, or anywhere in the Bay Area.
Plus lots of people went to University in Arizona and have chosen not to leave.
Plenty of conservatives also moving from California to Arizona.
50 years ago of course California was solidly GOP, the state of Reagan and Nixon.
Now it is solidly liberal Democrat, voting for the Democratic candidate for president at every election since 1992. Arizona however still leans right. Even if Biden scraped home in 2020 Arizona has only voted Democrat twice since 1992 for president, in 1996 and 2020 while the US as a whole has voted for a Democratic president 5 times during that period
After being reminded what TB helped N Ireland achieve I am left even more bewildered why almost no one in today's Labour will give him the time of day.
It was and is a towering political and diplomatic achievement that will long feature in the history books.
Meanwhile, Owen Jones and Aaron whats his name and all the others, fart crap on social media having achieved precisely nothing. *
* edit: other than a Tory 80 seat win of course.
I . R .A. Q
Labour folk generally aren't keen on war criminals
Apart from KL and his obsession with Adolph
All three men to have won general elections for Labour from 1945 onwards are war criminals. It's par for the course.
Attlee's role in the partition of India, Blair in Iraq, and Harold Wilson’s Labour Party government that won power in 1964 armed Iraq’s regime in the mid-1960s as it massacred Kurds and set the process in motion to illegally evict the Chagos Islanders in the Indian Ocean. An even less-known policy was the Wilson government’s support for, and side-role in facilitating, the Indonesian government’s massacre of up to a million people in 1965.
It's why I could never be a lefty/Labour person, full of war criminals.
Hmm.
Didn't Churchill firebomb Dresden? Eden invade Egypt? MacMillan ser up concentration camps in Kenya? Heath oversee Bloody Sunday? Thatcher arm the Islamists in Afghanistan and the Khymer Rouge in the Thai camps?
War is a dirty business. A lot of crime is involved.
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
I don't think she leaves. She wouldn't get elected as a Republican in Arizona, but I think she knows she's in a Purple State, and that the electoral geography might not be as favourable to a generic Democrat in 2024, and she therefore is going to be extremely moderate.
It's almost certainly the correct choice.
Except she is losing support with Independents. This seems like a bad thing for her re-election chances.
Sure she's gaining with Republicans but how many of them will vote for her instead of the Trumpster come election day when Trump is on the ballot?
Lets see. I think she will underperform both the Dem nominee (Probably Biden) and the generic house vote in Az
I think she is genuinely at risk of being primaried at the moment.
I think there is a significant chunk of Dem activists who thought they were getting former Green party member, most Left Wing member of the Arizona Statehouse, Sinema elected to the Senate. Not, voted with Trump more often than Joe Manchin, Sinema.
The "moderate" stuff that always gets blocked is never anything the gods, guns and gays Trumpers particularly care about but infrastructure spending that polls well across the spectrum but which the Dems will get it in the neck for if it doesn't pass
Arizona is one of the most fiscally conservative and libertarian states in the USA, it even voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 when LBJ won a landslide nationally and of course it voted for McCain and Romney over Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Biden only won Arizona with socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters who voted Libertarian in 2016 when Trump beat Hillary in the state but for him in 2020 solely to remove Trump. Sinema knows her state. It is not infrastructure spending she is blocking anyway but pork spending and big government expansion beyond that
Strange then that Mark Kelly who is more a mainstream Democrat is far outpolling Sinema then.
Re Aslan’s point, I haven’t actually seen any polling on Sinema, not on 538 anyway.
She won't get past the primary. It's one thing to antagonize the left but she is actively thwarting the party platform and her president. If the Build Back Better plan fails and Biden doesn't get reelected, every Democrat will put it squarely on her and Manchin. She will go off and get some pharma lobbyist job.
I don’t think she cares. Her stance is even more remarkable because she couldn’t even use the threat of resignation as AZ is one of the states where the Governor (a Republican) has to pick a candidate from the same party as was elected.
I think people overestimate the chance that Sistema loses a primary challenge, and overestimate the chance that Democrats and Independents would spoil their ballots rather than vote for her.
My predictions:
1/ She'll come to agreement with her caucus and will vote for an infrastructure package 2/ She will win a primary challenge 3/ She will do better than the Democratic Presidential nominee in Arizona in 2024
I’d agree on 3. I think her stance will win her more support than she loses (and I still can’t find where she is polling worse than Kelly).
1 and 2 less so although, on 1, Pelosi seems to be admitting the $3.5trn isn’t going to happen. It’s such an own goal by the Democrats. If they had done a $1.5trn infrastructure plan, they would have been lauded. Now if they get that through, it looks like defeat.
Have to admit I don’t know what the AZ Democrat party looks like but the NV one has gone decidedly more left wing
Which is of course complete rubbish as the highest global fertility rate is in Africa and Africa also has the smallest level of climate emissions of any continent
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
2015 FFS what are you talking about are you confused with Ed?
"Starmer is closer to winning power" yeah right he will get nowhere near as close as 2017
i think you seriously misjudge how many actual Labour supporters he has lost. Definitely exceeds the Tories he has converted with his electric personality.
Which is of course complete rubbish as the highest global fertility rate is in Africa and Africa also has the smallest level of climate emissions of any continent
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
‘This time it’ll be different’
Pandemic.
Not just that.
If you look back at the modern times that the party of government has changed (2010, 1997, 1979, 1974, 1970, 1964, 1951, 1945), the thing they have all had in common is that the incumbent government has unambiguously failed by external criteria- usually the one about people wanting to have more pounds in their pocket at the end of the week. I don't think there's really a case where a healthy government has been overtaken by an even better opposition. (Would a Blair born a decade earlier have been able to win in 1987? I doubt it very much.)
Now the grim reality is that the current government has failed in many important ways. But always with ambiguity. They have ballsed up Covid, but (to start with) that was an unprecedented challenge and they did well to get ahead on vaccines. (Though note that we had 157 deaths logged today, France had 30). The finances look grim, and the self-imposed shock looks really badly managed, but it hasn't really hit yet.
So the question for this government is what it has been for every government. Can they make it to the next election without hurting a significant chunk of voters? If they can, they probably win, irrespective of who the LotO is. If the government stumbles, a previously unimpressive (Thatcher, Cameron) or even outright rejected (Wilson, Heath, Churchill) leader suddenly becomes a lot more attractive.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and all that.
Unless this time is different, and the voters stick with someone who has failed them in preference to someone who hasn't.
I don't think she leaves. She wouldn't get elected as a Republican in Arizona, but I think she knows she's in a Purple State, and that the electoral geography might not be as favourable to a generic Democrat in 2024, and she therefore is going to be extremely moderate.
It's almost certainly the correct choice.
Except she is losing support with Independents. This seems like a bad thing for her re-election chances.
Sure she's gaining with Republicans but how many of them will vote for her instead of the Trumpster come election day when Trump is on the ballot?
Lets see. I think she will underperform both the Dem nominee (Probably Biden) and the generic house vote in Az
I think she is genuinely at risk of being primaried at the moment.
I think there is a significant chunk of Dem activists who thought they were getting former Green party member, most Left Wing member of the Arizona Statehouse, Sinema elected to the Senate. Not, voted with Trump more often than Joe Manchin, Sinema.
The "moderate" stuff that always gets blocked is never anything the gods, guns and gays Trumpers particularly care about but infrastructure spending that polls well across the spectrum but which the Dems will get it in the neck for if it doesn't pass
Arizona is one of the most fiscally conservative and libertarian states in the USA, it even voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 when LBJ won a landslide nationally and of course it voted for McCain and Romney over Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Biden only won Arizona with socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters who voted Libertarian in 2016 when Trump beat Hillary in the state but for him in 2020 solely to remove Trump. Sinema knows her state. It is not infrastructure spending she is blocking anyway but pork spending and big government expansion beyond that
Strange then that Mark Kelly who is more a mainstream Democrat is far outpolling Sinema then.
Re Aslan’s point, I haven’t actually seen any polling on Sinema, not on 538 anyway.
She won't get past the primary. It's one thing to antagonize the left but she is actively thwarting the party platform and her president. If the Build Back Better plan fails and Biden doesn't get reelected, every Democrat will put it squarely on her and Manchin. She will go off and get some pharma lobbyist job.
I don’t think she cares. Her stance is even more remarkable because she couldn’t even use the threat of resignation as AZ is one of the states where the Governor (a Republican) has to pick a candidate from the same party as was elected.
I think people overestimate the chance that Sistema loses a primary challenge, and overestimate the chance that Democrats and Independents would spoil their ballots rather than vote for her.
My predictions:
1/ She'll come to agreement with her caucus and will vote for an infrastructure package 2/ She will win a primary challenge 3/ She will do better than the Democratic Presidential nominee in Arizona in 2024
I’d agree on 3. I think her stance will win her more support than she loses (and I still can’t find where she is polling worse than Kelly).
1 and 2 less so although, on 1, Pelosi seems to be admitting the $3.5trn isn’t going to happen. It’s such an own goal by the Democrats. If they had done a $1.5trn infrastructure plan, they would have been lauded. Now if they get that through, it looks like defeat.
Have to admit I don’t know what the AZ Democrat party looks like but the NV one has gone decidedly more left wing
Once the package is done, it'll be done, and the Democrats in Arizona will discover they don't hate Sistema as much as they thought they did.
And, personally, I think the US will do better with a smaller infrastructure package. Given inflation is already rearing its ugly head, an additional $2trn of stimulus (granted over a significant period) would do the US no good at all.
I don't think she leaves. She wouldn't get elected as a Republican in Arizona, but I think she knows she's in a Purple State, and that the electoral geography might not be as favourable to a generic Democrat in 2024, and she therefore is going to be extremely moderate.
It's almost certainly the correct choice.
Except she is losing support with Independents. This seems like a bad thing for her re-election chances.
Sure she's gaining with Republicans but how many of them will vote for her instead of the Trumpster come election day when Trump is on the ballot?
Lets see. I think she will underperform both the Dem nominee (Probably Biden) and the generic house vote in Az
I think she is genuinely at risk of being primaried at the moment.
I think there is a significant chunk of Dem activists who thought they were getting former Green party member, most Left Wing member of the Arizona Statehouse, Sinema elected to the Senate. Not, voted with Trump more often than Joe Manchin, Sinema.
The "moderate" stuff that always gets blocked is never anything the gods, guns and gays Trumpers particularly care about but infrastructure spending that polls well across the spectrum but which the Dems will get it in the neck for if it doesn't pass
Arizona is one of the most fiscally conservative and libertarian states in the USA, it even voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 when LBJ won a landslide nationally and of course it voted for McCain and Romney over Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Biden only won Arizona with socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters who voted Libertarian in 2016 when Trump beat Hillary in the state but for him in 2020 solely to remove Trump. Sinema knows her state. It is not infrastructure spending she is blocking anyway but pork spending and big government expansion beyond that
Strange then that Mark Kelly who is more a mainstream Democrat is far outpolling Sinema then.
Re Aslan’s point, I haven’t actually seen any polling on Sinema, not on 538 anyway.
She won't get past the primary. It's one thing to antagonize the left but she is actively thwarting the party platform and her president. If the Build Back Better plan fails and Biden doesn't get reelected, every Democrat will put it squarely on her and Manchin. She will go off and get some pharma lobbyist job.
I don’t think she cares. Her stance is even more remarkable because she couldn’t even use the threat of resignation as AZ is one of the states where the Governor (a Republican) has to pick a candidate from the same party as was elected.
I think people overestimate the chance that Sistema loses a primary challenge, and overestimate the chance that Democrats and Independents would spoil their ballots rather than vote for her.
My predictions:
1/ She'll come to agreement with her caucus and will vote for an infrastructure package 2/ She will win a primary challenge 3/ She will do better than the Democratic Presidential nominee in Arizona in 2024
I’d agree on 3. I think her stance will win her more support than she loses (and I still can’t find where she is polling worse than Kelly).
1 and 2 less so although, on 1, Pelosi seems to be admitting the $3.5trn isn’t going to happen. It’s such an own goal by the Democrats. If they had done a $1.5trn infrastructure plan, they would have been lauded. Now if they get that through, it looks like defeat.
Have to admit I don’t know what the AZ Democrat party looks like but the NV one has gone decidedly more left wing
Once the package is done, it'll be done, and the Democrats in Arizona will discover they don't hate Sistema as much as they thought they did.
And, personally, I think the US will do better with a smaller infrastructure package. Given inflation is already rearing its ugly head, an additional $2trn of stimulus (granted over a significant period) would do the US no good at all.
I thought the latest inflation figures were out and suggested inflation had been a blip?
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
2015 FFS what are you talking about are you confused with Ed?
"Starmer is closer to winning power" yeah right he will get nowhere near as close as 2017
i think you seriously misjudge how many actual Labour supporters he has lost. Definitely exceeds the Tories he has converted with his electric personality.
Which is of course complete rubbish as the highest global fertility rate is in Africa and Africa also has the smallest level of climate emissions of any continent
Agree, This type of article takes dystopianism to new heights, or perhaps depths.
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
I am, but it wasn't until the fuel crisis that the penny dropped. All the historical indicators suggested it would be horrific for the Conservatives, but no, as the queues grew their stock increased.
However dull Starmer may be, Johnson and some members of his Government have been criminally inept, and yes downright corrupt. Yet according to the polls the Conservatives haven't lost a single voter, and the posters here suggest Starmer is not only stupid but evil too, and Johnson by contrast is revered as the second coming.
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
He should have gone, of course. But there is an irony here. What he said was not very different really from the Met's official advice to women - to check whether a policeman is genuine and, implicitly, that he is acting lawfully. It is putting the onus on women and leaves it open to blame her if she does not do the checks and then comes to harm.
Allot was not responsible for hiring Couzens. Not responsible for failing to do due diligence on him. Not responsible for failing to take action over his indecent exposure. Those who were responsible for these failings are still in post and will likely suffer very little, if anything, as a result of their failings.
It is only ever the small fry who get caught.
For anyone interested the 3-part series on corruption in the Met in the 1970's - Bent Coppers - is on iPlayer. Very well worth watching. The 3rd episode is particularly powerful and what it says about police culture then could be said about it now.
He should have gone, of course. But there is an irony here. What he said was not very different really from the Met's official advice to women - to check whether a policeman is genuine and, implicitly, that he is acting lawfully. It is putting the onus on women and leaves it open to blame her if she does not do the checks and then comes to harm.
Allot was not responsible for hiring Couzens. Not responsible for failing to do due diligence on him. Not responsible for failing to take action over his indecent exposure. Those who were responsible for these failings are still in post and will likely suffer very little, if anything, as a result of their failings.
It is only ever the small fry who get caught.
For anyone interested the 3-part series on corruption in the Met in the 1970's - Bent Coppers - is on iPlayer. Very well worth watching. The 3rd episode is particularly powerful and what it says about police culture then could be said about it now.
Going to school in Ledbury one of our revered citizens was Wally Virgo, the Bent Copper's Copper. He had a very nice large house in Horse Lane Orchard (locally known as Snob Valley). Who says crime doesn't pay?
Wally of course was later acquitted because of a handily misdirected jury. Living his final days as a free man.
Unless this time is different, and the voters stick with someone who has failed them in preference to someone who hasn't.
If it is different then in all the ways I can think of that it will be different it favours the Tories. There's Brexit, of course. The pandemic seems to favour the government given the polling on it. Boris is an unusual politician.
Given the money that was thrown at the Great Financial Crisis and at the Pandemic I feel sure that whatever needs to be done to save the housing market [the assets of Tory voters] will be done.
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
‘This time it’ll be different’
Pandemic.
Not just that.
If you look back at the modern times that the party of government has changed (2010, 1997, 1979, 1974, 1970, 1964, 1951, 1945), the thing they have all had in common is that the incumbent government has unambiguously failed by external criteria- usually the one about people wanting to have more pounds in their pocket at the end of the week. I don't think there's really a case where a healthy government has been overtaken by an even better opposition. (Would a Blair born a decade earlier have been able to win in 1987? I doubt it very much.)
Now the grim reality is that the current government has failed in many important ways. But always with ambiguity. They have ballsed up Covid, but (to start with) that was an unprecedented challenge and they did well to get ahead on vaccines. (Though note that we had 157 deaths logged today, France had 30). The finances look grim, and the self-imposed shock looks really badly managed, but it hasn't really hit yet.
So the question for this government is what it has been for every government. Can they make it to the next election without hurting a significant chunk of voters? If they can, they probably win, irrespective of who the LotO is. If the government stumbles, a previously unimpressive (Thatcher, Cameron) or even outright rejected (Wilson, Heath, Churchill) leader suddenly becomes a lot more attractive.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and all that.
Unless this time is different, and the voters stick with someone who has failed them in preference to someone who hasn't.
If there were a By Election in Leicester East, the Conservatives could have an interesting candidate…
“ Among those who lost out to Webbe in the party race to become candidate was Sundip Meghani, a former Labour councillor who defected to the Conservatives.
“The good people of Leicester East deserve an MP who isn’t a dodgy liar,” Meghani, a solicitor, said. “It’s time for convicted criminal Claudia Webbe to resign from parliament. People are sick and tired of the dodgy practices of their last two MPs, Keith Vaz and Webbe.
“They have had such dreadful representation over the years and have been taken for granted by the Labour Party. It would be no surprise to me if the electorate of Leicester East go on to show they have had enough of Labour and vote a Conservative as their next MP.”
Which is of course complete rubbish as the highest global fertility rate is in Africa and Africa also has the smallest level of climate emissions of any continent
Agree, This type of article takes dystopianism to new heights, or perhaps depths.
It might do, but that doesn't save HYUFD from having made about the worst point ever made on pb because a. The article is expressly addressed to Spectator readers who are not on average Africans and b. Africa has low emissions because it consumes nothing because it is so poor, so an extra African child might be the most climate destructive thing an African parent can do because his opportunities to destroy the climate are so limited - he cannot fly in a plane or drive a car. And the more one hopes Africa's standard of living will improve over the next few decades the stronger this point is.
I don't think she leaves. She wouldn't get elected as a Republican in Arizona, but I think she knows she's in a Purple State, and that the electoral geography might not be as favourable to a generic Democrat in 2024, and she therefore is going to be extremely moderate.
It's almost certainly the correct choice.
Except she is losing support with Independents. This seems like a bad thing for her re-election chances.
Sure she's gaining with Republicans but how many of them will vote for her instead of the Trumpster come election day when Trump is on the ballot?
Lets see. I think she will underperform both the Dem nominee (Probably Biden) and the generic house vote in Az
I think she is genuinely at risk of being primaried at the moment.
I think there is a significant chunk of Dem activists who thought they were getting former Green party member, most Left Wing member of the Arizona Statehouse, Sinema elected to the Senate. Not, voted with Trump more often than Joe Manchin, Sinema.
The "moderate" stuff that always gets blocked is never anything the gods, guns and gays Trumpers particularly care about but infrastructure spending that polls well across the spectrum but which the Dems will get it in the neck for if it doesn't pass
Arizona is one of the most fiscally conservative and libertarian states in the USA, it even voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 when LBJ won a landslide nationally and of course it voted for McCain and Romney over Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Biden only won Arizona with socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters who voted Libertarian in 2016 when Trump beat Hillary in the state but for him in 2020 solely to remove Trump. Sinema knows her state. It is not infrastructure spending she is blocking anyway but pork spending and big government expansion beyond that
Strange then that Mark Kelly who is more a mainstream Democrat is far outpolling Sinema then.
Re Aslan’s point, I haven’t actually seen any polling on Sinema, not on 538 anyway.
She won't get past the primary. It's one thing to antagonize the left but she is actively thwarting the party platform and her president. If the Build Back Better plan fails and Biden doesn't get reelected, every Democrat will put it squarely on her and Manchin. She will go off and get some pharma lobbyist job.
I don’t think she cares. Her stance is even more remarkable because she couldn’t even use the threat of resignation as AZ is one of the states where the Governor (a Republican) has to pick a candidate from the same party as was elected.
I think people overestimate the chance that Sistema loses a primary challenge, and overestimate the chance that Democrats and Independents would spoil their ballots rather than vote for her.
My predictions:
1/ She'll come to agreement with her caucus and will vote for an infrastructure package 2/ She will win a primary challenge 3/ She will do better than the Democratic Presidential nominee in Arizona in 2024
I’d agree on 3. I think her stance will win her more support than she loses (and I still can’t find where she is polling worse than Kelly).
1 and 2 less so although, on 1, Pelosi seems to be admitting the $3.5trn isn’t going to happen. It’s such an own goal by the Democrats. If they had done a $1.5trn infrastructure plan, they would have been lauded. Now if they get that through, it looks like defeat.
Have to admit I don’t know what the AZ Democrat party looks like but the NV one has gone decidedly more left wing
Once the package is done, it'll be done, and the Democrats in Arizona will discover they don't hate Sistema as much as they thought they did.
And, personally, I think the US will do better with a smaller infrastructure package. Given inflation is already rearing its ugly head, an additional $2trn of stimulus (granted over a significant period) would do the US no good at all.
The infrastructure package is already agreed. Sinema is refusing agree on the Build Back Better bill. Progressives say they won't vote for the first without the second. Sinema is saying she won't negotiate on the second until the first is passed. Manchin, to be fair to him, is clearly articulating his position. Sinema seems to be deliberately stalling, while she fundraisers from Big Pharmacy and other corporate lobbies. Biden said she is not taking his calls.
I think she will end up dooming both bills and screw the Democrats in the Midterms. That definitely leads to a primary loss.
After being reminded what TB helped N Ireland achieve I am left even more bewildered why almost no one in today's Labour will give him the time of day.
It was and is a towering political and diplomatic achievement that will long feature in the history books.
Meanwhile, Owen Jones and Aaron whats his name and all the others, fart crap on social media having achieved precisely nothing. *
* edit: other than a Tory 80 seat win of course.
I . R .A. Q
Labour folk generally aren't keen on war criminals
Apart from KL and his obsession with Adolph
Would the outcome in Iraq have been any different if TB hadn't signed up with GW Bush?
I seem to recall one of Bush's ministers/generals saying it didn't matter if UK stays out as it would make no material difference.
A point sometimes overlooked in all the hubbub.
Although we should not forget that some UK troops lost their lives who wouldn't have if Blair had done a Wilson.
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
‘This time it’ll be different’
Pandemic.
Not just that.
If you look back at the modern times that the party of government has changed (2010, 1997, 1979, 1974, 1970, 1964, 1951, 1945), the thing they have all had in common is that the incumbent government has unambiguously failed by external criteria- usually the one about people wanting to have more pounds in their pocket at the end of the week. I don't think there's really a case where a healthy government has been overtaken by an even better opposition. (Would a Blair born a decade earlier have been able to win in 1987? I doubt it very much.)
Now the grim reality is that the current government has failed in many important ways. But always with ambiguity. They have ballsed up Covid, but (to start with) that was an unprecedented challenge and they did well to get ahead on vaccines. (Though note that we had 157 deaths logged today, France had 30). The finances look grim, and the self-imposed shock looks really badly managed, but it hasn't really hit yet.
So the question for this government is what it has been for every government. Can they make it to the next election without hurting a significant chunk of voters? If they can, they probably win, irrespective of who the LotO is. If the government stumbles, a previously unimpressive (Thatcher, Cameron) or even outright rejected (Wilson, Heath, Churchill) leader suddenly becomes a lot more attractive.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and all that.
Unless this time is different, and the voters stick with someone who has failed them in preference to someone who hasn't.
People were no doubt hopecasting the same kind of desperation in 1985 - 3m unemployed, Miners strikes etc etc. Nice lead for Lab in the polls, Kinnock in the ratings… Con landslide
They stuck with Blair in 05, and he’d just unleashed the twin forces of Islamic extremism and Eastern European Labour
Good luck getting that message through to those environmentalists with a tribe of snot-goblins in tow....
It's complete cobblers.
We need to reduce emissions to net zero. Which means we need to reduce them to net zero, on average, for every person. At which point adding an extra person to the calculation makes a difference of zero to the net emissions.
It's not like we can cut the global population by 90% fast enough to make a difference to the climate, save by a monumental act of genocide. And women everywhere that they are educated and have control of their bodies and economic life choose on average to have fewer children than the replacement rate - so no act of self-denial is required to bring the global population under control.
So the misanthropic attempt to shame people for having children is, as I said, complete cobblers.
After being reminded what TB helped N Ireland achieve I am left even more bewildered why almost no one in today's Labour will give him the time of day.
It was and is a towering political and diplomatic achievement that will long feature in the history books.
Meanwhile, Owen Jones and Aaron whats his name and all the others, fart crap on social media having achieved precisely nothing. *
* edit: other than a Tory 80 seat win of course.
I . R .A. Q
Labour folk generally aren't keen on war criminals
Apart from KL and his obsession with Adolph
Would the outcome in Iraq have been any different if TB hadn't signed up with GW Bush?
I seem to recall one of Bush's ministers/generals saying it didn't matter if UK stays out as it would make no material difference.
Blairs legacy and standing in Labour would have been totally different.
If Wilson had gone into Vietnam would he be air brushed from Labour history?
If there were a By Election in Leicester East, the Conservatives could have an interesting candidate…
“ Among those who lost out to Webbe in the party race to become candidate was Sundip Meghani, a former Labour councillor who defected to the Conservatives.
“The good people of Leicester East deserve an MP who isn’t a dodgy liar,” Meghani, a solicitor, said. “It’s time for convicted criminal Claudia Webbe to resign from parliament. People are sick and tired of the dodgy practices of their last two MPs, Keith Vaz and Webbe.
“They have had such dreadful representation over the years and have been taken for granted by the Labour Party. It would be no surprise to me if the electorate of Leicester East go on to show they have had enough of Labour and vote a Conservative as their next MP.”
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
‘This time it’ll be different’
Pandemic.
Not just that.
If you look back at the modern times that the party of government has changed (2010, 1997, 1979, 1974, 1970, 1964, 1951, 1945), the thing they have all had in common is that the incumbent government has unambiguously failed by external criteria- usually the one about people wanting to have more pounds in their pocket at the end of the week. I don't think there's really a case where a healthy government has been overtaken by an even better opposition. (Would a Blair born a decade earlier have been able to win in 1987? I doubt it very much.)
Now the grim reality is that the current government has failed in many important ways. But always with ambiguity. They have ballsed up Covid, but (to start with) that was an unprecedented challenge and they did well to get ahead on vaccines. (Though note that we had 157 deaths logged today, France had 30). The finances look grim, and the self-imposed shock looks really badly managed, but it hasn't really hit yet.
So the question for this government is what it has been for every government. Can they make it to the next election without hurting a significant chunk of voters? If they can, they probably win, irrespective of who the LotO is. If the government stumbles, a previously unimpressive (Thatcher, Cameron) or even outright rejected (Wilson, Heath, Churchill) leader suddenly becomes a lot more attractive.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and all that.
Unless this time is different, and the voters stick with someone who has failed them in preference to someone who hasn't.
Despite a 3 month head start, they're not even ahead on vaccines any more, at least in Western Europe.
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
I am, but it wasn't until the fuel crisis that the penny dropped. All the historical indicators suggested it would be horrific for the Conservatives, but no, as the queues grew their stock increased.
However dull Starmer may be, Johnson and some members of his Government have been criminally inept, and yes downright corrupt. Yet according to the polls the Conservatives haven't lost a single voter, and the posters here suggest Starmer is not only stupid but evil too, and Johnson by contrast is revered as the second coming.
The world has gone mad.
There is still time for the tide to turn. It's widely accepted that Johnson's useless but so far his uselessness isn't causing much pain at least in comparison to the suffering of the last 20 months.
It's pretty obvious that this won't last. Everyone's hearing murmurs. No doctors. Service is shocking. A&E overflowing. The police are close to being pointles and bills are rising sharply.
They might also notice that contrary to government propaganda the rest of Europe are functioning a hell of a lot better
After being reminded what TB helped N Ireland achieve I am left even more bewildered why almost no one in today's Labour will give him the time of day.
It was and is a towering political and diplomatic achievement that will long feature in the history books.
Meanwhile, Owen Jones and Aaron whats his name and all the others, fart crap on social media having achieved precisely nothing. *
* edit: other than a Tory 80 seat win of course.
I . R .A. Q
Labour folk generally aren't keen on war criminals
Apart from KL and his obsession with Adolph
Would the outcome in Iraq have been any different if TB hadn't signed up with GW Bush?
I seem to recall one of Bush's ministers/generals saying it didn't matter if UK stays out as it would make no material difference.
A point sometimes overlooked in all the hubbub.
Although we should not forget that some UK troops lost their lives who wouldn't have if Blair had done a Wilson.
Iraq is now a democracy free of Saddam.
In the long run it has been a more successful war than Vietnam or Afghanistan (in the latter case of course the Taliban are back and Bin Laden ended up being killed in Pakistan not Afghanistan)
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
‘This time it’ll be different’
Pandemic.
Not just that.
If you look back at the modern times that the party of government has changed (2010, 1997, 1979, 1974, 1970, 1964, 1951, 1945), the thing they have all had in common is that the incumbent government has unambiguously failed by external criteria- usually the one about people wanting to have more pounds in their pocket at the end of the week. I don't think there's really a case where a healthy government has been overtaken by an even better opposition. (Would a Blair born a decade earlier have been able to win in 1987? I doubt it very much.)
Now the grim reality is that the current government has failed in many important ways. But always with ambiguity. They have ballsed up Covid, but (to start with) that was an unprecedented challenge and they did well to get ahead on vaccines. (Though note that we had 157 deaths logged today, France had 30). The finances look grim, and the self-imposed shock looks really badly managed, but it hasn't really hit yet.
So the question for this government is what it has been for every government. Can they make it to the next election without hurting a significant chunk of voters? If they can, they probably win, irrespective of who the LotO is. If the government stumbles, a previously unimpressive (Thatcher, Cameron) or even outright rejected (Wilson, Heath, Churchill) leader suddenly becomes a lot more attractive.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and all that.
Unless this time is different, and the voters stick with someone who has failed them in preference to someone who hasn't.
Despite a 3 month head start, they're not even ahead on vaccines any more, at least in Western Europe.
That's hardly surprising, is it? The benefit comes from the cumulative days' worth of protection offered by having the jab earlier.
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
‘This time it’ll be different’
Pandemic.
Not just that.
If you look back at the modern times that the party of government has changed (2010, 1997, 1979, 1974, 1970, 1964, 1951, 1945), the thing they have all had in common is that the incumbent government has unambiguously failed by external criteria- usually the one about people wanting to have more pounds in their pocket at the end of the week. I don't think there's really a case where a healthy government has been overtaken by an even better opposition. (Would a Blair born a decade earlier have been able to win in 1987? I doubt it very much.)
Now the grim reality is that the current government has failed in many important ways. But always with ambiguity. They have ballsed up Covid, but (to start with) that was an unprecedented challenge and they did well to get ahead on vaccines. (Though note that we had 157 deaths logged today, France had 30). The finances look grim, and the self-imposed shock looks really badly managed, but it hasn't really hit yet.
So the question for this government is what it has been for every government. Can they make it to the next election without hurting a significant chunk of voters? If they can, they probably win, irrespective of who the LotO is. If the government stumbles, a previously unimpressive (Thatcher, Cameron) or even outright rejected (Wilson, Heath, Churchill) leader suddenly becomes a lot more attractive.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and all that.
Unless this time is different, and the voters stick with someone who has failed them in preference to someone who hasn't.
Despite a 3 month head start, they're not even ahead on vaccines any more, at least in Western Europe.
The vaccine triumph was in the speed and initial stockpiles, not whether there would be the capability to get a lot of people jabbed, that should have been a given.
For the rich, powerful nations of Western Europe, including us, getting adequate supplies and being able to get most people jabbed would, I hope, have been expected. Thankfully, that does appear to have been the case.
Which is of course complete rubbish as the highest global fertility rate is in Africa and Africa also has the smallest level of climate emissions of any continent
Utterly insane illogic. Well done.
I sat there umming and ahring whether to respond having had these arguments with hyufd before, but he never gets it, but I do sit there slapping the palm of my hand against my forehead. It is incredible that someone can produce such mindbogglingly wrong logic.
The obvious conclusion is that Africa is made up of 3rd world countries and therefore obviously their per child output of CO2 is less. If their fertility rate is greater than 2 per woman the overall output will increase exponentially plus of course they will produce more individually as they improve their standard of living per head. So not only is the deduction irrational, with time it has a reasonable probability to be shown to be false.
But ignoring that you can produce umpteen mathematical models that show the conclusion jumped to that you can deduce from the fact stated is bonkers.
It is on a par with 'A dog is an animal with 4 legs, therefore all things with 4 legs are dogs, or animals, or all animals have 4 legs, etc, etc.'
Unfortunately hyufd does sometimes spot that the 4 legged thing is an animal or a dog (and not a table) and thinks his logic is spot on.
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
‘This time it’ll be different’
Pandemic.
Not just that.
If you look back at the modern times that the party of government has changed (2010, 1997, 1979, 1974, 1970, 1964, 1951, 1945), the thing they have all had in common is that the incumbent government has unambiguously failed by external criteria- usually the one about people wanting to have more pounds in their pocket at the end of the week. I don't think there's really a case where a healthy government has been overtaken by an even better opposition. (Would a Blair born a decade earlier have been able to win in 1987? I doubt it very much.)
Now the grim reality is that the current government has failed in many important ways. But always with ambiguity. They have ballsed up Covid, but (to start with) that was an unprecedented challenge and they did well to get ahead on vaccines. (Though note that we had 157 deaths logged today, France had 30). The finances look grim, and the self-imposed shock looks really badly managed, but it hasn't really hit yet.
So the question for this government is what it has been for every government. Can they make it to the next election without hurting a significant chunk of voters? If they can, they probably win, irrespective of who the LotO is. If the government stumbles, a previously unimpressive (Thatcher, Cameron) or even outright rejected (Wilson, Heath, Churchill) leader suddenly becomes a lot more attractive.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and all that.
Unless this time is different, and the voters stick with someone who has failed them in preference to someone who hasn't.
But wasn't the economy doing pretty well in 1997?
In terms of overall data, yes. But there were a few problems.
For a start, people who had been blown out by the house price falls of 1990-3 had been hurt enough that they hadn't really recovered. The miracle really was that enough gave the Conservatives the benefit of the doubt in 1992.
Also, the public realm, the state of things like schools, hospitals, roads and parks was pretty shabby by 1997. Life felt tatty and that fed through to how people felt about the economy. People of a certain age will remember the slight cringe on visiting (say) West Germany- things were cleaner, worked better, that sort of thing. It's why spending money on improving town centres (especially in, ahem, marginals) is smart politics.
And Black Wednesday meant that, even though Major and Clarke did a decent job with the economy in the run up to 1997, they didn't get the credit, because of the previous shambles. You don't recover your reputation after that. It didn't kill the Conservative ratings (they were falling before September 1992) but it did stop them rising again.
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
I am, but it wasn't until the fuel crisis that the penny dropped. All the historical indicators suggested it would be horrific for the Conservatives, but no, as the queues grew their stock increased.
However dull Starmer may be, Johnson and some members of his Government have been criminally inept, and yes downright corrupt. Yet according to the polls the Conservatives haven't lost a single voter, and the posters here suggest Starmer is not only stupid but evil too, and Johnson by contrast is revered as the second coming.
The world has gone mad.
There is still time for the tide to turn. It's widely accepted that Johnson's useless but so far his uselessness isn't causing much pain at least in comparison to the suffering of the last 20 months.
It's pretty obvious that this won't last. Everyone's hearing murmurs. No doctors. Service is shocking. A&E overflowing. The police are close to being pointles and bills are rising sharply.
They might also notice that contrary to government propaganda the rest of Europe are functioning a hell of a lot better
So long as we still have cheap mortgages and a new his and hers BMW X1 and X3 lease cars in the drive Johnson is home and hosed.
Should the repayments on the house and the BMWs become a problem, Johnson has a problem. I cannot see how he avoids this now, but...oh wait...incoming post from @Philip_Thompson ...
Which is of course complete rubbish as the highest global fertility rate is in Africa and Africa also has the smallest level of climate emissions of any continent
Utterly insane illogic. Well done.
I sat there umming and ahring whether to respond having had these arguments with hyufd before, but he never gets it, but I do sit there slapping the palm of my hand against my forehead. It is incredible that someone can produce such mindbogglingly wrong logic.
The obvious conclusion is that Africa is made up of 3rd world countries and therefore obviously their per child output of CO2 is less. If their fertility rate is greater than 2 per woman the overall output will increase exponentially plus of course they will produce more individually as they improve their standard of living per head. So not only is the deduction irrational, with time it has a reasonable probability to be shown to be false.
But ignoring that you can produce umpteen mathematical models that show the conclusion jumped to that you can deduce from the fact stated is bonkers.
It is on a par with 'A dog is an animal with 4 legs, therefore all things with 4 legs are dogs, or animals, or all animals have 4 legs, etc, etc.'
Unfortunately hyufd does sometimes spot that the 4 legged thing is an animal or a dog (and not a table) and thinks his logic is spot on.
My logic is spot on.
Africa has far higher fertlity rates than the global average but emissions far below the average per head.
The issue of climate change is entirely therefore to do with replacing fossil fuels with renewables and perhaps reducing our consumption of red meat a bit so we need less destruction of forests for cattle farming and less methane emissions.
Fertility rates have sod all to do with it and so I was absolutely right and the article was completely wrong
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
‘This time it’ll be different’
Pandemic.
Not just that.
If you look back at the modern times that the party of government has changed (2010, 1997, 1979, 1974, 1970, 1964, 1951, 1945), the thing they have all had in common is that the incumbent government has unambiguously failed by external criteria- usually the one about people wanting to have more pounds in their pocket at the end of the week. I don't think there's really a case where a healthy government has been overtaken by an even better opposition. (Would a Blair born a decade earlier have been able to win in 1987? I doubt it very much.)
Now the grim reality is that the current government has failed in many important ways. But always with ambiguity. They have ballsed up Covid, but (to start with) that was an unprecedented challenge and they did well to get ahead on vaccines. (Though note that we had 157 deaths logged today, France had 30). The finances look grim, and the self-imposed shock looks really badly managed, but it hasn't really hit yet.
So the question for this government is what it has been for every government. Can they make it to the next election without hurting a significant chunk of voters? If they can, they probably win, irrespective of who the LotO is. If the government stumbles, a previously unimpressive (Thatcher, Cameron) or even outright rejected (Wilson, Heath, Churchill) leader suddenly becomes a lot more attractive.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and all that.
Unless this time is different, and the voters stick with someone who has failed them in preference to someone who hasn't.
Despite a 3 month head start, they're not even ahead on vaccines any more, at least in Western Europe.
That's hardly surprising, is it? The benefit comes from the cumulative days' worth of protection offered by having the jab earlier.
Which is why we have the most new infections of any European nation today presumably. But only the 2nd highest deaths. Whereas late starters like Germany ...
After being reminded what TB helped N Ireland achieve I am left even more bewildered why almost no one in today's Labour will give him the time of day.
It was and is a towering political and diplomatic achievement that will long feature in the history books.
Meanwhile, Owen Jones and Aaron whats his name and all the others, fart crap on social media having achieved precisely nothing. *
* edit: other than a Tory 80 seat win of course.
I . R .A. Q
Labour folk generally aren't keen on war criminals
Apart from KL and his obsession with Adolph
Would the outcome in Iraq have been any different if TB hadn't signed up with GW Bush?
I seem to recall one of Bush's ministers/generals saying it didn't matter if UK stays out as it would make no material difference.
Blairs legacy and standing in Labour would have been totally different.
If Wilson had gone into Vietnam would he be air brushed from Labour history?
Which is of course complete rubbish as the highest global fertility rate is in Africa and Africa also has the smallest level of climate emissions of any continent
Utterly insane illogic. Well done.
I sat there umming and ahring whether to respond having had these arguments with hyufd before, but he never gets it, but I do sit there slapping the palm of my hand against my forehead. It is incredible that someone can produce such mindbogglingly wrong logic.
The obvious conclusion is that Africa is made up of 3rd world countries and therefore obviously their per child output of CO2 is less. If their fertility rate is greater than 2 per woman the overall output will increase exponentially plus of course they will produce more individually as they improve their standard of living per head. So not only is the deduction irrational, with time it has a reasonable probability to be shown to be false.
But ignoring that you can produce umpteen mathematical models that show the conclusion jumped to that you can deduce from the fact stated is bonkers.
It is on a par with 'A dog is an animal with 4 legs, therefore all things with 4 legs are dogs, or animals, or all animals have 4 legs, etc, etc.'
Unfortunately hyufd does sometimes spot that the 4 legged thing is an animal or a dog (and not a table) and thinks his logic is spot on.
My logic is spot on.
Africa has far higher fertlity rates than the global average but emissions far below the average per head.
The issue of climate change is entirely therefore to do with replacing fossil fuels with renewables and perhaps reducing our consumption of red meat a bit so we need less destruction of forests for cattle farming and less methane emissions.
Fertility rates have sod all to do with it and so I was absolutely right and the article was completely wrong
A non-existent person has a zero environmental footprint.
Let's all stop procreating, allow our species to become extinct and leave the planet a better place.
God created the earth and humans to inhabit it and as I have already pointed out fertlity rates have nothing to do with pollution rates
Ignoring the God bit for a moment who do you think creates pollution if not humans and the more humans you have the greater the pollution. You may be able to ameliorate that by improving human behaviour but 2 humans will always produce more than 1 human even if they behave exceedingly well as far as the environment is concerned. And fertility rates determine how many humans there will be.
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
‘This time it’ll be different’
Pandemic.
Not just that.
If you look back at the modern times that the party of government has changed (2010, 1997, 1979, 1974, 1970, 1964, 1951, 1945), the thing they have all had in common is that the incumbent government has unambiguously failed by external criteria- usually the one about people wanting to have more pounds in their pocket at the end of the week. I don't think there's really a case where a healthy government has been overtaken by an even better opposition. (Would a Blair born a decade earlier have been able to win in 1987? I doubt it very much.)
Now the grim reality is that the current government has failed in many important ways. But always with ambiguity. They have ballsed up Covid, but (to start with) that was an unprecedented challenge and they did well to get ahead on vaccines. (Though note that we had 157 deaths logged today, France had 30). The finances look grim, and the self-imposed shock looks really badly managed, but it hasn't really hit yet.
So the question for this government is what it has been for every government. Can they make it to the next election without hurting a significant chunk of voters? If they can, they probably win, irrespective of who the LotO is. If the government stumbles, a previously unimpressive (Thatcher, Cameron) or even outright rejected (Wilson, Heath, Churchill) leader suddenly becomes a lot more attractive.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and all that.
Unless this time is different, and the voters stick with someone who has failed them in preference to someone who hasn't.
Despite a 3 month head start, they're not even ahead on vaccines any more, at least in Western Europe.
That's hardly surprising, is it? The benefit comes from the cumulative days' worth of protection offered by having the jab earlier.
Which is why we have the most new infections of any European nation today presumably. But only the 2nd highest deaths. Whereas late starters like Germany ...
He should have gone, of course. But there is an irony here. What he said was not very different really from the Met's official advice to women - to check whether a policeman is genuine and, implicitly, that he is acting lawfully. It is putting the onus on women and leaves it open to blame her if she does not do the checks and then comes to harm.
Allot was not responsible for hiring Couzens. Not responsible for failing to do due diligence on him. Not responsible for failing to take action over his indecent exposure. Those who were responsible for these failings are still in post and will likely suffer very little, if anything, as a result of their failings.
It is only ever the small fry who get caught.
For anyone interested the 3-part series on corruption in the Met in the 1970's - Bent Coppers - is on iPlayer. Very well worth watching. The 3rd episode is particularly powerful and what it says about police culture then could be said about it now.
Going to school in Ledbury one of our revered citizens was Wally Virgo, the Bent Copper's Copper. He had a very nice large house in Horse Lane Orchard (locally known as Snob Valley). Who says crime doesn't pay?
Wally of course was later acquitted because of a handily misdirected jury. Living his final days as a free man.
What I hadn't realised was the extent of corruption in the City of London police and now high it went.
It would be nice to think that this is all in the past. But then you read the Daniel Morgan report and remember that even now the Met does not have an agreed definition of corruption and that the Met Commissioner was found to have deliberately and repeatedly obstructed the inquiry.
So nothing really has changed and she too will live her final days on a fat pension garlanded with titles, her only real achievement to have hung into her job like a limpet.
Good luck getting that message through to those environmentalists with a tribe of snot-goblins in tow....
It's complete cobblers.
We need to reduce emissions to net zero. Which means we need to reduce them to net zero, on average, for every person. At which point adding an extra person to the calculation makes a difference of zero to the net emissions.
It's not like we can cut the global population by 90% fast enough to make a difference to the climate, save by a monumental act of genocide. And women everywhere that they are educated and have control of their bodies and economic life choose on average to have fewer children than the replacement rate - so no act of self-denial is required to bring the global population under control.
So the misanthropic attempt to shame people for having children is, as I said, complete cobblers.
It isn't just climate change. Humans are fucking up the earth in plenty of other ways. Habitat destruction, species extinction, pollution of earth, water and air with manmade compounds that become ingested by animals. The list goes on. As a species we do not deserve to be on this planet. Let us quietly disappear and let everyone else get on with their lives.
I don't think she leaves. She wouldn't get elected as a Republican in Arizona, but I think she knows she's in a Purple State, and that the electoral geography might not be as favourable to a generic Democrat in 2024, and she therefore is going to be extremely moderate.
It's almost certainly the correct choice.
Except she is losing support with Independents. This seems like a bad thing for her re-election chances.
Sure she's gaining with Republicans but how many of them will vote for her instead of the Trumpster come election day when Trump is on the ballot?
Lets see. I think she will underperform both the Dem nominee (Probably Biden) and the generic house vote in Az
I think she is genuinely at risk of being primaried at the moment.
I think there is a significant chunk of Dem activists who thought they were getting former Green party member, most Left Wing member of the Arizona Statehouse, Sinema elected to the Senate. Not, voted with Trump more often than Joe Manchin, Sinema.
The "moderate" stuff that always gets blocked is never anything the gods, guns and gays Trumpers particularly care about but infrastructure spending that polls well across the spectrum but which the Dems will get it in the neck for if it doesn't pass
Arizona is one of the most fiscally conservative and libertarian states in the USA, it even voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964 when LBJ won a landslide nationally and of course it voted for McCain and Romney over Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Biden only won Arizona with socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters who voted Libertarian in 2016 when Trump beat Hillary in the state but for him in 2020 solely to remove Trump. Sinema knows her state. It is not infrastructure spending she is blocking anyway but pork spending and big government expansion beyond that
Strange then that Mark Kelly who is more a mainstream Democrat is far outpolling Sinema then.
Re Aslan’s point, I haven’t actually seen any polling on Sinema, not on 538 anyway.
She won't get past the primary. It's one thing to antagonize the left but she is actively thwarting the party platform and her president. If the Build Back Better plan fails and Biden doesn't get reelected, every Democrat will put it squarely on her and Manchin. She will go off and get some pharma lobbyist job.
I don’t think she cares. Her stance is even more remarkable because she couldn’t even use the threat of resignation as AZ is one of the states where the Governor (a Republican) has to pick a candidate from the same party as was elected.
I think people overestimate the chance that Sistema loses a primary challenge, and overestimate the chance that Democrats and Independents would spoil their ballots rather than vote for her.
My predictions:
1/ She'll come to agreement with her caucus and will vote for an infrastructure package 2/ She will win a primary challenge 3/ She will do better than the Democratic Presidential nominee in Arizona in 2024
I’d agree on 3. I think her stance will win her more support than she loses (and I still can’t find where she is polling worse than Kelly).
1 and 2 less so although, on 1, Pelosi seems to be admitting the $3.5trn isn’t going to happen. It’s such an own goal by the Democrats. If they had done a $1.5trn infrastructure plan, they would have been lauded. Now if they get that through, it looks like defeat.
Have to admit I don’t know what the AZ Democrat party looks like but the NV one has gone decidedly more left wing
Once the package is done, it'll be done, and the Democrats in Arizona will discover they don't hate Sistema as much as they thought they did.
And, personally, I think the US will do better with a smaller infrastructure package. Given inflation is already rearing its ugly head, an additional $2trn of stimulus (granted over a significant period) would do the US no good at all.
I thought the latest inflation figures were out and suggested inflation had been a blip?
Producer price inflation is up 8.6% year-over-year. That's a record, albeit a slightly smaller one than expected.
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
‘This time it’ll be different’
Pandemic.
Not just that.
If you look back at the modern times that the party of government has changed (2010, 1997, 1979, 1974, 1970, 1964, 1951, 1945), the thing they have all had in common is that the incumbent government has unambiguously failed by external criteria- usually the one about people wanting to have more pounds in their pocket at the end of the week. I don't think there's really a case where a healthy government has been overtaken by an even better opposition. (Would a Blair born a decade earlier have been able to win in 1987? I doubt it very much.)
Now the grim reality is that the current government has failed in many important ways. But always with ambiguity. They have ballsed up Covid, but (to start with) that was an unprecedented challenge and they did well to get ahead on vaccines. (Though note that we had 157 deaths logged today, France had 30). The finances look grim, and the self-imposed shock looks really badly managed, but it hasn't really hit yet.
So the question for this government is what it has been for every government. Can they make it to the next election without hurting a significant chunk of voters? If they can, they probably win, irrespective of who the LotO is. If the government stumbles, a previously unimpressive (Thatcher, Cameron) or even outright rejected (Wilson, Heath, Churchill) leader suddenly becomes a lot more attractive.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and all that.
Unless this time is different, and the voters stick with someone who has failed them in preference to someone who hasn't.
Despite a 3 month head start, they're not even ahead on vaccines any more, at least in Western Europe.
The vaccine triumph was in the speed and initial stockpiles, not whether there would be the capability to get a lot of people jabbed, that should have been a given.
For the rich, powerful nations of Western Europe, including us, getting adequate supplies and being able to get most people jabbed would, I hope, have been expected. Thankfully, that does appear to have been the case.
Except that those countries have not only caught us up on vaccination rates, they are starting to pull ahead. In a nation which has effectively dropped all other public health measures and which has bet the house on vaccination alone.
Good luck getting that message through to those environmentalists with a tribe of snot-goblins in tow....
It's complete cobblers.
We need to reduce emissions to net zero. Which means we need to reduce them to net zero, on average, for every person. At which point adding an extra person to the calculation makes a difference of zero to the net emissions.
It's not like we can cut the global population by 90% fast enough to make a difference to the climate, save by a monumental act of genocide. And women everywhere that they are educated and have control of their bodies and economic life choose on average to have fewer children than the replacement rate - so no act of self-denial is required to bring the global population under control.
So the misanthropic attempt to shame people for having children is, as I said, complete cobblers.
It isn't just climate change. Humans are fucking up the earth in plenty of other ways. Habitat destruction, species extinction, pollution of earth, water and air with manmade compounds that become ingested by animals. The list goes on. As a species we do not deserve to be on this planet. Let us quietly disappear and let everyone else get on with their lives.
And now definitely goodnight.
Well if that is the leftwing attitude you deserve to be in eternal opposition.
Humanity has also achieved more than any other species on earth, the fact we sometimes make mistakes does not mean we cannot rectify them
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
I am, but it wasn't until the fuel crisis that the penny dropped. All the historical indicators suggested it would be horrific for the Conservatives, but no, as the queues grew their stock increased.
However dull Starmer may be, Johnson and some members of his Government have been criminally inept, and yes downright corrupt. Yet according to the polls the Conservatives haven't lost a single voter, and the posters here suggest Starmer is not only stupid but evil too, and Johnson by contrast is revered as the second coming.
The world has gone mad.
There is still time for the tide to turn. It's widely accepted that Johnson's useless but so far his uselessness isn't causing much pain at least in comparison to the suffering of the last 20 months.
It's pretty obvious that this won't last. Everyone's hearing murmurs. No doctors. Service is shocking. A&E overflowing. The police are close to being pointles and bills are rising sharply.
They might also notice that contrary to government propaganda the rest of Europe are functioning a hell of a lot better
So long as we still have cheap mortgages and a new his and hers BMW X1 and X3 lease cars in the drive Johnson is home and hosed.
Should the repayments on the house and the BMWs become a problem, Johnson has a problem. I cannot see how he avoids this now, but...oh wait...incoming post from @Philip_Thompson ...
Let the poor guy rest! He's got to do his holiday update from the Costa Del Sol in the morning. 'Freeloaders in Fuengirola'
Are the Left so irredeemably disjointed that they couldn't group together under a green banner to win power?
Yes.
As someone with right of centre instincts who just really really would rather B Johnson wasn't Prime Minister, this baffles and infuriates me.
Even if Starmer is a bit of a duffer (and I think he's better than that- flawed but substantial and serviceable), he's the best the left has got. And he's clearly an improvement on the incumbent.
Tories understand this, which is why they keep winning. Back your leader to the hilt, unless you're prepared to back them onto the hilt. Make your leader look good, because that improves your chance of winning.
I'm an outsider to lefty thinking. But my impression is that kits of people would rather lead an opposition than have a secondary place in power.
I'm a loyalist, but I do have friends who've drifted away, mostly to the Greens. They say they might be back when we've got something worth voting for, but there isn't a GE at the moment, and they don't see much positive reason to vote Labour (or tell pollsters they will). I don't think they prefer opposition and they'd still be pleased to see the Tories lose - it's more that they can't be bothered to support the opposition if they feel it doesn't stand for anything.
By contrast, you can't really say that Corbyn doesn't stand for anything. Loads of people thought "Wow, that sounds good" and voted Labour with enthusiasm. But larger loads of people thought "no way". On the whole, Starmer is closer to winning power than Corbyn was, because most people feel he'd be perfectly acceptable as PM, so it "only" requires some attractive policies and Government unpopularity to bring them over. By contrast, Corbyn probably hit his ceiling in 2015.
To be fair Corbyn has caused untold damage to the labour brand and while Starmer is better, he is dull and lacks that something special quality which is making labour's climb back very slow
Personally I think the pandemic and vaccines have held Labour back much more than Starmer's quality (or lack of). It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
I am, but it wasn't until the fuel crisis that the penny dropped. All the historical indicators suggested it would be horrific for the Conservatives, but no, as the queues grew their stock increased.
However dull Starmer may be, Johnson and some members of his Government have been criminally inept, and yes downright corrupt. Yet according to the polls the Conservatives haven't lost a single voter, and the posters here suggest Starmer is not only stupid but evil too, and Johnson by contrast is revered as the second coming.
The world has gone mad.
There is still time for the tide to turn. It's widely accepted that Johnson's useless but so far his uselessness isn't causing much pain at least in comparison to the suffering of the last 20 months.
It's pretty obvious that this won't last. Everyone's hearing murmurs. No doctors. Service is shocking. A&E overflowing. The police are close to being pointles and bills are rising sharply.
They might also notice that contrary to government propaganda the rest of Europe are functioning a hell of a lot better
So long as we still have cheap mortgages and a new his and hers BMW X1 and X3 lease cars in the drive Johnson is home and hosed.
Should the repayments on the house and the BMWs become a problem, Johnson has a problem. I cannot see how he avoids this now, but...oh wait...incoming post from @Philip_Thompson ...
I don't think he's around this evening, but I think he's more accepting of that problem than many Boris Backers, and that if we need a crunch it's the right thing to do, even if it does kill the Conservatives' chances at the next GE.
But in the real world, life hasn't been that bad for most of us for the last couple of years. Compared with how bad it could have been to live through a pandemic, it's been fairly peachy. Inconvenient, sure, but few of us are destitute and even fewer of us are dead.
It's hard to see how BoJo keeps life good for the next couple of years, but that is what will determine the result of the next election. (The undignified scramble for not-taxes to increase shows the problem.)
But if anyone can, Boris can. In which case, heaven help his successor.
(Which again strengthens his position in No 10. Who, in their right mind, would want to take over now?)
Comments
I seem to recall one of Bush's ministers/generals saying it didn't matter if UK stays out as it would make no material difference.
(hmmmm the admissions numbers are usually absolute - are they showing a lag for a change?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zj7KrKsW6Q
Not a bad backing singer credit list so far: Gimme Shelter and Sweet Home Alabama?
Please God no
https://twitter.com/TmorrowsPapers/status/1448754757292732417/photo/1
But property prices are dramatically more reasonable than in California, and you haven't had the tax system fucked by ballot propositions. If you are a household earning $60,000/year in Arizona, you can live a good middle class lifestyle, and own your own home.
That's simply not true in Los Angeles, San Francisco. San Diego, Orange County, or anywhere in the Bay Area.
Plus lots of people went to University in Arizona and have chosen not to leave.
“ Among those who lost out to Webbe in the party race to become candidate was Sundip Meghani, a former Labour councillor who defected to the Conservatives.
“The good people of Leicester East deserve an MP who isn’t a dodgy liar,” Meghani, a solicitor, said. “It’s time for convicted criminal Claudia Webbe to resign from parliament. People are sick and tired of the dodgy practices of their last two MPs, Keith Vaz and Webbe.
“They have had such dreadful representation over the years and have been taken for granted by the Labour Party. It would be no surprise to me if the electorate of Leicester East go on to show they have had enough of Labour and vote a Conservative as their next MP.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/claudia-webbe-acid-threat-mp-should-quit-now-say-constituents-8t6nd3hdk
Blair was also as committed to being the US' closest ally whether the US President was Clinton or Bush as he was for the UK to be part of the EU
My predictions:
1/ She'll come to agreement with her caucus and will vote for an infrastructure package
2/ She will win a primary challenge
3/ She will do better than the Democratic Presidential nominee in Arizona in 2024
It looks like folly to me to think of this as a normal electoral cycle. In fact even if it were, look at the changes that can happen in the last month before an election.
If I were a Labour supporter, I would not be at all worried at the polling right now.
50 years ago of course California was solidly GOP, the state of Reagan and Nixon.
Now it is solidly liberal Democrat, voting for the Democratic candidate for president at every election since 1992. Arizona however still leans right. Even if Biden scraped home in 2020 Arizona has only voted Democrat twice since 1992 for president, in 1996 and 2020 while the US as a whole has voted for a Democratic president 5 times during that period
Didn't Churchill firebomb Dresden? Eden invade Egypt? MacMillan ser up concentration camps in Kenya? Heath oversee Bloody Sunday? Thatcher arm the Islamists in Afghanistan and the Khymer Rouge in the Thai camps?
War is a dirty business. A lot of crime is involved.
1 and 2 less so although, on 1, Pelosi seems to be admitting the $3.5trn isn’t going to happen. It’s such an own goal by the Democrats. If they had done a $1.5trn infrastructure plan, they would have been lauded. Now if they get that through, it looks like defeat.
Have to admit I don’t know what the AZ Democrat party looks like but the NV one has gone decidedly more left wing
"Tom Woodman
Having a child is the grandest act of climate destruction
From magazine issue: 16 October 2021"
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/having-a-child-is-the-grandest-act-of-climate-destruction
https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1448764439138906114?s=20
"Starmer is closer to winning power" yeah right he will get nowhere near as close as 2017
i think you seriously misjudge how many actual Labour supporters he has lost. Definitely exceeds the Tories he has converted with his electric personality.
If you look back at the modern times that the party of government has changed (2010, 1997, 1979, 1974, 1970, 1964, 1951, 1945), the thing they have all had in common is that the incumbent government has unambiguously failed by external criteria- usually the one about people wanting to have more pounds in their pocket at the end of the week. I don't think there's really a case where a healthy government has been overtaken by an even better opposition. (Would a Blair born a decade earlier have been able to win in 1987? I doubt it very much.)
Now the grim reality is that the current government has failed in many important ways. But always with ambiguity. They have ballsed up Covid, but (to start with) that was an unprecedented challenge and they did well to get ahead on vaccines. (Though note that we had 157 deaths logged today, France had 30). The finances look grim, and the self-imposed shock looks really badly managed, but it hasn't really hit yet.
So the question for this government is what it has been for every government. Can they make it to the next election without hurting a significant chunk of voters? If they can, they probably win, irrespective of who the LotO is. If the government stumbles, a previously unimpressive (Thatcher, Cameron) or even outright rejected (Wilson, Heath, Churchill) leader suddenly becomes a lot more attractive.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and all that.
Unless this time is different, and the voters stick with someone who has failed them in preference to someone who hasn't.
And, personally, I think the US will do better with a smaller infrastructure package. Given inflation is already rearing its ugly head, an additional $2trn of stimulus (granted over a significant period) would do the US no good at all.
However dull Starmer may be, Johnson and some members of his Government have been criminally inept, and yes downright corrupt. Yet according to the polls the Conservatives haven't lost a single voter, and the posters here suggest Starmer is not only stupid but evil too, and Johnson by contrast is revered as the second coming.
The world has gone mad.
Allot was not responsible for hiring Couzens. Not responsible for failing to do due diligence on him. Not responsible for failing to take action over his indecent exposure. Those who were responsible for these failings are still in post and will likely suffer very little, if anything, as a result of their failings.
It is only ever the small fry who get caught.
For anyone interested the 3-part series on corruption in the Met in the 1970's - Bent Coppers - is on iPlayer. Very well worth watching. The 3rd episode is particularly powerful and what it says about police culture then could be said about it now.
https://www.kantarpublic.com/inspiration/thought-leadership/half-of-britons-are-concerned-about-keeping-their-home-warm-over-winter
A non-existent person has a zero environmental footprint.
Let's all stop procreating, allow our species to become extinct and leave the planet a better place.
The first big energy shock of the green era
There are grave problems with the transition to clean energy power" (£)
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/10/16/the-first-big-energy-shock-of-the-green-era
Labour's worst case is 28% flat. The Conservatives' is 40% and change.
*28%* worst case scenario despite having swallowed a quarter of LD voters. 😬
Labour's best case scenario? 33%.
One point up from what we're told was the greatest catastrophe in the history of the Labour party.
Best case scenario for the Conservatives? 45%.
If both these happen in a GE it's still a larger margin of defeat than 2019 for Labour. 😬😬😬‘
https://twitter.com/bareleft/status/1448713265144598532?s=21
Wally of course was later acquitted because of a handily misdirected jury. Living his final days as a free man.
Given the money that was thrown at the Great Financial Crisis and at the Pandemic I feel sure that whatever needs to be done to save the housing market [the assets of Tory voters] will be done.
A self-server with no real political principles.
Not the first and won't be the last.
I think she will end up dooming both bills and screw the Democrats in the Midterms. That definitely leads to a primary loss.
They stuck with Blair in 05, and he’d just unleashed the twin forces of Islamic extremism and Eastern European Labour
We need to reduce emissions to net zero. Which means we need to reduce them to net zero, on average, for every person. At which point adding an extra person to the calculation makes a difference of zero to the net emissions.
It's not like we can cut the global population by 90% fast enough to make a difference to the climate, save by a monumental act of genocide. And women everywhere that they are educated and have control of their bodies and economic life choose on average to have fewer children than the replacement rate - so no act of self-denial is required to bring the global population under control.
So the misanthropic attempt to shame people for having children is, as I said, complete cobblers.
It's pretty obvious that this won't last. Everyone's hearing murmurs. No doctors. Service is shocking. A&E overflowing. The police are close to being pointles and bills are rising sharply.
They might also notice that contrary to government propaganda the rest of Europe are functioning a hell of a lot better
In the long run it has been a more successful war than Vietnam or Afghanistan (in the latter case of course the Taliban are back and Bin Laden ended up being killed in Pakistan not Afghanistan)
For the rich, powerful nations of Western Europe, including us, getting adequate supplies and being able to get most people jabbed would, I hope, have been expected. Thankfully, that does appear to have been the case.
The obvious conclusion is that Africa is made up of 3rd world countries and therefore obviously their per child output of CO2 is less. If their fertility rate is greater than 2 per woman the overall output will increase exponentially plus of course they will produce more individually as they improve their standard of living per head. So not only is the deduction irrational, with time it has a reasonable probability to be shown to be false.
But ignoring that you can produce umpteen mathematical models that show the conclusion jumped to that you can deduce from the fact stated is bonkers.
It is on a par with 'A dog is an animal with 4 legs, therefore all things with 4 legs are dogs, or animals, or all animals have 4 legs, etc, etc.'
Unfortunately hyufd does sometimes spot that the 4 legged thing is an animal or a dog (and not a table) and thinks his logic is spot on.
For a start, people who had been blown out by the house price falls of 1990-3 had been hurt enough that they hadn't really recovered. The miracle really was that enough gave the Conservatives the benefit of the doubt in 1992.
Also, the public realm, the state of things like schools, hospitals, roads and parks was pretty shabby by 1997. Life felt tatty and that fed through to how people felt about the economy. People of a certain age will remember the slight cringe on visiting (say) West Germany- things were cleaner, worked better, that sort of thing. It's why spending money on improving town centres (especially in, ahem, marginals) is smart politics.
And Black Wednesday meant that, even though Major and Clarke did a decent job with the economy in the run up to 1997, they didn't get the credit, because of the previous shambles. You don't recover your reputation after that. It didn't kill the Conservative ratings (they were falling before September 1992) but it did stop them rising again.
Should the repayments on the house and the BMWs become a problem, Johnson has a problem. I cannot see how he avoids this now, but...oh wait...incoming post from @Philip_Thompson ...
Africa has far higher fertlity rates than the global average but emissions far below the average per head.
The issue of climate change is entirely therefore to do with replacing fossil fuels with renewables and perhaps reducing our consumption of red meat a bit so we need less destruction of forests for cattle farming and less methane emissions.
Fertility rates have sod all to do with it and so I was absolutely right and the article was completely wrong
Oh hang on.
After nodding in agreement with your posts on space tourism we are back on opposite sides of the table.
Goodnight.
Lab 1 004
Con 423
Ind 257
LD 103.
Labour Hold. Indy is serial candidate, UKIP, then Leigh, Atherton and Tyldesley Together.
It would be nice to think that this is all in the past. But then you read the Daniel Morgan report and remember that even now the Met does not have an agreed definition of corruption and that the Met Commissioner was found to have deliberately and repeatedly obstructed the inquiry.
So nothing really has changed and she too will live her final days on a fat pension garlanded with titles, her only real achievement to have hung into her job like a limpet.
And now definitely goodnight.
In a nation which has effectively dropped all other public health measures and which has bet the house on vaccination alone.
Humanity has also achieved more than any other species on earth, the fact we sometimes make mistakes does not mean we cannot rectify them
But in the real world, life hasn't been that bad for most of us for the last couple of years. Compared with how bad it could have been to live through a pandemic, it's been fairly peachy. Inconvenient, sure, but few of us are destitute and even fewer of us are dead.
It's hard to see how BoJo keeps life good for the next couple of years, but that is what will determine the result of the next election. (The undignified scramble for not-taxes to increase shows the problem.)
But if anyone can, Boris can. In which case, heaven help his successor.
(Which again strengthens his position in No 10. Who, in their right mind, would want to take over now?)