Options
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Osborne’s new job: Rewarding failure

“He wrecked the economy and he’ll wreck anything he gets his hands on.” — the verdict on the new editor of the London Evening Standard from a Tory activist vox popped at the Conservative Spring Forum in Cardiff by Channel Four’s Michael Crick.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
George is a modern day polymath.
@PaulBrandITV: Horrifically, they even went so far as to say murdered MP Jo Cox 'had it coming'.
https://twitter.com/itvnews/status/843885002664394752
They know Ozzy is going to be leader, possibly in the very near future.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the George;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His brilliance is marching on.
the opposite of love isnt hate, it's indifference
they no longer care
On-topic: if we ended up staying in, it would put rocket boosters under political division and bitterness. A new Farage-Banks political vehicle could gain widespread support very quickly.
I expect to see the country fall even further behind over the next twenty years. It's very very sad but when my kids leave school over the next decade I may well encourage them to go abroad. This country is in serious, serious trouble.
The posters on here will be fine of course. You can continue your conversations about the best way to invest your piles of cash. One of the great truisms of life is that the rich never suffer, and most of the posters on here are rich.
But its you and people like you who will be responsible, along with the self-indulgent rich left-wingers who have kept Corbyn in.
Oh for a viable moderate government.
Strap yourselves in, it's going to be a rough ride.
What's that quote about a classical education? It allows one to despise the wealth it prevents one from acquiring.
No wonder Mr. Eagles is so loaded
I don't know whether the Tatton constituency can get rid of him, but if he's looking for another seat after the boundary review I can't imagine anywhere else in Cheshire would be too keen to have him. Though maybe he's planning a wholesale shift to somewhere down south anyway.
In tonight's debate among the leading five, it will be interesting to watch how Macron plays his recent conversion to the reintroduction of conscription.
Mr. Cookie, I'm not against MPs having second jobs, but do agree the conflict seems too great to be considered acceptable.
This line from Blair resonated
"Populism identifies an enemy as the answer to what are essentially the problems of accelerated change".
...says the man who put his foot on the accelerator
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/17/tony-blair-launches-pushback-against-frightening-populism
TM the PM was a remainer, but now she is cast by Don as some kind of traitor because she accepts the result! Incredible
It's not only Osborne who cannot count. Mr Brind can't either. Osborne was Chancellor from May 2010 to June 2016. Six years.
Who was responsible for the other years of economic stagnation? Might the party in power before then have had something to do with it?
The economy was not all sweetness and light up to May 2010 and then driven to hell in a handbasket by Osborne.
Sorry: I know how hard it can be to write a good article. So I hesitate to criticize. But this is incoherent. Criticise Osborne by all means for his failures as Chancellor but we were left in a hell of a mess by the party that was kicked out in May 2010, a party that had been in power for 13 years and it is simply untenable to claim that what happened during those 13 years (and in earlier years) did not also form part of the backdrop to the EU referendum.
The Brexit Rogues Gallery should include pretty much the entire political class who, despite all their planet sized brains, were unable to make a convincingly positive case for the EU and for the way in which it is developing in a way that resonated with a country which was in the EU and enjoying the advantages of being in the EU. That's one hell of a failure.
And, finally, Mr B makes the mistake all British politicians have made since the Treaty of Rome was first signed. He thinks that the EU is all about economics and the Single Market. The one thing you'd hope pro-EU campaigners would understand is that the EU is - and always has been - primarily about politics. It is a political project. Economics is the means but it is not the end. The political case for the EU wasn't even attempted by the Blairs, Majors and Heseltines of this world. It is possible that in addition to those who thought the economics didn't work for them there were enough people who thought that the political consequences of being in the EU didn't work for them either and/or outweighed any economic benefits.
https://twitter.com/juliansheasport/status/843793568242302980
That is rather avoiding confronting that Remain was unable to convince people, and you're choosing to blame the deliverers rather than the message. That's very comforting, but not very helpful.
I also think blaming Osborne's stewardship of the economy as the reason is overly simplistic. Immigration was a far bigger concern. And while I lambasted the man for not dealing with the deficit, I have yet to see it explained how people who think austerity, cutting, is wrong, as you seem to say, think him not cutting enough is a bad thing. It's a failure of his, but one those who didn't want austerity should be thankful for.
On Osborne generally, speaking roles and adviser jobs are one thing, but he's clearly got no plans to get back in government again, and probably not long to stay as an MP.
https://twitter.com/TomMery/status/843861801494306817
Round 1 Le Pen 26% Macron 25% Fillon 18% Hamon 12.5% Melenchon 11.5% Dupont-Aignan 4.5%
Runoff Macron 60% Le Pen 40%
http://dataviz.ifop.com:8080/IFOP_ROLLING/IFOP_20-03-2017.pdf
Those who were responsible for Brexit were those who took Britain's membership of the EU and the advantages of the EU for Britain for granted for far too long and forgot to think about - let alone articulate convincingly - the case for both. In that vacuum mountebanks like Farage prospered.
That referendum was lost long before the campaign. If Cameron and Co wanted to win it they should have been making the case for the EU long long before early 2016. They should have been doing so from the moment the promise of a referendum was made. Cameron was doing the equivalent of fattening the pig on market day and trying to sell it to vegetarians.
Like his namesake Mr Best it is entirely appropriate to ask, "George, where did it all go wrong?"
Well yes, a failure if you're a fiscal conservative like some of us on here. But not a failure if you're Ed Miliband, Don Brind or the rest of the BBC.
The conversation has also been almost entirely about stability being good for business, but so is change. It just depends which business you are in.
Continental exporters will feel the same pressures to protect their UK generated profits/revenue in the same way that UK ones feel the need to do with their european ones.
If Business A vacates the marketplace, businesses B,C and D are presented with an opportunity to fill the space.
Peace is good for business.
War is good for business.
No doubt Remain didn't run a very good campaign... But at the end of the day the blame or the credit depending on how you think of it must go to the Leave side.
As for Don Brind and the EU even if we went to WTO terms we would still trade with the EU and it was precisely because EU trade is now worth less than half of the UK's overall trade that enough felt able to vote Leave (a position Scotland still has not achieved in terms of UK trade). If his party had imposed the 7 year work permits requirement Germany, for example, imposed on Eastern European migrants in 2004 we would probably never have had a Brexit referendum, let alone a Leave vote
Too many on the Remain side were talking to themselves or - and this is very common, particularly amongst lawyers and other professionals - thought that the rationality of their argument would be enough. Big mistake that. Persuasion is as much about emotion and about saying something that makes sense to those you are seeking to persuade. And to persuade you need to understand what motivates your audience. You need first to listen.
There is a case - a good one - to be made for immigration, for immigration from the EU and free movement within it. I could make it. But it was notable how few on the Remain side sought to make it or did so as if it was something that needed to be endured or did so in a way which contrived to insult its audience. If no-one was listening to the audience which needed persuading, why on earth should they listen to Heseltine and his rational arguments. No amount of rationality will compensate for de haut en bas condescension and lofty indifference to your concerns.
Good evening, everybody.
You could blame newspapers for leading them by the nose but just because someone feeds you malicious poison doesn't absolve you from the stupidity of eating it
Good article. Worth reading.
Are we headed for a bond market bloodbath?
My feeling was that Remain certainly had enough advantages that they were rightly favourites before the referendum. But i don't really know - if leave had lost i might well be praising the united remain campaign which crushed the hopelessly divided leave campaign.
Keep calling those who have come to a different political view to your own, rogues and liars. That'll persuade them.
https://twitter.com/JenWilliamsMEN/status/843907732289830912
With 300,000 new people coming to the country each year the simple fact is the infrastructure cannot cope. The salary I earn which would have bought a family home a generation ago barely buys a one bedroom grime pit in london these days. Move to the provinces? I'd be lucky to find a job and if I did my income would be cut by half, probably more.
I genuinely don't know if Brexit will be good or bad for my hypothetical children, but they weighed heavily on my mind as I was casting my vote. All I could think was, maybe things can get worse, but since I am already in a position where I am unable to house, feed and educate a family then I might as well gamble and hope that our nation's collective decision to pull the emergency cord will finally lead to something being done.
For me, it was an all-in shove. And I say this as a well-off middle class professional. I imagine quite a few people worse off than me genuinely did say "well it can't get any worse" and they would be quite right.
France, like so many other European countries, needs sensible Eurosceptics. By which I mean fiscally rational, business friendly Eurosceptics.
Marine Le Pen believes that France should pay higher pensions and lower the retirement age. She believes that the EU is too free trade and wants to raise tariffs on goods from outside France. She is a member of a political party which - not that long ago - described the holocaust as a 'detail'. She believes that a lack of government regulation in France is a major part of that country's problems.
There are many who look at MLP and say, "I hate the EU, and she's a Eurosceptic! Therefore I like MLP." But her prescriptions for France are either utterly unrealistic, or would make it poorer.
I hope D-A arises and is able to put forward a sensible Eurosceptic movement in France. I am not currently optimistic.