.... I thought that Cameron had genuinely shifted his party in the right direction of social liberalism. I also thought that Brown had to go for his economic incompetence.
I think that the coalition was a golden period of good government (with one or two exceptions, tuition fees being the glaring one).
In 2015 the loonies took over the Tory asylum, and we are living out that lunacy. Tories abandoned economic competence a year ago when they backed Hard Brexit. They will not recover it for a generation.
I do not regard Labour now as less financially competent. Sure, they want to open the financial taps, but by wanting soft Brexit they balance that out. I am not the only one who thinks this, most of London does too.
If we are not going to live within our means, then I prefer the Labour way of doing it.
Not so great post. Sorry
I take his final points as well.
We have been through six years of being told endlessly that everybody and everything had to save money in order to avoid national bankruptcy. Suddenly the Tories' pet project is agreed and balancing the budget is no longer quite so important. How unreasonable is it to expect that hospitals, schools, and all the other services that have been under such financial pressure should be at the top of the financial queue? Instead, the Tories want to hose money on big business, high earners, rich dead people's estates, and down the drain of hard Brexit, whilst offering yet more bad tasting medicine for the rest of us. And despite Mrs May's opening promises in Downing Street, too.
Anyone on here willing to admit to saying that the Coalition would not last 6 months back in 2010?
Mate..... the coalition lasted so long because the Tories were behind in the polls...so m much so that Cameron went to desperate lengths such as promise a vote on the EU.....
The Tories are now behind in the polls. Please tell me when they the time will come when they will feel brave enough to go for an election....
No idea, but my point is that I think it may be a mistake to assume any Con/DUP arrangement will only last months. If the Tories are determined and disciplined the next election may well ne some time away.
Indeed, Julia Gillard maintained a deal with the Greens and a few independents in Australia for 3 years from 2010 to 2013 until she was eventually toppled by Kevin Rudd who shortly after called an election. Like May she was a poor campaigner, going into the 2010 election expecting a landslide against Tony Abbott and barely stopping him winning, however like May she was a far better backroom dealer and technocrat with an eye for detail which kept her government intact
1) Keep HS2 but don't franchise it out, keep it government owned and run. It will be an easy line to run compare to others as it has few branch lines so even the DfT could do it.
2) Bursary for nurses and midwives, plus those in the lower income brackets and those in areas of need for the economy. Slackers like me get nothing.
3) Freeze free schools and grammar school expansion, feed that money into the main school funding for now.
4) Cross party group on Brexit, as it should have been to start with.
5) Sort out the extra £350m for the NHS, it is difficult to do but is possible.....with some accounting slight of hand (as has been noted on here).
6) Slow down benefit sanctions as they are now having reducing returns.
Laura K is incredibly irritating. It is getting to the point where I can't watch BBC News in case she pops up
She did her best during the campaign, probably just stopped Corbyn from winning to be fair
Thank Christ.
We didn't just dodge a bullet, we dodged an entire front line of entrenched machine guns with the British people very slowly marching toward them.
It does demonstrate how risky FPTP is
I thought this place was all in favour of FPTP? I seem to recall that threads on PR and AV never get published? I mean, if it was popular, surely @TSE would do a thread on it?
Anyone on here willing to admit to saying that the Coalition would not last 6 months back in 2010?
Mate..... the coalition lasted so long because the Tories were behind in the polls...so m much so that Cameron went to desperate lengths such as promise a vote on the EU.....
The Tories are now behind in the polls. Please tell me when they the time will come when they will feel brave enough to go for an election....
The next election will be in May 2022.
I know John...the dance of death with the DUP and this slow, long drift will continue for five long years of impotent, powerless, infighting, divisive, excruciatingly enfeebled government against a backdrop of Brexit that will be pushed continually into the long grass.....
Who do you blame most? Cameron or May?
Er, the voters??
It's certainly possible that 2022 will be like 1997 and that will assuredly be the outcome should the Tories behave now as they did then. But nothing is inevitable, is it? After all, barely a week or so ago, you and I and a good many others thought Mrs M would win by a landslide.
I think the (very) real and serious prospect of the return of socialism will prove a real motivator and unifier for Conservatives.
It's what almost of us joined the Party to prevent.
Comrades...it took me many months to reemerge here after the crushing losses of 2015 and Trump..... and your defeat I think is much much worse. After all, overnight, your politics were pretty much destroyed in the UK, and you were totally unprepared for it. The quote that a week is a long time in politics...well your ideology was blown up in a single night.
Well done for sticking around here. You have much more character than I had previously and I say that with all sincerity.
If only Ken Clarke had won the leadership we could have had Conservative dominance over the last couple of decades with the UK in the Eurozone, and happy to be so. We wouldn't have got involved in Iraq, and the Blair government would have faced serious opposition for as long as it lasted.
Plus, you'd never have had to go through the pain of seeing the UK vote for Brexit and then having it all slip away in a humiliating death spiral.
Anyone on here willing to admit to saying that the Coalition would not last 6 months back in 2010?
Mate..... the coalition lasted so long because the Tories were behind in the polls...so m much so that Cameron went to desperate lengths such as promise a vote on the EU.....
The Tories are now behind in the polls. Please tell me when they the time will come when they will feel brave enough to go for an election....
The next election will be in May 2022.
Not June 2022?
I imagine that there will be agreement to hold it on the same day as the locals. Otherwise, you're right and it will be June.
Cling on with no majority for five years? What is the record term for a minority government?
@steve_hawkes: Lord Rose tells ITV Election shows Brits are reconsidering Brexit. Must only be matter of time before UniversitiesUK and FTSE chief letters
There's almost nothing that some remainers don't count as evidence of REMAIN coming back.
Losing the referendum? REMAIN will still prevail over this grubby racist democracy lark. REMAIN campaign leaders DC and GO leave their posts and the HoC? Not to worry, the Project goes on. TMay coronated on the grounds that Brexit means Brexit? Oh, she must mean it means remain. Gina Miller wins? That's it, told you, completely blocked now. Everyone go home. HoC overwhelmingly approves A50 trigger powers? Never mind, you'll never do it. A50 actually triggered? No, no, not listening, still won't happen. CON and LAB both write Brexitty manifestos and are returned with 80%+ of the vote? Oooh LEAVE in trouble. SNP, GRN and LD write remainy manifestos and go backwards in vote share? Victory surely imminent, lads, courage now. Arch leavers Dominic Raab and Michael Gove are ministers? Wind about to change, won't be long now...
Anyone on here willing to admit to saying that the Coalition would not last 6 months back in 2010?
Mate..... the coalition lasted so long because the Tories were behind in the polls...so m much so that Cameron went to desperate lengths such as promise a vote on the EU.....
The Tories are now behind in the polls. Please tell me when they the time will come when they will feel brave enough to go for an election....
Anyone on here willing to admit to saying that the Coalition would not last 6 months back in 2010?
Mate..... the coalition lasted so long because the Tories were behind in the polls...so m much so that Cameron went to desperate lengths such as promise a vote on the EU.....
The Tories are now behind in the polls. Please tell me when they the time will come when they will feel brave enough to go for an election....
The next election will be in May 2022.
I know John...the dance of death with the DUP and this slow, long drift will continue for five long years of impotent, powerless, infighting, divisive, excruciatingly enfeebled government against a backdrop of Brexit that will be pushed continually into the long grass.....
Stewart Jackson complaining about his redundancy pay had me chuckling for the first time in days.
Why should MPs get redundancy pay ?
They're employed on a fixed term contract ie until the next general election takes place and then they are given the opportunity to apply for the next fixed term contract.
If the voters chose someone else then its the equivalent of failing a job interview.
Anyone on here willing to admit to saying that the Coalition would not last 6 months back in 2010?
Mate..... the coalition lasted so long because the Tories were behind in the polls...so m much so that Cameron went to desperate lengths such as promise a vote on the EU.....
The Tories are now behind in the polls. Please tell me when they the time will come when they will feel brave enough to go for an election....
No idea, but my point is that I think it may be a mistake to assume any Con/DUP arrangement will only last months. If the Tories are determined and disciplined the next election may well ne some time away.
Indeed, Julia Gillard maintained a deal with the Greens and a few independents in Australia for 3 years from 2010 to 2013 until she was eventually toppled by Kevin Rudd who shortly after called an election
Meanwhile we can look forward to lots of interesting Thursday Council by-election threads!
.... I thought that Cameron had genuinely shifted his party in the right direction of social liberalism. I also thought that Brown had to go for his economic incompetence.
I think that the coalition was a golden period of good government (with one or two exceptions, tuition fees being the glaring one).
In 2015 the loonies took over the Tory asylum, and we are living out that lunacy. Tories abandoned economic competence a year ago when they backed Hard Brexit. They will not recover it for a generation.
I do not regard Labour now as less financially competent. Sure, they want to open the financial taps, but by wanting soft Brexit they balance that out. I am not the only one who thinks this, most of London does too.
If we are not going to live within our means, then I prefer the Labour way of doing it.
Not so great post. Sorry
How do we win someone like you back, Beverley?
I read you as precisely the sort of voter the Conservatives should never have lost.
I'd suggest binning the europhobia and bigoted colleagues. But I'm sure she will answer for herself!
But, those things are fun. We love to march with the Hertsmere Protestant Defenders Flute Band.
Where do I sign up? Potters Bar High Street can be like the Shankill Road some days.
Comrades...it took me many months to reemerge here after the crushing losses of 2015 and Trump..... and your defeat I think is much much worse. After all, overnight, your politics were pretty much destroyed in the UK, and you were totally unprepared for it. The quote that a week is a long time in politics...well your ideology was blown up in a single night.
Well done for sticking around here. You have much more character than I had previously and I say that with all sincerity.
It was definitely not a good result for Con but describing a 42.5% share of the vote as being destroyed seems a bit over the top.
@steve_hawkes: Lord Rose tells ITV Election shows Brits are reconsidering Brexit. Must only be matter of time before UniversitiesUK and FTSE chief letters
Lord Rose thought it a bad thing, if wages rose, following Brexit.
It is a bad thing if prices rise faster. An inflationary spiral does no-one any good.
Could you explain what Sinn Fein abstaining means in practice ? I saw that Eilish McCallion had resigned her assembly seat following the election as MP for Foyle.
What exactly does she still have to do as an abstaining MP ?
Anyone on here willing to admit to saying that the Coalition would not last 6 months back in 2010?
Mate..... the coalition lasted so long because the Tories were behind in the polls...so m much so that Cameron went to desperate lengths such as promise a vote on the EU.....
The Tories are now behind in the polls. Please tell me when they the time will come when they will feel brave enough to go for an election....
No idea, but my point is that I think it may be a mistake to assume any Con/DUP arrangement will only last months. If the Tories are determined and disciplined the next election may well ne some time away.
Indeed, Julia Gillard maintained a deal with the Greens and a few independents in Australia for 3 years from 2010 to 2013 until she was eventually toppled by Kevin Rudd who shortly after called an election
Meanwhile we can look forward to lots of interesting Thursday Council by-election threads!
This place is increasingly full of people confusing what they want to happen with what will happen.
That has always been the case - both on here and elsewhere on the internet.
Most people (though not everyone) just types what they want to happen and then change the language to dress it up as a prediction of what will happen.
Fair point but the standard of debate on here since friday has been awful. Some people appear to neither work or sleep, its as if they're paid to post drivel.
I would far rather that the main Unionist party was the UUP. But, the modern DUP is pragmatic, and understand that they can't make outrageous demands.
I don't really expect them to. But the Google quoting is hurting the Tories already
It will blow over.
The damage - particularly with younger people - will already be done.
And after the quote-googling gets tired there will be the lying-in-a-wait-for-quote game, the provocative "make him say something crazy" interview question, the hidden microphone trick...
The Conservatives will be judged on their competence in office, not their dealings with the DUP.
Different people will judge in different ways.
For some key demographics, there will be a contamination and retoxification - however undeserved or illogical or unpragmatic such a judgment may be, the optics people are getting at the moment involve DUP "dinosaur quotes" and the idea these people are seen by Conservatives as natural bedfellows rather than crazy outdated nutters (unfair, but if that's the only information hitting a typical social media feed then that's how it looks) who are totally beyond the pale.
Can someone explain what's so unfair about quoting the things politicians say?
Presumably this is something new since the election campaign?
You've got me loyal orange lodgin'!
I quite agree. My point is that SeanF may find it unfair to judge the Tories by a selection of DUP quotes (and as Lucian points out in the thread, there is much more to the DUP than such quotes) but I know what is going to go viral on social media, and it isn't the DUP's hard-headed pragmatism or the finer details of their healthcare policy..
Stuff that goes viral on social media is forgotten the following week.
Unfortunately, though, such viral surges coincided with the GE this time. This was the X-factor election, and Theresa didn't have it.
The 18-24s should never be ignored, but it's the 35-45 age group I'd be most worried about as a Conservative.
And we seem to have lost the female vote this time, too.
I quite agree. My point is that SeanF may find it unfair to judge the Tories by a selection of DUP quotes (and as Lucian points out in the thread, there is much more to the DUP than such quotes) but I know what is going to go viral on social media, and it isn't the DUP's hard-headed pragmatism or the finer details of their healthcare policy..
Stuff that goes viral on social media is forgotten the following week.
Unfortunately, though, such viral surges coincided with the GE this time. This was the X-factor election, and Theresa didn't have it.
The 18-24s should never be ignored, but it's the 35-45 age group I'd be most worried about as a Conservative.
And we seem to have lost the female vote this time, too.
Yes - someone pointed out the 35-45 age group seems to have actively defected to Labour rather than just stayed at home, according to the YouGov model. That should be terrifying for you!
People only get so many pieces of political information per week, and for normal people that number is low (especially outside election times). If the little bit they are getting fed is that Unionists are vile and backwards, and the Conservatives are nasty enough to find them suitable allies, the Tories risk getting tarred in the same way that the Lib Dems did in coalition. Ironic, really.
It is certainly an interesting experiment to see if a junior coalition partner can poison the senior one.
Does anyone know if Paisley's War against Sodomy actually reduced the amount of sodomy/sodomites in Northern Ireland?
Of course it made no difference at all.
Such policies are stupid and all such policies reveal is that the people pushing those policies are insecure in their sense of self. Rather than putting the effort into learning to accept differences in others, they take the other route of banning what they do not like so that they do not have to think about it or face their own inadequacies.
I mean - what does it matter who someone else loves? It is no one's business except for the couple involved. Gay people are just people. If two of them love each other then why is it anyone else's business? Why should anyone have their lives proscribed because of who they love? Why should they be discriminated against for finding happiness?
Penalising people for being happy shows just how mad homophobia is.
I quite agree. My point is that SeanF may find it unfair to judge the Tories by a selection of DUP quotes (and as Lucian points out in the thread, there is much more to the DUP than such quotes) but I know what is going to go viral on social media, and it isn't the DUP's hard-headed pragmatism or the finer details of their healthcare policy..
Stuff that goes viral on social media is forgotten the following week.
Unfortunately, though, such viral surges coincided with the GE this time. This was the X-factor election, and Theresa didn't have it.
The 18-24s should never be ignored, but it's the 35-45 age group I'd be most worried about as a Conservative.
And we seem to have lost the female vote this time, too.
Yes - someone pointed out the 35-45 age group seems to have actively defected to Labour rather than just stayed at home, according to the YouGov model. That should be terrifying for you!
People only get so many pieces of political information per week, and for normal people that number is low (especially outside election times). If the little bit they are getting fed is that Unionists are vile and backwards, and the Conservatives are nasty enough to find them suitable allies, the Tories risk getting tarred in the same way that the Lib Dems did in coalition. Ironic, really.
Yet the Tories still won 42%, the only influence the DUP will get will be on areas like watering down the dementia tax, keeping the triple lock and a softer approach to Brexit, ironically what the country voted for
This is one of the ironies - I expect much of what the DUP will "want" (or provide a get-out clause to the Tories by saying they want!) is actually the abandonment of much of the "nasty" part of the manifesto! And yet to whatever extent it seeps into popular perception, the Tory association with the DUP is going to go down as Nasty Central, particularly with younger, more liberal or metropolitan voters. Probably even worse than if UKIP had won a few seats and they'd made a deal with them.
Comrades...it took me many months to reemerge here after the crushing losses of 2015 and Trump..... and your defeat I think is much much worse. After all, overnight, your politics were pretty much destroyed in the UK, and you were totally unprepared for it. The quote that a week is a long time in politics...well your ideology was blown up in a single night.
Well done for sticking around here. You have much more character than I had previously and I say that with all sincerity.
I'll take that as a compliment.
But, I would say Conservative politics is very far from destroyed in the UK, nor is the idea that the UK's only credible future lies solely in political and economic union with the continent.
@steve_hawkes: Lord Rose tells ITV Election shows Brits are reconsidering Brexit. Must only be matter of time before UniversitiesUK and FTSE chief letters
Lord Rose thought it a bad thing, if wages rose, following Brexit.
Only workers wages.
He thought directors earnings rising would be a good thing.
Stuart Rose is another to add to the list of people who have damaged the image of free market capitalism.
Anyone on here willing to admit to saying that the Coalition would not last 6 months back in 2010?
Mate..... the coalition lasted so long because the Tories were behind in the polls...so m much so that Cameron went to desperate lengths such as promise a vote on the EU.....
The Tories are now behind in the polls. Please tell me when they the time will come when they will feel brave enough to go for an election....
The next election will be in May 2022.
I know John...the dance of death with the DUP and this slow, long drift will continue for five long years of impotent, powerless, infighting, divisive, excruciatingly enfeebled government against a backdrop of Brexit that will be pushed continually into the long grass.....
Who do you blame most? Cameron or May?
Er, the voters??
It's certainly possible that 2022 will be like 1997 and that will assuredly be the outcome should the Tories behave now as they did then. But nothing is inevitable, is it? After all, barely a week or so ago, you and I and a good many others thought Mrs M would win by a landslide.
John...you cannot blame the voters for giving a big fat V to two vanity elections.....
The Brexit vote and May's vote should not have happened. 2 elections that have totally reduced the Tories.
Without those two elections Cameron would be anointing his successor at this very time...
I would far rather that the main Unionist party was the UUP. But, the modern DUP is pragmatic, and understand that they can't make outrageous demands.
I don't really expect them to. But the Google quoting is hurting the Tories already
It will blow over.
The damage - particularly with younger people - will already be done.
And after the quote-googling gets tired there will be the lying-in-a-wait-for-quote game, the provocative "make him say something crazy" interview question, the hidden microphone trick...
The Conservatives will be judged on their competence in office, not their dealings with the DUP.
Different people will judge in different ways.
For some key demographics, there will be a contamination and retoxification - however undeserved or illogical or unpragmatic such a judgment may be, the optics people are getting at the moment involve DUP "dinosaur quotes" and the idea these people are seen by Conservatives as natural bedfellows rather than crazy outdated nutters (unfair, but if that's the only information hitting a typical social media feed then that's how it looks) who are totally beyond the pale.
Can someone explain what's so unfair about quoting the things politicians say?
Presumably this is something new since the election campaign?
You've got me loyal orange lodgin'!
I quite agree. My point is that SeanF may find it unfair to judge the Tories by a selection of DUP quotes (and as Lucian points out in the thread, there is much more to the DUP than such quotes) but I know what is going to go viral on social media, and it isn't the DUP's hard-headed pragmatism or the finer details of their healthcare policy..
Stuff that goes viral on social media is forgotten the following week.
Unfortunately, though, such viral surges coincided with the GE this time. This was the X-factor election, and Theresa didn't have it.
The 18-24s should never be ignored, but it's the 35-45 age group I'd be most worried about as a Conservative.
And we seem to have lost the female vote this time, too.
It is actually quite hard to work out what you're trying to say in these comments. For example, are you saying it's unfair to the Tories that people think they see the DUP as natural bedfellows? That's certainly what Theresa May seemed to be saying in her victory speech. Or that it's unfair that people see the DUP as outdated nutters? But is that unfair, if it's based on things they have really said? Should people disregard the offensive stuff because they have a pragmatic healthcare policy? I'm tempted to say something about trains running on time, but I suppose I'd better not.
I have my own views on the DUP but they aren't relevant to my point, which is simply that different people will judge things in different ways - often based on only very partial information (there is far more to the DUP than a spot of quote-googling will throw up - and similar exercises on other parties could be made to look very ugly too) and on very limited criteria. The end judgment may not be holistic or fair or take into account the relevant counterfactuals (e.g. sure, Labour would also have tried cutting a deal with the DUP if the numbers meant they needed to, but few people will be absolving the Tories on that basis) yet it will still affect how people in key demographics vote.
Essentially, just because someone thinks this deal "should" be judged in a particular way, doesn't mean it will be.
Thanks. I agree life isn't fair. But on the other hand no one forces politicians into their careers, and if they say stupid and offensive things they have no right to complain if they experience consequences.
Anyone on here willing to admit to saying that the Coalition would not last 6 months back in 2010?
Mate..... the coalition lasted so long because the Tories were behind in the polls...so m much so that Cameron went to desperate lengths such as promise a vote on the EU.....
The Tories are now behind in the polls. Please tell me when they the time will come when they will feel brave enough to go for an election....
The next election will be in May 2022.
Not June 2022?
Not unless the FTPA is repealed
No by elections?
That would bring the election forward, not delay in until June 2022
Comrades...it took me many months to reemerge here after the crushing losses of 2015 and Trump..... and your defeat I think is much much worse. After all, overnight, your politics were pretty much destroyed in the UK, and you were totally unprepared for it. The quote that a week is a long time in politics...well your ideology was blown up in a single night.
Well done for sticking around here. You have much more character than I had previously and I say that with all sincerity.
I'll take that as a compliment.
But, I would say Conservative politics is very far from destroyed in the UK, nor is the idea that the UK's only credible future lies solely in political and economic union with the continent.
The question for me is what is Conservative politics?
I used to know, fuck knows what they stand for now.
The damage - particularly with younger people - will already be done.
And after the quote-googling gets tired there will be the lying-in-a-wait-for-quote game, the provocative "make him say something crazy" interview question, the hidden microphone trick...
The Conservatives will be judged on their competence in office, not their dealings with the DUP.
Different people will judge in different ways.
For some key demographics, there will be a contamination and retoxification - however undeserved or illogical or unpragmatic such a judgment may be, the optics people are getting at the moment involve DUP "dinosaur quotes" and the idea these people are seen by Conservatives as natural bedfellows rather than crazy outdated nutters (unfair, but if that's the only information hitting a typical social media feed then that's how it looks) who are totally beyond the pale.
Can someone explain what's so unfair about quoting the things politicians say?
Presumably this is something new since the election campaign?
You've got me loyal orange lodgin'!
I quite agree. My point is that SeanF may find it unfair to judge the Tories by a selection of DUP quotes (and as Lucian points out in the thread, there is much more to the DUP than such quotes) but I know what is going to go viral on social media, and it isn't the DUP's hard-headed pragmatism or the finer details of their healthcare policy..
Stuff that goes viral on social media is forgotten the following week.
Unfortunately, though, such viral surges coincided with the GE this time. This was the X-factor election, and Theresa didn't have it.
The 18-24s should never be ignored, but it's the 35-45 age group I'd be most worried about as a Conservative.
And we seem to have lost the female vote this time, too.
Comrades...it took me many months to reemerge here after the crushing losses of 2015 and Trump..... and your defeat I think is much much worse. After all, overnight, your politics were pretty much destroyed in the UK, and you were totally unprepared for it. The quote that a week is a long time in politics...well your ideology was blown up in a single night.
Well done for sticking around here. You have much more character than I had previously and I say that with all sincerity.
I'll take that as a compliment.
But, I would say Conservative politics is very far from destroyed in the UK, nor is the idea that the UK's only credible future lies solely in political and economic union with the continent.
The question for me is what is Conservative politics?
I used to know, fuck knows what they stand for now.
A couple of years ago no-one knew what Labour stood for, but did for the Tories. The converse is now the case.
Anyone on here willing to admit to saying that the Coalition would not last 6 months back in 2010?
Mate..... the coalition lasted so long because the Tories were behind in the polls...so m much so that Cameron went to desperate lengths such as promise a vote on the EU.....
The Tories are now behind in the polls. Please tell me when they the time will come when they will feel brave enough to go for an election....
The next election will be in May 2022.
I know John...the dance of death with the DUP and this slow, long drift will continue for five long years of impotent, powerless, infighting, divisive, excruciatingly enfeebled government against a backdrop of Brexit that will be pushed continually into the long grass.....
Who do you blame most? Cameron or May?
Er, the voters??
It's certainly possible that 2022 will be like 1997 and that will assuredly be the outcome should the Tories behave now as they did then. But nothing is inevitable, is it? After all, barely a week or so ago, you and I and a good many others thought Mrs M would win by a landslide.
John...you cannot blame the voters for giving a big fat V to two vanity elections.....
The Brexit vote and May's vote should not have happened. 2 elections that have totally reduced the Tories.
Without those two elections Cameron would be anointing his successor at this very time...
Anyone on here willing to admit to saying that the Coalition would not last 6 months back in 2010?
Mate..... the coalition lasted so long because the Tories were behind in the polls...so m much so that Cameron went to desperate lengths such as promise a vote on the EU.....
The Tories are now behind in the polls. Please tell me when they the time will come when they will feel brave enough to go for an election....
The next election will be in May 2022.
I know John...the dance of death with the DUP and this slow, long drift will continue for five long years of impotent, powerless, infighting, divisive, excruciatingly enfeebled government against a backdrop of Brexit that will be pushed continually into the long grass.....
Who do you blame most? Cameron or May?
Er, the voters??
It's certainly possible that 2022 will be like 1997 and that will assuredly be the outcome should the Tories behave now as they did then. But nothing is inevitable, is it? After all, barely a week or so ago, you and I and a good many others thought Mrs M would win by a landslide.
John...you cannot blame the voters for giving a big fat V to two vanity elections.....
The Brexit vote and May's vote should not have happened. 2 elections that have totally reduced the Tories.
Without those two elections Cameron would be anointing his successor at this very time...
Better vanity elections that vanity wars.
What is good is the issues of tuition fees, generation rent and the general inter-generational unfairness have been given prominence.
Essentially a Grand Coalition on the biggest issue of the parliament.
Well they aren't very secret if the Telegraph knows about them!
It's not a bad thing.
I'd prefer full independence, of course, but the most important thing to me is breaking the back of the mainstream consensus that the UK's future lies in political membership of the EU, for good, and putting that to bed.
Like we did with the prospect of our membership of the Euro between 2001-2007.
I quite agree. My point is that SeanF may find it unfair to judge the Tories by a selection of DUP quotes (and as Lucian points out in the thread, there is much more to the DUP than such quotes) but I know what is going to go viral on social media, and it isn't the DUP's hard-headed pragmatism or the finer details of their healthcare policy..
Stuff that goes viral on social media is forgotten the following week.
Unfortunately, though, such viral surges coincided with the GE this time. This was the X-factor election, and Theresa didn't have it.
The 18-24s should never be ignored, but it's the 35-45 age group I'd be most worried about as a Conservative.
And we seem to have lost the female vote this time, too.
Yes - someone pointed out the 35-45 age group seems to have actively defected to Labour rather than just stayed at home, according to the YouGov model. That should be terrifying for you!
People only get so many pieces of political information per week, and for normal people that number is low (especially outside election times). If the little bit they are getting fed is that Unionists are vile and backwards, and the Conservatives are nasty enough to find them suitable allies, the Tories risk getting tarred in the same way that the Lib Dems did in coalition. Ironic, really.
I am in listening mode.
As @RochdalePioneers pointed out with great eloquence, and others tried to, with rather less, it is the falling real wages that needs addressing. The govt. needs to somehow engineer an economic boom at the same time as negotiating Brexit. Maybe a good shake of the "magic money tree" in the direction of middle income families and their public services will suffice? Offered, and I hope taken, in the spirit of the good of the country.
Comrades...it took me many months to reemerge here after the crushing losses of 2015 and Trump..... and your defeat I think is much much worse. After all, overnight, your politics were pretty much destroyed in the UK, and you were totally unprepared for it. The quote that a week is a long time in politics...well your ideology was blown up in a single night.
Well done for sticking around here. You have much more character than I had previously and I say that with all sincerity.
It was definitely not a good result for Con but describing a 42.5% share of the vote as being destroyed seems a bit over the top.
I think you'll find that election night was as damaging for the Tories as black Wednesday and the ERM debacle...
the next time the Tories present a platform that will be electorally appealing...well we are going to have to wait for 5 years of excruciating drift...and then 2 terms of Labour Govt....so 15 years...the shape of the Tory party be a lot different from now....
Quite a few of our pbCOM community here will be in another place when the Tories next win an election, or at least look like winning an election...
Stewart Jackson complaining about his redundancy pay had me chuckling for the first time in days.
Why should MPs get redundancy pay ?
They're employed on a fixed term contract ie until the next general election takes place and then they are given the opportunity to apply for the next fixed term contract.
If the voters chose someone else then its the equivalent of failing a job interview.
If like the USA we had absolutely fixed term dates for the parliament, I could accept that argument more. Even with the FTPA we can - and do! - have early elections. So it does mean that MPs accept quite serious uncertainty about how long their job will last for. Even if it were fixed, it would be most unreasonable to expect sitting MPs to go around seeking job interviews in the run-up to an election just in case they lose... on that basis they should be given a few months' worth to live on, surely?
@steve_hawkes: Lord Rose tells ITV Election shows Brits are reconsidering Brexit. Must only be matter of time before UniversitiesUK and FTSE chief letters
Why does the election show that?
Well obviously when 85% of the voters vote for a pro-Brexit party that means the people are against Brexit. It's simple really.
Comrades...it took me many months to reemerge here after the crushing losses of 2015 and Trump..... and your defeat I think is much much worse. After all, overnight, your politics were pretty much destroyed in the UK, and you were totally unprepared for it. The quote that a week is a long time in politics...well your ideology was blown up in a single night.
Well done for sticking around here. You have much more character than I had previously and I say that with all sincerity.
I'll take that as a compliment.
But, I would say Conservative politics is very far from destroyed in the UK, nor is the idea that the UK's only credible future lies solely in political and economic union with the continent.
The question for me is what is Conservative politics?
I used to know, fuck knows what they stand for now.
A couple of years ago no-one knew what Labour stood for, but did for the Tories. The converse is now the case.
The Tories stand for being in power and staying there. The corrolary is that sometime they are too successful, hold on too long and when they lose they lose by the occasional landslide.
Comrades...it took me many months to reemerge here after the crushing losses of 2015 and Trump..... and your defeat I think is much much worse. After all, overnight, your politics were pretty much destroyed in the UK, and you were totally unprepared for it. The quote that a week is a long time in politics...well your ideology was blown up in a single night.
Well done for sticking around here. You have much more character than I had previously and I say that with all sincerity.
It was definitely not a good result for Con but describing a 42.5% share of the vote as being destroyed seems a bit over the top.
I think you'll find that election night was as damaging for the Tories as black Wednesday and the ERM debacle...
the next time the Tories present a platform that will be electorally appealing...well we are going to have to wait for 5 years of excruciating drift...and then 2 terms of Labour Govt....so 15 years...the shape of the Tory party be a lot different from now....
Quite a few of our pbCOM community here will be in another place when the Tories next win an election, or at least look like winning an election...
Tyson my friend, anyone and I mean anyone, making cocksure predictions for the next 15 years is being an arrogant fool.
I remember telling a prominent but to remain nameless PBer the same thing in mid May 2015 and you know what the cocksure predictions he was then making didn't come true.
Essentially a Grand Coalition on the biggest issue of the parliament.
Well they aren't very secret if the Telegraph knows about them!
It's not a bad thing.
I'd prefer full independence, of course, but the most important thing to me is breaking the back of the mainstream consensus that the UK's future lies in political membership of the EU, for good, and putting that to bed.
Like we did with the prospect of our membership of the Euro between 2001-2007.
This is where the mistake of the moderate Brexiteers lies. The consensus before June last year was that we could have a semi-detached relationship in the EU but outside the Eurozone. That is what Brexit has shattered, and it makes it much more likely that we will end up as part of the inner core in the long term.
I quite agree. My point is that SeanF may find it unfair to judge the Tories by a selection of DUP quotes (and as Lucian points out in the thread, there is much more to the DUP than such quotes) but I know what is going to go viral on social media, and it isn't the DUP's hard-headed pragmatism or the finer details of their healthcare policy..
Stuff that goes viral on social media is forgotten the following week.
Unfortunately, though, such viral surges coincided with the GE this time. This was the X-factor election, and Theresa didn't have it.
The 18-24s should never be ignored, but it's the 35-45 age group I'd be most worried about as a Conservative.
And we seem to have lost the female vote this time, too.
Yes - someone pointed out the 35-45 age group seems to have actively defected to Labour rather than just stayed at home, according to the YouGov model. That should be terrifying for you!
People only get so many pieces of political information per week, and for normal people that number is low (especially outside election times). If the little bit they are getting fed is that Unionists are vile and backwards, and the Conservatives are nasty enough to find them suitable allies, the Tories risk getting tarred in the same way that the Lib Dems did in coalition. Ironic, really.
I am in listening mode.
As @RochdalePioneers pointed out with great eloquence, and others tried to, with rather less, it is the falling real wages that needs addressing. The govt. needs to somehow engineer an economic boom at the same time as negotiating Brexit. Maybe a good shake of the "magic money tree" in the direction of middle income families and their public services will suffice? Offered, and I hope taken, in the spirit of the good of the country.
Isn't this just pointing to the fact that 7 years of austerity is a failed experiment. The economic boom could have been triggered in 2010 with a more relaxed approach to the deficit... and stronger growth would have led to increased tax revenues so the net effect may have been less debt not more. But the hairshirt austerity squeezed the prospects of real growth out of the economy (and btw Cameron and Osborne should take the blame for that, not May).
Good for you. Had a few people been so inclined at the top of your party a few weeks ago, history could have unfolded quite differently. A problem for the Tories at the moment though, is that whatever you choose to offer you are going to be outbid!
Essentially a Grand Coalition on the biggest issue of the parliament.
Well they aren't very secret if the Telegraph knows about them!
It's not a bad thing.
I'd prefer full independence, of course, but the most important thing to me is breaking the back of the mainstream consensus that the UK's future lies in political membership of the EU, for good, and putting that to bed.
Like we did with the prospect of our membership of the Euro between 2001-2007.
If the UK can get out of the EU political structures, it will surely only take a decade of further divergence between the UK and EU to render re-entry an option beyond the mainstream. The pace of EU integration, and the ever-decreasing share of the UK's trade with the EU (a long-term trend that predates Brexit and is associated with economic growth of developing countries) will surely see to that.
The euro would have been a bloody difficult thing to get out of if we'd signed up to it. But the idea of joining it was killed off surprisingly quickly, given how many powerful people thought it would be a wonderful idea.
Essentially a Grand Coalition on the biggest issue of the parliament.
Well they aren't very secret if the Telegraph knows about them!
It's not a bad thing.
I'd prefer full independence, of course, but the most important thing to me is breaking the back of the mainstream consensus that the UK's future lies in political membership of the EU, for good, and putting that to bed.
Like we did with the prospect of our membership of the Euro between 2001-2007.
This is where the mistake of the moderate Brexiteers lies. The consensus before June last year was that we could have a semi-detached relationship in the EU but outside the Eurozone. That is what Brexit has shattered, and it makes it much more likely that we will end up as part of the inner core in the long term.
Why? We have never in our history been in the inner core, we never joined the EEC originally, the original inner core was W Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium when we did first try De Gaulle probably correctly vetoed our entry and when we finally entered it was only what we saw as a 'Common Market.' Even in the unlikely event we ever returned to the EU we would never be in the inner core, we would be in the non-Eurozone periphery alongside Sweden, Denmark and most of Eastern Europe
.... I thought that Cameron had genuinely shifted his party in the right direction of social liberalism. I also thought that Brown had to go for his economic incompetence.
I think that the coalition was a golden period of good government (with one or two exceptions, tuition fees being the glaring one).
In 2015 the loonies took over the Tory asylum, and we are living out that lunacy. Tories abandoned economic competence a year ago when they backed Hard Brexit. They will not recover it for a generation.
I do not regard Labour now as less financially competent. Sure, they want to open the financial taps, but by wanting soft Brexit they balance that out. I am not the only one who thinks this, most of London does too.
If we are not going to live within our means, then I prefer the Labour way of doing it.
Not so great post. Sorry
How do we win someone like you back, Beverley?
I read you as precisely the sort of voter the Conservatives should never have lost.
I thought you wrote me off as a dreadful person when I changed my avatar?
Anyway... to answer your question, I have voted Conservative in the past and more often than I have voted Labour. I am not a party loyalist and my vote always needs to be won at each election.
Setting Brexit aside for the purposes of your question - what would make me vote Tory? I started to answer your question but it quickly became a novelette rather than an answer. I will try and post a summary version in a while or maybe tomorrow
This tweet holds the contradiction at the heart of Ruth Davidson boosters. Opposition has boosted Ruth into the stratosphere but opposition is the only card she's ever played so far. So now she's setting herself up as opposition to the UK Conservative party? Aye right.
Under what situation is she going to vote against her own party on a matter of confidence (or abstain). Is she actually really willing to bring down the government?
Yes? Okay then - she's an incredible woman of principle and I salute her but do you then see the MPs of that self same party then voting her in as leader?
No? Then she's just a regular old politician and the shine comes off at the first piece of controversial legislation that the SCons troop in behind the rest of the lobby fodder.
I quite agree. My point is that SeanF may find it unfair to judge the Tories by a selection of DUP quotes (and as Lucian points out in the thread, there is much more to the DUP than such quotes) but I know what is going to go viral on social media, and it isn't the DUP's hard-headed pragmatism or the finer details of their healthcare policy..
Stuff that goes viral on social media is forgotten the following week.
Unfortunately, though, such viral surges coincided with the GE this time. This was the X-factor election, and Theresa didn't have it.
The 18-24s should never be ignored, but it's the 35-45 age group I'd be most worried about as a Conservative.
And we seem to have lost the female vote this time, too.
Yes - someone pointed out the 35-45 age group seems to have actively defected to Labour rather than just stayed at home, according to the YouGov model. That should be terrifying for you!
People only get so many pieces of political information per week, and for normal people that number is low (especially outside election times). If the little bit they are getting fed is that Unionists are vile and backwards, and the Conservatives are nasty enough to find them suitable allies, the Tories risk getting tarred in the same way that the Lib Dems did in coalition. Ironic, really.
Yet the Tories still won 42%, the only influence the DUP will get will be on areas like watering down the dementia tax, keeping the triple lock and a softer approach to Brexit, ironically what the country voted for
This is one of the ironies - I expect much of what the DUP will "want" (or provide a get-out clause to the Tories by saying they want!) is actually the abandonment of much of the "nasty" part of the manifesto! And yet to whatever extent it seeps into popular perception, the Tory association with the DUP is going to go down as Nasty Central, particularly with younger, more liberal or metropolitan voters. Probably even worse than if UKIP had won a few seats and they'd made a deal with them.
It won't if the Tories dump the unpopular stuff and do not adopt any of the DUP's social baggage, the young voters who might be put off would never vote Tory in a million years anyway
I quite agree. My point is that SeanF may find it unfair to judge the Tories by a selection of DUP quotes (and as Lucian points out in the thread, there is much more to the DUP than such quotes) but I know what is going to go viral on social media, and it isn't the DUP's hard-headed pragmatism or the finer details of their healthcare policy..
Stuff that goes viral on social media is forgotten the following week.
Unfortunately, though, such viral surges coincided with the GE this time. This was the X-factor election, and Theresa didn't have it.
The 18-24s should never be ignored, but it's the 35-45 age group I'd be most worried about as a Conservative.
And we seem to have lost the female vote this time, too.
Yes - someone pointed out the 35-45 age group seems to have actively defected to Labour rather than just stayed at home, according to the YouGov model. That should be terrifying for you!
People only get so many pieces of political information per week, and for normal people that number is low (especially outside election times). If the little bit they are getting fed is that Unionists are vile and backwards, and the Conservatives are nasty enough to find them suitable allies, the Tories risk getting tarred in the same way that the Lib Dems did in coalition. Ironic, really.
I am in listening mode.
As @RochdalePioneers pointed out with great eloquence, and others tried to, with rather less, it is the falling real wages that needs addressing. The govt. needs to somehow engineer an economic boom at the same time as negotiating Brexit. Maybe a good shake of the "magic money tree" in the direction of middle income families and their public services will suffice? Offered, and I hope taken, in the spirit of the good of the country.
Isn't this just pointing to the fact that 7 years of austerity is a failed experiment. The economic boom could have been triggered in 2010 with a more relaxed approach to the deficit... and stronger growth would have led to increased tax revenues so the net effect may have been less debt not more. But the hairshirt austerity squeezed the prospects of real growth out of the economy (and btw Cameron and Osborne should take the blame for that, not May).
I love how people so casually talk about economic booms as if its merely a matter of choice whether to have one or not.
The last economic boom in Britain was named after Nigel Lawson and faded out almost thirty years ago.
Until this country manages to improve its wealth creating capacity there will be no more economic booms.
Check out the second places in the highlands of Scotland (Ross, Inverness, Argyll)- all the old Lib Dem places of strength now have the blue team in second place.
I quite agree. My point is that SeanF may find it unfair to judge the Tories by a selection of DUP quotes (and as Lucian points out in the thread, there is much more to the DUP than such quotes) but I know what is going to go viral on social media, and it isn't the DUP's hard-headed pragmatism or the finer details of their healthcare policy..
Stuff that goes viral on social media is forgotten the following week.
Unfortunately, though, such viral surges coincided with the GE this time. This was the X-factor election, and Theresa didn't have it.
The 18-24s should never be ignored, but it's the 35-45 age group I'd be most worried about as a Conservative.
And we seem to have lost the female vote this time, too.
Yes - someone pointed out the 35-45 age group seems to have actively defected to Labour rather than just stayed at home, according to the YouGov model. That should be terrifying for you!
People only get so many pieces of political information per week, and for normal people that number is low (especially outside election times). If the little bit they are getting fed is that Unionists are vile and backwards, and the Conservatives are nasty enough to find them suitable allies, the Tories risk getting tarred in the same way that the Lib Dems did in coalition. Ironic, really.
I am in listening mode.
As @RochdalePioneers pointed out with great eloquence, and others tried to, with rather less, it is the falling real wages that needs addressing. The govt. needs to somehow engineer an economic boom at the same time as negotiating Brexit. Maybe a good shake of the "magic money tree" in the direction of middle income families and their public services will suffice? Offered, and I hope taken, in the spirit of the good of the country.
Isn't this just pointing to the fact that 7 years of austerity is a failed experiment. The economic boom could have been triggered in 2010 with a more relaxed approach to the deficit... and stronger growth would have led to increased tax revenues so the net effect may have been less debt not more. But the hairshirt austerity squeezed the prospects of real growth out of the economy (and btw Cameron and Osborne should take the blame for that, not May).
....£158bn isn't relaxed enough? 10% of GDP....shifted the % of GDP debt up by 17%
This tweet holds the contradiction at the heart of Ruth Davidson boosters. Opposition has boosted Ruth into the stratosphere but opposition is the only card she's ever played so far. So now she's setting herself up as opposition to the UK Conservative party? Aye right.
Under what situation is she going to vote against her own party on a matter of confidence (or abstain). Is she actually really willing to bring down the government?
Yes? Okay then - she's an incredible woman of principle and I salute her but do you then see the MPs of that self same party then voting her in as leader?
No? Then she's just a regular old politician and the shine comes off at the first piece of controversial legislation that the SCons troop in behind the rest of the lobby fodder.
I have been making a similar point about the SNP for some time, but I was told I was wrong by at least two supporters.
I love how people so casually talk about economic booms as if its merely a matter of choice whether to have one or not.
If it was so easy to create an economic boom you would think that politicians would do it more often, and in particular time them to come before general elections.
This tweet holds the contradiction at the heart of Ruth Davidson boosters. Opposition has boosted Ruth into the stratosphere but opposition is the only card she's ever played so far. So now she's setting herself up as opposition to the UK Conservative party? Aye right.
Under what situation is she going to vote against her own party on a matter of confidence (or abstain). Is she actually really willing to bring down the government?
Yes? Okay then - she's an incredible woman of principle and I salute her but do you then see the MPs of that self same party then voting her in as leader?
No? Then she's just a regular old politician and the shine comes off at the first piece of controversial legislation that the SCons troop in behind the rest of the lobby fodder.
Exactly.
What are Messiah Ruth's actual policies for government ?
Laura K is incredibly irritating. It is getting to the point where I can't watch BBC News in case she pops up
She did her best during the campaign, probably just stopped Corbyn from winning to be fair
Thank Christ.
We didn't just dodge a bullet, we dodged an entire front line of entrenched machine guns with the British people very slowly marching toward them.
It does demonstrate how risky FPTP is
I thought this place was all in favour of FPTP? I seem to recall that threads on PR and AV never get published? I mean, if it was popular, surely @TSE would do a thread on it?
AV is NOT proportional
That is OK Sunil. I do not really care about voting systems, I simply could not resist stirring the pot
I think its time for the Westminser Lobby to calm down, we have a Government that is currently completing its reshuffle, we had no Government for a week following the 2010 GE!
The 18-24s should never be ignored, but it's the 35-45 age group I'd be most worried about as a Conservative.
And we seem to have lost the female vote this time, too.
Yes - someone pointed out the 35-45 age group seems to have actively defected to Labour rather than just stayed at home, according to the YouGov model. That should be terrifying for you!
People only get so many pieces of political information per week, and for normal people that number is low (especially outside election times). If the little bit they are getting fed is that Unionists are vile and backwards, and the Conservatives are nasty enough to find them suitable allies, the Tories risk getting tarred in the same way that the Lib Dems did in coalition. Ironic, really.
I am in listening mode.
As @RochdalePioneers pointed out with great eloquence, and others tried to, with rather less, it is the falling real wages that needs addressing. The govt. needs to somehow engineer an economic boom at the same time as negotiating Brexit. Maybe a good shake of the "magic money tree" in the direction of middle income families and their public services will suffice? Offered, and I hope taken, in the spirit of the good of the country.
Isn't this just pointing to the fact that 7 years of austerity is a failed experiment. The economic boom could have been triggered in 2010 with a more relaxed approach to the deficit... and stronger growth would have led to increased tax revenues so the net effect may have been less debt not more. But the hairshirt austerity squeezed the prospects of real growth out of the economy (and btw Cameron and Osborne should take the blame for that, not May).
My view FWIW, was that the promise to eliminate the deficit was the mistake. People were perfectly willing to accept it had to be brought under control, but not for the failure in reaching the target. Merely kicking the target down the road made people receptive to JC's anti-austerity "hope" message. It did not help that the Cons constantly boasted about their success in dealing with the deficit, and simultaneously promising more austerity to achieve a lower deficit. It began to seem like a promise of never ending misery.
We have been through six years of being told endlessly that everybody and everything had to save money in order to avoid national bankruptcy. Suddenly the Tories' pet project is agreed and balancing the budget is no longer quite so important. How unreasonable is it to expect that hospitals, schools, and all the other services that have been under such financial pressure should be at the top of the financial queue? Instead, the Tories want to hose money on big business, high earners, rich dead people's estates, and down the drain of hard Brexit, whilst offering yet more bad tasting medicine for the rest of us. And despite Mrs May's opening promises in Downing Street, too.
The National Debt needs to come down. Gordon's madness will be with us for generations otherwise.
The real truth is that spending as a percentage of GDP has been 40+% whilst taxation as a percentage has been 35% - 37%. Viewed in that context the problem is rather obvious.... since we cannot cut any deeper then taxes need to go up.
I love how people so casually talk about economic booms as if its merely a matter of choice whether to have one or not.
If it was so easy to create an economic boom you would think that politicians would do it more often, and in particular time them to come before general elections.
Once upon a time, back in the era of Keynesianism, that was pretty much how things worked, at least in terms of the timing. It all went to pot under Mrs T.
Of course Con may not be able to string it out 5 years.
But one extra advantage of doing so is that Corbyn will be getting older - he'll be 73 in 2022.
Now Corbyn is in good health and I'm sure everyone, whoever they support, wishes him the best of health.
But there has to be a chance he'll slow down by then - and if he isn't up to fighting the next GE any replacement isn't going to have his charisma.
Reagan was 73 when he won his second term.
Trump will be fighting for re-election at the age of 74 in 2020, strangely I don't think people are as bothered about candidates ages at this point in time as they were a few years ago.
This is one of the ironies - I expect much of what the DUP will "want" (or provide a get-out clause to the Tories by saying they want!) is actually the abandonment of much of the "nasty" part of the manifesto! And yet to whatever extent it seeps into popular perception, the Tory association with the DUP is going to go down as Nasty Central, particularly with younger, more liberal or metropolitan voters. Probably even worse than if UKIP had won a few seats and they'd made a deal with them.
It won't if the Tories dump the unpopular stuff and do not adopt any of the DUP's social baggage, the young voters who might be put off would never vote Tory in a million years anyway
They won't vote Tory in a million years, they'll be dead by then. (Apologies for the facetiousness!)
The Tories do, however, need them to vote Tory in 5 or 10 or 15 years' time - and if they think the Tories are evil, they won't.
(I fully accept there's not a lot of point the Tories splurging their political capital on chasing the vote of teenagers and early twenty-somethings. But you do need to make sure they're not put off forever.)
I love how people so casually talk about economic booms as if its merely a matter of choice whether to have one or not.
If it was so easy to create an economic boom you would think that politicians would do it more often, and in particular time them to come before general elections.
For those who doubt me economic growth is dependent upon wealth creation.
Now how do you create wealth ? You create wealth by producing a good or service which people want.
This good or service must be worth more than its cost of production. This good or service must be of higher quality and/or lower price than its competitors. This good or service must be produced within all the laws and regulations. This good or service must be continually improved at a rate at least equal to its competitors.
And after all that you have to pay taxes on everything involved in the process.
I love how people so casually talk about economic booms as if its merely a matter of choice whether to have one or not.
If it was so easy to create an economic boom you would think that politicians would do it more often, and in particular time them to come before general elections.
Once upon a time, back in the era of Keynesianism, that was pretty much how things worked, at least in terms of the timing. It all went to pot under Mrs T.
I think most contemporary economists would describe Keynesianism as a school of economic thought not a description of economic reality.
Check out the second places in the highlands of Scotland (Ross, Inverness, Argyll)- all the old Lib Dem places of strength now have the blue team in second place.
The LibDems now have no Scottish leadership as they did in the days of Grimond, Steel, Kennedy and Campbell while SCON has become the most prominent anti-independence party.
Labour are still second in Western Isles.
I've always wondered about why Labour are so strong there - is it very deprived ?
Check out the second places in the highlands of Scotland (Ross, Inverness, Argyll)- all the old Lib Dem places of strength now have the blue team in second place.
The LibDems now have no Scottish leadership as they did in the days of Grimond, Steel, Kennedy and Campbell while SCON has become the most prominent anti-independence party.
Labour are still second in Western Isles.
I've always wondered about why Labour are so strong there - is it very deprived ?
Traditional crofting is bl**dy hard work, there has always been a Labour tradition in the Western Isles. Tories have always done miserably there since time began.
This is one of the ironies - I expect much of what the DUP will "want" (or provide a get-out clause to the Tories by saying they want!) is actually the abandonment of much of the "nasty" part of the manifesto! And yet to whatever extent it seeps into popular perception, the Tory association with the DUP is going to go down as Nasty Central, particularly with younger, more liberal or metropolitan voters. Probably even worse than if UKIP had won a few seats and they'd made a deal with them.
It won't if the Tories dump the unpopular stuff and do not adopt any of the DUP's social baggage, the young voters who might be put off would never vote Tory in a million years anyway
They won't vote Tory in a million years, they'll be dead by then. (Apologies for the facetiousness!)
The Tories do, however, need them to vote Tory in 5 or 10 or 15 years' time - and if they think the Tories are evil, they won't.
(I fully accept there's not a lot of point the Tories splurging their political capital on chasing the vote of teenagers and early twenty-somethings. But you do need to make sure they're not put off forever.)
As Churchill said 'if you are not a socialist when you are young you have no heart, if you are not a Tory when you are older then you have no head.' Of course if they get the disaster that would be a Corbyn and McDonnell government in a few years they may become Tory a bit sooner, it took the final Wilson/Callaghan government to get young people to vote for Thatcher in 1979 and it took the Carter administration to get young people in the US to vote for Reagan in 1980. A Sanders Presidency and a Corbyn Premiership would do wonders for a conservative revival
We have been through six years of being told endlessly that everybody and everything had to save money in order to avoid national bankruptcy. Suddenly the Tories' pet project is agreed and balancing the budget is no longer quite so important. How unreasonable is it to expect that hospitals, schools, and all the other services that have been under such financial pressure should be at the top of the financial queue? Instead, the Tories want to hose money on big business, high earners, rich dead people's estates, and down the drain of hard Brexit, whilst offering yet more bad tasting medicine for the rest of us. And despite Mrs May's opening promises in Downing Street, too.
The National Debt needs to come down. Gordon's madness will be with us for generations otherwise.
The real truth is that spending as a percentage of GDP has been 40+% whilst taxation as a percentage has been 35% - 37%. Viewed in that context the problem is rather obvious.... since we cannot cut any deeper then taxes need to go up.
I agree with the solution - taxes do need to rise.
I appreciate people enjoy blaiming the 2008 crash entirely on Gordon Brown but seriously, do you PB tories think that if the Tories had been in power we'd have avoided being impacted by a global financial crisis, given our economy's reliance on a lightly regulated financial services industry?
Labour paid the price because they were in power at the time, and that's fair enough but I can't concieve we'd have been in any better position had the Tories been in power!
Comments
We have been through six years of being told endlessly that everybody and everything had to save money in order to avoid national bankruptcy. Suddenly the Tories' pet project is agreed and balancing the budget is no longer quite so important. How unreasonable is it to expect that hospitals, schools, and all the other services that have been under such financial pressure should be at the top of the financial queue? Instead, the Tories want to hose money on big business, high earners, rich dead people's estates, and down the drain of hard Brexit, whilst offering yet more bad tasting medicine for the rest of us. And despite Mrs May's opening promises in Downing Street, too.
1) Keep HS2 but don't franchise it out, keep it government owned and run. It will be an easy line to run compare to others as it has few branch lines so even the DfT could do it.
2) Bursary for nurses and midwives, plus those in the lower income brackets and those in areas of need for the economy. Slackers like me get nothing.
3) Freeze free schools and grammar school expansion, feed that money into the main school funding for now.
4) Cross party group on Brexit, as it should have been to start with.
5) Sort out the extra £350m for the NHS, it is difficult to do but is possible.....with some accounting slight of hand (as has been noted on here).
6) Slow down benefit sanctions as they are now having reducing returns.
It's what almost of us joined the Party to prevent.
Comrades...it took me many months to reemerge here after the crushing losses of 2015 and Trump..... and your defeat I think is much much worse. After all, overnight, your politics were pretty much destroyed in the UK, and you were totally unprepared for it. The quote that a week is a long time in politics...well your ideology was blown up in a single night.
Well done for sticking around here. You have much more character than I had previously and I say that with all sincerity.
Most people (though not everyone) just types what they want to happen and then change the language to dress it up as a prediction of what will happen.
Losing the referendum? REMAIN will still prevail over this grubby racist democracy lark.
REMAIN campaign leaders DC and GO leave their posts and the HoC? Not to worry, the Project goes on.
TMay coronated on the grounds that Brexit means Brexit? Oh, she must mean it means remain.
Gina Miller wins? That's it, told you, completely blocked now. Everyone go home.
HoC overwhelmingly approves A50 trigger powers? Never mind, you'll never do it.
A50 actually triggered? No, no, not listening, still won't happen.
CON and LAB both write Brexitty manifestos and are returned with 80%+ of the vote? Oooh LEAVE in trouble.
SNP, GRN and LD write remainy manifestos and go backwards in vote share? Victory surely imminent, lads, courage now.
Arch leavers Dominic Raab and Michael Gove are ministers? Wind about to change, won't be long now...
They're employed on a fixed term contract ie until the next general election takes place and then they are given the opportunity to apply for the next fixed term contract.
If the voters chose someone else then its the equivalent of failing a job interview.
Could you explain what Sinn Fein abstaining means in practice ? I saw that Eilish McCallion had resigned her assembly seat following the election as MP for Foyle.
What exactly does she still have to do as an abstaining MP ?
But, I would say Conservative politics is very far from destroyed in the UK, nor is the idea that the UK's only credible future lies solely in political and economic union with the continent.
He thought directors earnings rising would be a good thing.
Stuart Rose is another to add to the list of people who have damaged the image of free market capitalism.
The Brexit vote and May's vote should not have happened. 2 elections that have totally reduced the Tories.
Without those two elections Cameron would be anointing his successor at this very time...
I used to know, fuck knows what they stand for now.
No chance of that happening these days.
What is good is the issues of tuition fees, generation rent and the general inter-generational unfairness have been given prominence.
I'd prefer full independence, of course, but the most important thing to me is breaking the back of the mainstream consensus that the UK's future lies in political membership of the EU, for good, and putting that to bed.
Like we did with the prospect of our membership of the Euro between 2001-2007.
the next time the Tories present a platform that will be electorally appealing...well we are going to have to wait for 5 years of excruciating drift...and then 2 terms of Labour Govt....so 15 years...the shape of the Tory party be a lot different from now....
Quite a few of our pbCOM community here will be in another place when the Tories next win an election, or at least look like winning an election...
Now that I found absolutely astonishing! (Wonder if Nick Palmer knows him personally, given that he was chief exec at the RSPCA.)
I remember telling a prominent but to remain nameless PBer the same thing in mid May 2015 and you know what the cocksure predictions he was then making didn't come true.
Avatar on E4+1
(only kidding!)
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/12/jeremy-corbyn-urged-to-reappoint-existing-shadow-cabinet
The euro would have been a bloody difficult thing to get out of if we'd signed up to it. But the idea of joining it was killed off surprisingly quickly, given how many powerful people thought it would be a wonderful idea.
Anyway... to answer your question, I have voted Conservative in the past and more often than I have voted Labour. I am not a party loyalist and my vote always needs to be won at each election.
Setting Brexit aside for the purposes of your question - what would make me vote Tory? I started to answer your question but it quickly became a novelette rather than an answer. I will try and post a summary version in a while or maybe tomorrow
https://twitter.com/C4Ciaran/status/874344848920375297
This tweet holds the contradiction at the heart of Ruth Davidson boosters. Opposition has boosted Ruth into the stratosphere but opposition is the only card she's ever played so far. So now she's setting herself up as opposition to the UK Conservative party? Aye right.
Under what situation is she going to vote against her own party on a matter of confidence (or abstain). Is she actually really willing to bring down the government?
Yes? Okay then - she's an incredible woman of principle and I salute her but do you then see the MPs of that self same party then voting her in as leader?
No? Then she's just a regular old politician and the shine comes off at the first piece of controversial legislation that the SCons troop in behind the rest of the lobby fodder.
The last economic boom in Britain was named after Nigel Lawson and faded out almost thirty years ago.
Until this country manages to improve its wealth creating capacity there will be no more economic booms.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicspending/bulletins/ukgovernmentdebtanddeficitforeurostatmaast/aprtojune2016
ie the Govt after the 2017 GE, the Govt to be formed now.
What are Messiah Ruth's actual policies for government ?
1) No IndyRef2
2) WFA for Scotland
Anything else ?
The 18-24s should never be ignored, but it's the 35-45 age group I'd be most worried about as a Conservative.
And we seem to have lost the female vote this time, too.
Yes - someone pointed out the 35-45 age group seems to have actively defected to Labour rather than just stayed at home, according to the YouGov model. That should be terrifying for you!
People only get so many pieces of political information per week, and for normal people that number is low (especially outside election times). If the little bit they are getting fed is that Unionists are vile and backwards, and the Conservatives are nasty enough to find them suitable allies, the Tories risk getting tarred in the same way that the Lib Dems did in coalition. Ironic, really.
I am in listening mode.
As @RochdalePioneers pointed out with great eloquence, and others tried to, with rather less, it is the falling real wages that needs addressing. The govt. needs to somehow engineer an economic boom at the same time as negotiating Brexit. Maybe a good shake of the "magic money tree" in the direction of middle income families and their public services will suffice? Offered, and I hope taken, in the spirit of the good of the country.
Isn't this just pointing to the fact that 7 years of austerity is a failed experiment. The economic boom could have been triggered in 2010 with a more relaxed approach to the deficit... and stronger growth would have led to increased tax revenues so the net effect may have been less debt not more. But the hairshirt austerity squeezed the prospects of real growth out of the economy (and btw Cameron and Osborne should take the blame for that, not May).
My view FWIW, was that the promise to eliminate the deficit was the mistake. People were perfectly willing to accept it had to be brought under control, but not for the failure in reaching the target. Merely kicking the target down the road made people receptive to JC's anti-austerity "hope" message.
It did not help that the Cons constantly boasted about their success in dealing with the deficit, and simultaneously promising more austerity to achieve a lower deficit. It began to seem like a promise of never ending misery.
The real truth is that spending as a percentage of GDP has been 40+% whilst taxation as a percentage has been 35% - 37%. Viewed in that context the problem is rather obvious.... since we cannot cut any deeper then taxes need to go up.
https://twitter.com/iankatz1000/status/874382882151829505
The Tories do, however, need them to vote Tory in 5 or 10 or 15 years' time - and if they think the Tories are evil, they won't.
(I fully accept there's not a lot of point the Tories splurging their political capital on chasing the vote of teenagers and early twenty-somethings. But you do need to make sure they're not put off forever.)
Now how do you create wealth ? You create wealth by producing a good or service which people want.
This good or service must be worth more than its cost of production.
This good or service must be of higher quality and/or lower price than its competitors.
This good or service must be produced within all the laws and regulations.
This good or service must be continually improved at a rate at least equal to its competitors.
And after all that you have to pay taxes on everything involved in the process.
Its not easy.
I'm out of long term positions for the moment - looking to move house shortly :>
Labour are still second in Western Isles.
I've always wondered about why Labour are so strong there - is it very deprived ?
I appreciate people enjoy blaiming the 2008 crash entirely on Gordon Brown but seriously, do you PB tories think that if the Tories had been in power we'd have avoided being impacted by a global financial crisis, given our economy's reliance on a lightly regulated financial services industry?
Labour paid the price because they were in power at the time, and that's fair enough but I can't concieve we'd have been in any better position had the Tories been in power!