The Commission is doing this to virtue signal a bit of power over the UK.
Fairness and equity don't come into it.
I know Brexiteers changed the meaning of alert last week without notice and I have just adjusted to it, but please can I get an explanation of the new meaning of "virtue"?
Being old fashioned I am used to it meaning good character and high standards, i.e. fairness and equity.
North Island, NZ is having its worst drought ever. The UK seems to be headed that way. Disappointing to note this virus thing is as well as, not instead of, everything else.
Thornhill report makes painful reading. It would be hard to be otherwise after the 2019 GE
"The report notes that while Swinson was hampered by having less than five months between winning the party leadership and the election, her decision to immediately seek a new party chief executive undermined decision-making structures.
“This had the unintended consequence creating an ‘inner circle’ of advisers at arm’s length from the resources of the party machine, and put decision-making in the hands of an unaccountable group around the leader,” the report says. “It also severed some people from the roles and responsibilities they were employed to do, and led to the overpromotion of others.”
The report says: "...the party "effectively ignored" the biggest group of voters: those who were neither fervently remain or leave". A curious comment - it seemed to me that the vast majority were either fervently remain or fervently leave.
I need to read the full report, but it sounds as if no attempt to paper over the cracks. Many lessons to learn.
The repeal A50 policy was viable when No Deal Brexit on Halloween was the threat, but needed a back up plan for when BoZo's "Oven Ready Deal" appeared. It was off putting to many Remainers, and all Leavers.
I have said all along that the LDs newly expanded membership risked becoming a single issue anti Brexit party. Now that it is out of the way, hopefully we can get back to potholes, bus routes and barcharts
I've read the 61 page report.
In summary
1.New leader to develop a clear vision of what the LibDems are for 2. Improve decision making (eg confusion between authority of Leader, President and CEO; Federal Board has 41 members) 3. Improve campaigning.
4. Learn to count (as per LBJ). Too much hubris led to the rejection of Labour who offered the only path to fulfilling LibDem policy on Brexit; perhaps buoyed up by forgetting half of LibDem MPs were defectors from other parties and did not represent a yellow revival amongst voters.
5. Dress like a leader, not a teacher. Looks matter, and first impressions count. Ain't life unfair.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
The English nationalists had him in fettes?
Uniondivvie keeps the eccentricity very much under control most of the time, but it is one of his peculiar quirks to argue both that the British class system doesn't exist in Scotland and that English people are obsessed by class whereas Scots don't care. Trying to create some sort of fundamental dividing lines I suppose, if only in his head.
I don't see any inconsistency in the arguments that you attribute to Uniondivvie. As someone who has lived in both Scotland and England I would say that his position as you outline it is more true than untrue. Certainly, Scots are less class conscious than the English (it's not difficult) and Scotland is a more egalitarian country. Although Scots are less egalitarian than they like to think they are, as the persistent problems of poverty and ill health in parts of the central belt demonstrate.
I have lived in Scotland for nearly 10 years, and I can tell you in my experience his argument is utter tripe. Again, perhaps your experience has been very different to mine.
Holy shit, a gradual dawning that others' experiences may differ from yours? A heartening if small step on the road to enlightenment.
There is so much that is right in this article that it's a pity the underlying premise renders it null and void.
Johnson won the Tories their biggest victory since Margaret Thatcher. She was given free rein in three General Elections (1979, 1983, 1987) and no one would touch her.
We tend to filter what we think we know through the prism of recent experience and I'm afraid David you have fallen foul of this. You're thinking Boris is Cameron. He isn't. Cameron did win but only just and his coalition victory followed by 12-seat majority gave the plotters the oxygen they needed.
Boris has one single undeniable firewall. He won handsomely. The party won't touch him.
There is one huge difference. No-one could touch Thatcher for so long because she was ideologically in tune with the membership. They still worship her.
There is no guarantee the membership are going to be too enamoured with Boris's leadership once they have experienced it for a while. He took a calculated risk that being "Mr Brexit" would win him the leadership and the GE. That strategy paid off brilliantly. However who really knows what else his government is going to do?
My guess is that BigG is correct and he will be a "one nation" Tory. I think it will be a big state, high spending government and I think that that was the case even before Covid19. Whether it can also remain a low-tax government remains to be seen. I don't see how it can.
He may remain popular in the country but I don't think it will be long before there are rumblings of discontent in the party and the membership. If he is serious about prioritising the voters in the new Tory seats in the north and midlands i order to retain those seats I don't think the wealthier southern membership base is going to be too thrilled about what that means in practice.
North Island, NZ is having its worst drought ever. The UK seems to be headed that way. Disappointing to note this virus thing is as well as, not instead of, everything else.
Ironically a drought could be good for Boris if he takes the opportunity to build new reservoirs and pipelines, creating jobs and helping to get the economy moving again.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
I believe you still think of Scots as 'they' dontcha? Always good to get the anthropological view of those who deign to live among us.
Not being Scottish, I do, yes. I think the 'they' word about millionaires, women, people who can play the piano, children etc. But I think of us all as being British - which is lovely.
What I don't do is grade people on their Scottishness, which you apparently do.
The Lib Dems need to make a deal with Keir Starmer, in return for the implementation of STV. Simple as that.
Maybe after the election and with a referendum. Labour can't do pre-election deals because it brings the unanswerable question of "would you do a deal with the SNP?"
Which Bundesliga team are we all adopting? I am going with FC St Pauli for their impeccable left wing and anti-fash credentials. Even though they are having a shit year.
Careful, you'll be accused of being a de facto Celtic supporter.
North Island, NZ is having its worst drought ever. The UK seems to be headed that way. Disappointing to note this virus thing is as well as, not instead of, everything else.
I literally just said to my wife ten minutes ago that the drought we are experiencing is just not cutting through in news because everything has to be virus.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
It's a good point. My experience of posh Scots makes Scotland look like a feudal bastion in comparison with down-to-earth, egalitarian England.
Quite. At my first employer in Scotland the office staff spoke quite unironically about 'undesirables' in their local area. I know several lovely Scots obsessed with name-dropping when they might have run into an Earl at some committee or event (at least one of whom is a vocal SNP supporter - which doesn't stop him going weak at the knees at a sniff of the tweedy upper crust). I can't see a shred of evidence that Scots are any less aware of or interested in social class, though perhaps it is more so on the West Coast where I've spent less time.
I've never been more aware of the BBC as a State Broadcaster than now. It's mobile front page is essentially a cut and paste from the Ministry of Information.
Even to the point of getting it presumably intentionally wrong over the new exercise rules. It says you can now exercise outside with someone from outside your household for the first time. Which is wrong. You always could.
No you couldn't unless you reckon you can freely stand shoulder to shoulder with strangers and that there's no such thing as a 2 metre rule.
"Restrictions on gatherings
7. During the emergency period, no person may participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people except—
(a)where all the persons in the gathering are members of the same household, (b)where the gathering is essential for work purposes, (c)to attend a funeral, etc..."
And the two metre rule is advice not the law.
Not all rules are laws.
The two metre rule is a rule. The only exercising once per day was a rule.
That was my point. You could always under the law go outside with two people. The BBC is making out that it is a recent thing.
It is if you are following the rules and not just the law.
If the government announced they were lifting the two metre rule and the BBC reported that would you say "why are they reporting that it was never the law?"
Which Bundesliga team are we all adopting? I am going with FC St Pauli for their impeccable left wing and anti-fash credentials. Even though they are having a shit year.
I know you have a bitter take on Boris but you may find that the public enquiries have a lot more to say about the public health bodies and the scientific advisors
Unfortunately my Mother in Laws excellent care home in the Isle of Wight now has several cases. Worrying, and a desperately sad situation.
One of the many awful things about Covid-19 is how people die without family around them. Even our hardy ICU consultants, who have made decisions to end intervention on a weekly basis for years find this distressing.
And, dare one venture to say it, the Covid crisis in care homes doesn't end with the disease. A high proportion of care home residents are demented, and are presently being warehoused in solitary confinement basically with no human contact apart from help with feeding and essential personal care, gradually wasting away despite the best efforts of the staff.
At the end of all of this there are going to be many relatives who, having left their loved ones in a state of mild cognitive impairment, go back again to discover that they are either completely uncommunicative or have no idea who this stranger who's just come to see them actually is.
There's arguably an issue here of the prioritisation of quantity of life over quality of life, but in your line of work I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that society often isn't very comfortable about having conversations on that subject.
Disagree with the thread header, Starmer is unlikely to win a majority but he has a strong chance of becoming PM.
First only one party since WW2 has won a general election after 10 years in power, the Tories in 1992 and then only by a small majority. By the time of the next general election the Tories will have been in power for 14 years.
Second none of the minor parties will prop up the Tories if they lost their majority, the LDs will prefer Starmer to the Tories hard Brexit and even the DUP would prefer the whole UK to be in the EEA with Starmer than a border in the Irish Sea.
Third, Boris is the best election winner for the Tories since Thatcher and the idea replacing him if he becomes unpopular will resolve their problems is deluded. If he becomes unpopular it will be because Government policy is unpopular and replacing him with Sunak will not resolve that as Sunak will have been setting economic policy post Covid.
Nor will the Tories have the option of dropping an unpopular policy like Brexit on WTO terms as they did in 1990 when they replaced Thatcher with Major and Major dumped the poll tax. While a small majority of voters at large want an extension of the transition period, the vast majority of Tory and Leave voters oppose an extension of the transition period and welcome WTO terms.
So getting rid of Boris for a soft Brexit, pro single market Tory leader say maybe Hunt or a converted Sunak would just lead to mass defections of Leavers from the Tories to the Brexit Party again and Leave them in the same position they were under May which was why they elected Boris in the first place
The market is not "who will be Prime Minister after the next general election". The market is "who will be next Prime Minister".
So, if Johnson becomes unpopular and is replaced as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party, and Prime Minister, then his replacement as PM will be the winner in this betting market and they will certainly be a Conservative MP rather than Starmer.
In order for Starmer to become the next Prime Minister you have to believe that Johnson will not only lose the next election, but be allowed to lose the next election rather than be replaced, and would want to fight a losing battle, rather than stepping aside.
The only point in replacing Boris, the best Tory election winner since Thatcher, would be if WTO terms with Boris becomes as unpopular as the poll tax with Thatcher was when she was replaced by Major in 1990.
However given over 60% of Tory voters oppose extending the transition period, replacing Boris with say Hunt or Sunak on a pro single market policy would see mass defections of Leavers from the Tories to the Brexit Party again.
Hard Brexit and WTO terms is far more popular with Tory voters than the poll tax ever was
The popularity of WTO terms is neither here nor there for the argument. Given the make-up of the Parliamentary Conservative Party I'd expect Johnson's replacement to be more of a Brexit ideologue than less.
The point is that Starmer only becomes the next PM if an unpopular Johnson contests the next general election. It's much more likely that he remains popular enough to win again, or is replaced if he becomes unpopular.
When was the last time the Conservatives contested a general election with a Prime Minister known to be personally unpopular without first trying to replace them?
They aren't the Labour Party who drifted to defeat in 2010 with Brown at the helm.
Ironically a drought could be good for Boris if he takes the opportunity to build new reservoirs and pipelines, creating jobs and helping to get the economy moving again.
The Lib Dems need to make a deal with Keir Starmer, in return for the implementation of STV. Simple as that.
Why say Starmer rather than Johnson? Liberals are - or should be - equality distant from the conservatives and collectivists - so that we have a party aligned to each of the three contrasting ideologies.
They shouldn`t make deals with anyone. The ironic thing is that there is a decent proportion of the public which is liberal.
Ironically a drought could be good for Boris if he takes the opportunity to build new reservoirs and pipelines, creating jobs and helping to get the economy moving again.
Ironically a drought could be good for Boris if he takes the opportunity to build new reservoirs and pipelines, creating jobs and helping to get the economy moving again.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
I believe you still think of Scots as 'they' dontcha? Always good to get the anthropological view of those who deign to live among us.
Not being Scottish, I do, yes. I think the 'they' word about millionaires, women, people who can play the piano, children etc. But I think of us all as being British - which is lovely.
What I don't do is grade people on their Scottishness, which you apparently do.
Do I think of a middle aged stripper making a buck while sad old guys stare into their pints of Special as more Scottish than Tony Blair? You bet.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
Lucky , no matter how much you protest it is plain to anyone that Scotland is far less class conscious than England. We have our share , much smaller, of hoorays but in general people don't have the doff your cap/they are better than me attitude that you see down south.
It is awareness that we're speaking of Malc, not necessarily 'kowtowing'. Complaining about the poshos in the big house (or complaining about the local neds) is as much awareness of the class system as the deferential behaviour you describe.
Thornhill report makes painful reading. It would be hard to be otherwise after the 2019 GE
"The report notes that while Swinson was hampered by having less than five months between winning the party leadership and the election, her decision to immediately seek a new party chief executive undermined decision-making structures.
“This had the unintended consequence creating an ‘inner circle’ of advisers at arm’s length from the resources of the party machine, and put decision-making in the hands of an unaccountable group around the leader,” the report says. “It also severed some people from the roles and responsibilities they were employed to do, and led to the overpromotion of others.”
The report says: "...the party "effectively ignored" the biggest group of voters: those who were neither fervently remain or leave". A curious comment - it seemed to me that the vast majority were either fervently remain or fervently leave.
I need to read the full report, but it sounds as if no attempt to paper over the cracks. Many lessons to learn.
The repeal A50 policy was viable when No Deal Brexit on Halloween was the threat, but needed a back up plan for when BoZo's "Oven Ready Deal" appeared. It was off putting to many Remainers, and all Leavers.
I have said all along that the LDs newly expanded membership risked becoming a single issue anti Brexit party. Now that it is out of the way, hopefully we can get back to potholes, bus routes and barcharts
I've read the 61 page report.
In summary
1.New leader to develop a clear vision of what the LibDems are for 2. Improve decision making (eg confusion between authority of Leader, President and CEO; Federal Board has 41 members) 3. Improve campaigning.
4. Learn to count (as per LBJ). Too much hubris led to the rejection of Labour who offered the only path to fulfilling LibDem policy on Brexit; perhaps buoyed up by forgetting half of LibDem MPs were defectors from other parties and did not represent a yellow revival amongst voters.
5. Dress like a leader, not a teacher. Looks matter, and first impressions count. Ain't life unfair.
On your point 4, the report says:
"The leadership was faced with two Catch-22 strategy options; and as became one of the hallmarks of the campaign, no decision was actually made.
One was to embark on a pure strategy to Stop Brexit. Under this strategy the plan would have been to ensure as many pro-remain MPs in the House of Commons as possible. This would have necessitated standing down in areas where there were Labour pro-Remain MPs. The consequence of that decision could likely have been a collapse in Conservative tactical voters petrified of a Corbyn led coalition. While we said we wanted to Stop Brexit we were not prepared to take that strategic risk, nor did we make any preparations for how we could mitigate that risk.
The second was a pure strategy to maximise Liberal Democrat representation in Westminster. Under this strategy the plan would have been to let the Parliamentary stalemate continue to play out. The consequences of that would have been Brexit happening, either with Labour votes or with No Deal; this in turn might have given us a way to profit from either Labour or Conservative disarray in an election.
While we said we wanted to maximise Lib Dem seats in Westminster we were not prepared to take that strategic risk, nor did we make any preparations for how we could mitigate that risk.
In the end we did not clarify or decide between these two hellish scenarios, and we will never know what the alternative reality might have been. Instead we chose to claim to believe we could win outright ourselves [hubris!], thus obviating the need to choose.
It is this lack of clarity which led to an election campaign that can only be described as a high stakes gamble".
Ironically a drought could be good for Boris if he takes the opportunity to build new reservoirs and pipelines, creating jobs and helping to get the economy moving again.
Where?
The NIMBYs are not going to be in favour
I question whether we still need to build HS2; however, the decision to press ahead with it when the Government has an ideal excuse to cancel strikes me as the perfect exemplar of its willingness to face down the NIMBYs when they present an obstacle to its agenda. This is very important. If the housing supply problem is to be adequately addressed then an awful lot more NIMBYs are going to have to be offended.
There is no question Starmer is an upgrade to Corbyn but i'm not so sure he will have anything like the appeal.
The 'forensic' approach is going to be a turn-off for an electorate primed on snappy soundbites, cliches and generalisations.
Starmer is the political equivalent of a 50 page T&C's section on an insurance policy.
After a year longer in opposition, up against a weak and distrusted PM who had split his party literally in two, in the middle of a constitutional crisis and with fiscal policy in turmoil, Corbyn put up a performance comparable to that of Michael Howard in 2005.
I think it’s fair to say that Labour could do without Corbyn’s appeal.
When people talk about talented politicians what does it mean?
I assume it means they agree with them
I don't believe that is true at all. In every government, be it Tory or Labour, there are always some ministers who are widely rated across the political spectrum and there are others who are generally considered to be a dud.
At the moment Rishi Sunak is an example of the former and Pritti Patel an example of the latter.
The Lib Dems need to make a deal with Keir Starmer, in return for the implementation of STV. Simple as that.
And the SNP need to make a deal with Keir Starmer on a referendum on independence.
The two demands go together.
If the Scots get independence then the Labour needs STV to avoid permanent Tory hegemony in England and Wales.
STV prevents the SNP from winning disproportionate numbers of MPs. I don't know how Labour have done with STV in Scottish local elections, but I'd have thought it's one of their best chances of a recovery in Westminster elections in Scotland.
Thornhill report makes painful reading. It would be hard to be otherwise after the 2019 GE
"The report notes that while Swinson was hampered by having less than five months between winning the party leadership and the election, her decision to immediately seek a new party chief executive undermined decision-making structures.
“This had the unintended consequence creating an ‘inner circle’ of advisers at arm’s length from the resources of the party machine, and put decision-making in the hands of an unaccountable group around the leader,” the report says. “It also severed some people from the roles and responsibilities they were employed to do, and led to the overpromotion of others.”
The report says: "...the party "effectively ignored" the biggest group of voters: those who were neither fervently remain or leave". A curious comment - it seemed to me that the vast majority were either fervently remain or fervently leave.
No, I'd say the report had that about right. On the Brexit issue, I think you could put 2019 voters into a number of different broad groups, as follows:
*Remainiacs (determined to stop Brexit at all costs) *Brexit Ultras (determined to go ahead at all costs) *Satisfied Leavers (pleased with the result and now want to have it implemented and move on) *Disappointed Remainers (would rather it went the other way but now want to have it implemented and move on) *Converts (voted Remain but now supportive of Brexit and wish to see it implemented) *U-turners (voted Leave but would now like a second referendum so they can change their minds) *The Unconcerned (don't care one way or the other) *The Oblivious (I don't really understand much about this Brexit thing/What is this Brexit thing anyway?)
I'd go as far as to venture that the Satisfied Leavers, Disappointed Remainers and Unconcerned between them constituted the bulk of the electorate. Labour would've had a bit of leverage amongst the Disappointed Remainer segment, insofar as many of them might've hoped for a closer relationship with the EU under a Labour Government than under a Tory one, but we also have to bear in mind that Brexit would not have been the main consideration for many of these more middling voters. There was also the Corbyn factor to consider, and of course both the rules of the game and many of the players were different in Scotland.
The Liberal Democrats, of course, ignored everyone except those who were "fervently remain," which is how they ended up with not very much more than their small core habit vote, plus that portion of the Remainiac tendency for whom the Lib Dems appeared to be the best hope of stopping the Conservatives in their particular constituency. It's small wonder that they did so very badly.
Seems about right.
Accordingly, our local LibDems are now essentially extinct, and the ex-LibDems who didn't go postal over anti-Brexit are now running the place.
Disagree with the thread header, Starmer is unlikely to win a majority but he has a strong chance of becoming PM.
First only one party since WW2 has won a general election after 10 years in power, the Tories in 1992 and then only by a small majority. By the time of the next general election the Tories will have been in power for 14 years.
Second none of the minor parties will prop up the Tories if they lost their majority, the LDs will prefer Starmer to the Tories hard Brexit and even the DUP would prefer the whole UK to be in the EEA with Starmer than a border in the Irish Sea.
Third, Boris is the best election winner for the Tories since Thatcher and the idea replacing him if he becomes unpopular will resolve their problems is deluded. If he becomes unpopular it will be because Government policy is unpopular and replacing him with Sunak will not resolve that as Sunak will have been setting economic policy post Covid.
Nor will the Tories have the option of dropping an unpopular policy like Brexit on WTO terms as they did in 1990 when they replaced Thatcher with Major and Major dumped the poll tax. While a small majority of voters at large want an extension of the transition period, the vast majority of Tory and Leave voters oppose an extension of the transition period and welcome WTO terms.
So getting rid of Boris for a soft Brexit, pro single market Tory leader say maybe Hunt or a converted Sunak would just lead to mass defections of Leavers from the Tories to the Brexit Party again and Leave them in the same position they were under May which was why they elected Boris in the first place
The market is not "who will be Prime Minister after the next general election". The market is "who will be next Prime Minister".
So, if Johnson becomes unpopular and is replaced as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party, and Prime Minister, then his replacement as PM will be the winner in this betting market and they will certainly be a Conservative MP rather than Starmer.
In order for Starmer to become the next Prime Minister you have to believe that Johnson will not only lose the next election, but be allowed to lose the next election rather than be replaced, and would want to fight a losing battle, rather than stepping aside.
The only point in replacing Boris, the best Tory election winner since Thatcher, would be if WTO terms with Boris becomes as unpopular as the poll tax with Thatcher was when she was replaced by Major in 1990.
However given over 60% of Tory voters oppose extending the transition period, replacing Boris with say Hunt or Sunak on a pro single market policy would see mass defections of Leavers from the Tories to the Brexit Party again.
Hard Brexit and WTO terms is far more popular with Tory voters than the poll tax ever was
The popularity of WTO terms is neither here nor there for the argument. Given the make-up of the Parliamentary Conservative Party I'd expect Johnson's replacement to be more of a Brexit ideologue than less.
The point is that Starmer only becomes the next PM if an unpopular Johnson contests the next general election. It's much more likely that he remains popular enough to win again, or is replaced if he becomes unpopular.
When was the last time the Conservatives contested a general election with a Prime Minister known to be personally unpopular without first trying to replace them?
They aren't the Labour Party who drifted to defeat in 2010 with Brown at the helm.
Wrong.
The popularity or not of WTO terms as opposed to the single market will define British politics for the next decade.
If Starmer becomes PM it will not be because he becomes more likeable or charismatic than Boris, which he never will, it will be because the Tories have to deliver the WTO terms Brexit most of their voters want and enough Tory Remain voters vote Labour or LD next time as a result to make Starmer PM.
Who personally leads the Tories is irrelevant to that unless they change the Brexit policy which would be suicide with their mainly Leave vote
He isn't. It's ridiculous wishful-thinking and an example of what happens if people bet with their heart not their head.
Keep this article for one reason only. To look back and smile fondly at the folly of it.
Boris Johnson will only step down before the 2024 election for one of two reasons 1. His health or 2. Boredom. Otherwise, the leadership is his for at least 8 more years.
You could be right. What do you estimate is the probability of Boris stepping down for health reasons? (Or boredom?)
My money would go on Boris resigning by Jan 1 2022 and he will cite health grounds as the excuse without it being the actual reason. Ever since this awful pandemic hit us I have felt that the hard slog now ahead is not really what Boris signed up for,
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
It's a good point. My experience of posh Scots makes Scotland look like a feudal bastion in comparison with down-to-earth, egalitarian England.
Quite. At my first employer in Scotland the office staff spoke quite unironically about 'undesirables' in their local area. I know several lovely Scots obsessed with name-dropping when they might have run into an Earl at some committee or event (at least one of whom is a vocal SNP supporter - which doesn't stop him going weak at the knees at a sniff of the tweedy upper crust). I can't see a shred of evidence that Scots are any less aware of or interested in social class, though perhaps it is more so on the West Coast where I've spent less time.
There was none of this shit in Fife.
I guess St Andrews should be considered an enclave, a wee breath of the home counties. Difficult to believe it and Kelty exist in the same county.
I know you have a bitter take on Boris but you may find that the public enquiries have a lot more to say about the public health bodies and the scientific advisors
Unfortunately my Mother in Laws excellent care home in the Isle of Wight now has several cases. Worrying, and a desperately sad situation.
One of the many awful things about Covid-19 is how people die without family around them. Even our hardy ICU consultants, who have made decisions to end intervention on a weekly basis for years find this distressing.
And, dare one venture to say it, the Covid crisis in care homes doesn't end with the disease. A high proportion of care home residents are demented, and are presently being warehoused in solitary confinement basically with no human contact apart from help with feeding and essential personal care, gradually wasting away despite the best efforts of the staff.
At the end of all of this there are going to be many relatives who, having left their loved ones in a state of mild cognitive impairment, go back again to discover that they are either completely uncommunicative or have no idea who this stranger who's just come to see them actually is.
There's arguably an issue here of the prioritisation of quantity of life over quality of life, but in your line of work I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that society often isn't very comfortable about having conversations on that subject.
Thank you for posting that. I`m getting really angry about this. Care homes are farming old folk for profit. How dare they - a private company - deny my mother from seeing her husband (my father), who have been married for nearly 60 years, and her children. Despite that fact that she - and we - would take the risk to ensure that her last weeks and months are as "quality" as is possible.
My last note from my mother, received last week, reads: "when I go downstairs to the TV room they make us wear face masks. The staff are always wearing them even when they bring me food in my room. We sit in front of the TV in silence looking at each other and all we can see are shiny eyes."
There is so much that is right in this article that it's a pity the underlying premise renders it null and void.
Johnson won the Tories their biggest victory since Margaret Thatcher. She was given free rein in three General Elections (1979, 1983, 1987) and no one would touch her.
We tend to filter what we think we know through the prism of recent experience and I'm afraid David you have fallen foul of this. You're thinking Boris is Cameron. He isn't. Cameron did win but only just and his coalition victory followed by 12-seat majority gave the plotters the oxygen they needed.
Boris has one single undeniable firewall. He won handsomely. The party won't touch him.
There is one huge difference. No-one could touch Thatcher for so long because she was ideologically in tune with the membership. They still worship her.
There is no guarantee the membership are going to be too enamoured with Boris's leadership once they have experienced it for a while. He took a calculated risk that being "Mr Brexit" would win him the leadership and the GE. That strategy paid off brilliantly. However who really knows what else his government is going to do?
My guess is that BigG is correct and he will be a "one nation" Tory. I think it will be a big state, high spending government and I think that that was the case even before Covid19. Whether it can also remain a low-tax government remains to be seen. I don't see how it can.
He may remain popular in the country but I don't think it will be long before there are rumblings of discontent in the party and the membership. If he is serious about prioritising the voters in the new Tory seats in the north and midlands i order to retain those seats I don't think the wealthier southern membership base is going to be too thrilled about what that means in practice.
It will be a low tax, big spend, big borrowing, populist Berlusconi, George W Bush style government
Which Bundesliga team are we all adopting? I am going with FC St Pauli for their impeccable left wing and anti-fash credentials. Even though they are having a shit year.
Careful, you'll be accused of being a de facto Celtic supporter.
I know you have a bitter take on Boris but you may find that the public enquiries have a lot more to say about the public health bodies and the scientific advisors
Unfortunately my Mother in Laws excellent care home in the Isle of Wight now has several cases. Worrying, and a desperately sad situation.
One of the many awful things about Covid-19 is how people die without family around them. Even our hardy ICU consultants, who have made decisions to end intervention on a weekly basis for years find this distressing.
And, dare one venture to say it, the Covid crisis in care homes doesn't end with the disease. A high proportion of care home residents are demented, and are presently being warehoused in solitary confinement basically with no human contact apart from help with feeding and essential personal care, gradually wasting away despite the best efforts of the staff.
At the end of all of this there are going to be many relatives who, having left their loved ones in a state of mild cognitive impairment, go back again to discover that they are either completely uncommunicative or have no idea who this stranger who's just come to see them actually is.
There's arguably an issue here of the prioritisation of quantity of life over quality of life, but in your line of work I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that society often isn't very comfortable about having conversations on that subject.
I do wonder if, in at least the milder cases, there is now an obvious technological answer to the problem of social isolation in care homes. Zoom is not just for passing Cabinet secrets to China.
Thornhill report makes painful reading. It would be hard to be otherwise after the 2019 GE
"The report notes that while Swinson was hampered by having less than five months between winning the party leadership and the election, her decision to immediately seek a new party chief executive undermined decision-making structures.
“This had the unintended consequence creating an ‘inner circle’ of advisers at arm’s length from the resources of the party machine, and put decision-making in the hands of an unaccountable group around the leader,” the report says. “It also severed some people from the roles and responsibilities they were employed to do, and led to the overpromotion of others.”
The report says: "...the party "effectively ignored" the biggest group of voters: those who were neither fervently remain or leave". A curious comment - it seemed to me that the vast majority were either fervently remain or fervently leave.
I need to read the full report, but it sounds as if no attempt to paper over the cracks. Many lessons to learn.
The repeal A50 policy was viable when No Deal Brexit on Halloween was the threat, but needed a back up plan for when BoZo's "Oven Ready Deal" appeared. It was off putting to many Remainers, and all Leavers.
I have said all along that the LDs newly expanded membership risked becoming a single issue anti Brexit party. Now that it is out of the way, hopefully we can get back to potholes, bus routes and barcharts
I've read the 61 page report.
In summary
1.New leader to develop a clear vision of what the LibDems are for 2. Improve decision making (eg confusion between authority of Leader, President and CEO; Federal Board has 41 members) 3. Improve campaigning.
A header on where next for the yellow peril would be welcome...
Thornhill report makes painful reading. It would be hard to be otherwise after the 2019 GE
"The report notes that while Swinson was hampered by having less than five months between winning the party leadership and the election, her decision to immediately seek a new party chief executive undermined decision-making structures.
“This had the unintended consequence creating an ‘inner circle’ of advisers at arm’s length from the resources of the party machine, and put decision-making in the hands of an unaccountable group around the leader,” the report says. “It also severed some people from the roles and responsibilities they were employed to do, and led to the overpromotion of others.”
The report says: "...the party "effectively ignored" the biggest group of voters: those who were neither fervently remain or leave". A curious comment - it seemed to me that the vast majority were either fervently remain or fervently leave.
The biggest mistake was supporting an early election rather than let the Tories stew while keep pushing for a second referendum on Boris's deal to resolve the stalemate. Several LibDem MPs were against an early election including Farron and Cable but were over-ruled with disastrous consequences. Decision driven by hubris.
Agreed she was completely insane politically going for an early election in those circumstances.
1.New leader to develop a clear vision of what the LibDems are for
I won't hold my breath on that one...
I wouldn't! There isn't a new leader yet.
I'd like to see it somehow expressed as representing responsible adults (as opposed to authoritarian parents - do as you're told nanny state - or submissive children - tell us what to do in detail dear leader).
It is liberal, will appeal also to libertarians on the right and intelligensia on the left. The responsibility, as adults, is not only for our own actions but also for others in our society.
Possibly one more majority than they would have won if they'd stuck with Thatcher for the 1992 general election.
If Johnson becomes personally unpopular, and Brexit is done, then Conservative MPs have no need for Johnson.
The Tories would have been much better served losing the 1992 GE with Thatcher still at the helm...it would have lanced the boil before it became a pustulating sore that needed nearly 20 years to clean up.
As for Boris, his usp is perfect for the next couple of years...and I say that as someone who isn't particularly a fan.
The Lib Dems need to make a deal with Keir Starmer, in return for the implementation of STV. Simple as that.
And the SNP need to make a deal with Keir Starmer on a referendum on independence.
The two demands go together.
If the Scots get independence then the Labour needs STV to avoid permanent Tory hegemony in England and Wales.
STV prevents the SNP from winning disproportionate numbers of MPs. I don't know how Labour have done with STV in Scottish local elections, but I'd have thought it's one of their best chances of a recovery in Westminster elections in Scotland.
The STV system in Scotland is rigged to ensure the perpetual losers , ie Tories & Labour get lots of seats. They were too scared to keep FPTP in place.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
It's a good point. My experience of posh Scots makes Scotland look like a feudal bastion in comparison with down-to-earth, egalitarian England.
Quite. At my first employer in Scotland the office staff spoke quite unironically about 'undesirables' in their local area. I know several lovely Scots obsessed with name-dropping when they might have run into an Earl at some committee or event (at least one of whom is a vocal SNP supporter - which doesn't stop him going weak at the knees at a sniff of the tweedy upper crust). I can't see a shred of evidence that Scots are any less aware of or interested in social class, though perhaps it is more so on the West Coast where I've spent less time.
There was none of this shit in Fife.
I guess St Andrews should be considered an enclave, a wee breath of the home counties. Difficult to believe it and Kelty exist in the same county.
Ha ha, I grew up in St Andrews. It is certainly quite different from some other parts of Fife, but it has more in common with Oxford or Cambridge than the home counties, and there are also some pretty tough places in the surrounding area. You didn't mess with the kids from Tayport.
Which Bundesliga team are we all adopting? I am going with FC St Pauli for their impeccable left wing and anti-fash credentials. Even though they are having a shit year.
Eintracht Frankfurt.
Fox jr went to a game there when on German exchange as a kid.
1730 KO vs Monchen Gladbach, who seem to be having a good season so far.
Apart from the predictable Bayern hegemony, the Bundesliga does seem quite fluid.
Disagree with the thread header, Starmer is unlikely to win a majority but he has a strong chance of becoming PM.
First only one party since WW2 has won a general election after 10 years in power, the Tories in 1992 and then only by a small majority. By the time of the next general election the Tories will have been in power for 14 years.
Second none of the minor parties will prop up the Tories if they lost their majority, the LDs will prefer Starmer to the Tories hard Brexit and even the DUP would prefer the whole UK to be in the EEA with Starmer than a border in the Irish Sea.
Third, Boris is the best election winner for the Tories since Thatcher and the idea replacing him if he becomes unpopular will resolve their problems is deluded. If he becomes unpopular it will be because Government policy is unpopular and replacing him with Sunak will not resolve that as Sunak will have been setting economic policy post Covid.
Nor will the Tories have the option of dropping an unpopular policy like Brexit on WTO terms as they did in 1990 when they replaced Thatcher with Major and Major dumped the poll tax. While a small majority of voters at large want an extension of the transition period, the vast majority of Tory and Leave voters oppose an extension of the transition period and welcome WTO terms.
So getting rid of Boris for a soft Brexit, pro single market Tory leader say maybe Hunt or a converted Sunak would just lead to mass defections of Leavers from the Tories to the Brexit Party again and Leave them in the same position they were under May which was why they elected Boris in the first place
The market is not "who will be Prime Minister after the next general election". The market is "who will be next Prime Minister".
So, if Johnson becomes unpopular and is replaced as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party, and Prime Minister, then his replacement as PM will be the winner in this betting market and they will certainly be a Conservative MP rather than Starmer.
In order for Starmer to become the next Prime Minister you have to believe that Johnson will not only lose the next election, but be allowed to lose the next election rather than be replaced, and would want to fight a losing battle, rather than stepping aside.
The only point in replacing Boris, the best Tory election winner since Thatcher, would be if WTO terms with Boris becomes as unpopular as the poll tax with Thatcher was when she was replaced by Major in 1990.
However given over 60% of Tory voters oppose extending the transition period, replacing Boris with say Hunt or Sunak on a pro single market policy would see mass defections of Leavers from the Tories to the Brexit Party again.
Hard Brexit and WTO terms is far more popular with Tory voters than the poll tax ever was
The popularity of WTO terms is neither here nor there for the argument. Given the make-up of the Parliamentary Conservative Party I'd expect Johnson's replacement to be more of a Brexit ideologue than less.
The point is that Starmer only becomes the next PM if an unpopular Johnson contests the next general election. It's much more likely that he remains popular enough to win again, or is replaced if he becomes unpopular.
When was the last time the Conservatives contested a general election with a Prime Minister known to be personally unpopular without first trying to replace them?
They aren't the Labour Party who drifted to defeat in 2010 with Brown at the helm.
Wrong.
The popularity or not of WTO terms as opposed to the single market will define British politics for the next decade.
If Starmer becomes PM it will not be because he becomes more likeable or charismatic than Boris, which he never will, it will be because the Tories have to deliver the WTO terms Brexit most of their voters want and enough Tory Remain voters vote Labour or LD next time as a result to make Starmer PM.
Who personally leads the Tories is irrelevant to that unless they change the Brexit policy which would be suicide with their mainly Leave vote
The Lib Dems need to make a deal with Keir Starmer, in return for the implementation of STV. Simple as that.
And the SNP need to make a deal with Keir Starmer on a referendum on independence.
The two demands go together.
If the Scots get independence then the Labour needs STV to avoid permanent Tory hegemony in England and Wales.
STV prevents the SNP from winning disproportionate numbers of MPs. I don't know how Labour have done with STV in Scottish local elections, but I'd have thought it's one of their best chances of a recovery in Westminster elections in Scotland.
STV in England and Wales would be implemented after the Scots get independence. It would be up to the Scots what system they adopt subsequently.
When people talk about talented politicians what does it mean?
I assume it means they agree with them
Not at all. Mrs Thatcher was exceptionally talented. She was incredibly effective and on top of her brief. In this Cabinet I think you can only say that of Gove, though Sunak offers promise. Osborne, too, from previous times.
I woudn't say Gove is a master of his brief. His Covid-19 briefings were spectacular car crashes, even by the woeful standard of the others. I would rate Sunak on knowing his brief. Hancock can get through the briefings more or less intact but has a tendency to panicky promises.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
Lucky , no matter how much you protest it is plain to anyone that Scotland is far less class conscious than England. We have our share , much smaller, of hoorays but in general people don't have the doff your cap/they are better than me attitude that you see down south.
It is awareness that we're speaking of Malc, not necessarily 'kowtowing'. Complaining about the poshos in the big house (or complaining about the local neds) is as much awareness of the class system as the deferential behaviour you describe.
Lucky , I disagree, you have the poshos v neds in all countries but few have the ingrained social structure that still pervades England. We saw that in bold on here as Starmer was deemed an absolute pleb due to the schools he had attended and fact his parents were not of the correct class yet absolute arseholes are feted because they are from the right stock and went to Eton/Cambridge/Oxford etc. There is nothing near that attitude in Scotland.
The Lib Dems need to make a deal with Keir Starmer, in return for the implementation of STV. Simple as that.
Maybe after the election and with a referendum. Labour can't do pre-election deals because it brings the unanswerable question of "would you do a deal with the SNP?"
Can’t avoid it forever. A deal with the SNP is pretty much a necessity in order for Labour to form a Government under FPTP.
I know you have a bitter take on Boris but you may find that the public enquiries have a lot more to say about the public health bodies and the scientific advisors
Unfortunately my Mother in Laws excellent care home in the Isle of Wight now has several cases. Worrying, and a desperately sad situation.
One of the many awful things about Covid-19 is how people die without family around them. Even our hardy ICU consultants, who have made decisions to end intervention on a weekly basis for years find this distressing.
And, dare one venture to say it, the Covid crisis in care homes doesn't end with the disease. A high proportion of care home residents are demented, and are presently being warehoused in solitary confinement basically with no human contact apart from help with feeding and essential personal care, gradually wasting away despite the best efforts of the staff.
At the end of all of this there are going to be many relatives who, having left their loved ones in a state of mild cognitive impairment, go back again to discover that they are either completely uncommunicative or have no idea who this stranger who's just come to see them actually is.
There's arguably an issue here of the prioritisation of quantity of life over quality of life, but in your line of work I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that society often isn't very comfortable about having conversations on that subject.
Thank you for posting that. I`m getting really angry about this. Care homes are farming old folk for profit. How dare they - a private company - deny my mother from seeing her husband (my father), who have been married for nearly 60 years, and her children. Despite that fact that she - and we - would take the risk to ensure that her last weeks and months are as "quality" as is possible.
My last note from my mother, received last week, reads: "when I go downstairs to the TV room they make us wear face masks. The staff are always wearing them even when they bring me food in my room. We sit in front of the TV in silence looking at each other and all we can see are shiny eyes."
The image haunts me night and day.
Must be horrendous for families with parents in care homes at this time.
The Lib Dems need to make a deal with Keir Starmer, in return for the implementation of STV. Simple as that.
Why say Starmer rather than Johnson? Liberals are - or should be - equality distant from the conservatives and collectivists - so that we have a party aligned to each of the three contrasting ideologies.
They shouldn`t make deals with anyone. The ironic thing is that there is a decent proportion of the public which is liberal.
“Deals” are a requirement of FPTP. The “Labour Party” is essentially a deal between the Blairites and the hard left. The “Conservative Party” is essentially a deal between the Cameroons and the much harder right. To suggest otherwise is naive.
Thornhill report makes painful reading. It would be hard to be otherwise after the 2019 GE
"The report notes that while Swinson was hampered by having less than five months between winning the party leadership and the election, her decision to immediately seek a new party chief executive undermined decision-making structures.
“This had the unintended consequence creating an ‘inner circle’ of advisers at arm’s length from the resources of the party machine, and put decision-making in the hands of an unaccountable group around the leader,” the report says. “It also severed some people from the roles and responsibilities they were employed to do, and led to the overpromotion of others.”
The report says: "...the party "effectively ignored" the biggest group of voters: those who were neither fervently remain or leave". A curious comment - it seemed to me that the vast majority were either fervently remain or fervently leave.
No, I'd say the report had that about right. On the Brexit issue, I think you could put 2019 voters into a number of different broad groups, as follows:
*Remainiacs (determined to stop Brexit at all costs) *Brexit Ultras (determined to go ahead at all costs) *Satisfied Leavers (pleased with the result and now want to have it implemented and move on) *Disappointed Remainers (would rather it went the other way but now want to have it implemented and move on) *Converts (voted Remain but now supportive of Brexit and wish to see it implemented) *U-turners (voted Leave but would now like a second referendum so they can change their minds) *The Unconcerned (don't care one way or the other) *The Oblivious (I don't really understand much about this Brexit thing/What is this Brexit thing anyway?)
I'd go as far as to venture that the Satisfied Leavers, Disappointed Remainers and Unconcerned between them constituted the bulk of the electorate. Labour would've had a bit of leverage amongst the Disappointed Remainer segment, insofar as many of them might've hoped for a closer relationship with the EU under a Labour Government than under a Tory one, but we also have to bear in mind that Brexit would not have been the main consideration for many of these more middling voters. There was also the Corbyn factor to consider, and of course both the rules of the game and many of the players were different in Scotland.
The Liberal Democrats, of course, ignored everyone except those who were "fervently remain," which is how they ended up with not very much more than their small core habit vote, plus that portion of the Remainiac tendency for whom the Lib Dems appeared to be the best hope of stopping the Conservatives in their particular constituency. It's small wonder that they did so very badly.
'Get Brexit Done' - with its air of both decisiveness and frustrated impatience - appealed to many people who voted Remain in 2016 but had grown weary of the squabbling and wanted to move beyond the issue rather than prolong it with a 2nd referendum. It also appealed to almost ALL leavers. That's an electoral majority right there.
The sequitur 'Unleash Our Potential' played perfectly into this mood. Brexit presented now not as a good thing in and of itself but simply as something in the way. A roadblock preventing us getting on with more important matters. This had the additional benefit of being true. Brexit never did have any tangible benefits - we all know this really - but once voted for, it had to be 'done'. It had to be done (i) to preserve democratic integrity and (ii) because nothing else of consequence was politically possible until it was.
So, upshot, an absolutely devastating piece of messaging by Team Johnson. The best ever in a UK general election. Simple and direct, yet simultaneously subtle and sophisticated, and bespoke tailored for the electorate. It was as close to perfect as you can get. Allied to the personal appeal of Johnson - or "Boris" rather - to the WWC voters the Cons needed for their Red Wall strategy to work, it delivered what we saw on Dec 12th - an overall majority of 50 seats. Which, due to the Corbyn factor, became 80.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
I believe you still think of Scots as 'they' dontcha? Always good to get the anthropological view of those who deign to live among us.
Not being Scottish, I do, yes. I think the 'they' word about millionaires, women, people who can play the piano, children etc. But I think of us all as being British - which is lovely.
What I don't do is grade people on their Scottishness, which you apparently do.
Do I think of a middle aged stripper making a buck while sad old guys stare into their pints of Special as more Scottish than Tony Blair? You bet.
I know you have a bitter take on Boris but you may find that the public enquiries have a lot more to say about the public health bodies and the scientific advisors
Action to stop staff moving between care homes is at least 2 months too late. It should have been part of any infectious disease protocol. Can definitely believe that care homes would struggle to afford it though.
HMG needs to put together a team of very capable people to review all the “care-home” models around the world and prepare a report on much needed reform to the whole sector. HMG needs to then actually implement it. It should have been done yesterday.
There is so much that is right in this article that it's a pity the underlying premise renders it null and void.
Johnson won the Tories their biggest victory since Margaret Thatcher. She was given free rein in three General Elections (1979, 1983, 1987) and no one would touch her.
We tend to filter what we think we know through the prism of recent experience and I'm afraid David you have fallen foul of this. You're thinking Boris is Cameron. He isn't. Cameron did win but only just and his coalition victory followed by 12-seat majority gave the plotters the oxygen they needed.
Boris has one single undeniable firewall. He won handsomely. The party won't touch him.
There is one huge difference. No-one could touch Thatcher for so long because she was ideologically in tune with the membership. They still worship her.
There is no guarantee the membership are going to be too enamoured with Boris's leadership once they have experienced it for a while. He took a calculated risk that being "Mr Brexit" would win him the leadership and the GE. That strategy paid off brilliantly. However who really knows what else his government is going to do?
My guess is that BigG is correct and he will be a "one nation" Tory. I think it will be a big state, high spending government and I think that that was the case even before Covid19. Whether it can also remain a low-tax government remains to be seen. I don't see how it can.
He may remain popular in the country but I don't think it will be long before there are rumblings of discontent in the party and the membership. If he is serious about prioritising the voters in the new Tory seats in the north and midlands i order to retain those seats I don't think the wealthier southern membership base is going to be too thrilled about what that means in practice.
It will be a low tax, big spend, big borrowing, populist Berlusconi, George W Bush style government
You may be right re tax but I don't see how it can be done other than for a very short period.
However even if it is, is that the sort of government that Tory members want because I am far from certain it is. I think the membership is still predominantly Thatcherite.
I've never been more aware of the BBC as a State Broadcaster than now. It's mobile front page is essentially a cut and paste from the Ministry of Information.
Even to the point of getting it presumably intentionally wrong over the new exercise rules. It says you can now exercise outside with someone from outside your household for the first time. Which is wrong. You always could.
No you couldn't unless you reckon you can freely stand shoulder to shoulder with strangers and that there's no such thing as a 2 metre rule.
"Restrictions on gatherings
7. During the emergency period, no person may participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people except—
(a)where all the persons in the gathering are members of the same household, (b)where the gathering is essential for work purposes, (c)to attend a funeral, etc..."
And the two metre rule is advice not the law.
Not all rules are laws.
The two metre rule is a rule. The only exercising once per day was a rule.
That was my point. You could always under the law go outside with two people. The BBC is making out that it is a recent thing.
It is if you are following the rules and not just the law.
If the government announced they were lifting the two metre rule and the BBC reported that would you say "why are they reporting that it was never the law?"
You are becoming a bit HYUFD-like.
You could always exercise outdoors with someone not in your household. As per the law.
Nothing has changed in this respect yet the BBC is reporting as though it is a new development.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
Lucky , no matter how much you protest it is plain to anyone that Scotland is far less class conscious than England. We have our share , much smaller, of hoorays but in general people don't have the doff your cap/they are better than me attitude that you see down south.
It is awareness that we're speaking of Malc, not necessarily 'kowtowing'. Complaining about the poshos in the big house (or complaining about the local neds) is as much awareness of the class system as the deferential behaviour you describe.
Lucky , I disagree, you have the poshos v neds in all countries but few have the ingrained social structure that still pervades England. We saw that in bold on here as Starmer was deemed an absolute pleb due to the schools he had attended and fact his parents were not of the correct class yet absolute arseholes are feted because they are from the right stock and went to Eton/Cambridge/Oxford etc. There is nothing near that attitude in Scotland.
Starmer went to private school, has an Oxford degree and is a knight of the realm.
On that basis he is the poshest party leader since Douglas Home
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
It's a good point. My experience of posh Scots makes Scotland look like a feudal bastion in comparison with down-to-earth, egalitarian England.
Quite. At my first employer in Scotland the office staff spoke quite unironically about 'undesirables' in their local area. I know several lovely Scots obsessed with name-dropping when they might have run into an Earl at some committee or event (at least one of whom is a vocal SNP supporter - which doesn't stop him going weak at the knees at a sniff of the tweedy upper crust). I can't see a shred of evidence that Scots are any less aware of or interested in social class, though perhaps it is more so on the West Coast where I've spent less time.
There was none of this shit in Fife.
I guess St Andrews should be considered an enclave, a wee breath of the home counties. Difficult to believe it and Kelty exist in the same county.
Ha ha, I grew up in St Andrews. It is certainly quite different from some other parts of Fife, but it has more in common with Oxford or Cambridge than the home counties, and there are also some pretty tough places in the surrounding area. You didn't mess with the kids from Tayport.
Fair enough, I yield to on the ground experience! I had cousins who had a farm outside St Andrews with whom I stayed a few time as a boy; we certainly didn't see much of the kids from Tayport but plenty of bracing walks on the seafront & cathedral, much to my disgust.
Had a weekend break there last year, and we ended up in a local howff that had chairs outside so I could have a smoke, tbf not home counties at all.
When people talk about talented politicians what does it mean?
I assume it means they agree with them
Not at all. Mrs Thatcher was exceptionally talented. She was incredibly effective and on top of her brief. In this Cabinet I think you can only say that of Gove, though Sunak offers promise. Osborne, too, from previous times.
I woudn't say Gove is a master of his brief. His Covid-19 briefings were spectacular car crashes, even by the woeful standard of the others. I would rate Sunak on knowing his brief. Hancock can get through the briefings more or less intact but has a tendency to panicky promises.
Sunak is the only one that sounds as if he knows what he is talking about and not lying through his teeth.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
I believe you still think of Scots as 'they' dontcha? Always good to get the anthropological view of those who deign to live among us.
Not being Scottish, I do, yes. I think the 'they' word about millionaires, women, people who can play the piano, children etc. But I think of us all as being British - which is lovely.
What I don't do is grade people on their Scottishness, which you apparently do.
Do I think of a middle aged stripper making a buck while sad old guys stare into their pints of Special as more Scottish than Tony Blair? You bet.
Blair was never Scottish
He was born in Edinburgh and went to school there. What do you have to do to qualify as Scottish?
The SNP did promise civic nationalism - not pure enough for you?
There is so much that is right in this article that it's a pity the underlying premise renders it null and void.
Johnson won the Tories their biggest victory since Margaret Thatcher. She was given free rein in three General Elections (1979, 1983, 1987) and no one would touch her.
We tend to filter what we think we know through the prism of recent experience and I'm afraid David you have fallen foul of this. You're thinking Boris is Cameron. He isn't. Cameron did win but only just and his coalition victory followed by 12-seat majority gave the plotters the oxygen they needed.
Boris has one single undeniable firewall. He won handsomely. The party won't touch him.
There is one huge difference. No-one could touch Thatcher for so long because she was ideologically in tune with the membership. They still worship her.
There is no guarantee the membership are going to be too enamoured with Boris's leadership once they have experienced it for a while. He took a calculated risk that being "Mr Brexit" would win him the leadership and the GE. That strategy paid off brilliantly. However who really knows what else his government is going to do?
My guess is that BigG is correct and he will be a "one nation" Tory. I think it will be a big state, high spending government and I think that that was the case even before Covid19. Whether it can also remain a low-tax government remains to be seen. I don't see how it can.
He may remain popular in the country but I don't think it will be long before there are rumblings of discontent in the party and the membership. If he is serious about prioritising the voters in the new Tory seats in the north and midlands i order to retain those seats I don't think the wealthier southern membership base is going to be too thrilled about what that means in practice.
It will be a low tax, big spend, big borrowing, populist Berlusconi, George W Bush style government
Berlusconi, definitely. Berlusconi screwed the Italians figuratively and literally, just as Johnson is doing to the British. If you want a vision of the UK in a few years time, assuming it's still intact, look at Italy now.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
I believe you still think of Scots as 'they' dontcha? Always good to get the anthropological view of those who deign to live among us.
Not being Scottish, I do, yes. I think the 'they' word about millionaires, women, people who can play the piano, children etc. But I think of us all as being British - which is lovely.
What I don't do is grade people on their Scottishness, which you apparently do.
Do I think of a middle aged stripper making a buck while sad old guys stare into their pints of Special as more Scottish than Tony Blair? You bet.
Blair was never Scottish
Blair was born in Edinburgh and went to School in Scotland, he was Scottish
I know you have a bitter take on Boris but you may find that the public enquiries have a lot more to say about the public health bodies and the scientific advisors
Unfortunately my Mother in Laws excellent care home in the Isle of Wight now has several cases. Worrying, and a desperately sad situation.
One of the many awful things about Covid-19 is how people die without family around them. Even our hardy ICU consultants, who have made decisions to end intervention on a weekly basis for years find this distressing.
And, dare one venture to say it, the Covid crisis in care homes doesn't end with the disease. A high proportion of care home residents are demented, and are presently being warehoused in solitary confinement basically with no human contact apart from help with feeding and essential personal care, gradually wasting away despite the best efforts of the staff.
At the end of all of this there are going to be many relatives who, having left their loved ones in a state of mild cognitive impairment, go back again to discover that they are either completely uncommunicative or have no idea who this stranger who's just come to see them actually is.
There's arguably an issue here of the prioritisation of quantity of life over quality of life, but in your line of work I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that society often isn't very comfortable about having conversations on that subject.
True. But in this case they completely closed care homes even to close family visitors, well before they then discharged infected patients directly from hospital into those care homes.
There is so much that is right in this article that it's a pity the underlying premise renders it null and void.
Johnson won the Tories their biggest victory since Margaret Thatcher. She was given free rein in three General Elections (1979, 1983, 1987) and no one would touch her.
We tend to filter what we think we know through the prism of recent experience and I'm afraid David you have fallen foul of this. You're thinking Boris is Cameron. He isn't. Cameron did win but only just and his coalition victory followed by 12-seat majority gave the plotters the oxygen they needed.
Boris has one single undeniable firewall. He won handsomely. The party won't touch him.
There is one huge difference. No-one could touch Thatcher for so long because she was ideologically in tune with the membership. They still worship her.
There is no guarantee the membership are going to be too enamoured with Boris's leadership once they have experienced it for a while. He took a calculated risk that being "Mr Brexit" would win him the leadership and the GE. That strategy paid off brilliantly. However who really knows what else his government is going to do?
My guess is that BigG is correct and he will be a "one nation" Tory. I think it will be a big state, high spending government and I think that that was the case even before Covid19. Whether it can also remain a low-tax government remains to be seen. I don't see how it can.
He may remain popular in the country but I don't think it will be long before there are rumblings of discontent in the party and the membership. If he is serious about prioritising the voters in the new Tory seats in the north and midlands i order to retain those seats I don't think the wealthier southern membership base is going to be too thrilled about what that means in practice.
It will be a low tax, big spend, big borrowing, populist Berlusconi, George W Bush style government
Berlusconi, definitely. Berlusconi screwed the Italians figuratively and literally, just as Johnson is doing to the British. If you want a vision of the UK in a few years time, assuming it's still intact, look at Italy now.
The power of telling people what they want to hear. Johnson is a master of it, just as Berlusconi was.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
Lucky , no matter how much you protest it is plain to anyone that Scotland is far less class conscious than England. We have our share , much smaller, of hoorays but in general people don't have the doff your cap/they are better than me attitude that you see down south.
It is awareness that we're speaking of Malc, not necessarily 'kowtowing'. Complaining about the poshos in the big house (or complaining about the local neds) is as much awareness of the class system as the deferential behaviour you describe.
Lucky , I disagree, you have the poshos v neds in all countries but few have the ingrained social structure that still pervades England. We saw that in bold on here as Starmer was deemed an absolute pleb due to the schools he had attended and fact his parents were not of the correct class yet absolute arseholes are feted because they are from the right stock and went to Eton/Cambridge/Oxford etc. There is nothing near that attitude in Scotland.
Starmer went to private school, has an Oxford degree and is a knight of the realm.
On that basis he is the poshest party leader since Douglas Home
Any old pleb can become a knight of the realm. Remind me what school and university that Boris Johnson went to?
Also, Starmer’s Oxford Degree is basically an after-thought. He went to the University of Leeds for his undergraduate, like a true man of the people.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
Lucky , no matter how much you protest it is plain to anyone that Scotland is far less class conscious than England. We have our share , much smaller, of hoorays but in general people don't have the doff your cap/they are better than me attitude that you see down south.
It is awareness that we're speaking of Malc, not necessarily 'kowtowing'. Complaining about the poshos in the big house (or complaining about the local neds) is as much awareness of the class system as the deferential behaviour you describe.
Lucky , I disagree, you have the poshos v neds in all countries but few have the ingrained social structure that still pervades England. We saw that in bold on here as Starmer was deemed an absolute pleb due to the schools he had attended and fact his parents were not of the correct class yet absolute arseholes are feted because they are from the right stock and went to Eton/Cambridge/Oxford etc. There is nothing near that attitude in Scotland.
Starmer went to private school, has an Oxford degree and is a knight of the realm.
On that basis he is the poshest party leader since Douglas Home
Don't get all isam on us. He went to a grammar school which became fee paying while he was there. Did they say existing students didn't need to pay? No idea. My guess is yes.
Which Bundesliga team are we all adopting? I am going with FC St Pauli for their impeccable left wing and anti-fash credentials. Even though they are having a shit year.
Careful, you'll be accused of being a de facto Celtic supporter.
Disagree with the thread header, Starmer is unlikely to win a majority but he has a strong chance of becoming PM.
First only one party since WW2 has won a general election after 10 years in power, the Tories in 1992 and then only by a small majority. By the time of the next general election the Tories will have been in power for 14 years.
Second none of the minor parties will prop up the Tories if they lost their majority, the LDs will prefer Starmer to the Tories hard Brexit and even the DUP would prefer the whole UK to be in the EEA with Starmer than a border in the Irish Sea.
Third, Boris is the best election winner for the Tories since Thatcher and the idea replacing him if he becomes unpopular will resolve their problems is deluded. If he becomes unpopular it will be because Government policy is unpopular and replacing him with Sunak will not resolve that as Sunak will have been setting economic policy post Covid.
Nor will the Tories have the option of dropping an unpopular policy like Brexit on WTO terms as they did in 1990 when they replaced Thatcher with Major and Major dumped the poll tax. While a small majority of voters at large want an extension of the transition period, the vast majority of Tory and Leave voters oppose an extension of the transition period and welcome WTO terms.
So getting rid of Boris for a soft Brexit, pro single market Tory leader say maybe Hunt or a converted Sunak would just lead to mass defections of Leavers from the Tories to the Brexit Party again and Leave them in the same position they were under May which was why they elected Boris in the first place
The market is not "who will be Prime Minister after the next general election". The market is "who will be next Prime Minister".
So, if Johnson becomes unpopular and is replaced as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party, and Prime Minister, then his replacement as PM will be the winner in this betting market and they will certainly be a Conservative MP rather than Starmer.
In order for Starmer to become the next Prime Minister you have to believe that Johnson will not only lose the next election, but be allowed to lose the next election rather than be replaced, and would want to fight a losing battle, rather than stepping aside.
The only point in replacing Boris, the best Tory election winner since Thatcher, would be if WTO terms with Boris becomes as unpopular as the poll tax with Thatcher was when she was replaced by Major in 1990.
However given over 60% of Tory voters oppose extending the transition period, replacing Boris with say Hunt or Sunak on a pro single market policy would see mass defections of Leavers from the Tories to the Brexit Party again.
Hard Brexit and WTO terms is far more popular with Tory voters than the poll tax ever was
The popularity of WTO terms is neither here nor there for the argument. Given the make-up of the Parliamentary Conservative Party I'd expect Johnson's replacement to be more of a Brexit ideologue than less.
The point is that Starmer only becomes the next PM if an unpopular Johnson contests the next general election. It's much more likely that he remains popular enough to win again, or is replaced if he becomes unpopular.
When was the last time the Conservatives contested a general election with a Prime Minister known to be personally unpopular without first trying to replace them?
They aren't the Labour Party who drifted to defeat in 2010 with Brown at the helm.
Wrong.
The popularity or not of WTO terms as opposed to the single market will define British politics for the next decade.
If Starmer becomes PM it will not be because he becomes more likeable or charismatic than Boris, which he never will, it will be because the Tories have to deliver the WTO terms Brexit most of their voters want and enough Tory Remain voters vote Labour or LD next time as a result to make Starmer PM.
Who personally leads the Tories is irrelevant to that unless they change the Brexit policy which would be suicide with their mainly Leave vote
Once lock down ends by July and as we head for WTO terms in December that will change
The “Labour Party” is essentially a deal between the Blairites and the hard left.
I'm pretty sick and tired of the far left's stereotyping of Labour members who aren't signed up Corbynites as "Blarites". I'm pretty sure that the current leader is too.
Disagree with the thread header, Starmer is unlikely to win a majority but he has a strong chance of becoming PM.
First only one party since WW2 has won a general election after 10 years in power, the Tories in 1992 and then only by a small majority. By the time of the next general election the Tories will have been in power for 14 years.
Second none of the minor parties will prop up the Tories if they lost their majority, the LDs will prefer Starmer to the Tories hard Brexit and even the DUP would prefer the whole UK to be in the EEA with Starmer than a border in the Irish Sea.
Third, Boris is the best election winner for the Tories since Thatcher and the idea replacing him if he becomes unpopular will resolve their problems is deluded. If he becomes unpopular it will be because Government policy is unpopular and replacing him with Sunak will not resolve that as Sunak will have been setting economic policy post Covid.
Nor will the Tories have the option of dropping an unpopular policy like Brexit on WTO terms as they did in 1990 when they replaced Thatcher with Major and Major dumped the poll tax. While a small majority of voters at large want an extension of the transition period, the vast majority of Tory and Leave voters oppose an extension of the transition period and welcome WTO terms.
So getting rid of Boris for a soft Brexit, pro single market Tory leader say maybe Hunt or a converted Sunak would just lead to mass defections of Leavers from the Tories to the Brexit Party again and Leave them in the same position they were under May which was why they elected Boris in the first place
The market is not "who will be Prime Minister after the next general election". The market is "who will be next Prime Minister".
So, if Johnson becomes unpopular and is replaced as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party, and Prime Minister, then his replacement as PM will be the winner in this betting market and they will certainly be a Conservative MP rather than Starmer.
In order for Starmer to become the next Prime Minister you have to believe that Johnson will not only lose the next election, but be allowed to lose the next election rather than be replaced, and would want to fight a losing battle, rather than stepping aside.
The only point in replacing Boris, the best Tory election winner since Thatcher, would be if WTO terms with Boris becomes as unpopular as the poll tax with Thatcher was when she was replaced by Major in 1990.
However given over 60% of Tory voters oppose extending the transition period, replacing Boris with say Hunt or Sunak on a pro single market policy would see mass defections of Leavers from the Tories to the Brexit Party again.
Hard Brexit and WTO terms is far more popular with Tory voters than the poll tax ever was
The popularity of WTO terms is neither here nor there for the argument. Given the make-up of the Parliamentary Conservative Party I'd expect Johnson's replacement to be more of a Brexit ideologue than less.
The point is that Starmer only becomes the next PM if an unpopular Johnson contests the next general election. It's much more likely that he remains popular enough to win again, or is replaced if he becomes unpopular.
When was the last time the Conservatives contested a general election with a Prime Minister known to be personally unpopular without first trying to replace them?
They aren't the Labour Party who drifted to defeat in 2010 with Brown at the helm.
Wrong.
The popularity or not of WTO terms as opposed to the single market will define British politics for the next decade.
If Starmer becomes PM it will not be because he becomes more likeable or charismatic than Boris, which he never will, it will be because the Tories have to deliver the WTO terms Brexit most of their voters want and enough Tory Remain voters vote Labour or LD next time as a result to make Starmer PM.
Who personally leads the Tories is irrelevant to that unless they change the Brexit policy which would be suicide with their mainly Leave vote
Once lock down ends by July and as we head for WTO terms in December that will change
Can you also please tell me tonight’s Lottery numbers? Thanks.
I know you have a bitter take on Boris but you may find that the public enquiries have a lot more to say about the public health bodies and the scientific advisors
Unfortunately my Mother in Laws excellent care home in the Isle of Wight now has several cases. Worrying, and a desperately sad situation.
One of the many awful things about Covid-19 is how people die without family around them. Even our hardy ICU consultants, who have made decisions to end intervention on a weekly basis for years find this distressing.
And, dare one venture to say it, the Covid crisis in care homes doesn't end with the disease. A high proportion of care home residents are demented, and are presently being warehoused in solitary confinement basically with no human contact apart from help with feeding and essential personal care, gradually wasting away despite the best efforts of the staff.
At the end of all of this there are going to be many relatives who, having left their loved ones in a state of mild cognitive impairment, go back again to discover that they are either completely uncommunicative or have no idea who this stranger who's just come to see them actually is.
There's arguably an issue here of the prioritisation of quantity of life over quality of life, but in your line of work I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that society often isn't very comfortable about having conversations on that subject.
Thank you for posting that. I`m getting really angry about this. Care homes are farming old folk for profit. How dare they - a private company - deny my mother from seeing her husband (my father), who have been married for nearly 60 years, and her children. Despite that fact that she - and we - would take the risk to ensure that her last weeks and months are as "quality" as is possible.
My last note from my mother, received last week, reads: "when I go downstairs to the TV room they make us wear face masks. The staff are always wearing them even when they bring me food in my room. We sit in front of the TV in silence looking at each other and all we can see are shiny eyes."
The image haunts me night and day.
I instinctively feel the same way. Also about funerals and visiting the sick and dying more generally, regardless of location. It feels 'off' to me, all the verbotens around this, although I know there are good reasons. It just feels like a bad value judgment - or rather one that I do not share.
The Lib Dems need to make a deal with Keir Starmer, in return for the implementation of STV. Simple as that.
And the SNP need to make a deal with Keir Starmer on a referendum on independence.
The two demands go together.
If the Scots get independence then the Labour needs STV to avoid permanent Tory hegemony in England and Wales.
STV prevents the SNP from winning disproportionate numbers of MPs. I don't know how Labour have done with STV in Scottish local elections, but I'd have thought it's one of their best chances of a recovery in Westminster elections in Scotland.
STV in England and Wales would be implemented after the Scots get independence. It would be up to the Scots what system they adopt subsequently.
STV would likely prevent there ever being a majority Labour government again, just as for the Tories.
The LDs and occasionally the Brexit Party or another UKIP style party would always be Kingmakers
Disagree with the thread header, Starmer is unlikely to win a majority but he has a strong chance of becoming PM.
First only one party since WW2 has won a general election after 10 years in power, the Tories in 1992 and then only by a small majority. By the time of the next general election the Tories will have been in power for 14 years.
Second none of the minor parties will prop up the Tories if they lost their majority, the LDs will prefer Starmer to the Tories hard Brexit and even the DUP would prefer the whole UK to be in the EEA with Starmer than a border in the Irish Sea.
Third, Boris is the best election winner for the Tories since Thatcher and the idea replacing him if he becomes unpopular will resolve their problems is deluded. If he becomes unpopular it will be because Government policy is unpopular and replacing him with Sunak will not resolve that as Sunak will have been setting economic policy post Covid.
Nor will the Tories have the option of dropping an unpopular policy like Brexit on WTO terms as they did in 1990 when they replaced Thatcher with Major and Major dumped the poll tax. While a small majority of voters at large want an extension of the transition period, the vast majority of Tory and Leave voters oppose an extension of the transition period and welcome WTO terms.
So getting rid of Boris for a soft Brexit, pro single market Tory leader say maybe Hunt or a converted Sunak would just lead to mass defections of Leavers from the Tories to the Brexit Party again and Leave them in the same position they were under May which was why they elected Boris in the first place
The market is not "who will be Prime Minister after the next general election". The market is "who will be next Prime Minister".
So, if Johnson becomes unpopular and is replaced as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party, and Prime Minister, then his replacement as PM will be the winner in this betting market and they will certainly be a Conservative MP rather than Starmer.
In order for Starmer to become the next Prime Minister you have to believe that Johnson will not only lose the next election, but be allowed to lose the next election rather than be replaced, and would want to fight a losing battle, rather than stepping aside.
The only point in replacing Boris, the best Tory election winner since Thatcher, would be if WTO terms with Boris becomes as unpopular as the poll tax with Thatcher was when she was replaced by Major in 1990.
However given over 60% of Tory voters oppose extending the transition period, replacing Boris with say Hunt or Sunak on a pro single market policy would see mass defections of Leavers from the Tories to the Brexit Party again.
Hard Brexit and WTO terms is far more popular with Tory voters than the poll tax ever was
The popularity of WTO terms is neither here nor there for the argument. Given the make-up of the Parliamentary Conservative Party I'd expect Johnson's replacement to be more of a Brexit ideologue than less.
The point is that Starmer only becomes the next PM if an unpopular Johnson contests the next general election. It's much more likely that he remains popular enough to win again, or is replaced if he becomes unpopular.
When was the last time the Conservatives contested a general election with a Prime Minister known to be personally unpopular without first trying to replace them?
They aren't the Labour Party who drifted to defeat in 2010 with Brown at the helm.
Wrong.
The popularity or not of WTO terms as opposed to the single market will define British politics for the next decade.
If Starmer becomes PM it will not be because he becomes more likeable or charismatic than Boris, which he never will, it will be because the Tories have to deliver the WTO terms Brexit most of their voters want and enough Tory Remain voters vote Labour or LD next time as a result to make Starmer PM.
Who personally leads the Tories is irrelevant to that unless they change the Brexit policy which would be suicide with their mainly Leave vote
Once lock down ends by July and as we head for WTO terms in December that will change
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
I believe you still think of Scots as 'they' dontcha? Always good to get the anthropological view of those who deign to live among us.
Not being Scottish, I do, yes. I think the 'they' word about millionaires, women, people who can play the piano, children etc. But I think of us all as being British - which is lovely.
What I don't do is grade people on their Scottishness, which you apparently do.
Do I think of a middle aged stripper making a buck while sad old guys stare into their pints of Special as more Scottish than Tony Blair? You bet.
Blair was never Scottish
He was born in Edinburgh and went to school there. What do you have to do to qualify as Scottish?
The SNP did promise civic nationalism - not pure enough for you?
The much more interesting question would be does Tony Blair consider himself Scottish? I doubt it but am open to persuasion.
The “Labour Party” is essentially a deal between the Blairites and the hard left.
I'm pretty sick and tired of the far left's stereotyping of Labour members who aren't signed up Corbynites as "Blarites". I'm pretty sure that the current leader is too.
I’m not sure if you’re having a go at me here or not, but I’m not on the “far left” and I was making no such point, I was merely demonstrating the peculiarities of the party system under FPTP.
The Lib Dems need to make a deal with Keir Starmer, in return for the implementation of STV. Simple as that.
And the SNP need to make a deal with Keir Starmer on a referendum on independence.
The two demands go together.
If the Scots get independence then the Labour needs STV to avoid permanent Tory hegemony in England and Wales.
STV prevents the SNP from winning disproportionate numbers of MPs. I don't know how Labour have done with STV in Scottish local elections, but I'd have thought it's one of their best chances of a recovery in Westminster elections in Scotland.
STV in England and Wales would be implemented after the Scots get independence. It would be up to the Scots what system they adopt subsequently.
STV would likely prevent there ever being a majority Labour government again, just as for the Tories.
The LDs and occasionally the Brexit Party or another UKIP style party would always be Kingmakers
The Labour Party and the Conservative Party would not survive in their current form under STV. There would be no need for such broad churches.
There is so much that is right in this article that it's a pity the underlying premise renders it null and void.
Johnson won the Tories their biggest victory since Margaret Thatcher. She was given free rein in three General Elections (1979, 1983, 1987) and no one would touch her.
We tend to filter what we think we know through the prism of recent experience and I'm afraid David you have fallen foul of this. You're thinking Boris is Cameron. He isn't. Cameron did win but only just and his coalition victory followed by 12-seat majority gave the plotters the oxygen they needed.
Boris has one single undeniable firewall. He won handsomely. The party won't touch him.
There is one huge difference. No-one could touch Thatcher for so long because she was ideologically in tune with the membership. They still worship her.
There is no guarantee the membership are going to be too enamoured with Boris's leadership once they have experienced it for a while. He took a calculated risk that being "Mr Brexit" would win him the leadership and the GE. That strategy paid off brilliantly. However who really knows what else his government is going to do?
My guess is that BigG is correct and he will be a "one nation" Tory. I think it will be a big state, high spending government and I think that that was the case even before Covid19. Whether it can also remain a low-tax government remains to be seen. I don't see how it can.
He may remain popular in the country but I don't think it will be long before there are rumblings of discontent in the party and the membership. If he is serious about prioritising the voters in the new Tory seats in the north and midlands i order to retain those seats I don't think the wealthier southern membership base is going to be too thrilled about what that means in practice.
It will be a low tax, big spend, big borrowing, populist Berlusconi, George W Bush style government
You may be right re tax but I don't see how it can be done other than for a very short period.
However even if it is, is that the sort of government that Tory members want because I am far from certain it is. I think the membership is still predominantly Thatcherite.
The membership want low tax and accept high spending if it is popular.
Bar a few wonks few Tory members are deficit hawks and they know they need a Tory government elected to keep taxes lower than Labour will impose
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
It's a good point. My experience of posh Scots makes Scotland look like a feudal bastion in comparison with down-to-earth, egalitarian England.
Quite. At my first employer in Scotland the office staff spoke quite unironically about 'undesirables' in their local area. I know several lovely Scots obsessed with name-dropping when they might have run into an Earl at some committee or event (at least one of whom is a vocal SNP supporter - which doesn't stop him going weak at the knees at a sniff of the tweedy upper crust). I can't see a shred of evidence that Scots are any less aware of or interested in social class, though perhaps it is more so on the West Coast where I've spent less time.
There was none of this shit in Fife.
I guess St Andrews should be considered an enclave, a wee breath of the home counties. Difficult to believe it and Kelty exist in the same county.
Ha ha, I grew up in St Andrews. It is certainly quite different from some other parts of Fife, but it has more in common with Oxford or Cambridge than the home counties, and there are also some pretty tough places in the surrounding area. You didn't mess with the kids from Tayport.
Fair enough, I yield to on the ground experience! I had cousins who had a farm outside St Andrews with whom I stayed a few time as a boy; we certainly didn't see much of the kids from Tayport but plenty of bracing walks on the seafront & cathedral, much to my disgust.
Had a weekend break there last year, and we ended up in a local howff that had chairs outside so I could have a smoke, tbf not home counties at all.
I couldn't wait to leave as a kid but now when I go home to see my folks I realise it is a magical place. I have got too soft for the Scottish climate though.
There is so much that is right in this article that it's a pity the underlying premise renders it null and void.
Johnson won the Tories their biggest victory since Margaret Thatcher. She was given free rein in three General Elections (1979, 1983, 1987) and no one would touch her.
We tend to filter what we think we know through the prism of recent experience and I'm afraid David you have fallen foul of this. You're thinking Boris is Cameron. He isn't. Cameron did win but only just and his coalition victory followed by 12-seat majority gave the plotters the oxygen they needed.
Boris has one single undeniable firewall. He won handsomely. The party won't touch him.
There is one huge difference. No-one could touch Thatcher for so long because she was ideologically in tune with the membership. They still worship her.
There is no guarantee the membership are going to be too enamoured with Boris's leadership once they have experienced it for a while. He took a calculated risk that being "Mr Brexit" would win him the leadership and the GE. That strategy paid off brilliantly. However who really knows what else his government is going to do?
My guess is that BigG is correct and he will be a "one nation" Tory. I think it will be a big state, high spending government and I think that that was the case even before Covid19. Whether it can also remain a low-tax government remains to be seen. I don't see how it can.
He may remain popular in the country but I don't think it will be long before there are rumblings of discontent in the party and the membership. If he is serious about prioritising the voters in the new Tory seats in the north and midlands i order to retain those seats I don't think the wealthier southern membership base is going to be too thrilled about what that means in practice.
It will be a low tax, big spend, big borrowing, populist Berlusconi, George W Bush style government
You may be right re tax but I don't see how it can be done other than for a very short period.
However even if it is, is that the sort of government that Tory members want because I am far from certain it is. I think the membership is still predominantly Thatcherite.
The membership want low tax and accept high spending if it is popular.
Bar a few wonks few Tory members are deficit hawks and they know they need a Tory government elected to keep taxes lower than Labour will impose
I can’t wait for the Labour Party to feast on the magic money tree that the Tories seem to have found in the forest.
Those betting on BoZo's departure date would do well to factor in the timing of the inevitable public inquiry
I expect any public enquiry will expose PHE as unfit for purpose and will have serious criticism of the NHS as an organisation. Furthermore Sage may well have questions to answer
It is quite clear listening to Nicola that she has acted exactly as Boris until this last couple of weeks, especially in respect of care homes. She continually repeats she will only follow the advice so it is fair to assume in the Cobra meetings, both Boris and Nicola acted on that advise.
Boris is reported to have said in the 1922 meeting yesterday that PHE have questions to answer.
I know you have a bitter take on Boris but you may find that the public enquiries have a lot more to say about the public health bodies and the scientific advisors
It may well be the case that the inadequacies of PHE are exposed. That in no way exonerates the government.
The discharge policy was almost certainly signed off by the Health Secretary.
It has been notable how ready he has been to put his name on policy changes and underline them at the press conferences. I vividly recall his announcing at one that close family would now be allowed to visit their dying relatives in care homes, shortly after my father died. It made some of the front pages the following day. Ministers have consistently and studiously avoided discussing the discharge decision.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
I believe you still think of Scots as 'they' dontcha? Always good to get the anthropological view of those who deign to live among us.
Not being Scottish, I do, yes. I think the 'they' word about millionaires, women, people who can play the piano, children etc. But I think of us all as being British - which is lovely.
What I don't do is grade people on their Scottishness, which you apparently do.
Do I think of a middle aged stripper making a buck while sad old guys stare into their pints of Special as more Scottish than Tony Blair? You bet.
Blair was never Scottish
He was born in Edinburgh and went to school there. What do you have to do to qualify as Scottish?
The SNP did promise civic nationalism - not pure enough for you?
The much more interesting question would be does Tony Blair consider himself Scottish? I doubt it but am open to persuasion.
IDS was born in Scotland so is also Scottish arguably
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
I believe you still think of Scots as 'they' dontcha? Always good to get the anthropological view of those who deign to live among us.
Not being Scottish, I do, yes. I think the 'they' word about millionaires, women, people who can play the piano, children etc. But I think of us all as being British - which is lovely.
What I don't do is grade people on their Scottishness, which you apparently do.
Do I think of a middle aged stripper making a buck while sad old guys stare into their pints of Special as more Scottish than Tony Blair? You bet.
Blair was never Scottish
He was born in Edinburgh and went to school there. What do you have to do to qualify as Scottish?
The SNP did promise civic nationalism - not pure enough for you?
Blair is an arse of the highest order and given he lived in Scotland for some months as a baby , his upbringing was not Scottish. He spent his life in Australia and England, and hated his time at Fettes which for sure would not have been his choice. He immediately went back to England and has never been seen in Scotland or ever mentioned it again..
There is so much that is right in this article that it's a pity the underlying premise renders it null and void.
Johnson won the Tories their biggest victory since Margaret Thatcher. She was given free rein in three General Elections (1979, 1983, 1987) and no one would touch her.
We tend to filter what we think we know through the prism of recent experience and I'm afraid David you have fallen foul of this. You're thinking Boris is Cameron. He isn't. Cameron did win but only just and his coalition victory followed by 12-seat majority gave the plotters the oxygen they needed.
Boris has one single undeniable firewall. He won handsomely. The party won't touch him.
There is one huge difference. No-one could touch Thatcher for so long because she was ideologically in tune with the membership. They still worship her.
There is no guarantee the membership are going to be too enamoured with Boris's leadership once they have experienced it for a while. He took a calculated risk that being "Mr Brexit" would win him the leadership and the GE. That strategy paid off brilliantly. However who really knows what else his government is going to do?
My guess is that BigG is correct and he will be a "one nation" Tory. I think it will be a big state, high spending government and I think that that was the case even before Covid19. Whether it can also remain a low-tax government remains to be seen. I don't see how it can.
He may remain popular in the country but I don't think it will be long before there are rumblings of discontent in the party and the membership. If he is serious about prioritising the voters in the new Tory seats in the north and midlands i order to retain those seats I don't think the wealthier southern membership base is going to be too thrilled about what that means in practice.
It will be a low tax, big spend, big borrowing, populist Berlusconi, George W Bush style government
Berlusconi, definitely. Berlusconi screwed the Italians figuratively and literally, just as Johnson is doing to the British. If you want a vision of the UK in a few years time, assuming it's still intact, look at Italy now.
Ironically a drought could be good for Boris if he takes the opportunity to build new reservoirs and pipelines, creating jobs and helping to get the economy moving again.
Where?
The NIMBYs are not going to be in favour
Reservoirs are basically big lakes that encourage wildfowl and wildflowers so I'd not expect much objection, unless Boris opts for big, ugly, concrete swimming pools instead, but given he nearly gave us the garden bridge, we may be all right there.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
I believe you still think of Scots as 'they' dontcha? Always good to get the anthropological view of those who deign to live among us.
Not being Scottish, I do, yes. I think the 'they' word about millionaires, women, people who can play the piano, children etc. But I think of us all as being British - which is lovely.
What I don't do is grade people on their Scottishness, which you apparently do.
Do I think of a middle aged stripper making a buck while sad old guys stare into their pints of Special as more Scottish than Tony Blair? You bet.
Blair was never Scottish
He was born in Edinburgh and went to school there. What do you have to do to qualify as Scottish?
The SNP did promise civic nationalism - not pure enough for you?
The much more interesting question would be does Tony Blair consider himself Scottish? I doubt it but am open to persuasion.
IDS was born in Scotland so is also Scottish arguably
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
Lucky , no matter how much you protest it is plain to anyone that Scotland is far less class conscious than England. We have our share , much smaller, of hoorays but in general people don't have the doff your cap/they are better than me attitude that you see down south.
It is awareness that we're speaking of Malc, not necessarily 'kowtowing'. Complaining about the poshos in the big house (or complaining about the local neds) is as much awareness of the class system as the deferential behaviour you describe.
Lucky , I disagree, you have the poshos v neds in all countries but few have the ingrained social structure that still pervades England. We saw that in bold on here as Starmer was deemed an absolute pleb due to the schools he had attended and fact his parents were not of the correct class yet absolute arseholes are feted because they are from the right stock and went to Eton/Cambridge/Oxford etc. There is nothing near that attitude in Scotland.
Starmer went to private school, has an Oxford degree and is a knight of the realm.
On that basis he is the poshest party leader since Douglas Home
Don't get all isam on us. He went to a grammar school which became fee paying while he was there. Did they say existing students didn't need to pay? No idea. My guess is yes.
Reigate grammar school was an independent school for most of the time Starmer was there
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
Lucky , no matter how much you protest it is plain to anyone that Scotland is far less class conscious than England. We have our share , much smaller, of hoorays but in general people don't have the doff your cap/they are better than me attitude that you see down south.
It is awareness that we're speaking of Malc, not necessarily 'kowtowing'. Complaining about the poshos in the big house (or complaining about the local neds) is as much awareness of the class system as the deferential behaviour you describe.
Lucky , I disagree, you have the poshos v neds in all countries but few have the ingrained social structure that still pervades England. We saw that in bold on here as Starmer was deemed an absolute pleb due to the schools he had attended and fact his parents were not of the correct class yet absolute arseholes are feted because they are from the right stock and went to Eton/Cambridge/Oxford etc. There is nothing near that attitude in Scotland.
Starmer went to private school, has an Oxford degree and is a knight of the realm.
On that basis he is the poshest party leader since Douglas Home
Don't get all isam on us. He went to a grammar school which became fee paying while he was there. Did they say existing students didn't need to pay? No idea. My guess is yes.
Reigate grammar school was an independence school for most of the time Starmer was there
The Lib Dems need to make a deal with Keir Starmer, in return for the implementation of STV. Simple as that.
Maybe after the election and with a referendum. Labour can't do pre-election deals because it brings the unanswerable question of "would you do a deal with the SNP?"
Can’t avoid it forever. A deal with the SNP is pretty much a necessity in order for Labour to form a Government under FPTP.
If that's Labour thinking then you might as well wave goodbye to majority government forever. People just won't vote for a party that aims to be in minority government, not in enough numbers to depose us. Your aim has got to be more than just "deny the Tories as majority" we'll keep winning if we're the only party that can offer majority government.
Blair delivered a majority by appealing to our voters, I don't know where Starmer stands but on recent history Labour seems more interested in lecturing and hectoring our voters for having the temerity to vote Tory, that was true under Ed as well.
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
It's a good point. My experience of posh Scots makes Scotland look like a feudal bastion in comparison with down-to-earth, egalitarian England.
Quite. At my first employer in Scotland the office staff spoke quite unironically about 'undesirables' in their local area. I know several lovely Scots obsessed with name-dropping when they might have run into an Earl at some committee or event (at least one of whom is a vocal SNP supporter - which doesn't stop him going weak at the knees at a sniff of the tweedy upper crust). I can't see a shred of evidence that Scots are any less aware of or interested in social class, though perhaps it is more so on the West Coast where I've spent less time.
There was none of this shit in Fife.
I guess St Andrews should be considered an enclave, a wee breath of the home counties. Difficult to believe it and Kelty exist in the same county.
Ha ha, I grew up in St Andrews. It is certainly quite different from some other parts of Fife, but it has more in common with Oxford or Cambridge than the home counties, and there are also some pretty tough places in the surrounding area. You didn't mess with the kids from Tayport.
Fair enough, I yield to on the ground experience! I had cousins who had a farm outside St Andrews with whom I stayed a few time as a boy; we certainly didn't see much of the kids from Tayport but plenty of bracing walks on the seafront & cathedral, much to my disgust.
Had a weekend break there last year, and we ended up in a local howff that had chairs outside so I could have a smoke, tbf not home counties at all.
I couldn't wait to leave as a kid but now when I go home to see my folks I realise it is a magical place. I have got too soft for the Scottish climate though.
I'm much the same about the Outer Hebrides, had a bit of a shock when I idly looked up house prices on Harris and Lewis though
DH is right that the Tory party is pretty swift to defenestrate a leader looking likely to lose an election.
I have never been a Boris fan. He has always looked the bumbling amateur public school boy who bullshits his way through life.
It got Blair three election victories, didn't it?
And being thoughtful oiks got Brown and May precisely nowhere, after some initial successes.
You could easily make a case that the country likes being led by people who make them feel more optimistic, especially when the circumstances don't justify it. For my money, we've had two leaders like that in the past two decades (Blair and Johnson), and two who clearly weren't (Brown and May). Cameron is somewhere between, hence his mediocre but not disastrous electoral record.
? Perhaps my antennae aren't as developed as those of the class obsessed English, but to me Blair always gave the impression of suppressing his public school background, appeared anything but bumbling and his adoption of estuarine tones was the opposite of Johnson's Classical pretensions.
Is that the same Tony Blair that went to public school in... Scotland?
I'm sure that would be a killer point if I could work out what it was.
He was infected by Scottishness?
There used to be a trio of stripper bars in the West Port in Edinburgh known colloquially as the pubic triangle, similarly Fettes, Edinburgh Academy and Stewart's Melville could be described as the public school triangle (though you can probably randomly chuck a triangle onto a map of Edinburgh and come up with 3 private schools). I'd venture that there was a good deal more Scottishness in the former than the latter.
So the Scots who are either posh, or class-aware aren't 'properly Scottish'. That makes more sense as a definition. I wonder what you'd do with these non-Scottish Scots in your brave new Scotland? Ship them all off to the a remote Hebridean Island maybe? Edinburgh would look funny empty.
I believe you still think of Scots as 'they' dontcha? Always good to get the anthropological view of those who deign to live among us.
Not being Scottish, I do, yes. I think the 'they' word about millionaires, women, people who can play the piano, children etc. But I think of us all as being British - which is lovely.
What I don't do is grade people on their Scottishness, which you apparently do.
Do I think of a middle aged stripper making a buck while sad old guys stare into their pints of Special as more Scottish than Tony Blair? You bet.
Blair was never Scottish
He was born in Edinburgh and went to school there. What do you have to do to qualify as Scottish?
The SNP did promise civic nationalism - not pure enough for you?
The much more interesting question would be does Tony Blair consider himself Scottish? I doubt it but am open to persuasion.
My guess is that he would think of himself as British more than anything else, but Scottish enough to get a Scottish passport after independence.
Comments
Being old fashioned I am used to it meaning good character and high standards, i.e. fairness and equity.
The two demands go together.
If the Scots get independence then the Labour needs STV to avoid permanent Tory hegemony in England and Wales.
Ydoethur, The King over the Water , Bonnie Prince Charlie
@ishmaelz
5. Dress like a leader, not a teacher. Looks matter, and first impressions count. Ain't life unfair.
There is no guarantee the membership are going to be too enamoured with Boris's leadership once they have experienced it for a while. He took a calculated risk that being "Mr Brexit" would win him the leadership and the GE. That strategy paid off brilliantly. However who really knows what else his government is going to do?
My guess is that BigG is correct and he will be a "one nation" Tory. I think it will be a big state, high spending government and I think that that was the case even before Covid19. Whether it can also remain a low-tax government remains to be seen. I don't see how it can.
He may remain popular in the country but I don't think it will be long before there are rumblings of discontent in the party and the membership. If he is serious about prioritising the voters in the new Tory seats in the north and midlands i order to retain those seats I don't think the wealthier southern membership base is going to be too thrilled about what that means in practice.
I won't hold my breath on that one...
What I don't do is grade people on their Scottishness, which you apparently do.
What's happening to spring crops etc etc?
If the government announced they were lifting the two metre rule and the BBC reported that would you say "why are they reporting that it was never the law?"
At the end of all of this there are going to be many relatives who, having left their loved ones in a state of mild cognitive impairment, go back again to discover that they are either completely uncommunicative or have no idea who this stranger who's just come to see them actually is.
There's arguably an issue here of the prioritisation of quantity of life over quality of life, but in your line of work I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that society often isn't very comfortable about having conversations on that subject.
The point is that Starmer only becomes the next PM if an unpopular Johnson contests the next general election. It's much more likely that he remains popular enough to win again, or is replaced if he becomes unpopular.
When was the last time the Conservatives contested a general election with a Prime Minister known to be personally unpopular without first trying to replace them?
They aren't the Labour Party who drifted to defeat in 2010 with Brown at the helm.
The NIMBYs are not going to be in favour
They shouldn`t make deals with anyone. The ironic thing is that there is a decent proportion of the public which is liberal.
The 'forensic' approach is going to be a turn-off for an electorate primed on snappy soundbites, cliches and generalisations.
Starmer is the political equivalent of a 50 page T&C's section on an insurance policy.
"The leadership was faced with two Catch-22 strategy options; and as became one of the hallmarks of the campaign, no decision was actually made.
One was to embark on a pure strategy to Stop Brexit. Under this strategy the plan would have been to ensure as many pro-remain MPs in the House of Commons as possible. This would have necessitated standing down in areas where there were Labour pro-Remain MPs. The consequence of that decision could likely have been a collapse in Conservative tactical voters petrified of a Corbyn led coalition. While
we said we wanted to Stop Brexit we were not prepared to take that strategic risk, nor did we make any preparations for how we could mitigate that risk.
The second was a pure strategy to maximise Liberal Democrat representation in Westminster. Under this strategy the plan would have been to let the Parliamentary stalemate continue to play out. The consequences of that would have been Brexit happening, either with Labour votes or with No Deal; this in turn might have given us a way to profit from either Labour or Conservative disarray in an election.
While we said we wanted to maximise Lib Dem seats in Westminster we were not prepared to take that strategic risk, nor did we make any preparations for how we could mitigate that risk.
In the end we did not clarify or decide between these two hellish scenarios, and we will never know what the alternative reality might have been. Instead we chose to claim to believe we could win outright ourselves [hubris!], thus obviating the need to choose.
It is this lack of clarity which led to an election campaign that can only be described as a high stakes gamble".
I think it’s fair to say that Labour could do without Corbyn’s appeal.
I don't believe that is true at all. In every government, be it Tory or Labour, there are always some ministers who are widely rated across the political spectrum and there are others who are generally considered to be a dud.
At the moment Rishi Sunak is an example of the former and Pritti Patel an example of the latter.
Accordingly, our local LibDems are now essentially extinct, and the ex-LibDems who didn't go postal over anti-Brexit are now running the place.
Crash being the operative word.
The popularity or not of WTO terms as opposed to the single market will define British politics for the next decade.
If Starmer becomes PM it will not be because he becomes more likeable or charismatic than Boris, which he never will, it will be because the Tories have to deliver the WTO terms Brexit most of their voters want and enough Tory Remain voters vote Labour or LD next time as a result to make Starmer PM.
Who personally leads the Tories is irrelevant to that unless they change the Brexit policy which would be suicide with their mainly Leave vote
My last note from my mother, received last week, reads: "when I go downstairs to the TV room they make us wear face masks. The staff are always wearing them even when they bring me food in my room. We sit in front of the TV in silence looking at each other and all we can see are shiny eyes."
The image haunts me night and day.
I'd like to see it somehow expressed as representing responsible adults (as opposed to authoritarian parents - do as you're told nanny state - or submissive children - tell us what to do in detail dear leader).
It is liberal, will appeal also to libertarians on the right and intelligensia on the left. The responsibility, as adults, is not only for our own actions but also for others in our society.
The Tories would have been much better served losing the 1992 GE with Thatcher still at the helm...it would have lanced the boil before it became a pustulating sore that needed nearly 20 years to clean up.
As for Boris, his usp is perfect for the next couple of years...and I say that as someone who isn't particularly a fan.
Fox jr went to a game there when on German exchange as a kid.
1730 KO vs Monchen Gladbach, who seem to be having a good season so far.
Apart from the predictable Bayern hegemony, the Bundesliga does seem quite fluid.
His USP is bumbling incompetence. How exactly is that perfect for the next couple of years?
We saw that in bold on here as Starmer was deemed an absolute pleb due to the schools he had attended and fact his parents were not of the correct class yet absolute arseholes are feted because they are from the right stock and went to Eton/Cambridge/Oxford etc.
There is nothing near that attitude in Scotland.
The sequitur 'Unleash Our Potential' played perfectly into this mood. Brexit presented now not as a good thing in and of itself but simply as something in the way. A roadblock preventing us getting on with more important matters. This had the additional benefit of being true. Brexit never did have any tangible benefits - we all know this really - but once voted for, it had to be 'done'. It had to be done (i) to preserve democratic integrity and (ii) because nothing else of consequence was politically possible until it was.
So, upshot, an absolutely devastating piece of messaging by Team Johnson. The best ever in a UK general election. Simple and direct, yet simultaneously subtle and sophisticated, and bespoke tailored for the electorate. It was as close to perfect as you can get. Allied to the personal appeal of Johnson - or "Boris" rather - to the WWC voters the Cons needed for their Red Wall strategy to work, it delivered what we saw on Dec 12th - an overall majority of 50 seats. Which, due to the Corbyn factor, became 80.
That's your 'Brexit Election' chez moi.
However even if it is, is that the sort of government that Tory members want because I am far from certain it is. I think the membership is still predominantly Thatcherite.
You could always exercise outdoors with someone not in your household. As per the law.
Nothing has changed in this respect yet the BBC is reporting as though it is a new development.
On that basis he is the poshest party leader since Douglas Home
Had a weekend break there last year, and we ended up in a local howff that had chairs outside so I could have a smoke, tbf not home counties at all.
The SNP did promise civic nationalism - not pure enough for you?
But in this case they completely closed care homes even to close family visitors, well before they then discharged infected patients directly from hospital into those care homes.
Also, Starmer’s Oxford Degree is basically an after-thought. He went to the University of Leeds for his undergraduate, like a true man of the people.
Have you been south of Derby?
The LDs and occasionally the Brexit Party or another UKIP style party would always be Kingmakers
Bar a few wonks few Tory members are deficit hawks and they know they need a Tory government elected to keep taxes lower than Labour will impose
That in no way exonerates the government.
The discharge policy was almost certainly signed off by the Health Secretary.
It has been notable how ready he has been to put his name on policy changes and underline them at the press conferences. I vividly recall his announcing at one that close family would now be allowed to visit their dying relatives in care homes, shortly after my father died. It made some of the front pages the following day.
Ministers have consistently and studiously avoided discussing the discharge decision.
Oh no.
Blair delivered a majority by appealing to our voters, I don't know where Starmer stands but on recent history Labour seems more interested in lecturing and hectoring our voters for having the temerity to vote Tory, that was true under Ed as well.