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How will Boris be judged in future polling questions like this? – politicalbetting.com
How will Boris be judged in future polling questions like this? – politicalbetting.com
Above is some interesting polling from Ipsos – a question that the firm puts from time to time and no doubt at some time in the future Boris will be on the list.
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Betting PostF1: was contemplating this yesterday and decided to back it.
Ladbrokes has a winner without Red Bull/Mercedes market. McLaren and Ferrari are 1.73 and 2.2 respectively. AlphaTauri are 8, 8.5 with boost, and I've backed them.
Gasly was 6th in qualifying but losing his front wing compromised his whole race. Tsunoda fell victim to the same qualifying complacency as Perez but came back to score some points on his debut.
I think they're all pretty similar in pace terms, and 8/8.5 is far too long.
LibDem policy is federalism. A position I have believed in for decades. Devolve to the nations as much power as possible, leaving state-wide competence only in things like national defence and federal infrastructure.
You solve the issue of "England will be too big and dominate the others" by devolving most powers away from the federal level. What England chooses to do with its own affairs won't affect the other nations that much if enough power is devolved to them.
On topic, the Tories and especially Boris won't tackle these issues. He/they like the me me me approach where never mind debates about governance its all about me and mine. Does it matter that we can't realistically have a full service hospital in every town? No - we want it HERE and not THERE.
The table suggests that, largely, the country collectively forgets leaders who were judged to have failed, but successful leaders are referred to by future leaders, and so have their reputation endlessly boosted.
Will we have political leaders calling back to the time of Boris as one to emulate?
O/t again, but maybe inspired by today's news and recollections how many males here can recall occasions from their schooldays where they did things which might be considered, in a different time, as 'abuse'?
The harsh light of day for most people will be a country that has a worse economy - fewer exports, balance of payments crisis - less choice at more cost, and fewer opportunities in the world having made ourselves irrelevant in global politics.
Most of this hasn't played out yet, but its there. We're already realising that its now not viable to maintain large chunks of our exports to the EU, with "just sell them elsewhere" already not viable. We've postponed the imposition of inbound checks due to wazzocks but they will eventually happen at which point we reduce what we can import and increase the costs.
Less stuff at more cost isn't what people expected. Less jobs and less rights - the inevitable Tory response - isn't what people expected. And our position in the world? Yes, we can join the Trans Pacific thing as a long-way detached addendum, but we're hardly relevant to it. Partnerships and alliances are the way that stuff gets done, not saying "we're exceptional, do what we want".
A Britain less relevant, less competitive, more expensive - isn't what people expected. The whole point was more prosperity not less. The honeymoon won't last as reality sets in. That the government and their parrots are so utterly blind to the real crises their idiocy has created won't serve them well - even if you disagree with my analysis of Britain cast adrift, their stupidity when it comes to the actual departure deal is something that business knows is shit and only Philip disagrees with.
https://twitter.com/adamcooperF1/status/1376629161981325312
Actual ranking is as follows:
1. Churchill
2. Thatcher
3. Attlee
4. Macmillan
5. Blair
6. Wilson
7. Heath
8. Major
9. Brown
10. Callaghan
11. May
12. Douglas-Home
13. Johnson
14. Eden
The Right Hand column first 10 is as dear as dammit a ranking by recency of time in office, so surely this need derating by either "PMs you experienced" or "Rose Tinted Spectacles"?
Perhaps I am missing something.
Off the scale, perhaps, but in which direction?
Any solution has to involve the creation of an English Parliament, and for the devolved Parliaments to be responsible for raising the majority of their own taxes, through borrowing if necessary, without reliance on a block grant from the U.K. government as they do now.
The discussion then becomes what to do with the slimmed-down federal U.K. government, responsible for foreign policy, defence, federal law, Treasury, and national debt? You’d want many fewer MPs, perhaps two from each county, and a very much reduced Lords.
Maybe appointments to the Lords could be for a single 10 year term, and made by each of the First Ministers? You’d want them to replicate the existing setup with regard to keep the elected Parliament and executive honest while not being hyper-partisan, as they would be if elected directly.
Between Wilson and Heath.
It would be interesting to see how the contributors of PB who by definition have way more than the normal interest in politics would vote. I suspect Attlee in particular would do a lot better but that Thatcher would probably be number 1, possibly of both lists!
Edit, on catching up with the thread I see @Gardenwalker has already given us a list. Apologies.
We need a name for this.
The England-as-Prussia conundrum.
https://twitter.com/john_cope/status/1376158011492864004?s=21
Thatcher
Churchill
Attlee
My bottom 3 would
Eden
May
Brown.
I think it was Ant Davidson who said that learning a new car was like a pilot learning a new type of plane. They have hundreds of pages of manuals to be learned, and were expected to know the drills by heart for various contingencies and emergencies. Some teams make a replica steering wheel, which works with a real F1 ECU in a home-based simulator, so they can spend dozens of hours pressing all the buttons!
Can someone bung up the chart if you detract the right hand column from the left? I haven't the time right now.
This question, or its equivalent, is regularly asked of former US Presidents and I think it's an interesting poll. It also shows how dynamic and divisive someone like Thatcher was. Similarly Tony Blair.
It's arguably better to be hot or cold than lukewarm. At least they made an impact. Boris will be impactful. An interesting table is therefore to total up both columns.
Then you have:
Churchill 7.88
Attlee 3.00
Macmillan 2.40
Wilson 2.14
Thatcher 1.26
Callaghan 1.21
Eden 1.14
Douglas-Home 1.08
Blair 1.00
Heath 0.90
Major 0.83
Brown 0.65
Cameron 0.61
May 0.49
I suspect Johnson's scores would be similar to Thatcher's. Will Starmer ever place?
The division of powers does need to be formalised though, and in a clearer way than with the current devolved administrations.
He or she will be structurally incentivised to undermine the U.K. PM and thereby the U.K. as a whole.
But none of them showed Boris's casual disregard for truth, British institutions and democracy itself. Boris is sui generis.
Remove the need for a vast Westminster and you remove the need to renovate at vast expense the Palace to be once again fit for the 19th century. As a national building that people can tour around it is fine.
Everything else goes to the national parliaments with their own assembly. With little overlap between even the English First Minister and the UK President, there is little conflict. Ideally we would bring in all of the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies who also benefit from UK foreign and defence policy. Let them self govern as now, but with formal representation to help shape their own defence policy.
The trip — a year after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents — was criticised at the time by Amnesty International, which said the former prime minister's attendance would be “interpreted as showing support for the Saudi regime” despite its “appalling human rights record”.
Brown was an unmitigated disaster, completely unable to make a decision until Mandelson effectively took over. May was similar. An effective leader has to be able to lead and persuade. Neither of those two could. I agree about Churchill, his second administration in the 1950s was embarrassing. Its why I rank Thatcher ahead of him although she went on too long as well.
Seems a bit early in the year to me. I guess the mini heatwave has triggered them?
https://twitter.com/brianrose4mayor/status/1376534618044702720?s=21
The English FM derives their power from, and is accountable to, only the English Parliament.
Mrs Thatcher might, I suspect, be downgraded if Scotland does become independent as many will trace the breakup of the United Kingdom back to her using Scotland as a testbed for the poll tax and for treating North Sea oil as a magic money tree. If Scotland remains, these matter less.
There is no ‘rape culture’ in schools
Education’s ‘#MeToo moment’ is not a scandal – it’s a moral panic over teenage sex."
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/29/there-is-no-rape-culture-in-schools/
On the first flight, on take off, there was a problem with the engine. The pilot in question saved the plane by doing all the right things in an impossibly short period of time.
A more workable approach is likely to be an asymmetrical one with Scotland made autonomous in a similar fashion to Alto Adige (Sudtirol) in Italy. Thus you'd have English regions (and English parliament makes no sense as an addition to the UK one) with devolved powers plus Scotland (and possibly Wales) as autonomous regions with additional powers and only the loosest oversight from UK parliament for defence and the like.
The problem now, of course, is Scotland's wish to draw closer to the EU, which makes all of these options unacceptable, at least in the medium term. But then the Tories were warned that their obsession with Brexit might risk the union, and overwhelmingly said they were willing to take that risk.
“It’s too soon to say what exactly the long-term impact of the current debate is going to have, but it’s likely to contribute to the huge changes in young male sexuality that have been happening for over a decade - without most people paying them much attention.
The primary change, at its most basic level, is that young men seem to be having much less sex than at any point in recent history. The statistics are actually quite shocking when you start to think about what they mean for an entire generation.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/todays-boys-young-men-arent-obsessed-sex-terrified/
One has to add communication skills to the mix.What made Brown and May such terrible PM's was their inability to answer questions.Instead one got endlessly repeated irritating cliches.One could argue that Brown got his big decision right (dealing with the financial crisis) but his reputation is poor .The same might have happened to May even if she had got Brexit done.Voters deserve a certain bar of transparency from their leaders.Brown and May were both too risk averse to be clear and open
A great thing about Mrs Thatcher was that she did answer tough questions and explained clearly her reasoning behind unpopular policies.Another factor in a leader is how good or not their Cabinet team is. Reading history the war generation Cabinets were generally strong but the baby boomer cabinets have been very hit and miss.
Some of the stories are horrible, and I am not sure how it can be tackled other than by changing the culture, and it seems reasonable to describe that as a "rape culture".
His supporters were certainly enthusiastic in backing him on Betfair earlier in the campaign, and now he’s spending money on advertising. The deposit is £10k for the election, which he’s found from somewhere too.
Peel
Grey
Russell
Melbourne
Disraeli
Gladstone
Palmerston
Asquith
Lloyd George
Salisbury
And yes I know that doing so isn't an invitation to abuse, but it can be very, very close to it.
Anyone put in charge of a prototype anything, which can kill themselves and others if it goes wrong, are usually the calm and methodical types, with an academic interest in the machine they’re operating.
There does seem to also be a few cases where checks have resulted in the country deciding that they don't want that person staying there but I've not seen anything that makes the extraordinary.
As for Gordon Brown, he absolutely was a poor leader. What he got right was the management of the global financial crash. When put on the spot the decisions made - refusing to sanction the takeover of Lehman by Barclays, bailing out RBS that October day in 2008, the need for immediate stimulus investments to keep cash flowing - were all critical for the future of the UK.
Ask any of the world leaders of the time about him, and they sing his praises. Yet in the UK he is hated because the Tory lie that he bankrupted the country stuck (helped by that cretin Byrne with his comedy note). Brown was useless at everything else, but in that time of crisis he was peerless.
But the moment their luck deserted them, they pretty much died instantly.
Caesar was somewhat similar.
Unlucky Hannibal actually lived for decades after the Second Punic War.
2 of my sons suffered some pretty bad bullying at times
On the positive side, youngest has Aspergers and he never really suffered at school from bullying from the other children.
Is it possible kids are more accepting of differences these days or perhaps he was just lucky.
His treatment by the teaching establishment on the other hand ......
It seems now that with its expiration and failure to put anything in its place we wont be getting criminals extradited.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14491625/brexit-european-countries-extradition-criminals-uk/
21 species of moth out and about last night.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56570364
This is a particular gem:
...Oxford University's Sir John Bell said Mr Soriot was mystified by the French approach: "He's found dealing with the French one of the most difficult things he's had to do, because they have been so completely irrational."...
Note also that Pfizer unsuccessfully bid to take over the company a few years back.
The argument that it's OK because it's no different than it was in my day cuts no ice with me.
The hard grind of course is going mosque to mosque and church to church. Is this being done yet or are they just moving down the list and using whatever doses they have on whoever wants them?
https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1376645320998854658