Scottish secession would as you correctly say mean Boris had to resign having lost Scotland, which is why he will never grant a legal indyref2.
However if it ever happened it would be the end of the Conservative and Unionist Party anyway, they would become the English National Party instead ie the English equivalent of the Scottish National Party and to ensure no compromise with the SNP in Scexit talks, Labour would be out of power for another generation in both England and Scotland and would probably have to reinvent itself in Wales as the Welsh Nationalist Party to see off a Plaid resurgence there
I think the last sentence is very true -- Welsh Labour would reinvent itself as the voice of (English-speaking) Wales in the event of Scottish secession. They would become the WNP.
The real heartlands of Welsh Labour -- the Valleys -- identify as very Welsh.
In the last 2011 census, the highest proportions of the population self-identifying as Welsh, rather than British, were **not** in Gwynedd or Ceredigion -- they were in the Rhondda or in Neath or in Merthyr (all between 70-80 per cent).
The loss of Scotland would change the Welsh Labour Party into the WNP. Because Wales would be a tiny proportion of the rump of the much more prosperous & right-wing UK.
The population of Scotland is in the Central Belt, and they will control the fate of Scotland. They are never going to vote Tory. So, there really are only two options -- either the Labour Party recovers the Central Belt, or Scotland secedes.
And if Scotland secedes, there is no way back for the Labour Party. It will have to change dramatically in both England and in Wales to survive.
Labour seems to have no plan on how to recover their old Scottish citadels.
And SKS doesn't seem to really understand that the loss of Scotland is a terminal event for what we know as the Labour Party.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
OT today sees the start of the 2021 World Snooker Championship.
The BBC helpfully explains that the world championship has seen some of the biggest names in snooker throughout the decades win the trophy. Who'd have thunk it? https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/snooker/54134586
OT today sees the start of the 2021 World Snooker Championship.
The BBC helpfully explains that the world championship has seen some of the biggest names in snooker throughout the decades win the trophy. Who'd have thunk it? https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/snooker/54134586
Really? I assumed from the title and the fact it’s held in a small theatre in Sheffield that it was minor tournament won by blokes from down the pub.
Edit - I see Trump is favourite. Wouldn’t rule out Selby though.
Aliens using Velcro sounds a bit like cosmonauts using pencils when NASA was inventing the space pen.
The American officials (and ex officials) have been quite careful not to sound too outlandish. They’re basically saying “we are seeing things that are not ours, they interfere with our military operations, in a lot of cases they defy our understanding of materials science and physics itself, and we have a lot of multi point evidence backing it up. We need insight on what these things are”.
A multi decades campaign of public ridicule on the subject has meant people have been too scared to engage with it. At least in America, that’s now changing. We’ve yet to catch up here, somewhere between 2-3 years behind the process in America I’d say.
Looking at current Earth politics would be rather fascinating if it was the case that Russia, China, the EU were excluded from a US-Alien technology alliance....
Who says they’ve allied with the US? Maybe it’s the Chinese who are the favoured children and they are the ones who can now break the sound barrier without causing a sonic boom. Or have perfected trans medium transport (equally fast in air and water).
If I were a paranoid US military type figure, these intelligence reports would disturb me greatly. As it is, I just sit back and enjoy the ride, taking comfort from the human story so far being on balance a positive one. Despite them almost certainly being there from our start if they’re with us now (as looks increasingly likely).
The Israeli prof at Harvard makes an interesting point. He says the increasing evidence for alien intelligence is too easily and airily dismissed because it is associated with nutters, stoners and Trump. The ‘giggle factor’ as he calls it. Which means scientists who do seriously contemplate alien life stay fairly silent
The same thing happens in other fields - eg it happened here, just the other day, when we were discussing the origins of Covid-19. A leak from the Wuhan lab is highly plausible; to me (and others) it is the most likely answer by a distance, because the coincidences are otherwise too great, and no other explanation has any positive evidence.
Yet the lab theory is dismissed out of hand by some intelligent people on here. And the main reason they do that, I believe, is because the lab origin concept is strongly associated with Trump. And no one, understandably, wants to be aligned with Trump.
It is the giggle factor with a dash of Normalcy Bias.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
So we have the Tories who simply HAVE to lose seats, but Labour who can't actually win them off them - and LibDem's so wedded to the EU they can't either. New Party time?
Somebody seems to be forgetting that 48% of the electorate voted to remain in the EU. Being in favour of a good working relationship with our nearest neighbours is by no means unpopular. A large number of people who have voted Conservative in the past are now looking for a new home.
The problem that some PB posters have is that they assume that once a person has voted Conservative, he will continue to do that for the rest of his life.
In fact, there is a very large pool of people who could vote Conservative, or Lib Dem, or UKIP - and which way they vote in any one election will be influenced by a large number of factors. Similarly, there is a large pool of people who could go Labour, or Lib Dem, or Green Party, and the same principle also applies.
In the present round of local elections, the Lib Dems are talking about local issues, not national ones. Boris Johnson is irrelevant. I would not be surprised by a good Lib Dem result in May.
I’d probably vote for them if they were standing.
And Gallowgate was expressing exasperation about their lack of effort in Ashington.
I hope they have a good result, but they’ve got to want it for themselves.
Very sorry, Dr Ydoethur, but the organisation is patchy, as all organisations are, even the education system. The strength of a political party very much depends on the combination of people who are in a particular place at any one time.
I remember that at one stage the Labour Party never bothered even to put up candidates round our way. Then a fiercely committed Labour lady moved in and they suddenly put up candidates. They came last, of course, and she moved away, so we went back to being a Tory-Liberal area again.
Obviously a political party with unlimited amounts of funding and pay people to move into an area to get things set up. They can appear to be strong and organised everywhere. The downside is that the pipers sooner or later will start to call the tune. This we are seeing all too clearly with the present Johnson government.
It happened in education a long time ago, under Thatcher and Howe, long before the latest scheming by Gove and Cummings.
Who would have thought when Labour lost the 2010 general election they would end up out of power for 20 years? But that looks like I real possibility now.
Labour will be back in power at some point. In the end "time for a change" will trump everything else but it doesn't look like it's going to be happening anytime soon does it?
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
So we have the Tories who simply HAVE to lose seats, but Labour who can't actually win them off them - and LibDem's so wedded to the EU they can't either. New Party time?
Somebody seems to be forgetting that 48% of the electorate voted to remain in the EU. Being in favour of a good working relationship with our nearest neighbours is by no means unpopular. A large number of people who have voted Conservative in the past are now looking for a new home.
The problem that some PB posters have is that they assume that once a person has voted Conservative, he will continue to do that for the rest of his life.
In fact, there is a very large pool of people who could vote Conservative, or Lib Dem, or UKIP - and which way they vote in any one election will be influenced by a large number of factors. Similarly, there is a large pool of people who could go Labour, or Lib Dem, or Green Party, and the same principle also applies.
In the present round of local elections, the Lib Dems are talking about local issues, not national ones. Boris Johnson is irrelevant. I would not be surprised by a good Lib Dem result in May.
I’d probably vote for them if they were standing.
And Gallowgate was expressing exasperation about their lack of effort in Ashington.
I hope they have a good result, but they’ve got to want it for themselves.
Very sorry, Dr Ydoethur, but the organisation is patchy, as all organisations are, even the education system. The strength of a political party very much depends on the combination of people who are in a particular place at any one time.
I remember that at one stage the Labour Party never bothered even to put up candidates round our way. Then a fiercely committed Labour lady moved in and they suddenly put up candidates. They came last, of course, and she moved away, so we went back to being a Tory-Liberal area again.
Obviously a political party with unlimited amounts of funding and pay people to move into an area to get things set up. They can appear to be strong and organised everywhere. The downside is that the pipers sooner or later will start to call the tune. This we are seeing all too clearly with the present Johnson government.
It happened in education a long time ago, under Thatcher and Howe, long before the latest scheming by Gove and Cummings.
Agreed to an extent - and they never make more than a token effort round here anyway. But it’s a bit weird if they’re not campaigning in wards they actually hold.
(Again, I’m sure that in other places, e.g. the Isle of Wight they’re fighting like tigers for every vote, but so far it seems a bit low key.)
Two points where I disagree with the excellent thread header. Firstly,
But crucially, both parties had broadly accepted the need to adopt themselves to the electorate rather than hoping to reform the electorate to them.
I think this is wrong. I think that Cameron and Osborne achieved a massive reformation of the electorate with the political arguments over what caused the great financial crash, what to do about it, and who should pay.
The political argument they put forward was that the answer to these questions was, Labour over-spending, austerity, and anyone but the retired. I think it's this that started the great political reformation we have seen where the oldies vote Tory, and the Tories win because there are more oldies.
So, secondly, this crucial age divide gave us Brexit, and it is the key to understanding British politics today, rather than any other identity faultline that maps onto the age divide. Although this age divide has always existed in stereotype, its existence in fact now is on a different scale altogether.
It's ironic that the Tories, who continually have argued that Labour are the party of creating a client vote with government handouts, are now the party of that caricature when it comes to their pensioner client vote. Who are clearly all delighted now that they've been vaccinated.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant.
A bagatelle to distract from the prospect of BJ sitting on your face forever. What I want to know is if they're going to commit this massive act of cultural appropriation, why can't they pronounce 'troosers'?
A bagatelle to distract from the prospect of BJ sitting on your face forever. What I want to know is if they're going to commit this massive act of cultural appropriation, why can't they pronounce 'troosers'?
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
I see a lot of people, who I get on with otherwise, imply or state outright that if you vote Tory then you're one or all of the above. A friend whom I've known for 30+ years couldn't understand why I wouldn't even consider voting for Labour under JC and implied all of the bad things the tories were doing were because of me.
Labour also has a structural problem with the falling union membership. There are areas, like some of the red wall seats, which have lost their union jobs which pushed people to voting Labour. between 1945 and 1966 Labour consistently won the rural Norfolk seats (excluding Norwich) because of unionised farm workers. since 1970 they've been solid Tory.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
So we have the Tories who simply HAVE to lose seats, but Labour who can't actually win them off them - and LibDem's so wedded to the EU they can't either.
New Party time?
You're in fine trolling mood this morning. First offering us the clown as PM for decades to come. Then the US allying with aliens. Now suggesting ChangeUK Two.
Two points where I disagree with the excellent thread header. Firstly,
But crucially, both parties had broadly accepted the need to adopt themselves to the electorate rather than hoping to reform the electorate to them.
I think this is wrong. I think that Cameron and Osborne achieved a massive reformation of the electorate with the political arguments over what caused the great financial crash, what to do about it, and who should pay.
The political argument they put forward was that the answer to these questions was, Labour over-spending, austerity, and anyone but the retired. I think it's this that started the great political reformation we have seen where the oldies vote Tory, and the Tories win because there are more oldies.
So, secondly, this crucial age divide gave us Brexit, and it is the key to understanding British politics today, rather than any other identity faultline that maps into the age divide. Although this age divide has always existed in stereotype, its existence in fact now is on a different scale altogether.
It's ironic that the Tories, who continually have argued that Labour are the party of creating a client vote with government handouts, are now the party of that caricature when it comes to their pensioner client vote. Who are clearly all delighted now that they've been vaccinated.
As you say, Cameron and Osborne reset the political zeitgeist. But so did Boris, who ran against Cameron and Osborne's Conservatism and co-opted much of Jeremy Corbyn's 2017 platform. So did Nicola Sturgeon north of Hadrian's Wall. Whether Starmer can manage the trick is doubtful but the pandemic and its aftermath, whatever that will be, could help.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
Arrant nonsense. Your lazy stereotype of Labour supporters, derived from the pages of the Mail and from Twitter, describes no more than, I'd guess, 10% of them. It's no more accurate than a depiction of all Tory supporters based on the absurdity of their most right-wing MPs like Francois, Rees-Mogg, P Davies etc. or the angry gammony types who want the empire back. I'm yet to meet a Labour member, let alone supporter, who believes in completely open immigration or interventions for nine-year olds suffering from gender dysphoria.
The Tories have built a values-based coalition of interests of the right size (c.40-45% of voter) in the right places to gain and maintain power. Brexit was the means to an end, not the end itself. Unless and until Labour adopts a strategy to fracture this coalition without shrinking its own support, it will remain out of power. The only strategy I discern at the moment is one of “wait and see”. They need the equivalent of Blair, Brown, Mandelson, Campbell, Gould (the best political strategy team of my time) and even then, it’s not going to be easy.
Aliens using Velcro sounds a bit like cosmonauts using pencils when NASA was inventing the space pen.
The American officials (and ex officials) have been quite careful not to sound too outlandish. They’re basically saying “we are seeing things that are not ours, they interfere with our military operations, in a lot of cases they defy our understanding of materials science and physics itself, and we have a lot of multi point evidence backing it up. We need insight on what these things are”.
A multi decades campaign of public ridicule on the subject has meant people have been too scared to engage with it. At least in America, that’s now changing. We’ve yet to catch up here, somewhere between 2-3 years behind the process in America I’d say.
Looking at current Earth politics would be rather fascinating if it was the case that Russia, China, the EU were excluded from a US-Alien technology alliance....
Who says they’ve allied with the US? Maybe it’s the Chinese who are the favoured children and they are the ones who can now break the sound barrier without causing a sonic boom. Or have perfected trans medium transport (equally fast in air and water).
If I were a paranoid US military type figure, these intelligence reports would disturb me greatly. As it is, I just sit back and enjoy the ride, taking comfort from the human story so far being on balance a positive one. Despite them almost certainly being there from our start if they’re with us now (as looks increasingly likely).
The US seem rather more relaxed about it, is all.
If the aliens had allied with say Burundi or Micronesia, perhaps not so much.
It is going to be rather funny if Erich von Däniken ends up getting a huge apology from all those who have taken the piss out of him for decades...
Two points where I disagree with the excellent thread header. Firstly,
But crucially, both parties had broadly accepted the need to adopt themselves to the electorate rather than hoping to reform the electorate to them.
I think this is wrong. I think that Cameron and Osborne achieved a massive reformation of the electorate with the political arguments over what caused the great financial crash, what to do about it, and who should pay.
The political argument they put forward was that the answer to these questions was, Labour over-spending, austerity, and anyone but the retired. I think it's this that started the great political reformation we have seen where the oldies vote Tory, and the Tories win because there are more oldies.
So, secondly, this crucial age divide gave us Brexit, and it is the key to understanding British politics today, rather than any other identity faultline that maps onto the age divide. Although this age divide has always existed in stereotype, its existence in fact now is on a different scale altogether.
It's ironic that the Tories, who continually have argued that Labour are the party of creating a client vote with government handouts, are now the party of that caricature when it comes to their pensioner client vote. Who are clearly all delighted now that they've been vaccinated.
That's an interesting take.
And I'd also add that I totally disagree with the notion - often communicated via the satirical "We must dissolve the people and choose another" comment that some smartarse or other once said - that political parties should NOT try to change the views of the electorate and should instead seek only to appeal to them.
I have little interest in a Labour government running the country in a way that Tory voters approve of.
Brains Trust: what is a good thing to do for Central London (City) weekend parking these days?
Planning a day down there 2 weeks after my second jab, and charges in London appear to have gone a bit postal. And I don't plan to take trains or tubes yet.
The full congestion charge for people moving into the CC zone, whilst leaving the 90% discount for incumbents, seems particularly sharp.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
So we have the Tories who simply HAVE to lose seats, but Labour who can't actually win them off them - and LibDem's so wedded to the EU they can't either. New Party time?
Somebody seems to be forgetting that 48% of the electorate voted to remain in the EU. Being in favour of a good working relationship with our nearest neighbours is by no means unpopular. A large number of people who have voted Conservative in the past are now looking for a new home.
The problem that some PB posters have is that they assume that once a person has voted Conservative, he will continue to do that for the rest of his life.
In fact, there is a very large pool of people who could vote Conservative, or Lib Dem, or UKIP - and which way they vote in any one election will be influenced by a large number of factors. Similarly, there is a large pool of people who could go Labour, or Lib Dem, or Green Party, and the same principle also applies.
In the present round of local elections, the Lib Dems are talking about local issues, not national ones. Boris Johnson is irrelevant. I would not be surprised by a good Lib Dem result in May.
I’d probably vote for them if they were standing.
And Gallowgate was expressing exasperation about their lack of effort in Ashington.
I hope they have a good result, but they’ve got to want it for themselves.
Very sorry, Dr Ydoethur, but the organisation is patchy, as all organisations are, even the education system. The strength of a political party very much depends on the combination of people who are in a particular place at any one time.
I remember that at one stage the Labour Party never bothered even to put up candidates round our way. Then a fiercely committed Labour lady moved in and they suddenly put up candidates. They came last, of course, and she moved away, so we went back to being a Tory-Liberal area again.
Obviously a political party with unlimited amounts of funding and pay people to move into an area to get things set up. They can appear to be strong and organised everywhere. The downside is that the pipers sooner or later will start to call the tune. This we are seeing all too clearly with the present Johnson government.
It happened in education a long time ago, under Thatcher and Howe, long before the latest scheming by Gove and Cummings.
Agreed to an extent - and they never make more than a token effort round here anyway. But it’s a bit weird if they’re not campaigning in wards they actually hold.
(Again, I’m sure that in other places, e.g. the Isle of Wight they’re fighting like tigers for every vote, but so far it seems a bit low key.)
They are putting up a decent showing, although not in my ward despite a decent second last time. But island elections aren't really like that. Its so hilly round here that if you get any leaflets at all, you admire the effort.
The Tories have built a values-based coalition of interests of the right size (c.40-45% of voter) in the right places to gain and maintain power. Brexit was the means to an end, not the end itself. Unless and until Labour adopts a strategy to fracture this coalition without shrinking its own support, it will remain out of power. The only strategy I discern at the moment is one of “wait and see”. They need the equivalent of Blair, Brown, Mandelson, Campbell, Gould (the best political strategy team of my time) and even then, it’s not going to be easy.
Given the civil war in the Tory Party, I think it’s a stretch to say that this was their intention all along. I don’t think George Osborne - or dare I say it, many ex-Tories on here - are pleased at how it’s worked out for the Brexiteers in the party.
Aliens using Velcro sounds a bit like cosmonauts using pencils when NASA was inventing the space pen.
The American officials (and ex officials) have been quite careful not to sound too outlandish. They’re basically saying “we are seeing things that are not ours, they interfere with our military operations, in a lot of cases they defy our understanding of materials science and physics itself, and we have a lot of multi point evidence backing it up. We need insight on what these things are”.
A multi decades campaign of public ridicule on the subject has meant people have been too scared to engage with it. At least in America, that’s now changing. We’ve yet to catch up here, somewhere between 2-3 years behind the process in America I’d say.
Looking at current Earth politics would be rather fascinating if it was the case that Russia, China, the EU were excluded from a US-Alien technology alliance....
Who says they’ve allied with the US? Maybe it’s the Chinese who are the favoured children and they are the ones who can now break the sound barrier without causing a sonic boom. Or have perfected trans medium transport (equally fast in air and water).
If I were a paranoid US military type figure, these intelligence reports would disturb me greatly. As it is, I just sit back and enjoy the ride, taking comfort from the human story so far being on balance a positive one. Despite them almost certainly being there from our start if they’re with us now (as looks increasingly likely).
The US seem rather more relaxed about it, is all.
If the aliens had allied with say Burundi or Micronesia, perhaps not so much.
It is going to be rather funny if Erich von Däniken ends up getting a huge apology from all those who have taken the piss out of him for decades...
If they have the power and technology to get here, they really don't need to be so elusive. Nor so obsessed with red state America.
Who would have thought when Labour lost the 2010 general election they would end up out of power for 20 years? But that looks like I real possibility now.
Labour will be back in power at some point. In the end "time for a change" will trump everything else but it doesn't look like it's going to be happening anytime soon does it?
It is quite possible that for the next 20 years, Labour will be too weak to obtain power, but too strong to die. They will however bed-block the formation of a new party that could perhaps take power.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
Arrant nonsense. Your lazy stereotype of Labour supporters, derived from the pages of the Mail and from Twitter, describes no more than, I'd guess, 10% of them. It's no more accurate than a depiction of all Tory supporters based on the absurdity of their most right-wing MPs like Francois, Rees-Mogg, P Davies etc. or the angry gammony types who want the empire back. I'm yet to meet a Labour member, let alone supporter, who believes in completely open immigration or interventions for nine-year olds suffering from gender dysphoria.
Rook always writes well - one of the best on here - but he talks utter shit when it comes to Labour. Truly, he does. It's 100% bilious caricature, 0% knowledge or insight.
His previous trope - and not so long ago - was that Labour voters march to the polling station like drones and vote mindlessly for the party that their grandad always used to. On that basis he forecast a shock hung parliament in the Dec 19 general election.
This now discredited we have a new trope. The party's supporters as crazed, post modern, turtle-necked wokerati.
OK, completely off topic, but I need help from you guys.
I have to decide who to vote for. In 2019 I spoiled my ballot paper, but I don’t want to do that again. People died for my right to vote and the very least I can do is use it.
People died for your right to vote, but it is a right, not a duty, and you still have that right whether or not you exercise it.
Two points where I disagree with the excellent thread header. Firstly,
But crucially, both parties had broadly accepted the need to adopt themselves to the electorate rather than hoping to reform the electorate to them.
I think this is wrong. I think that Cameron and Osborne achieved a massive reformation of the electorate with the political arguments over what caused the great financial crash, what to do about it, and who should pay.
The political argument they put forward was that the answer to these questions was, Labour over-spending, austerity, and anyone but the retired. I think it's this that started the great political reformation we have seen where the oldies vote Tory, and the Tories win because there are more oldies.
So, secondly, this crucial age divide gave us Brexit, and it is the key to understanding British politics today, rather than any other identity faultline that maps onto the age divide. Although this age divide has always existed in stereotype, its existence in fact now is on a different scale altogether.
It's ironic that the Tories, who continually have argued that Labour are the party of creating a client vote with government handouts, are now the party of that caricature when it comes to their pensioner client vote. Who are clearly all delighted now that they've been vaccinated.
Was there really an argument about what caused the financial crash in 2008? It seems about as pointless as arguing about the origins of COVID. The reality is that by 2009-10, the UK government was running a deficit of £150bn. It doesn’t matter who was to blame, that was the reality. And the voters decided that they’d had enough of Labour.
In reality the coalition did something akin to what Darling was proposing, but I guess we’ll never know if Labour would have delivered the reduction in the deficit that they promised.
Aliens using Velcro sounds a bit like cosmonauts using pencils when NASA was inventing the space pen.
The American officials (and ex officials) have been quite careful not to sound too outlandish. They’re basically saying “we are seeing things that are not ours, they interfere with our military operations, in a lot of cases they defy our understanding of materials science and physics itself, and we have a lot of multi point evidence backing it up. We need insight on what these things are”.
A multi decades campaign of public ridicule on the subject has meant people have been too scared to engage with it. At least in America, that’s now changing. We’ve yet to catch up here, somewhere between 2-3 years behind the process in America I’d say.
Looking at current Earth politics would be rather fascinating if it was the case that Russia, China, the EU were excluded from a US-Alien technology alliance....
Who says they’ve allied with the US? Maybe it’s the Chinese who are the favoured children and they are the ones who can now break the sound barrier without causing a sonic boom. Or have perfected trans medium transport (equally fast in air and water).
If I were a paranoid US military type figure, these intelligence reports would disturb me greatly. As it is, I just sit back and enjoy the ride, taking comfort from the human story so far being on balance a positive one. Despite them almost certainly being there from our start if they’re with us now (as looks increasingly likely).
The US seem rather more relaxed about it, is all.
If the aliens had allied with say Burundi or Micronesia, perhaps not so much.
It is going to be rather funny if Erich von Däniken ends up getting a huge apology from all those who have taken the piss out of him for decades...
If they have the power and technology to get here, they really don't need to be so elusive. Nor so obsessed with red state America.
Being elusive is presumably quite easy too - when you have the power and technology to get here....
Who would have thought when Labour lost the 2010 general election they would end up out of power for 20 years? But that looks like I real possibility now.
Labour will be back in power at some point. In the end "time for a change" will trump everything else but it doesn't look like it's going to be happening anytime soon does it?
It is quite possible that for the next 20 years, Labour will be too weak to obtain power, but too strong to die. They will however bed-block the formation of a new party that could perhaps take power.
The yearn for change will be too strong to ignore eventually so if Labour are unable to provide that change the electorate will have to look elsewhere.
Despite Lib-Dem travails since 2010 we may eventually find ourselves going back to our Tory/Liberal roots. My guess is that in the end another "Blair" type figure will emerge in the Labour Party and drag them back to power though.
A bagatelle to distract from the prospect of BJ sitting on your face forever. What I want to know is if they're going to commit this massive act of cultural appropriation, why can't they pronounce 'troosers'?
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
Arrant nonsense. Your lazy stereotype of Labour supporters, derived from the pages of the Mail and from Twitter, describes no more than, I'd guess, 10% of them. It's no more accurate than a depiction of all Tory supporters based on the absurdity of their most right-wing MPs like Francois, Rees-Mogg, P Davies etc. or the angry gammony types who want the empire back. I'm yet to meet a Labour member, let alone supporter, who believes in completely open immigration or interventions for nine-year olds suffering from gender dysphoria.
Rook always writes well - one of the best on here - but he talks utter shit when it comes to Labour. Truly, he does. It's 100% bilious caricature, 0% knowledge or insight.
His previous trope - and not so long ago - was that Labour voters march to the polling station like drones and vote mindlessly for the party that their grandad always used to. On that basis he forecast a shock hung parliament in the Dec 19 general election.
This now discredited we have a new trope. The party's supporters as crazed, post modern, turtle-necked wokerati.
I agree with you that it's not true for most of the Labour voters but the MOST VOCAL supporters, members and MPs are like that. Labour, in order to win, needs to stop the vocal minority demonising the very voters who they need to win.
Aliens using Velcro sounds a bit like cosmonauts using pencils when NASA was inventing the space pen.
The American officials (and ex officials) have been quite careful not to sound too outlandish. They’re basically saying “we are seeing things that are not ours, they interfere with our military operations, in a lot of cases they defy our understanding of materials science and physics itself, and we have a lot of multi point evidence backing it up. We need insight on what these things are”.
A multi decades campaign of public ridicule on the subject has meant people have been too scared to engage with it. At least in America, that’s now changing. We’ve yet to catch up here, somewhere between 2-3 years behind the process in America I’d say.
Looking at current Earth politics would be rather fascinating if it was the case that Russia, China, the EU were excluded from a US-Alien technology alliance....
Who says they’ve allied with the US? Maybe it’s the Chinese who are the favoured children and they are the ones who can now break the sound barrier without causing a sonic boom. Or have perfected trans medium transport (equally fast in air and water).
If I were a paranoid US military type figure, these intelligence reports would disturb me greatly. As it is, I just sit back and enjoy the ride, taking comfort from the human story so far being on balance a positive one. Despite them almost certainly being there from our start if they’re with us now (as looks increasingly likely).
The US seem rather more relaxed about it, is all.
If the aliens had allied with say Burundi or Micronesia, perhaps not so much.
It is going to be rather funny if Erich von Däniken ends up getting a huge apology from all those who have taken the piss out of him for decades...
If they have the power and technology to get here, they really don't need to be so elusive. Nor so obsessed with red state America.
Two points where I disagree with the excellent thread header. Firstly,
But crucially, both parties had broadly accepted the need to adopt themselves to the electorate rather than hoping to reform the electorate to them.
I think this is wrong. I think that Cameron and Osborne achieved a massive reformation of the electorate with the political arguments over what caused the great financial crash, what to do about it, and who should pay.
The political argument they put forward was that the answer to these questions was, Labour over-spending, austerity, and anyone but the retired. I think it's this that started the great political reformation we have seen where the oldies vote Tory, and the Tories win because there are more oldies.
So, secondly, this crucial age divide gave us Brexit, and it is the key to understanding British politics today, rather than any other identity faultline that maps onto the age divide. Although this age divide has always existed in stereotype, its existence in fact now is on a different scale altogether.
It's ironic that the Tories, who continually have argued that Labour are the party of creating a client vote with government handouts, are now the party of that caricature when it comes to their pensioner client vote. Who are clearly all delighted now that they've been vaccinated.
Was there really an argument about what caused the financial crash in 2008? It seems about as pointless as arguing about the origins of COVID. The reality is that by 2009-10, the UK government was running a deficit of £150bn. It doesn’t matter who was to blame, that was the reality. And the voters decided that they’d had enough of Labour.
In reality the coalition did something akin to what Darling was proposing, but I guess we’ll never know if Labour would have delivered the reduction in the deficit that they promised.
The fact that Labour activists like to forget. For all the fuss about austerity youd think a 2010 Labour government planned to spend like Johnson, whereas in reality the coalition ended up very close to Balls's proposals.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
That’s not quite true. It can be done. But the path is narrow and complicated.
123 seats need to be won. However, of those 123 seats where Labour wins on a UNS of 5.2% - not quite a Blair style swing, but much larger than the one Thatcher got - sixteen are held by the SNP and one by Plaid Cymru (which will of course be redrawn into a new seat anyway). That’s before we consider they will either lose or face significant cuts to majorities in several seats due to redrawn boundaries, while in others the majority they face may well increase.
Roughly speaking, therefore, they need to be making realistic challenges in Wimbledon, Telford, Bassetlaw and Stafford. Now that’s not impossible. They held have held all four seats in the last 20 years, and indeed Bassetlaw was a Labour seat until 2019.
The issue is, not only does it require the government to implode more spectacularly than Middlesex’s batting lineup, but unless the government’s decline is so abrupt it renders campaigns meaningless - as in 1997 when several paper candidates were unexpectedly elected - it requires them to be able to mount a simultaneous ground game in over 150 constituencies at once.
It’s one hell of an ask.
But with Boris Johnson in charge, all things are possible.
Is the maths correct here? For example Telford; the result was Tories 60% Lab 34%. That's a 13% swing. Labour need 10% not 5% swing to win 123 seats??
Aliens using Velcro sounds a bit like cosmonauts using pencils when NASA was inventing the space pen.
The American officials (and ex officials) have been quite careful not to sound too outlandish. They’re basically saying “we are seeing things that are not ours, they interfere with our military operations, in a lot of cases they defy our understanding of materials science and physics itself, and we have a lot of multi point evidence backing it up. We need insight on what these things are”.
A multi decades campaign of public ridicule on the subject has meant people have been too scared to engage with it. At least in America, that’s now changing. We’ve yet to catch up here, somewhere between 2-3 years behind the process in America I’d say.
Looking at current Earth politics would be rather fascinating if it was the case that Russia, China, the EU were excluded from a US-Alien technology alliance....
Who says they’ve allied with the US? Maybe it’s the Chinese who are the favoured children and they are the ones who can now break the sound barrier without causing a sonic boom. Or have perfected trans medium transport (equally fast in air and water).
If I were a paranoid US military type figure, these intelligence reports would disturb me greatly. As it is, I just sit back and enjoy the ride, taking comfort from the human story so far being on balance a positive one. Despite them almost certainly being there from our start if they’re with us now (as looks increasingly likely).
The US seem rather more relaxed about it, is all.
If the aliens had allied with say Burundi or Micronesia, perhaps not so much.
It is going to be rather funny if Erich von Däniken ends up getting a huge apology from all those who have taken the piss out of him for decades...
If they have the power and technology to get here, they really don't need to be so elusive. Nor so obsessed with red state America.
Being elusive is presumably quite easy too - when you have the power and technology to get here....
Perhaps the aliens have a sense of mischief, or humour
Just landing on the White House Lawn and killing everyone in sight with ultra-lasers, and then raping everyone else with special helium-powered ano-probes is so predictable. Passe indeed
Instead, tease the poor humans. Flash a bit of ET thigh, by flying at 50,000 mph across the sky, then disappear for thirty years. THEN come back with the helium-powered ano-probes
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Aliens using Velcro sounds a bit like cosmonauts using pencils when NASA was inventing the space pen.
The American officials (and ex officials) have been quite careful not to sound too outlandish. They’re basically saying “we are seeing things that are not ours, they interfere with our military operations, in a lot of cases they defy our understanding of materials science and physics itself, and we have a lot of multi point evidence backing it up. We need insight on what these things are”.
A multi decades campaign of public ridicule on the subject has meant people have been too scared to engage with it. At least in America, that’s now changing. We’ve yet to catch up here, somewhere between 2-3 years behind the process in America I’d say.
Looking at current Earth politics would be rather fascinating if it was the case that Russia, China, the EU were excluded from a US-Alien technology alliance....
Who says they’ve allied with the US? Maybe it’s the Chinese who are the favoured children and they are the ones who can now break the sound barrier without causing a sonic boom. Or have perfected trans medium transport (equally fast in air and water).
If I were a paranoid US military type figure, these intelligence reports would disturb me greatly. As it is, I just sit back and enjoy the ride, taking comfort from the human story so far being on balance a positive one. Despite them almost certainly being there from our start if they’re with us now (as looks increasingly likely).
The US seem rather more relaxed about it, is all.
If the aliens had allied with say Burundi or Micronesia, perhaps not so much.
It is going to be rather funny if Erich von Däniken ends up getting a huge apology from all those who have taken the piss out of him for decades...
If they have the power and technology to get here, they really don't need to be so elusive. Nor so obsessed with red state America.
Two points where I disagree with the excellent thread header. Firstly,
But crucially, both parties had broadly accepted the need to adopt themselves to the electorate rather than hoping to reform the electorate to them.
I think this is wrong. I think that Cameron and Osborne achieved a massive reformation of the electorate with the political arguments over what caused the great financial crash, what to do about it, and who should pay.
The political argument they put forward was that the answer to these questions was, Labour over-spending, austerity, and anyone but the retired. I think it's this that started the great political reformation we have seen where the oldies vote Tory, and the Tories win because there are more oldies.
So, secondly, this crucial age divide gave us Brexit, and it is the key to understanding British politics today, rather than any other identity faultline that maps onto the age divide. Although this age divide has always existed in stereotype, its existence in fact now is on a different scale altogether.
It's ironic that the Tories, who continually have argued that Labour are the party of creating a client vote with government handouts, are now the party of that caricature when it comes to their pensioner client vote. Who are clearly all delighted now that they've been vaccinated.
Was there really an argument about what caused the financial crash in 2008? It seems about as pointless as arguing about the origins of COVID. The reality is that by 2009-10, the UK government was running a deficit of £150bn. It doesn’t matter who was to blame, that was the reality. And the voters decided that they’d had enough of Labour.
In reality the coalition did something akin to what Darling was proposing, but I guess we’ll never know if Labour would have delivered the reduction in the deficit that they promised.
The fact that Labour activists like to forget. For all the fuss about austerity youd think a 2010 Labour government planned to spend like Johnson, whereas in reality the coalition ended up very close to Balls's proposals.
I think neo endogenous growth theory is a bit wishy washy. Has SKS adopted it.
OK, completely off topic, but I need help from you guys.
I have to decide who to vote for. In 2019 I spoiled my ballot paper, but I don’t want to do that again. People died for my right to vote and the very least I can do is use it.
But - I have in all elections a choice of three candidates. Con, Lab, Green.
The Cons are out. More out than a Hundred batter.
Labour will win easily, so in a sense this soul searching is irrelevant. But I’m dubious about them at the moment, particularly since both sets of local councillors have spent the last four years ignoring all local issues.
That leaves the Greens.
I’ve searched high, and low, and sideways. Can I find anything about their position on vaccine passports? Can I ecky thump.
Does anyone know whether they are opposed to ID cards by stealth vaccine passports?
About the only meaningful policy they have for Cannock is they want us to have much worse train services. Which for some obscure reason does not inspire me.
But if they are against vax passports, I will be willing to consider voting for them.
Caroline Lucas is one of the loudest opponents of vaxports.
Thanks for the info. Do you have a link?
Is there not a contact on a leaflet if you have one?
I haven’t had any leaflets from any fecking party whatsoever.
Oh blessed place that you inhabit !
I've only got one County Councillor and perhaps the PCC to vote for, and the incumbent Councillor (majority: 68%) has sent me two leaflets, a Focus-alike newspaper, another something, and a personalised letter.
Is all this talk of "vaccine busting" variants actually the fact they have a higher base r0 so thus require more vaccine coverage/efficacy to achieve herd immunity ?
Doctor on radio today said that people with both jabs were getting ill with covid in India with this new variant.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
That’s not quite true. It can be done. But the path is narrow and complicated.
123 seats need to be won. However, of those 123 seats where Labour wins on a UNS of 5.2% - not quite a Blair style swing, but much larger than the one Thatcher got - sixteen are held by the SNP and one by Plaid Cymru (which will of course be redrawn into a new seat anyway). That’s before we consider they will either lose or face significant cuts to majorities in several seats due to redrawn boundaries, while in others the majority they face may well increase.
Roughly speaking, therefore, they need to be making realistic challenges in Wimbledon, Telford, Bassetlaw and Stafford. Now that’s not impossible. They held have held all four seats in the last 20 years, and indeed Bassetlaw was a Labour seat until 2019.
The issue is, not only does it require the government to implode more spectacularly than Middlesex’s batting lineup, but unless the government’s decline is so abrupt it renders campaigns meaningless - as in 1997 when several paper candidates were unexpectedly elected - it requires them to be able to mount a simultaneous ground game in over 150 constituencies at once.
It’s one hell of an ask.
But with Boris Johnson in charge, all things are possible.
Is the maths correct here? For example Telford; the result was Tories 60% Lab 34%. That's a 13% swing. Labour need 10% not 5% swing to win 123 seats??
Telford isn’t in the top 123. It’s about 160. The point being some of the 123 are in practice out of reach so a 5.2% swing wouldn’t be enough.
Aliens using Velcro sounds a bit like cosmonauts using pencils when NASA was inventing the space pen.
The American officials (and ex officials) have been quite careful not to sound too outlandish. They’re basically saying “we are seeing things that are not ours, they interfere with our military operations, in a lot of cases they defy our understanding of materials science and physics itself, and we have a lot of multi point evidence backing it up. We need insight on what these things are”.
A multi decades campaign of public ridicule on the subject has meant people have been too scared to engage with it. At least in America, that’s now changing. We’ve yet to catch up here, somewhere between 2-3 years behind the process in America I’d say.
Looking at current Earth politics would be rather fascinating if it was the case that Russia, China, the EU were excluded from a US-Alien technology alliance....
Who says they’ve allied with the US? Maybe it’s the Chinese who are the favoured children and they are the ones who can now break the sound barrier without causing a sonic boom. Or have perfected trans medium transport (equally fast in air and water).
If I were a paranoid US military type figure, these intelligence reports would disturb me greatly. As it is, I just sit back and enjoy the ride, taking comfort from the human story so far being on balance a positive one. Despite them almost certainly being there from our start if they’re with us now (as looks increasingly likely).
The US seem rather more relaxed about it, is all.
If the aliens had allied with say Burundi or Micronesia, perhaps not so much.
It is going to be rather funny if Erich von Däniken ends up getting a huge apology from all those who have taken the piss out of him for decades...
If they have the power and technology to get here, they really don't need to be so elusive. Nor so obsessed with red state America.
That's a strong point. Strong enough to kill the idea in fact. Why on earth would aliens choose the US for their debut appearance? Such a cliche.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
Scottish secession would as you correctly say mean Boris had to resign having lost Scotland, which is why he will never grant a legal indyref2.
However if it ever happened it would be the end of the Conservative and Unionist Party anyway, they would become the English National Party instead ie the English equivalent of the Scottish National Party and to ensure no compromise with the SNP in Scexit talks, Labour would be out of power for another generation in both England and Scotland and would probably have to reinvent itself in Wales as the Welsh Nationalist Party to see off a Plaid resurgence there
I think the last sentence is very true -- Welsh Labour would reinvent itself as the voice of (English-speaking) Wales in the event of Scottish secession. They would become the WNP.
The real heartlands of Welsh Labour -- the Valleys -- identify as very Welsh.
In the last 2011 census, the highest proportions of the population self-identifying as Welsh, rather than British, were **not** in Gwynedd or Ceredigion -- they were in the Rhondda or in Neath or in Merthyr (all between 70-80 per cent).
The loss of Scotland would change the Welsh Labour Party into the WNP. Because Wales would be a tiny proportion of the rump of the much more prosperous & right-wing UK.
The population of Scotland is in the Central Belt, and they will control the fate of Scotland. They are never going to vote Tory. So, there really are only two options -- either the Labour Party recovers the Central Belt, or Scotland secedes.
And if Scotland secedes, there is no way back for the Labour Party. It will have to change dramatically in both England and in Wales to survive.
Labour seems to have no plan on how to recover their old Scottish citadels.
And SKS doesn't seem to really understand that the loss of Scotland is a terminal event for what we know as the Labour Party.
Until they become a Scottish party ,not a London branch office, and embrace independence, Labour are moribund and going nowhere.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
It is a big problem, and it is very representative
I have quite a few leftwing friends
Gather them in a pub for a few drinks, and they will regularly trot out stuff like "anyone who votes Tory is a racist", knowing full well that several around the table have, on occasion, voted Tory, or like Boris, or whatever
Another friend tells me, in sincere, earnest, condescending tones "you're my only rightwing friend", to which I occasionally reply "well, perhaps you should get a few more, then you wouldn't be constantly surprised and horrified when you lose elections" - this evokes a grimace from her, and she says "ewww, Tories, yuk" - and she means it. I keep her as a friend because she is basically nice and also funny and smart, but, Jesus, the temptation to hit her with a giant cucumber is sometimes hard to resist.
As for my friends at the pub telling me to my face that I am a racist, and Britain is racist, and everyone who votes Tory is a racist, my reaction is to stay quiet, smile politely, move the subject on - but inside I resolve that I will NEVER vote for their party and I actively want their party to lose and lose and lose, again and again and again, until they crumble into a pile of putrid dust. That's what I want to happen to your side.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
Perfect post. The old adage that the right looks for converts, whereas the left looks for heretics, has never been more apt. In the last decade, Labour has gone from being a party that at least gave the appearance of actually liking and understanding the country it aspired to govern to despising it instead, with the sole goal of divorcing us from our history, manners, and culture, and putting in its place a batshit, neo-puritan dogma that only a small sect of deluded adherents even like themselves. With the expected electoral results
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
Blair also managed to get his team to do the same so the majority of the message was about the positive vision. He also managed to criticise the Tories without implying (or outright stating) that their voters were to blame for what they were doing. The most vocal minority don't do that in this Labour party.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
Until Labour repudiates the likes of Mermaids and other child transgender agitators it's going to be basically impossible for them to get my vote and millions of others who are disgusted by the idea of gender reassignment for children. Labour is associated, fairly or unfairly, with their ilk.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
No culture wars??!
You're literally throwing statues into rivers.
It doesn't GET more "culture warsy" than that, apart from maybe re-education camps. I'm sure they're on their way, they might be renamed "schools" and "colleges"
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
Blair also managed to get his team to do the same so the majority of the message was about the positive vision. He also managed to criticise the Tories without implying (or outright stating) that their voters were to blame for what they were doing. The most vocal minority don't do that in this Labour party.
I completely agree with you, absolutely spot on.
What Starmer needs to get good at is messaging across Labour. If you say something stupid you're either kicked out or muted forever after.
The front bench is reasonably good at that, sadly the membership - well the loud minority - are not and say all sorts of unhinged drivel.
I am anti the Royal Family, however I am not arguing we abolish it and I also was not going on Twitter the day Phillip died and saying it's good he died. I can assure the majority of Labour members are just like me, however the loud minority just will not shut up.
Luckily for us, they are leaving. Slowly. And being replaced by sensible people that left under Corbyn.
Give it time and with the bad polling, Starmer can work on reforming Labour properly.
He has made inroads on anti-Semitism, in fact he's done a great job on that.
Scottish secession would as you correctly say mean Boris had to resign having lost Scotland, which is why he will never grant a legal indyref2.
However if it ever happened it would be the end of the Conservative and Unionist Party anyway, they would become the English National Party instead ie the English equivalent of the Scottish National Party and to ensure no compromise with the SNP in Scexit talks, Labour would be out of power for another generation in both England and Scotland and would probably have to reinvent itself in Wales as the Welsh Nationalist Party to see off a Plaid resurgence there
I think the last sentence is very true -- Welsh Labour would reinvent itself as the voice of (English-speaking) Wales in the event of Scottish secession. They would become the WNP.
The real heartlands of Welsh Labour -- the Valleys -- identify as very Welsh.
In the last 2011 census, the highest proportions of the population self-identifying as Welsh, rather than British, were **not** in Gwynedd or Ceredigion -- they were in the Rhondda or in Neath or in Merthyr (all between 70-80 per cent).
The loss of Scotland would change the Welsh Labour Party into the WNP. Because Wales would be a tiny proportion of the rump of the much more prosperous & right-wing UK.
The population of Scotland is in the Central Belt, and they will control the fate of Scotland. They are never going to vote Tory. So, there really are only two options -- either the Labour Party recovers the Central Belt, or Scotland secedes.
And if Scotland secedes, there is no way back for the Labour Party. It will have to change dramatically in both England and in Wales to survive.
Labour seems to have no plan on how to recover their old Scottish citadels.
And SKS doesn't seem to really understand that the loss of Scotland is a terminal event for what we know as the Labour Party.
Until they become a Scottish party ,not a London branch office, and embrace independence, Labour are moribund and going nowhere.
No, they would then be out of power in England for a generation and lose all their Scottish Unionist voters to the Tories and LDs while failing to win any Nationalist voters back from the SNP and Alba
I have made this point before but as a child I saw the government change pretty regularly. 64 Wilson, 70 Heath, 74 Wilson again, 79 Thatcher.
The pattern since then has been very different. 97 Blair, 2010 Cameron and that's it. 2 changes of government in 24 years with another change not looking particularly imminent. Why is this? Clearly incumbency has become an enormous advantage. In Scotland too we have had the same party in power for 14 years and they will clearly be the next government whatever the balance on a majority will be. Being in government, having the ability to bribe the electorate and dominate the airways seems an almost impossible advantage now.
Almost, but not quite. In 97 Blair won by a landslide, a tired, arrogant, divided government shown to be economically incompetent by black Wednesday got show the door emphatically. In 2010 a tired, arrogant divided government shown to be economically incompetent by the GFC got shown the door. It was almost as emphatic but Cameron started a long way behind where Blair was in 97.
So to overcome the advantage of incumbency we need something dramatic that bears directly on the performance of the government and a perceived to be competent alternative. We live in dramatic times but so far Boris's government is not wearing the consequences of the pandemic, quite the reverse, and Brexit is an issue for sad obsessives and no one else. That makes this government relatively safe. Of course if the short term boom of bounce back is followed by a severe recession in 2024 that might change but 92 showed that even a severe recession is not enough on its own.
And then there is the perceived to be competent alternative. This is not just the leader its the team. Blair had Brown, Cameron had Osborne, both powerful figures in their own right. Starmer needs a better team to help give himself more credibility. And he needs to hope.
I think there will be an issue around recency bias as well which could severely harm the Tories around economics, but I think they have got through on Covid.
In this country we are structurally set up in a way that was worse in the initial stages of Covid, as a national health service by its nature does not have significant overcapacity. The NHS used its size and political power to clear out patients to maximise its capacity by pushing vulnerable into care homes, a disaster. But since then national organisation has both helped delivery of vaccines and lessons to be learned and applied from first wave. The net effect was that our vulnerable populations were not initially protected well and hence the huge number of deaths (also recorded fairly accurately due to NHS)
Elsewhere they seemed to have protected their vulnerable groups only for more virulent strains to now be killing them off in any case.. This makes it look like our performance is improving when in reality everyone is on a par
Scottish secession would as you correctly say mean Boris had to resign having lost Scotland, which is why he will never grant a legal indyref2.
However if it ever happened it would be the end of the Conservative and Unionist Party anyway, they would become the English National Party instead ie the English equivalent of the Scottish National Party and to ensure no compromise with the SNP in Scexit talks, Labour would be out of power for another generation in both England and Scotland and would probably have to reinvent itself in Wales as the Welsh Nationalist Party to see off a Plaid resurgence there
I think the last sentence is very true -- Welsh Labour would reinvent itself as the voice of (English-speaking) Wales in the event of Scottish secession. They would become the WNP.
The real heartlands of Welsh Labour -- the Valleys -- identify as very Welsh.
In the last 2011 census, the highest proportions of the population self-identifying as Welsh, rather than British, were **not** in Gwynedd or Ceredigion -- they were in the Rhondda or in Neath or in Merthyr (all between 70-80 per cent).
The loss of Scotland would change the Welsh Labour Party into the WNP. Because Wales would be a tiny proportion of the rump of the much more prosperous & right-wing UK.
The population of Scotland is in the Central Belt, and they will control the fate of Scotland. They are never going to vote Tory. So, there really are only two options -- either the Labour Party recovers the Central Belt, or Scotland secedes.
And if Scotland secedes, there is no way back for the Labour Party. It will have to change dramatically in both England and in Wales to survive.
Labour seems to have no plan on how to recover their old Scottish citadels.
And SKS doesn't seem to really understand that the loss of Scotland is a terminal event for what we know as the Labour Party.
Until they become a Scottish party ,not a London branch office, and embrace independence, Labour are moribund and going nowhere.
No, they would then be out of power in England for a generation and lose all their Scottish Unionist voters to the Tories and LDs while failing to win any Nationalist voters back from the SNP and Alba
Indeed in a way Labour not making progress in Scotland whilst terrible would be okay if their anti-independence position meant they would make progress in England/Wales.
They need to banish the idea they could ever work with the SNP. And do it early.
Going back to aliens, I am trying to work out a conspiracy theory that might explain those Pentagon videos
The Pentagon claims they are genuine, and they show *real* Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Is it possible they are fake, and the Pentagon and lots of generals and ex-CIA bods are trying to hoodwink us? What would America, or the Pentagon, or the CIA gain from that? Can't see it
But maybe it goes deeper, and someone has hoodwinked the Pentagon, and the CIA directors, with fake videos. But how would you even do that? Hack into navy pilots' brains? And, again, who benefits? China is the obvious culprit, but what does it gain apart from sowing confusion in western ranks or making western military types look mad.....
OK that is quite a motivation, nonetheless I don't see how China could have done this, practically.
Which leaves us with Sherlock Holmes' dictum
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
They are UFOs, which resemble alien spaceships using inexplicably advanced technology
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
Arrant nonsense. Your lazy stereotype of Labour supporters, derived from the pages of the Mail and from Twitter, describes no more than, I'd guess, 10% of them. It's no more accurate than a depiction of all Tory supporters based on the absurdity of their most right-wing MPs like Francois, Rees-Mogg, P Davies etc. or the angry gammony types who want the empire back. I'm yet to meet a Labour member, let alone supporter, who believes in completely open immigration or interventions for nine-year olds suffering from gender dysphoria.
Rook always writes well - one of the best on here - but he talks utter shit when it comes to Labour. Truly, he does. It's 100% bilious caricature, 0% knowledge or insight.
His previous trope - and not so long ago - was that Labour voters march to the polling station like drones and vote mindlessly for the party that their grandad always used to. On that basis he forecast a shock hung parliament in the Dec 19 general election.
This now discredited we have a new trope. The party's supporters as crazed, post modern, turtle-necked wokerati.
I agree with you that it's not true for most of the Labour voters but the MOST VOCAL supporters, members and MPs are like that. Labour, in order to win, needs to stop the vocal minority demonising the very voters who they need to win.
You're referring to online digital warriors. They exist on both sides and battle it out in cyberspace. Good game, good game. Back in Flesh & Bloodsville, the prosaic truth is that Sir Keir Starmer, ex DPP, the epitome of Centrist Dad, won the Labour leadership in a landslide, has marmalized the hard left, and owns the party now. He will continue in this vein and get a crack at GE24 unless the polls still look disastrous this time next year. And if the polls do stick at doom levels for the party it will be in no small part because this Tory attack line that you and many others regurgitate - Labour are obsessed with bleeding edge wokery and totally out of touch with ordinary people - is joining "not fixing the roof while the sun was shining" as one of the greats.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
Blair also managed to get his team to do the same so the majority of the message was about the positive vision. He also managed to criticise the Tories without implying (or outright stating) that their voters were to blame for what they were doing. The most vocal minority don't do that in this Labour party.
I completely agree with you, absolutely spot on.
What Starmer needs to get good at is messaging across Labour. If you say something stupid you're either kicked out or muted forever after.
The front bench is reasonably good at that, sadly the membership - well the loud minority - are not and say all sorts of unhinged drivel.
I am anti the Royal Family, however I am not arguing we abolish it and I also was not going on Twitter the day Phillip died and saying it's good he died. I can assure the majority of Labour members are just like me, however the loud minority just will not shut up.
Luckily for us, they are leaving. Slowly. And being replaced by sensible people that left under Corbyn.
Give it time and with the bad polling, Starmer can work on reforming Labour properly.
He has made inroads on anti-Semitism, in fact he's done a great job on that.
Blair would have struggled with messaging in the era of social media but I suspect that he'd (or more likely Campbell) have come down hard on the nutters.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
Perfect post. The old adage that the right looks for converts, whereas the left looks for heretics, has never been more apt. In the last decade, Labour has gone from being a party that at least gave the appearance of actually liking and understanding the country it aspired to govern to despising it instead, with the sole goal of divorcing us from our history, manners, and culture, and putting in its place a batshit, neo-puritan dogma that only a small sect of deluded adherents even like themselves. With the expected electoral results
As always a good article - but David ignores the fact that it took Labour almost two years into the 1959 Parliament to draw level with the Tories - ie Autumn 1961 following the October 1959 election. Likewise , in the Parliament elected in June 1987 Labour did not take the lead until May 1989. Starmer managed to better those precedents within six months of becoming leader in April 2020.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
You think Labour under Starmer are going big on 'culture war' issues? I don't see that myself.
I have made this point before but as a child I saw the government change pretty regularly. 64 Wilson, 70 Heath, 74 Wilson again, 79 Thatcher.
The pattern since then has been very different. 97 Blair, 2010 Cameron and that's it. 2 changes of government in 24 years with another change not looking particularly imminent. Why is this? Clearly incumbency has become an enormous advantage.
I'd suggest that its even more extreme than that, there's been 2 changes of government in over 40 years.
As a child of the early 80s I never saw a change of government until I was a teenager, then there's been only one more since then. I'm currently approaching the end of my thirties with just 2 changes in my lifetime.
Entirely probable now that by the next change of government it will be the third in just 50 years.
Is all this talk of "vaccine busting" variants actually the fact they have a higher base r0 so thus require more vaccine coverage/efficacy to achieve herd immunity ?
Doctor on radio today said that people with both jabs were getting ill with covid in India with this new variant.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
You think Labour under Starmer are going big on 'culture war' issues? I don't see that myself.
Of course you don't. Can a fish see the water it swims in?
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
You think Labour under Starmer are going big on 'culture war' issues? I don't see that myself.
Indeed, I mean Starmer took the knee, if that's not trying to capitalise on culture war issues then I'm not sure what counts. The Tories are the last line of defence for our traditional culture in this country. Until that stops being the case they automatically win elections.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
It is a big problem, and it is very representative
I have quite a few leftwing friends
Gather them in a pub for a few drinks, and they will regularly trot out stuff like "anyone who votes Tory is a racist", knowing full well that several around the table have, on occasion, voted Tory, or like Boris, or whatever
Another friend tells me, in sincere, earnest, condescending tones "you're my only rightwing friend", to which I occasionally reply "well, perhaps you should get a few more, then you wouldn't be constantly surprised and horrified when you lose elections" - this evokes a grimace from her, and she says "ewww, Tories, yuk" - and she means it. I keep her as a friend because she is basically nice and also funny and smart, but, Jesus, the temptation to hit her with a giant cucumber is sometimes hard to resist.
As for my friends at the pub telling me to my face that I am a racist, and Britain is racist, and everyone who votes Tory is a racist, my reaction is to stay quiet, smile politely, move the subject on - but inside I resolve that I will NEVER vote for their party and I actively want their party to lose and lose and lose, again and again and again, until they crumble into a pile of putrid dust. That's what I want to happen to your side.
We just don't say it, coz we have better manners
This sounds like an overly intense bloke - you - taking pub bantz a little too seriously.
You're referring to online digital warriors. They exist on both sides and battle it out in cyberspace. Good game, good game. Back in Flesh & Bloodsville, the prosaic truth is that Sir Keir Starmer, ex DPP, the epitome of Centrist Dad, won the Labour leadership in a landslide, has marmalized the hard left, and owns the party now. He will continue in this vein and get a crack at GE24 unless the polls still look disastrous this time next year. And if the polls do stick at doom levels for the party it will be in no small part because this Tory attack line that you and many others regurgitate - Labour are obsessed with bleeding edge wokery and totally out of touch with ordinary people - is joining "not fixing the roof while the sun was shining" as one of the greats.
Given the prevalence of social media the 'digital warriors' are getting a larger and larger audience. They do tend to have an impact over time.
Is all this talk of "vaccine busting" variants actually the fact they have a higher base r0 so thus require more vaccine coverage/efficacy to achieve herd immunity ?
Doctor on radio today said that people with both jabs were getting ill with covid in India with this new variant.
Seriously ill? That would be worrying if so.
Let's wait and see which jab, the local Bharat Biotech one hasn't got proven efficacy against the original virus but we know AZ has got very good efficacy against severe symptoms against all variants so far. I know in India people are asking for the AZ/SII vaccine rather than the Bharat Biotech one.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
You think Labour under Starmer are going big on 'culture war' issues? I don't see that myself.
Of course you don't. Can a fish see the water it swims in?
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
Blair also managed to get his team to do the same so the majority of the message was about the positive vision. He also managed to criticise the Tories without implying (or outright stating) that their voters were to blame for what they were doing. The most vocal minority don't do that in this Labour party.
I completely agree with you, absolutely spot on.
What Starmer needs to get good at is messaging across Labour. If you say something stupid you're either kicked out or muted forever after.
The front bench is reasonably good at that, sadly the membership - well the loud minority - are not and say all sorts of unhinged drivel.
I am anti the Royal Family, however I am not arguing we abolish it and I also was not going on Twitter the day Phillip died and saying it's good he died. I can assure the majority of Labour members are just like me, however the loud minority just will not shut up.
Luckily for us, they are leaving. Slowly. And being replaced by sensible people that left under Corbyn.
Give it time and with the bad polling, Starmer can work on reforming Labour properly.
He has made inroads on anti-Semitism, in fact he's done a great job on that.
Blair would have struggled with messaging in the era of social media but I suspect that he'd (or more likely Campbell) have come down hard on the nutters.
You can't come down hard on the nutters because the entire party is comprised of nuts. It's like trying to take the nuts out of a nut roast
eg Lisa Nandy, Emily Thornberry. Supposedly the moderate sensible Labourites. They signed a pledge that
"calls on Labour to expel “transphobic” members and describes campaigns including Woman’s Place UK as “trans-exclusionist hate groups”."
Lisa Nandy thinks rapists who self identify as women should be in women's jails, she thinks biological sex is a fiction which is assigned.
"Piers Morgan later quizzed her on whether or not she believes that “a child is born without sex”.
Nandy said she did not want to tell people “who they are” but said that children are “designated a biological sex” at birth and this can become “problematic” as they grow older.
She then slammed the Good Morning Britain host for his refusal to make any effort to understand trans people’s identities."
To 70% of Britain (and the world) the trans argument is simultaneously trivial, bewildering, and mad. Yet it has gripped Labour from top to bottom (and the SNP). They argue about this stuff endlessly.
These are not fringe elements being bravely purged by Skyr Starmer. This IS Labour, it is also the Labour "elite".
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
The old adage that the right looks for converts, whereas the left looks for heretics, has never been more apt.
I have made this point before but as a child I saw the government change pretty regularly. 64 Wilson, 70 Heath, 74 Wilson again, 79 Thatcher.
The pattern since then has been very different. 97 Blair, 2010 Cameron and that's it. 2 changes of government in 24 years with another change not looking particularly imminent. Why is this? Clearly incumbency has become an enormous advantage.
I'd suggest that its even more extreme than that, there's been 2 changes of government in over 40 years.
As a child of the early 80s I never saw a change of government until I was a teenager, then there's been only one more since then. I'm currently approaching the end of my thirties with just 2 changes in my lifetime.
Entirely probable now that by the next change of government it will be the third in just 50 years.
Although, I’d argue that Brexit and the subsequent changes in the Tory Party were more significant than the changes of government in 1997 and 2010.
It feels like to me that the labour party is currently in the same situation it was in 1988. They have a competent leader but not one who is going to inspire people to switch. The lack of vision for what they want to do is their biggest problem. You know what the Tories stand for and what they are going to do, even if you don't agree with it.
It took the 1987 defeat to make Labour properly change their mindset and move them towards a credible alternative government but with so much ground to make up it took them two more elections to win. Something similar happened after 2005 for the Tories (but the change started with crowning Michael Howard).
The one thing that could change everything is a Scottish vote for independence. Will voters abandon the Tories? Will Labour be able to convince people that they will be able to negotiate firmly?
It's worth noting that since 1955 Labour has only won a majority of seats in England 4 times. Scottish independence could make it more likely that there's a (more) permanent Tory majority,
Starmer looks the part as a potential PM far more than Kinnock ever did - indeed he looks the part more than Johnson.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
Blair also managed to get his team to do the same so the majority of the message was about the positive vision. He also managed to criticise the Tories without implying (or outright stating) that their voters were to blame for what they were doing. The most vocal minority don't do that in this Labour party.
I completely agree with you, absolutely spot on.
What Starmer needs to get good at is messaging across Labour. If you say something stupid you're either kicked out or muted forever after.
The front bench is reasonably good at that, sadly the membership - well the loud minority - are not and say all sorts of unhinged drivel.
I am anti the Royal Family, however I am not arguing we abolish it and I also was not going on Twitter the day Phillip died and saying it's good he died. I can assure the majority of Labour members are just like me, however the loud minority just will not shut up.
Luckily for us, they are leaving. Slowly. And being replaced by sensible people that left under Corbyn.
Give it time and with the bad polling, Starmer can work on reforming Labour properly.
He has made inroads on anti-Semitism, in fact he's done a great job on that.
Blair would have struggled with messaging in the era of social media but I suspect that he'd (or more likely Campbell) have come down hard on the nutters.
You can't come down hard on the nutters because the entire party is comprised of nuts. It's like trying to take the nuts out of a nut roast
eg Lisa Nandy, Emily Thornberry. Supposedly the moderate sensible Labourites. They signed a pledge that
"calls on Labour to expel “transphobic” members and describes campaigns including Woman’s Place UK as “trans-exclusionist hate groups”."
Lisa Nandy thinks rapists who self identify as women should be in women's jails, she thinks biological sex is a fiction which is assigned.
"Piers Morgan later quizzed her on whether or not she believes that “a child is born without sex”.
Nandy said she did not want to tell people “who they are” but said that children are “designated a biological sex” at birth and this can become “problematic” as they grow older.
She then slammed the Good Morning Britain host for his refusal to make any effort to understand trans people’s identities."
To 70% of Britain (and the world) the trans argument is simultaneously trivial, bewildering, and mad. Yet it has gripped Labour from top to bottom (and the SNP). They argue about this stuff endlessly.
These are not fringe elements being bravely purged by Skyr Starmer. This IS Labour, it is also the Labour "elite".
She's completey barking. The whole lot of them are and as you say, this is the modern Labour party. Unintelligible for probably closer to 90% of people in the country.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
Blair also managed to get his team to do the same so the majority of the message was about the positive vision. He also managed to criticise the Tories without implying (or outright stating) that their voters were to blame for what they were doing. The most vocal minority don't do that in this Labour party.
I completely agree with you, absolutely spot on.
What Starmer needs to get good at is messaging across Labour. If you say something stupid you're either kicked out or muted forever after.
The front bench is reasonably good at that, sadly the membership - well the loud minority - are not and say all sorts of unhinged drivel.
I am anti the Royal Family, however I am not arguing we abolish it and I also was not going on Twitter the day Phillip died and saying it's good he died. I can assure the majority of Labour members are just like me, however the loud minority just will not shut up.
Luckily for us, they are leaving. Slowly. And being replaced by sensible people that left under Corbyn.
Give it time and with the bad polling, Starmer can work on reforming Labour properly.
He has made inroads on anti-Semitism, in fact he's done a great job on that.
Blair would have struggled with messaging in the era of social media but I suspect that he'd (or more likely Campbell) have come down hard on the nutters.
You can't come down hard on the nutters because the entire party is comprised of nuts. It's like trying to take the nuts out of a nut roast
eg Lisa Nandy, Emily Thornberry. Supposedly the moderate sensible Labourites. They signed a pledge that
"calls on Labour to expel “transphobic” members and describes campaigns including Woman’s Place UK as “trans-exclusionist hate groups”."
Lisa Nandy thinks rapists who self identify as women should be in women's jails, she thinks biological sex is a fiction which is assigned.
"Piers Morgan later quizzed her on whether or not she believes that “a child is born without sex”.
Nandy said she did not want to tell people “who they are” but said that children are “designated a biological sex” at birth and this can become “problematic” as they grow older.
She then slammed the Good Morning Britain host for his refusal to make any effort to understand trans people’s identities."
To 70% of Britain (and the world) the trans argument is simultaneously trivial, bewildering, and mad. Yet it has gripped Labour from top to bottom (and the SNP). They argue about this stuff endlessly.
These are not fringe elements being bravely purged by Skyr Starmer. This IS Labour, it is also the Labour "elite".
Exactly. Even the supposed Labour 'centrists' believe utterly insane things that only a small fraction of the population at large actually embrace. Hence the hilarity to outsiders of the eternal Labour factional struggles between the 'Left' (i.e. the communists), the 'Soft Left' (the socialists), and the Right (i.e. the Left): trust me, mateys, you're all the sodding Left to us!
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
It is a big problem, and it is very representative
I have quite a few leftwing friends
Gather them in a pub for a few drinks, and they will regularly trot out stuff like "anyone who votes Tory is a racist", knowing full well that several around the table have, on occasion, voted Tory, or like Boris, or whatever
Another friend tells me, in sincere, earnest, condescending tones "you're my only rightwing friend", to which I occasionally reply "well, perhaps you should get a few more, then you wouldn't be constantly surprised and horrified when you lose elections" - this evokes a grimace from her, and she says "ewww, Tories, yuk" - and she means it. I keep her as a friend because she is basically nice and also funny and smart, but, Jesus, the temptation to hit her with a giant cucumber is sometimes hard to resist.
As for my friends at the pub telling me to my face that I am a racist, and Britain is racist, and everyone who votes Tory is a racist, my reaction is to stay quiet, smile politely, move the subject on - but inside I resolve that I will NEVER vote for their party and I actively want their party to lose and lose and lose, again and again and again, until they crumble into a pile of putrid dust. That's what I want to happen to your side.
We just don't say it, coz we have better manners
This sounds like an overly intense bloke - you - taking pub bantz a little too seriously.
There you go, just wave the problem away.
That should work
The problem is getting worse, partly because the Woke Agenda is driving some lefties bonkers, but also because you keep losing. This makes Labour activists and supporters bitter, and as they grow more embittered, they hate the Tories all the more, thus driving them to say "All Tory voters are racist"
It is the very same partisan divide that we see in America, with a sour polarisation, and growing rancour. The difference in America is that the Dems are just about able to cobble together a winning Coalition, and last time they were facing a grotesque madman. Who still got 70m votes
Going back to aliens, I am trying to work out a conspiracy theory that might explain those Pentagon videos
The Pentagon claims they are genuine, and they show *real* Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Is it possible they are fake, and the Pentagon and lots of generals and ex-CIA bods are trying to hoodwink us? What would America, or the Pentagon, or the CIA gain from that? Can't see it
But maybe it goes deeper, and someone has hoodwinked the Pentagon, and the CIA directors, with fake videos. But how would you even do that? Hack into navy pilots' brains? And, again, who benefits? China is the obvious culprit, but what does it gain apart from sowing confusion in western ranks or making western military types look mad.....
OK that is quite a motivation, nonetheless I don't see how China could have done this, practically.
Which leaves us with Sherlock Holmes' dictum
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
They are UFOs, which resemble alien spaceships using inexplicably advanced technology
The aliens’ approach to our planet will be based on analysis of the examples of our species that they’ve abducted and examined, who all appear to be people from isolated farmsteads in Colorado, West Virginia and Dakota. Time to worry?
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
No culture wars??!
You're literally throwing statues into rivers.
It doesn't GET more "culture warsy" than that, apart from maybe re-education camps. I'm sure they're on their way, they might be renamed "schools" and "colleges"
He only says there's no 'culture war' because he's on the winning side of it. They cant see why those on the right and more traditional are annoyed about what is happening. Maybe if he could imagine how he would feel if thousands of Toby Young like minded people started taking over institutions. Organisations that he loves suddenly start insisting that al its patrons and staff should read hannah arendt, and why what she has to say is relevant to their organisation.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
It is a big problem, and it is very representative
I have quite a few leftwing friends
Gather them in a pub for a few drinks, and they will regularly trot out stuff like "anyone who votes Tory is a racist", knowing full well that several around the table have, on occasion, voted Tory, or like Boris, or whatever
Another friend tells me, in sincere, earnest, condescending tones "you're my only rightwing friend", to which I occasionally reply "well, perhaps you should get a few more, then you wouldn't be constantly surprised and horrified when you lose elections" - this evokes a grimace from her, and she says "ewww, Tories, yuk" - and she means it. I keep her as a friend because she is basically nice and also funny and smart, but, Jesus, the temptation to hit her with a giant cucumber is sometimes hard to resist.
As for my friends at the pub telling me to my face that I am a racist, and Britain is racist, and everyone who votes Tory is a racist, my reaction is to stay quiet, smile politely, move the subject on - but inside I resolve that I will NEVER vote for their party and I actively want their party to lose and lose and lose, again and again and again, until they crumble into a pile of putrid dust. That's what I want to happen to your side.
We just don't say it, coz we have better manners
This sounds like an overly intense bloke - you - taking pub bantz a little too seriously.
There you go, just wave the problem away.
That should work
The problem is getting worse, partly because the Woke Agenda is driving some lefties bonkers, but also because you keep losing. This makes Labour activists and supporters bitter, and as they grow more embittered, they hate the Tories all the more, thus driving them to say "All Tory voters are racist"
It is the very same partisan divide that we see in America, with a sour polarisation, and growing rancour. The difference in America is that the Dems are just about able to cobble together a winning Coalition, and last time they were facing a grotesque madman. Who still got 70m votes
It just means that they'll never win. They're utterly reliant on the Tories imploding, and as much as they wish it, that seems extremely unlikely. Look at how they have completely changed their fortunes since the start of this year.
On the one hand, I agree with a lot of the logic in this header. On the other hand, I'm very aware that this is the sort of thing which is often said just before a long-standing government spectacularly collapses and we all laugh about it later.
Good morning everybody.
What a sensible post to start the thread. Never say never.
Yes, the last time I remember reading so many articles like this was the summer of 1992.
Sure, and it could all go wrong for the Tories. However, after 1992, Labour had broadly accepted what it needed to do to win and was well on the the way to doing it. Even without the ERM, Smith looked a potential PM - and Blair, Brown, Cook and others formed a very strong front bench - and Labour had dropped its loony left stuff from the 1980s. The Tories only had a majority of 21 and by-elections could (and did) erode that.
By contrast, this time, Labour not only is not close to looking like a potential government but could easily go into reverse back to the left. The Tories have a very comfortable majority which will easily last five years if necessary, and far from losing by-elections, at the moment the bookies have them favourite to gain one.
The public has a good nose for when a party is ready for government. Unless Labour can make progress quickly - and they show no signs of being able to - I don't think they'll get the nod next time.
I have made this point before but as a child I saw the government change pretty regularly. 64 Wilson, 70 Heath, 74 Wilson again, 79 Thatcher.
The pattern since then has been very different. 97 Blair, 2010 Cameron and that's it. 2 changes of government in 24 years with another change not looking particularly imminent. Why is this? Clearly incumbency has become an enormous advantage.
I'd suggest that its even more extreme than that, there's been 2 changes of government in over 40 years.
As a child of the early 80s I never saw a change of government until I was a teenager, then there's been only one more since then. I'm currently approaching the end of my thirties with just 2 changes in my lifetime.
Entirely probable now that by the next change of government it will be the third in just 50 years.
I'd suggest it's even more extreme than that. Since Blair accepted most elements of the Thatcher settlement, and Cameron accepted most elements of Blair's, I'm not sure we've had a change of government, as opposed to governing party, since 1979. 42 years and counting. And before that you have to go back to 1964, or maybe 1945.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
No culture wars??!
You're literally throwing statues into rivers.
It doesn't GET more "culture warsy" than that, apart from maybe re-education camps. I'm sure they're on their way, they might be renamed "schools" and "colleges"
He only says there's no 'culture war' because he's on the winning side of it. They cant see why those on the right and more traditional are annoyed about what is happening. Maybe if he could imagine how he would feel if thousands of Toby Young like minded people started taking over institutions. Organisations that he loves suddenly start insisting that al its patrons and staff should read hannah arendt, and why what she has to say is relevant to their organisation.
As someone said on here maybe a week ago, in a sense, for quite a while, there has been no culture war - but that's only because no one on the right has been brave enough to fight it, so the left has just advanced without battle. Hence, the appearance of "no war"
Suddenly the Tories have said Nah, no more retreat, turn around and put powder in your muskets. And it feels much more like a culture war, which it is. And now we realise the Left has many weaknesses in this conflict, eg it can easily and profitably be portrayed as insane, detached and unpatriotic.
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
That’s not quite true. It can be done. But the path is narrow and complicated.
123 seats need to be won. However, of those 123 seats where Labour wins on a UNS of 5.2% - not quite a Blair style swing, but much larger than the one Thatcher got - sixteen are held by the SNP and one by Plaid Cymru (which will of course be redrawn into a new seat anyway). That’s before we consider they will either lose or face significant cuts to majorities in several seats due to redrawn boundaries, while in others the majority they face may well increase.
Roughly speaking, therefore, they need to be making realistic challenges in Wimbledon, Telford, Bassetlaw and Stafford. Now that’s not impossible. They held have held all four seats in the last 20 years, and indeed Bassetlaw was a Labour seat until 2019.
The issue is, not only does it require the government to implode more spectacularly than Middlesex’s batting lineup, but unless the government’s decline is so abrupt it renders campaigns meaningless - as in 1997 when several paper candidates were unexpectedly elected - it requires them to be able to mount a simultaneous ground game in over 150 constituencies at once.
It’s one hell of an ask.
But with Boris Johnson in charge, all things are possible.
Labour only wins 54 Tory seats on a swing of 5.2% - not 123.
Going back to aliens, I am trying to work out a conspiracy theory that might explain those Pentagon videos
The Pentagon claims they are genuine, and they show *real* Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Is it possible they are fake, and the Pentagon and lots of generals and ex-CIA bods are trying to hoodwink us? What would America, or the Pentagon, or the CIA gain from that? Can't see it
But maybe it goes deeper, and someone has hoodwinked the Pentagon, and the CIA directors, with fake videos. But how would you even do that? Hack into navy pilots' brains? And, again, who benefits? China is the obvious culprit, but what does it gain apart from sowing confusion in western ranks or making western military types look mad.....
OK that is quite a motivation, nonetheless I don't see how China could have done this, practically.
Which leaves us with Sherlock Holmes' dictum
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
They are UFOs, which resemble alien spaceships using inexplicably advanced technology
The aliens’ approach to our planet will be based on analysis of the examples of our species that they’ve abducted and examined, who all appear to be people from isolated farmsteads in Colorado, West Virginia and Dakota. Time to worry?
Droll.
However my point is good. Those videos need an explanation. Either someone is conspiring at a very high level (where, how and why?), or they are real and the US Navy pilots have seen some proper mad shit
I have little interest in a Labour government running the country in a way that Tory voters approve of.
That's how Tony Blair won in 1997 and probably the only way for Labour to ever win a majority in England again.
I don't mind winning that way. But not when it comes to governing.
if it looks like Labour don't mean it then people will see it for the sham it actually is.
People aren't that perceptive. Don't kid yourself.
They are and Blair and Brown knew it. in 1997 they went more Tory economically than the Tories were actually planning to be. in the end they maintained a reputation for economic competence (with policies the Tories didn't disagree with on the whole) until the GFC in 2007/8
The piece that still resonates with me was in the Spectator last week. Labour are the AND party - to support them you have to support this AND this AND this AND this and any dissent on any of them makes you a traitor. The Tories are the OR party - to support them you can support this OR this OR this and if you don't like most policies but vote for them for this one, welcome to the party!
There is no way that a party as inept as the current Tories can maintain their current level of support. Punters generally want competent fair government and despite the pox and Brexit making many voters suspend this, it won't last. However I don't put it past the Tories to reinvent themselves with a new leader leading a "new" government.
Then we have Labour. Without significant seats won in Scotland there is no route to a majority. Without a wholesale rethink of how to speak to people they aren't going to win back seats in the former red wall. Starmer isn't really the problem, the party is. A Blair would lead from the front, inspire the centre and build an unstoppable coalition of voters. I just don't see that Labour have anyone of that calibre to choose from...
More than that, perhaps the most important underlying factor that has changed over the course of the century so far is that, back in 2000, it was Labour that was the party of optimism, which looked as if it felt at ease with the country as it was. The Conservatives were the 'nasty party' that didn't much like what Britain had become or many of the people in it.
Now the situation is reversed. Labour is the party you support if you think that the country is a cesspool of racism and all kinds of horrid phobias, and most of the voters are brain dead scum who are wholly complicit in its manifold evils. Its remaining support base is very heavily skewed towards pissed off youths, minority interests and various shades of hard leftists and, apart from the occasional act of ritual genuflection before the NHS, they give a strong impression of having nothing good to say about Britain at all.
Starmer himself was meant to be the next Kinnock, but you do wonder if he's more like Labour's IDS? I don't know - yes, a lot could change in the years ahead, but how is this iteration of Labour meant to win back large numbers of voters directly from the Tories (or the SNP, for that matter?) It doesn't look at all promising for them...
Your hyperbolic characterisation of Labour supporters doesn't match any that I know, and I know a lot. It just ain't true.
Most of us are decent people who want what is best for the country, but just happen to believe that what's best includes a reduction in gross inequalities and a more tolerant, forward-looking culture. It's an optimistic vision.
Unfortunately for Labour, the impression given by both its loudest supporters and many of its MPs is that it is militantly intolerant. Society, and most of the individuals within it, are to varying degrees racist, imperialist, colonialist and all kinds of phobic, and if you don't swallow the agenda wholesale and agree with it unquestioningly then you are persona non grata and to be immediately cancelled. As Rochdale said, you must be this and this and this and this and this and this and this or you can f*** off and join the Tories.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
100% agree, really well articulated post and ultimately the reason I'll keep voting for the blue team. I disagree with the Tories on basically everything at the moment but they won't be sending kids into gender re-education because they picked up a digger toy instead of a Barbie.
An intelligent poster 100% agreeing with borderline unhinged drivel written by another intelligent poster. Such is the scale of Labour's problem if at all representative.
Max is convinced there is a culture war that has destroyed society, on most things he is extremely articulate and I would suggest educated but on this particular issue he's completely off the deep end.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
You think Labour under Starmer are going big on 'culture war' issues? I don't see that myself.
Indeed, I mean Starmer took the knee, if that's not trying to capitalise on culture war issues then I'm not sure what counts. The Tories are the last line of defence for our traditional culture in this country. Until that stops being the case they automatically win elections.
He took the knee that time, yes. And this being still referred to relentlessly is rather a tell. When looking for 'Starmer at vanguard of culture war' moments one is not exactly spoilt for choice.
This line of yours - "The Tories are the last line of defence for our traditional culture in this country" - reminds me very much of something often heard from Trump and the Trumpers at WH20, that a Joe Biden win would be the end of America as known and loved through the ages. It reminds me of it and I don't see it as having any more merit.
I predict you will think your way out of this well before the next election.
Comments
The real heartlands of Welsh Labour -- the Valleys -- identify as very Welsh.
In the last 2011 census, the highest proportions of the population self-identifying as Welsh, rather than British, were **not** in Gwynedd or Ceredigion -- they were in the Rhondda or in Neath or in Merthyr (all between 70-80 per cent).
The loss of Scotland would change the Welsh Labour Party into the WNP. Because Wales would be a tiny proportion of the rump of the much more prosperous & right-wing UK.
The population of Scotland is in the Central Belt, and they will control the fate of Scotland. They are never going to vote Tory. So, there really are only two options -- either the Labour Party recovers the Central Belt, or Scotland secedes.
And if Scotland secedes, there is no way back for the Labour Party. It will have to change dramatically in both England and in Wales to survive.
Labour seems to have no plan on how to recover their old Scottish citadels.
And SKS doesn't seem to really understand that the loss of Scotland is a terminal event for what we know as the Labour Party.
The centre of public opinion doesn't believe that Britain is saturated with racism from top to bottom, it doesn't think that Brexit was a massive act of self-destruction which we should aim to repudiate, and it doesn't want things such as open border immigration from the whole world, or radical medical interventions for nine-year-olds who think they're suffering from gender dysphoria, either. Labour looks like it is for angry sectional interests so it will only attract support from adherents of those interests, or from the remaining cohort of "never Tory" voters for whom Labour is the best means of removing or excluding a Conservative candidate in their area. In some ways it is surprising that Labour still polls as well as it does.
The BBC helpfully explains that the world championship has seen some of the biggest names in snooker throughout the decades win the trophy. Who'd have thunk it?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/snooker/54134586
Edit - I see Trump is favourite. Wouldn’t rule out Selby though.
There's plenty of debunking out there.
The same thing happens in other fields - eg it happened here, just the other day, when we were discussing the origins of Covid-19. A leak from the Wuhan lab is highly plausible; to me (and others) it is the most likely answer by a distance, because the coincidences are otherwise too great, and no other explanation has any positive evidence.
Yet the lab theory is dismissed out of hand by some intelligent people on here. And the main reason they do that, I believe, is because the lab origin concept is strongly associated with Trump. And no one, understandably, wants to be aligned with Trump.
It is the giggle factor with a dash of Normalcy Bias.
I remember that at one stage the Labour Party never bothered even to put up candidates round our way. Then a fiercely committed Labour lady moved in and they suddenly put up candidates. They came last, of course, and she moved away, so we went back to being a Tory-Liberal area again.
Obviously a political party with unlimited amounts of funding and pay people to move into an area to get things set up. They can appear to be strong and organised everywhere. The downside is that the pipers sooner or later will start to call the tune. This we are seeing all too clearly with the present Johnson government.
It happened in education a long time ago, under Thatcher and Howe, long before the latest scheming by Gove and Cummings.
Who would have thought when Labour lost the 2010 general election they would end up out of power for 20 years? But that looks like I real possibility now.
Labour will be back in power at some point. In the end "time for a change" will trump everything else but it doesn't look like it's going to be happening anytime soon does it?
(Again, I’m sure that in other places, e.g. the Isle of Wight they’re fighting like tigers for every vote, but so far it seems a bit low key.)
But crucially, both parties had broadly accepted the need to adopt themselves to the electorate rather than hoping to reform the electorate to them.
I think this is wrong. I think that Cameron and Osborne achieved a massive reformation of the electorate with the political arguments over what caused the great financial crash, what to do about it, and who should pay.
The political argument they put forward was that the answer to these questions was, Labour over-spending, austerity, and anyone but the retired. I think it's this that started the great political reformation we have seen where the oldies vote Tory, and the Tories win because there are more oldies.
So, secondly, this crucial age divide gave us Brexit, and it is the key to understanding British politics today, rather than any other identity faultline that maps onto the age divide. Although this age divide has always existed in stereotype, its existence in fact now is on a different scale altogether.
https://timothylikeszebras.wordpress.com/2019/11/26/the-old-people-are-coming/
It's ironic that the Tories, who continually have argued that Labour are the party of creating a client vote with government handouts, are now the party of that caricature when it comes to their pensioner client vote. Who are clearly all delighted now that they've been vaccinated.
What I want to know is if they're going to commit this massive act of cultural appropriation, why can't they pronounce 'troosers'?
https://twitter.com/NickHucknall/status/1383059562308116481?s=20
Have a good morning.
Labour also has a structural problem with the falling union membership. There are areas, like some of the red wall seats, which have lost their union jobs which pushed people to voting Labour. between 1945 and 1966 Labour consistently won the rural Norfolk seats (excluding Norwich) because of unionised farm workers. since 1970 they've been solid Tory.
If the aliens had allied with say Burundi or Micronesia, perhaps not so much.
It is going to be rather funny if Erich von Däniken ends up getting a huge apology from all those who have taken the piss out of him for decades...
And I'd also add that I totally disagree with the notion - often communicated via the satirical "We must dissolve the people and choose another" comment that some smartarse or other once said - that political parties should NOT try to change the views of the electorate and should instead seek only to appeal to them.
I have little interest in a Labour government running the country in a way that Tory voters approve of.
Planning a day down there 2 weeks after my second jab, and charges in London appear to have gone a bit postal. And I don't plan to take trains or tubes yet.
The full congestion charge for people moving into the CC zone, whilst leaving the 90% discount for incumbents, seems particularly sharp.
His previous trope - and not so long ago - was that Labour voters march to the polling station like drones and vote mindlessly for the party that their grandad always used to. On that basis he forecast a shock hung parliament in the Dec 19 general election.
This now discredited we have a new trope. The party's supporters as crazed, post modern, turtle-necked wokerati.
Its comment on the prospects of Barnard Castle in the 2.25 at Bangor is:-
Beaten out of sight on debut at Warwick; may fare better on today's less testing ground.
https://www.racingpost.com/profile/horse/3324893/barnard-castle/form
In reality the coalition did something akin to what Darling was proposing, but I guess we’ll never know if Labour would have delivered the reduction in the deficit that they promised.
The SNP has shown that if Labour is just an anti-Conservative vehicle then supporters happily jump ship en mass if an alternative is presented.
Could be a new party. The Lib Dems may be seen as traitors for having committed the sin of governance with The Enemy.
Despite Lib-Dem travails since 2010 we may eventually find ourselves going back to our Tory/Liberal roots. My guess is that in the end another "Blair" type figure will emerge in the Labour Party and drag them back to power though.
Just landing on the White House Lawn and killing everyone in sight with ultra-lasers, and then raping everyone else with special helium-powered ano-probes is so predictable. Passe indeed
Instead, tease the poor humans. Flash a bit of ET thigh, by flying at 50,000 mph across the sky, then disappear for thirty years. THEN come back with the helium-powered ano-probes
I've only got one County Councillor and perhaps the PCC to vote for, and the incumbent Councillor (majority: 68%) has sent me two leaflets, a Focus-alike newspaper, another something, and a personalised letter.
So far. In the last fortnight.
Keir Starmer however is however quite successfully allowing them to become irrelevant. He just needs more time.
The culture war is an invented fiction, it does not exist. It has never existed. Which is why it's more depressing that Labour engages in it.
Just don't, do what Blair did and ignore it. Simple.
I have quite a few leftwing friends
Gather them in a pub for a few drinks, and they will regularly trot out stuff like "anyone who votes Tory is a racist", knowing full well that several around the table have, on occasion, voted Tory, or like Boris, or whatever
Another friend tells me, in sincere, earnest, condescending tones "you're my only rightwing friend", to which I occasionally reply "well, perhaps you should get a few more, then you wouldn't be constantly surprised and horrified when you lose elections" - this evokes a grimace from her, and she says "ewww, Tories, yuk" - and she means it. I keep her as a friend because she is basically nice and also funny and smart, but, Jesus, the temptation to hit her with a giant cucumber is sometimes hard to resist.
As for my friends at the pub telling me to my face that I am a racist, and Britain is racist, and everyone who votes Tory is a racist, my reaction is to stay quiet, smile politely, move the subject on - but inside I resolve that I will NEVER vote for their party and I actively want their party to lose and lose and lose, again and again and again, until they crumble into a pile of putrid dust. That's what I want to happen to your side.
We just don't say it, coz we have better manners
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2021/04/imola-pre-qualifying-2021.html
You're literally throwing statues into rivers.
It doesn't GET more "culture warsy" than that, apart from maybe re-education camps. I'm sure they're on their way, they might be renamed "schools" and "colleges"
What Starmer needs to get good at is messaging across Labour. If you say something stupid you're either kicked out or muted forever after.
The front bench is reasonably good at that, sadly the membership - well the loud minority - are not and say all sorts of unhinged drivel.
I am anti the Royal Family, however I am not arguing we abolish it and I also was not going on Twitter the day Phillip died and saying it's good he died. I can assure the majority of Labour members are just like me, however the loud minority just will not shut up.
Luckily for us, they are leaving. Slowly. And being replaced by sensible people that left under Corbyn.
Give it time and with the bad polling, Starmer can work on reforming Labour properly.
He has made inroads on anti-Semitism, in fact he's done a great job on that.
In this country we are structurally set up in a way that was worse in the initial stages of Covid, as a national health service by its nature does not have significant overcapacity. The NHS used its size and political power to clear out patients to maximise its capacity by pushing vulnerable into care homes, a disaster. But since then national organisation has both helped delivery of vaccines and lessons to be learned and applied from first wave. The net effect was that our vulnerable populations were not initially protected well and hence the huge number of deaths (also recorded fairly accurately due to NHS)
Elsewhere they seemed to have protected their vulnerable groups only for more virulent strains to now be killing them off in any case.. This makes it look like our performance is improving when in reality everyone is on a par
They need to banish the idea they could ever work with the SNP. And do it early.
The Pentagon claims they are genuine, and they show *real* Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Is it possible they are fake, and the Pentagon and lots of generals and ex-CIA bods are trying to hoodwink us? What would America, or the Pentagon, or the CIA gain from that? Can't see it
But maybe it goes deeper, and someone has hoodwinked the Pentagon, and the CIA directors, with fake videos. But how would you even do that? Hack into navy pilots' brains? And, again, who benefits? China is the obvious culprit, but what does it gain apart from sowing confusion in western ranks or making western military types look mad.....
OK that is quite a motivation, nonetheless I don't see how China could have done this, practically.
Which leaves us with Sherlock Holmes' dictum
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
They are UFOs, which resemble alien spaceships using inexplicably advanced technology
As a child of the early 80s I never saw a change of government until I was a teenager, then there's been only one more since then. I'm currently approaching the end of my thirties with just 2 changes in my lifetime.
Entirely probable now that by the next change of government it will be the third in just 50 years.
eg Lisa Nandy, Emily Thornberry. Supposedly the moderate sensible Labourites. They signed a pledge that
"calls on Labour to expel “transphobic” members and describes campaigns including Woman’s Place UK as “trans-exclusionist hate groups”."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/15/trans-rights-labour-leadership-candidates
Lisa Nandy thinks rapists who self identify as women should be in women's jails, she thinks biological sex is a fiction which is assigned.
"Piers Morgan later quizzed her on whether or not she believes that “a child is born without sex”.
Nandy said she did not want to tell people “who they are” but said that children are “designated a biological sex” at birth and this can become “problematic” as they grow older.
She then slammed the Good Morning Britain host for his refusal to make any effort to understand trans people’s identities."
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/03/10/piers-morgan-lisa-nandy-good-morning-britain-transgender-cisgender-labour-leadership/
To 70% of Britain (and the world) the trans argument is simultaneously trivial, bewildering, and mad. Yet it has gripped Labour from top to bottom (and the SNP). They argue about this stuff endlessly.
These are not fringe elements being bravely purged by Skyr Starmer. This IS Labour, it is also the Labour "elite".
Great piece, David. But...
There is another explanation for the polls - the tories are spending a lot of borrowed money right now.
That ain’t gonna last.
Wake me up when September ends.
There you go, just wave the problem away.
That should work
The problem is getting worse, partly because the Woke Agenda is driving some lefties bonkers, but also because you keep losing. This makes Labour activists and supporters bitter, and as they grow more embittered, they hate the Tories all the more, thus driving them to say "All Tory voters are racist"
It is the very same partisan divide that we see in America, with a sour polarisation, and growing rancour. The difference in America is that the Dems are just about able to cobble together a winning Coalition, and last time they were facing a grotesque madman. Who still got 70m votes
By contrast, this time, Labour not only is not close to looking like a potential government but could easily go into reverse back to the left. The Tories have a very comfortable majority which will easily last five years if necessary, and far from losing by-elections, at the moment the bookies have them favourite to gain one.
The public has a good nose for when a party is ready for government. Unless Labour can make progress quickly - and they show no signs of being able to - I don't think they'll get the nod next time.
Suddenly the Tories have said Nah, no more retreat, turn around and put powder in your muskets. And it feels much more like a culture war, which it is. And now we realise the Left has many weaknesses in this conflict, eg it can easily and profitably be portrayed as insane, detached and unpatriotic.
In short, it can now lose this war, badly.
However my point is good. Those videos need an explanation. Either someone is conspiring at a very high level (where, how and why?), or they are real and the US Navy pilots have seen some proper mad shit
This line of yours - "The Tories are the last line of defence for our traditional culture in this country" - reminds me very much of something often heard from Trump and the Trumpers at WH20, that a Joe Biden win would be the end of America as known and loved through the ages. It reminds me of it and I don't see it as having any more merit.
I predict you will think your way out of this well before the next election.