What will Rishi’s PM chances look like after today’s budget? – politicalbetting.com
Options
What will Rishi’s PM chances look like after today’s budget? – politicalbetting.com
As regular PBers will know I have a significant stake in Sunak’s future following a £20 bet I placed with Ladbrokes in November 2019 when Rishi was just a junior minister. The quoted odds of him being next PM were 200/1 increased by the firm’s “odds boost” to 250/1. I know that some other PBers are also on at those odds following the post by Phillip Thompson.
0
Comments
-
I think that he will be impressive today but the reality is that the fiscal position is not good and there will be flack and moans too. How that will leave him overall is hard to say but a tough budget would win him a lot of friends on the Tory backbenchers.0
-
"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grass
Of the forest's ferny floor;3 -
Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.1
-
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
8 -
His problem is going to be, does he have anything good left to announce?DavidL said:I think that he will be impressive today but the reality is that the fiscal position is not good and there will be flack and moans too. How that will leave him overall is hard to say but a tough budget would win him a lot of friends on the Tory backbenchers.
Most of the goodies have been in the papers for weeks.
The only thing I can think of that would wrongfoot the media is announcing HS2 is going ahead in full and reading the correct cost (£63 billion at 2010 prices, or around £82 billion now) into the record. But that would in itself leave them feeling they had been led up the garden path and very angry.
Otherwise, it's going to be about major tax rises and spending cuts, and the squealing from affected interests will dominate the news cycle for the next fortnight.0 -
Off topic, but a lesson on how to write:
"90 seconds of rage on the Capitol steps"
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/16/us/capitol-riot.html
Hint: Google the title above.2 -
His timing is suspect. Too close to Halloween. Nightmare on Downing Street is an almost inevitable headline.ydoethur said:
His problem is going to be, does he have anything good left to announce?DavidL said:I think that he will be impressive today but the reality is that the fiscal position is not good and there will be flack and moans too. How that will leave him overall is hard to say but a tough budget would win him a lot of friends on the Tory backbenchers.
Most of the goodies have been in the papers for weeks.
The only thing I can think of that would wrongfoot the media is announcing HS2 is going ahead in full and reading the correct cost (£63 billion at 2010 prices, or around £82 billion now) into the record. But that would in itself leave them feeling they had been led up the garden path and very angry.
Otherwise, it's going to be about major tax rises and spending cuts, and the squealing from affected interests will dominate the news cycle for the next fortnight.
Personally, I don't have a big problem with pre-announcements of budget measures. These are complicated issues and producing the package as a single rabbit out of the hat is as good a way to hide stuff as any. I don't share the Speaker's concern about this.2 -
Maybe it was the LibDems?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
4 -
As objectively as possible, it is sometimes an error to announce the goodies first and then all the negatives on the day. The media coverage of the goodies is suppressed in the immediate aftermath (because they've headlined them before) and the negatives are actually the news. Being new, and all.2
-
The way they're announcing good stuff in advance leaving bad stuff to dominate the headlines is still amazingly inept politics though.DavidL said:
His timing is suspect. Too close to Halloween. Nightmare on Downing Street is an almost inevitable headline.ydoethur said:
His problem is going to be, does he have anything good left to announce?DavidL said:I think that he will be impressive today but the reality is that the fiscal position is not good and there will be flack and moans too. How that will leave him overall is hard to say but a tough budget would win him a lot of friends on the Tory backbenchers.
Most of the goodies have been in the papers for weeks.
The only thing I can think of that would wrongfoot the media is announcing HS2 is going ahead in full and reading the correct cost (£63 billion at 2010 prices, or around £82 billion now) into the record. But that would in itself leave them feeling they had been led up the garden path and very angry.
Otherwise, it's going to be about major tax rises and spending cuts, and the squealing from affected interests will dominate the news cycle for the next fortnight.
Personally, I don't have a big problem with pre-announcements of budget measures. These are complicated issues and producing the package as a single rabbit out of the hat is as good a way to hide stuff as any. I don't share the Speaker's concern about this.
Especially as it's been done for years by so many Chancellors and always ended in humiliation. Why can't they ever learn?0 -
FPT
I think the answer is a more responsible version of Jo Moore.ydoethur said:
Leaving aside the question of propriety for the moment, I do not understand why they leak the good stuff rather than the bad stuff.SouthamObserver said:Just remember the general rule of thumb: the more ecstatic the reception a budget gets - and Sunak's is going to be greeted with a level of joy on here and elsewhere that will be quite something to behold - the more likely it is to be an absolute dud.
Get that out of the way. Test the reaction. If it's too negative, make changes in advance.
Then, all the nice stuff guarantees you lots of good headlines and goodwill going forward.
The way they're doing it, they get so many bad headlines in the aftermath they invariably have to u-turn, which makes them look ridiculous. As they probably will have to again on the one piece of bad news that has been widely trailed in advance - the cancellation of HS2's eastern leg.*
Whoever the Treasury advisers are, they are clearly very stupid. No wonder the country's in such a mess if utter retards like this are considered the cream of the civil service.
*The government has pledged to increase capacity in other ways that will be either (a) impossible or (b) twice as expensive without building HS2. So they will have to u-turn on one of them.
My guess is the good stuff dragged out gets days of positive news and sets a positive environment for the speech.
Whereas by putting all the bad news in one day with a good rabbit too to get the headlines, then you hope to bury the bad news. In the event one bit of bad news catches the media zeitgeist and gets rowed back (see pasties) then the rest of it still gets through pretty much unnoticed.0 -
The simple truth is that Dishi only got the job because the previous incumbent refused to be Carrie's puppet. So off Javed went and in came Sunak. Who has also failed to be Carrie's puppet and thus has to leak all of the important measures in the budget beforehand.
Has this worked? No. Note last night's Broadcasting Boris Carrie News lead story that Aaaah! Sunak said he was giving people a payrise but Aaaaaah! we won;t say what payrise to who until next year so Aaaaaaah! Rishi is shit - a classic in Number 10 trying to torpedo Number 11. A one-dimensional scuttle your own fleet move that will surely make Mr Speaker even more pissed off.
Anything popular in the budget will either try and be claimed by Boris or will be sunk by Carrie. Even if that which is popular boosts the government because this isn't about the party or the country this is all about Boris, and by Boris we mean Carrie.
Great fun isn't it!2 -
What was it you most admired about David Cameron's ministry? The near-loss of Scotland? The loss of Europe? The unnecessary austerity? The NHS changes? The introduction of UC or its crippling by the Chancellor?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
0 -
Face masks become mandatory in the Commons – for everyone except MPs
Authorities do not have the power to force Members of Parliament to wear masks but will now require them for all other staff
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/10/26/face-masks-become-mandatory-commons-everyone-except-mps/
It will be interesting to see how many masks are worn this afternoon, and by whom.0 -
The bad stuff included the NI rise and that is done and dusted, doesn't even need to be mentioned if he doesn't want to.ydoethur said:
The way they're announcing good stuff in advance leaving bad stuff to dominate the headlines is still amazingly inept politics though.DavidL said:
His timing is suspect. Too close to Halloween. Nightmare on Downing Street is an almost inevitable headline.ydoethur said:
His problem is going to be, does he have anything good left to announce?DavidL said:I think that he will be impressive today but the reality is that the fiscal position is not good and there will be flack and moans too. How that will leave him overall is hard to say but a tough budget would win him a lot of friends on the Tory backbenchers.
Most of the goodies have been in the papers for weeks.
The only thing I can think of that would wrongfoot the media is announcing HS2 is going ahead in full and reading the correct cost (£63 billion at 2010 prices, or around £82 billion now) into the record. But that would in itself leave them feeling they had been led up the garden path and very angry.
Otherwise, it's going to be about major tax rises and spending cuts, and the squealing from affected interests will dominate the news cycle for the next fortnight.
Personally, I don't have a big problem with pre-announcements of budget measures. These are complicated issues and producing the package as a single rabbit out of the hat is as good a way to hide stuff as any. I don't share the Speaker's concern about this.
Especially as it's been done for years by so many Chancellors and always ended in humiliation. Why can't they ever learn?0 -
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
6 -
They certainly contribute enormously and positively. And then shat all over it. Truly weird.IanB2 said:
Maybe it was the LibDems?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
2 -
Well, that might be the intention but can you name me a budget out of the last 24 since this process began when it's actually happened?Philip_Thompson said:FPT
I think the answer is a more responsible version of Jo Moore.ydoethur said:
Leaving aside the question of propriety for the moment, I do not understand why they leak the good stuff rather than the bad stuff.SouthamObserver said:Just remember the general rule of thumb: the more ecstatic the reception a budget gets - and Sunak's is going to be greeted with a level of joy on here and elsewhere that will be quite something to behold - the more likely it is to be an absolute dud.
Get that out of the way. Test the reaction. If it's too negative, make changes in advance.
Then, all the nice stuff guarantees you lots of good headlines and goodwill going forward.
The way they're doing it, they get so many bad headlines in the aftermath they invariably have to u-turn, which makes them look ridiculous. As they probably will have to again on the one piece of bad news that has been widely trailed in advance - the cancellation of HS2's eastern leg.*
Whoever the Treasury advisers are, they are clearly very stupid. No wonder the country's in such a mess if utter retards like this are considered the cream of the civil service.
*The government has pledged to increase capacity in other ways that will be either (a) impossible or (b) twice as expensive without building HS2. So they will have to u-turn on one of them.
My guess is the good stuff dragged out gets days of positive news and sets a positive environment for the speech.
Whereas by putting all the bad news in one day with a good rabbit too to get the headlines, then you hope to bury the bad news. In the event one bit of bad news catches the media zeitgeist and gets rowed back (see pasties) then the rest of it still gets through pretty much unnoticed.
Einstein's famous definition of insanity springs to mind.0 -
Engineering vs Law Observation Series Part II
In engineering, people use Excel for everything, even for actual documents that should be done in Word.
In law, people use Word for everything, even for data handling that should be done in Excel.8 -
WEll, I suppose that is another thing he could do. Say 'we've taken soundings and you know what? NI rises are not going ahead after all.'DavidL said:
The bad stuff included the NI rise and that is done and dusted, doesn't even need to be mentioned if he doesn't want to.ydoethur said:
The way they're announcing good stuff in advance leaving bad stuff to dominate the headlines is still amazingly inept politics though.DavidL said:
His timing is suspect. Too close to Halloween. Nightmare on Downing Street is an almost inevitable headline.ydoethur said:
His problem is going to be, does he have anything good left to announce?DavidL said:I think that he will be impressive today but the reality is that the fiscal position is not good and there will be flack and moans too. How that will leave him overall is hard to say but a tough budget would win him a lot of friends on the Tory backbenchers.
Most of the goodies have been in the papers for weeks.
The only thing I can think of that would wrongfoot the media is announcing HS2 is going ahead in full and reading the correct cost (£63 billion at 2010 prices, or around £82 billion now) into the record. But that would in itself leave them feeling they had been led up the garden path and very angry.
Otherwise, it's going to be about major tax rises and spending cuts, and the squealing from affected interests will dominate the news cycle for the next fortnight.
Personally, I don't have a big problem with pre-announcements of budget measures. These are complicated issues and producing the package as a single rabbit out of the hat is as good a way to hide stuff as any. I don't share the Speaker's concern about this.
Especially as it's been done for years by so many Chancellors and always ended in humiliation. Why can't they ever learn?
But it would make him look silly so I don't think he will.0 -
As someone who wanted the loss of Scotland its disappointing that he won that Referendum - but he did.DecrepiterJohnL said:
What was it you most admired about David Cameron's ministry? The near-loss of Scotland? The loss of Europe? The unnecessary austerity? The NHS changes? The introduction of UC or its crippling by the Chancellor?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
Europe: Yes. The issue had bedevilled the nation and the Party for decades. He ended that division, for which we should be very grateful.
Austerity: Ha! What austerity? Brown absolutely wrecked the public finances, Osborne fixing them without any real austerity was really impressive.
UC: As much as I rail against this (and I do) and the originally proposed taper would have been much better (and still too high) its far better than Brown's tax credits where people used to say "I'm not allowed to work more than 16 hours" as a response to it.
Lets not also forget the defeat of electoral reform.
(I don't know enough about the NHS reforms to have an opinion either way on that one)0 -
Yep, completely agree with that. Excel for me is one of those programs that when I am using it a lot its great but if I haven't used it for a while it gets tricky. Also a depressing proportion of lawyers are innumerate and struggle to understand what the spreadsheet is telling them unless its put into words. Curiously, some of the very best lawyers have been mathematicians.Gallowgate said:Engineering vs Law Observation Series Part II
In engineering, people use Excel for everything, even for actual documents that should be done in Word.
In law, people use Word for everything, even for data handling that should be done in Excel.2 -
He was an affable prime minister for a more innocent age and he made people feel good about themselves. It might not have felt like it at the time in the Age of Austerity.DecrepiterJohnL said:
What was it you most admired about David Cameron's ministry? The near-loss of Scotland? The loss of Europe? The unnecessary austerity? The NHS changes? The introduction of UC or its crippling by the Chancellor?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
What should concern everyone is that by 2030 everyone might be saying the same thing about Boris Johnson and the Covid Years!1 -
Probably almost all of them.ydoethur said:
Well, that might be the intention but can you name me a budget out of the last 24 since this process began when it's actually happened?Philip_Thompson said:FPT
I think the answer is a more responsible version of Jo Moore.ydoethur said:
Leaving aside the question of propriety for the moment, I do not understand why they leak the good stuff rather than the bad stuff.SouthamObserver said:Just remember the general rule of thumb: the more ecstatic the reception a budget gets - and Sunak's is going to be greeted with a level of joy on here and elsewhere that will be quite something to behold - the more likely it is to be an absolute dud.
Get that out of the way. Test the reaction. If it's too negative, make changes in advance.
Then, all the nice stuff guarantees you lots of good headlines and goodwill going forward.
The way they're doing it, they get so many bad headlines in the aftermath they invariably have to u-turn, which makes them look ridiculous. As they probably will have to again on the one piece of bad news that has been widely trailed in advance - the cancellation of HS2's eastern leg.*
Whoever the Treasury advisers are, they are clearly very stupid. No wonder the country's in such a mess if utter retards like this are considered the cream of the civil service.
*The government has pledged to increase capacity in other ways that will be either (a) impossible or (b) twice as expensive without building HS2. So they will have to u-turn on one of them.
My guess is the good stuff dragged out gets days of positive news and sets a positive environment for the speech.
Whereas by putting all the bad news in one day with a good rabbit too to get the headlines, then you hope to bury the bad news. In the event one bit of bad news catches the media zeitgeist and gets rowed back (see pasties) then the rest of it still gets through pretty much unnoticed.
Einstein's famous definition of insanity springs to mind.
The point about the rest of the bad stuff getting through unnoticed is that we didn't notice it happened. 😉0 -
Just remember the general rule of thumb: the more ecstatic the reception a budget gets - and Sunak's is going to be greeted with a level of joy on here and elsewhere that will be quite something to behold - the more likely it is to be an absolute dud.2
-
From previous thread - See reply to you on previous thread. Caught out by new thread and slow typing.Andy_Cooke said:As objectively as possible, it is sometimes an error to announce the goodies first and then all the negatives on the day. The media coverage of the goodies is suppressed in the immediate aftermath (because they've headlined them before) and the negatives are actually the news. Being new, and all.
0 -
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
4 -
I am sure that a better punster than I could make a joke about an Excel replacement with Python as the scripting language.Gallowgate said:Engineering vs Law Observation Series Part II
In engineering, people use Excel for everything, even for actual documents that should be done in Word.
In law, people use Word for everything, even for data handling that should be done in Excel.
But then that would be playing Russian Roulette with being banned....0 -
A dull as ditch water budget is just fine in these circumstances - as even that would be hard to pull off.SouthamObserver said:Just remember the general rule of thumb: the more ecstatic the reception a budget gets - and Sunak's is going to be greeted with a level of joy on here and elsewhere that will be quite something to behold - the more likely it is to be an absolute dud.
There is actually very little that can be announced as new in the budget - all the plausible significant tax rises have already been pre-announced either in September or in the last budget.0 -
All governments do Good and Bad. Any government post 2010 was going to struggle with the economy after the GFC. They have literally doubled the national debt and maintained a significant structural deficit and imposed pointless misery on so many people - but I doubt any other government would have done much better.Philip_Thompson said:
As someone who wanted the loss of Scotland its disappointing that he won that Referendum - but he did.DecrepiterJohnL said:
What was it you most admired about David Cameron's ministry? The near-loss of Scotland? The loss of Europe? The unnecessary austerity? The NHS changes? The introduction of UC or its crippling by the Chancellor?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
Europe: Yes. The issue had bedevilled the nation and the Party for decades. He ended that division, for which we should be very grateful.
Austerity: Ha! What austerity? Brown absolutely wrecked the public finances, Osborne fixing them without any real austerity was really impressive.
UC: As much as I rail against this (and I do) and the originally proposed taper would have been much better (and still too high) its far better than Brown's tax credits where people used to say "I'm not allowed to work more than 16 hours" as a response to it.
Lets not also forget the defeat of electoral reform.
(I don't know enough about the NHS reforms to have an opinion either way on that one)
Saying "what Austerity" just demonstrates your utter disconnection from the real world. Austerity was destroying the police - tens of thousands of officers cut. Education reduced to the 3 rs because the budget for everything else was cut. The wholesale slaughter of local government funding. And yes, NHS reforms so big you could see them from space as they ensured that record ever spending at the top line meant crippling cuts to front line provision.
They didn't call the Chancellor "Osbrown" for nothing. For all that you berate Brown and praise Osborne, they were two cheeks of the same arse. "I'm abolishing Labour's wasteful PFI" said Osborne as he then tendered record amounts of PFI being just 1 example of Osbrownism.0 -
I have just liked both sides of this discussion. Stop confusing me.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
2 -
Or in the Broadcasting Boris Carrie News stories about how bad Rishi is at announcing uncosted not agreed changes to the public sector pay cap. Leading the charge against the budget will continue to be the opposition - Number 10.eek said:
A dull as ditch water budget is just fine in these circumstances - as even that would be hard to pull off.SouthamObserver said:Just remember the general rule of thumb: the more ecstatic the reception a budget gets - and Sunak's is going to be greeted with a level of joy on here and elsewhere that will be quite something to behold - the more likely it is to be an absolute dud.
There is actually very little that can be announced as new in the budget - all the plausible significant tax rises have already been pre-announced either in September or in the last budget.1 -
You should use the right tool for the job in hand. But as Lawyers will be scared of Excel and Engineers will be scared of Word they use what they are comfortable with along with a sledgehammer to get it to do what they want.Gallowgate said:Engineering vs Law Observation Series Part II
In engineering, people use Excel for everything, even for actual documents that should be done in Word.
In law, people use Word for everything, even for data handling that should be done in Excel.
And I suspect that in 90% of both examples above neither Excel or Word would be the best tool if you had a bigger tool kit. But this comes from someone who has made his money for 30 odd years converting Excel / Word documents into proper systems.2 -
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.1 -
I keep coming back to the start of the coalition. If the LibDems had said yes to the referendum then, it would have been 65/35 in. Job jobbed.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
0 -
It's a superb piece of writing but are these people not facing trial? Any publisher that produced anything like that in this country would be in the jail faster than the accused.Toms said:Off topic, but a lesson on how to write:
"90 seconds of rage on the Capitol steps"
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/16/us/capitol-riot.html
Hint: Google the title above.0 -
Thinking that PM s should be in the affability and feelgood business is what got us Johnson. His financial dealings post pm ship should put it beyond doubt what a spot and selfish man he is.moonshine said:
He was an affable prime minister for a more innocent age and he made people feel good about themselves. It might not have felt like it at the time in the Age of Austerity.DecrepiterJohnL said:
What was it you most admired about David Cameron's ministry? The near-loss of Scotland? The loss of Europe? The unnecessary austerity? The NHS changes? The introduction of UC or its crippling by the Chancellor?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
What should concern everyone is that by 2030 everyone might be saying the same thing about Boris Johnson and the Covid Years!2 -
The Coalition was seen in the round as good government. And the Cameron / Osborne half of the quad utterly outmanoeuvred the Clegg / Alexander half by managing to deflect all the credit to the Tories (especially for LD policies) and deflect all the blame to the LDs (especially for Tory policies).Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
Winning an outright majority was a stunning victory as nobody expected it least of all Cameron. Sadly that was the absolute zenith of his ministry - the pure Tory government that followed was dire, was getting eaten by that fool Farage and Cameron massively misjudged his own talent and forced through a referendum against his own senior team's advice.3 -
What is curious about Sunak is his vocal fan base. He’s not done much much beyond reacting to the pandemic. He has doled out emergency funds, launched a few headline measures, but mainly presided over an unprecedented collapse in the public finances. It’s odd. He has certainly carefully crafted a social media persona. But that doesn’t explain the fan base. Whatever he says today some will claim he is the next PM. Odd. I don’t get it.1
-
I disagree with the outcome of several of these, but you have put that very well.Philip_Thompson said:
As someone who wanted the loss of Scotland its disappointing that he won that Referendum - but he did.DecrepiterJohnL said:
What was it you most admired about David Cameron's ministry? The near-loss of Scotland? The loss of Europe? The unnecessary austerity? The NHS changes? The introduction of UC or its crippling by the Chancellor?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
Europe: Yes. The issue had bedevilled the nation and the Party for decades. He ended that division, for which we should be very grateful.
Austerity: Ha! What austerity? Brown absolutely wrecked the public finances, Osborne fixing them without any real austerity was really impressive.
UC: As much as I rail against this (and I do) and the originally proposed taper would have been much better (and still too high) its far better than Brown's tax credits where people used to say "I'm not allowed to work more than 16 hours" as a response to it.
Lets not also forget the defeat of electoral reform.
(I don't know enough about the NHS reforms to have an opinion either way on that one)1 -
If anyone's a Prime member, the PS5 is in stock at Amazon. Also at Argos.1
-
There was no way to avoid increasing debt in 2010 given the toxic legacy Brown bequeathed. To avoid that would have entailed running a huge budget surplus to counter the borrowing of the early years, or running a balanced budget immediately from 2010 which would have meant real austerity on a level never imagined before (and probably would have crashed tax takes so not balanced it anyway). But they didn't maintain a significant structural deficit, the structural deficit was removed and debt-to-GDP was falling pre-Recession.RochdalePioneers said:
All governments do Good and Bad. Any government post 2010 was going to struggle with the economy after the GFC. They have literally doubled the national debt and maintained a significant structural deficit and imposed pointless misery on so many people - but I doubt any other government would have done much better.Philip_Thompson said:
As someone who wanted the loss of Scotland its disappointing that he won that Referendum - but he did.DecrepiterJohnL said:
What was it you most admired about David Cameron's ministry? The near-loss of Scotland? The loss of Europe? The unnecessary austerity? The NHS changes? The introduction of UC or its crippling by the Chancellor?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
Europe: Yes. The issue had bedevilled the nation and the Party for decades. He ended that division, for which we should be very grateful.
Austerity: Ha! What austerity? Brown absolutely wrecked the public finances, Osborne fixing them without any real austerity was really impressive.
UC: As much as I rail against this (and I do) and the originally proposed taper would have been much better (and still too high) its far better than Brown's tax credits where people used to say "I'm not allowed to work more than 16 hours" as a response to it.
Lets not also forget the defeat of electoral reform.
(I don't know enough about the NHS reforms to have an opinion either way on that one)
Saying "what Austerity" just demonstrates your utter disconnection from the real world. Austerity was destroying the police - tens of thousands of officers cut. Education reduced to the 3 rs because the budget for everything else was cut. The wholesale slaughter of local government funding. And yes, NHS reforms so big you could see them from space as they ensured that record ever spending at the top line meant crippling cuts to front line provision.
They didn't call the Chancellor "Osbrown" for nothing. For all that you berate Brown and praise Osborne, they were two cheeks of the same arse. "I'm abolishing Labour's wasteful PFI" said Osborne as he then tendered record amounts of PFI being just 1 example of Osbrownism.
In the final full fiscal year before the recession began the country was running a very small deficit, which had been reduced every single year since 2010. As opposed to going from a budget surplus to a massive and unnecessary structural budget deficit pre-recession.
Anyone who says "Osbrown" is going for cheap shots, not serious.1 -
Praising David Cameron for losing the Brexit referendum is pushing it a bit.kjh said:
I disagree with the outcome of several of these, but you have put that very well.Philip_Thompson said:
As someone who wanted the loss of Scotland its disappointing that he won that Referendum - but he did.DecrepiterJohnL said:
What was it you most admired about David Cameron's ministry? The near-loss of Scotland? The loss of Europe? The unnecessary austerity? The NHS changes? The introduction of UC or its crippling by the Chancellor?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
Europe: Yes. The issue had bedevilled the nation and the Party for decades. He ended that division, for which we should be very grateful.
Austerity: Ha! What austerity? Brown absolutely wrecked the public finances, Osborne fixing them without any real austerity was really impressive.
UC: As much as I rail against this (and I do) and the originally proposed taper would have been much better (and still too high) its far better than Brown's tax credits where people used to say "I'm not allowed to work more than 16 hours" as a response to it.
Lets not also forget the defeat of electoral reform.
(I don't know enough about the NHS reforms to have an opinion either way on that one)1 -
Mr. Pioneers, the Lib Dems outmanoeuvred themselves. They tried to pretend they were the opposition, with their daft yellow box budget, and their queasiness about being in power with the 'evil Tories' meant they failed utterly to capitalise on their policy successes, while the activists focused on the tuition fees.
A party that loves the ideas of coalitions was oddly uncomfortable being in one.3 -
Having spoken to him one on one I absolutely get it. The man is relatable on a level that so many other Tories are not. His media team are top notch. His rapid response to the pandemic was unprecedented. The image is someone who understands people - that is worth a lot in a government of mentalists.Jonathan said:What is curious about Sunak is his vocal fan base. He’s not done much much beyond reacting to the pandemic. He has doled out emergency funds, launched a few headline measures, but mainly presided over an unprecedented collapse in the public finances. It’s odd. He has certainly carefully crafted a social media persona. But that doesn’t explain the fan base. Whatever he says today some will claim he is the next PM. Odd. I don’t get it.
1 -
A more interesting question is whether the Cleggasm would have persisted had Clegg have stuck with his earlier policy that an EU in-out referendum was the right courseMalmesbury said:
I keep coming back to the start of the coalition. If the LibDems had said yes to the referendum then, it would have been 65/35 in. Job jobbed.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
1 -
Cameron hasn’t exorcised anything, We’re more divided than before, The difference is your preferred side is in the ascendancy, which leads you to the conclusion job done. Our relationship with Europe will always be an issue. It always has been , long before the EU.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
But either way, Cameron failed. It was not his objective to lose the referendum, see his policy collapse and hand over to May. If you watch the Cameron documentary you see his hubris played an almighty part in his downfall. As I say, he’s a tragic figure.0 -
He appears to be effective - the furlough scheme was a masterly piece of improvisation. Which has completely dropped out of the news for the usual reason.Jonathan said:What is curious about Sunak is his vocal fan base. He’s not done much much beyond reacting to the pandemic. He has doled out emergency funds, launched a few headline measures, but mainly presided over an unprecedented collapse in the public finances. It’s odd. He has certainly carefully crafted a social media persona. But that doesn’t explain the fan base. Whatever he says today some will claim he is the next PM. Odd. I don’t get it.
0 -
Its the Orange Book / Social Democrat split. Cameron even offered Clegg opt-outs of policy areas which he knew were toxic for the LibDems - tuition fees being a prime example. Clegg said no. As the party realised it was sinking rather badly it then tried to distance itself from the government whilst pointedly refusing to actually distance itself in the run up to the election.Morris_Dancer said:Mr. Pioneers, the Lib Dems outmanoeuvred themselves. They tried to pretend they were the opposition, with their daft yellow box budget, and their queasiness about being in power with the 'evil Tories' meant they failed utterly to capitalise on their policy successes, while the activists focused on the tuition fees.
A party that loves the ideas of coalitions was oddly uncomfortable being in one.
For all the we enjoyed Cleggmania, he was a shit politician.3 -
Someone has to be the next Conservative leader, and Sunak is clearly the most capable person with a chance of getting past this version of the Conservative Party.Jonathan said:What is curious about Sunak is his vocal fan base. He’s not done much much beyond reacting to the pandemic. He has doled out emergency funds, launched a few headline measures, but mainly presided over an unprecedented collapse in the public finances. It’s odd. He has certainly carefully crafted a social media persona. But that doesn’t explain the fan base. Whatever he says today some will claim he is the next PM. Odd. I don’t get it.
0 -
Free money tends to be popular in he short term. Not so much when the bills come in.Malmesbury said:
He appears to be effective - the furlough scheme was a masterly piece of improvisation. Which has completely dropped out of the news for the usual reason.Jonathan said:What is curious about Sunak is his vocal fan base. He’s not done much much beyond reacting to the pandemic. He has doled out emergency funds, launched a few headline measures, but mainly presided over an unprecedented collapse in the public finances. It’s odd. He has certainly carefully crafted a social media persona. But that doesn’t explain the fan base. Whatever he says today some will claim he is the next PM. Odd. I don’t get it.
0 -
I'm not praising him for losing it, I'm praising him for holding it.DecrepiterJohnL said:
Praising David Cameron for losing the Brexit referendum is pushing it a bit.kjh said:
I disagree with the outcome of several of these, but you have put that very well.Philip_Thompson said:
As someone who wanted the loss of Scotland its disappointing that he won that Referendum - but he did.DecrepiterJohnL said:
What was it you most admired about David Cameron's ministry? The near-loss of Scotland? The loss of Europe? The unnecessary austerity? The NHS changes? The introduction of UC or its crippling by the Chancellor?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
Europe: Yes. The issue had bedevilled the nation and the Party for decades. He ended that division, for which we should be very grateful.
Austerity: Ha! What austerity? Brown absolutely wrecked the public finances, Osborne fixing them without any real austerity was really impressive.
UC: As much as I rail against this (and I do) and the originally proposed taper would have been much better (and still too high) its far better than Brown's tax credits where people used to say "I'm not allowed to work more than 16 hours" as a response to it.
Lets not also forget the defeat of electoral reform.
(I don't know enough about the NHS reforms to have an opinion either way on that one)
The issue had riven the nation and the Party for generations. Brown and Blair had ran scared of the issue promising a referendum on the EU Constitution then passing Lisbon without one. The Lib Dems ran scared of the issue promising an in/out referendum (2010) and a referendum on the EU Constitution (2005) but rejected their own policy of a referendum when it was put before them by Cameron.
Between Blair, Brown, Clegg and Cameron the latter was the only leader brave enough and honest enough to put the choice to the people despite all four of them promising to do so. He then accepted the result with grace. As a result the issue that had plagued us for generations has now been resolved and the schism has been closed.
Knowing when you've lost and accepting it magnanimously is an important part of democracy too. See Trump for when that breaks down.3 -
Mr. Jonathan, I partly agree but would add that we'd still be divided if the result had been 52/48 the other way. The difference is that most of the political class and broadcast media would be delighted with it.
Changes would mostly have been smaller, but it would have been interesting to see if the more ardent pro-EU types (both here and overseas) might have pushed for us to go 'all in'. I suspect some, at least, would've used even a narrow win as a pretext/green light for trying to throw away more rebate and go for the single currency.0 -
I hate to do a HYUFD but as a former and habitual Tory voter you may be more divided than ever before, "we" are not.Jonathan said:
Cameron hasn’t exorcised anything, We’re more divided than before, The difference is your preferred side is in the ascendancy, which leads you to the conclusion job done. Our relationship with Europe will always be an issue. It always has been , long before the EU.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
But either way, Cameron failed. It was not his objective to lose the referendum, see his policy collapse and hand over to May. If you watch the Cameron documentary you see his hubris played an almighty part in his downfall. As I say, he’s a tragic figure.
Instead of the division being on the right of British politics, that division has now been closed and the division has been moved to a much more palatable position. Well done Cameron.0 -
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd1 -
The hatred or contempt amongst remainers for Cameron is, with respect, irrational. What Cameron did was respond to enormous public pressure that had been building for a very long time. I think its called democracy.DecrepiterJohnL said:
What was it you most admired about David Cameron's ministry? The near-loss of Scotland? The loss of Europe? The unnecessary austerity? The NHS changes? The introduction of UC or its crippling by the Chancellor?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
So, in Scotland, the SNP had achieved an absolute majority in Holyrood on a manifesto seeking a referendum. Do you think, in a democracy, that Cameron could really say no? He did the right thing and won.
The position was the same for the EU. This was not some wild fancy, it was a view held by the majority of the British people who had been lied to and misled about various treaties and their effects since at least 1992. Refusing such a referendum again would have been seriously undemocratic and undermined our social society. In this case he lost but the referendum was not a mistake: it was an inevitable consequence of living a democracy.5 -
The Tory right is not the country. Success depends on what you value. Becoming UKIP isn’t a huge triumph for the Conservatives in the long term.Philip_Thompson said:
I hate to do a HYUFD but as a former and habitual Tory voter you may be more divided than ever before, "we" are not.Jonathan said:
Cameron hasn’t exorcised anything, We’re more divided than before, The difference is your preferred side is in the ascendancy, which leads you to the conclusion job done. Our relationship with Europe will always be an issue. It always has been , long before the EU.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
But either way, Cameron failed. It was not his objective to lose the referendum, see his policy collapse and hand over to May. If you watch the Cameron documentary you see his hubris played an almighty part in his downfall. As I say, he’s a tragic figure.
Instead of the division being on the right of British politics, that division has now been closed and the division has been moved to a much more palatable position. Well done Cameron.0 -
Morning all
Has Hoyle cancelled Rishi yet?0 -
I was commenting from Philip's point of view. Win win. Got result wanted and ended much of the division in the Tories. From Cameron's and my point of view is was a disaster.DecrepiterJohnL said:
Praising David Cameron for losing the Brexit referendum is pushing it a bit.kjh said:
I disagree with the outcome of several of these, but you have put that very well.Philip_Thompson said:
As someone who wanted the loss of Scotland its disappointing that he won that Referendum - but he did.DecrepiterJohnL said:
What was it you most admired about David Cameron's ministry? The near-loss of Scotland? The loss of Europe? The unnecessary austerity? The NHS changes? The introduction of UC or its crippling by the Chancellor?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
Europe: Yes. The issue had bedevilled the nation and the Party for decades. He ended that division, for which we should be very grateful.
Austerity: Ha! What austerity? Brown absolutely wrecked the public finances, Osborne fixing them without any real austerity was really impressive.
UC: As much as I rail against this (and I do) and the originally proposed taper would have been much better (and still too high) its far better than Brown's tax credits where people used to say "I'm not allowed to work more than 16 hours" as a response to it.
Lets not also forget the defeat of electoral reform.
(I don't know enough about the NHS reforms to have an opinion either way on that one)
As I said I don't agree with all of the results Philip points out but that wasn't what I was complementing him on.
I am finding both sides of the argument persuasive. Only history will tell.
Generally I think the coalition was one of our best governments.3 -
Absolutely - party before country every single time for the Tories.Philip_Thompson said:
I hate to do a HYUFD but as a former and habitual Tory voter you may be more divided than ever before, "we" are not.Jonathan said:
Cameron hasn’t exorcised anything, We’re more divided than before, The difference is your preferred side is in the ascendancy, which leads you to the conclusion job done. Our relationship with Europe will always be an issue. It always has been , long before the EU.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
But either way, Cameron failed. It was not his objective to lose the referendum, see his policy collapse and hand over to May. If you watch the Cameron documentary you see his hubris played an almighty part in his downfall. As I say, he’s a tragic figure.
Instead of the division being on the right of British politics, that division has now been closed and the division has been moved to a much more palatable position. Well done Cameron.
1 -
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...0 -
I don't expect the UK to ever rejoin the EU. Quite simply we are going to evolve in different directions to the point that we become neighbours and not part of the same state, like Canada and the USA. Being the party that is OK with the UK as it is and is willing to be positive and seek the opportunities for the country is a huge triumph for the Conservatives in the long term.Jonathan said:
The Tory right is not the country. Success depends on what you value. Becoming UKIP isn’t a huge triumph for the Conservatives in the long term.Philip_Thompson said:
I hate to do a HYUFD but as a former and habitual Tory voter you may be more divided than ever before, "we" are not.Jonathan said:
Cameron hasn’t exorcised anything, We’re more divided than before, The difference is your preferred side is in the ascendancy, which leads you to the conclusion job done. Our relationship with Europe will always be an issue. It always has been , long before the EU.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
But either way, Cameron failed. It was not his objective to lose the referendum, see his policy collapse and hand over to May. If you watch the Cameron documentary you see his hubris played an almighty part in his downfall. As I say, he’s a tragic figure.
Instead of the division being on the right of British politics, that division has now been closed and the division has been moved to a much more palatable position. Well done Cameron.
Until the opposition is willing to be positive about the future, they're not going to start winning.1 -
IIRC the Lib Dems counter-offer to a referendum early in the coalition was to ask that an "In" result would be used to push for full integration (removal of all opt outs) and the Euro.Morris_Dancer said:Mr. Jonathan, I partly agree but would add that we'd still be divided if the result had been 52/48 the other way. The difference is that most of the political class and broadcast media would be delighted with it.
Changes would mostly have been smaller, but it would have been interesting to see if the more ardent pro-EU types (both here and overseas) might have pushed for us to go 'all in'. I suspect some, at least, would've used even a narrow win as a pretext/green light for trying to throw away more rebate and go for the single currency.
At the time it was reported as making an impossible requirement to kill the possibility of a referendum. Again, IIRC.0 -
You mean Labour are the opposite.?🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣SouthamObserver said:
Absolutely - party before country every single time for the Tories.Philip_Thompson said:
I hate to do a HYUFD but as a former and habitual Tory voter you may be more divided than ever before, "we" are not.Jonathan said:
Cameron hasn’t exorcised anything, We’re more divided than before, The difference is your preferred side is in the ascendancy, which leads you to the conclusion job done. Our relationship with Europe will always be an issue. It always has been , long before the EU.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
But either way, Cameron failed. It was not his objective to lose the referendum, see his policy collapse and hand over to May. If you watch the Cameron documentary you see his hubris played an almighty part in his downfall. As I say, he’s a tragic figure.
Instead of the division being on the right of British politics, that division has now been closed and the division has been moved to a much more palatable position. Well done Cameron.2 -
He told us not to do it but we did. That's on us. People act like there cannot have been Brexit sentiment and point to various polling and so blame him for 'causing' it, but simple fact is people showed their view when asked.DavidL said:
The hatred or contempt amongst remainers for Cameron is, with respect, irrational. What Cameron did was respond to enormous public pressure that had been building for a very long time. I think its called democracy.DecrepiterJohnL said:
What was it you most admired about David Cameron's ministry? The near-loss of Scotland? The loss of Europe? The unnecessary austerity? The NHS changes? The introduction of UC or its crippling by the Chancellor?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
So, in Scotland, the SNP had achieved an absolute majority in Holyrood on a manifesto seeking a referendum. Do you think, in a democracy, that Cameron could really say no? He did the right thing and won.
The position was the same for the EU. This was not some wild fancy, it was a view held by the majority of the British people who had been lied to and misled about various treaties and their effects since at least 1992. Refusing such a referendum again would have been seriously undemocratic and undermined our social society. In this case he lost but the referendum was not a mistake: it was an inevitable consequence of living a democracy.2 -
I'm not sure that he can - unless he really does want to torpedo the Treasury Bench by allowing a stack of UQs about the budget before Sunak is allowed to summarise the various media rounds in his actual speech.rottenborough said:Morning all
Has Hoyle cancelled Rishi yet?
Given that Hoyle is trying to hold the upper hand against the government I can't see this - the Budget Speech is one of the big set-piece parliamentary events. How he skewers government business after the speech is more likely the tactic he will use.1 -
Philip_Thompson said:
Probably almost all of them.ydoethur said:
Well, that might be the intention but can you name me a budget out of the last 24 since this process began when it's actually happened?Philip_Thompson said:FPT
I think the answer is a more responsible version of Jo Moore.ydoethur said:
Leaving aside the question of propriety for the moment, I do not understand why they leak the good stuff rather than the bad stuff.SouthamObserver said:Just remember the general rule of thumb: the more ecstatic the reception a budget gets - and Sunak's is going to be greeted with a level of joy on here and elsewhere that will be quite something to behold - the more likely it is to be an absolute dud.
Get that out of the way. Test the reaction. If it's too negative, make changes in advance.
Then, all the nice stuff guarantees you lots of good headlines and goodwill going forward.
The way they're doing it, they get so many bad headlines in the aftermath they invariably have to u-turn, which makes them look ridiculous. As they probably will have to again on the one piece of bad news that has been widely trailed in advance - the cancellation of HS2's eastern leg.*
Whoever the Treasury advisers are, they are clearly very stupid. No wonder the country's in such a mess if utter retards like this are considered the cream of the civil service.
*The government has pledged to increase capacity in other ways that will be either (a) impossible or (b) twice as expensive without building HS2. So they will have to u-turn on one of them.
My guess is the good stuff dragged out gets days of positive news and sets a positive environment for the speech.
Whereas by putting all the bad news in one day with a good rabbit too to get the headlines, then you hope to bury the bad news. In the event one bit of bad news catches the media zeitgeist and gets rowed back (see pasties) then the rest of it still gets through pretty much unnoticed.
Einstein's famous definition of insanity springs to mind.
The point about the rest of the bad stuff getting through unnoticed is that we didn't notice it happened. 😉
If politics is mainly about campaigning, then "winning each day on the grid" is part of the game. So you dribble/preview/leak various bits of good news in advance because that wins you lots of days.
If politics is mainly about government, none of this matters, because most voters aren't watching. All you have to do is ensure that Mr, Mrs, Miss, Mx (etc) Voter have more money in their bank account at the end of each month. Achieve that, they'll probably vote for you. Fail, they probably won't.
And that leads to the 100 billion pound question. Which of those theories matters more? Lots of political operatives flatter themselves that it's the first, but I suspect that the second is dominant. Hence my inability to see the 202{3/4} election as a shoe-in for the government.
0 -
And would have showed their view had Blair, Brown or Clegg given us the chance to do so which they all ran scared from doing despite promising (twice in Clegg's case) to do so in a manifesto.kle4 said:
He told us not to do it but we did. That's on us. People act like there cannot have been Brexit sentiment and point to various polling and so blame him for 'causing' it, but simple fact is people showed their view when asked.DavidL said:
The hatred or contempt amongst remainers for Cameron is, with respect, irrational. What Cameron did was respond to enormous public pressure that had been building for a very long time. I think its called democracy.DecrepiterJohnL said:
What was it you most admired about David Cameron's ministry? The near-loss of Scotland? The loss of Europe? The unnecessary austerity? The NHS changes? The introduction of UC or its crippling by the Chancellor?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
So, in Scotland, the SNP had achieved an absolute majority in Holyrood on a manifesto seeking a referendum. Do you think, in a democracy, that Cameron could really say no? He did the right thing and won.
The position was the same for the EU. This was not some wild fancy, it was a view held by the majority of the British people who had been lied to and misled about various treaties and their effects since at least 1992. Refusing such a referendum again would have been seriously undemocratic and undermined our social society. In this case he lost but the referendum was not a mistake: it was an inevitable consequence of living a democracy.0 -
It's an ongoing process, and it's too early to say. There are plenty of worried Tories in the Home Counties still to lose, if the current trajectory continues.Philip_Thompson said:
I hate to do a HYUFD but as a former and habitual Tory voter you may be more divided than ever before, "we" are not.Jonathan said:
Cameron hasn’t exorcised anything, We’re more divided than before, The difference is your preferred side is in the ascendancy, which leads you to the conclusion job done. Our relationship with Europe will always be an issue. It always has been , long before the EU.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
But either way, Cameron failed. It was not his objective to lose the referendum, see his policy collapse and hand over to May. If you watch the Cameron documentary you see his hubris played an almighty part in his downfall. As I say, he’s a tragic figure.
Instead of the division being on the right of British politics, that division has now been closed and the division has been moved to a much more palatable position. Well done Cameron.0 -
Your lucky Farage and Eurosceptics didn’t take your advice and didn’t shut up shop.Philip_Thompson said:
I don't expect the UK to ever rejoin the EU. Quite simply we are going to evolve in different directions to the point that we become neighbours and not part of the same state, like Canada and the USA. Being the party that is OK with the UK as it is and is willing to be positive and seek the opportunities for the country is a huge triumph for the Conservatives in the long term.Jonathan said:
The Tory right is not the country. Success depends on what you value. Becoming UKIP isn’t a huge triumph for the Conservatives in the long term.Philip_Thompson said:
I hate to do a HYUFD but as a former and habitual Tory voter you may be more divided than ever before, "we" are not.Jonathan said:
Cameron hasn’t exorcised anything, We’re more divided than before, The difference is your preferred side is in the ascendancy, which leads you to the conclusion job done. Our relationship with Europe will always be an issue. It always has been , long before the EU.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
But either way, Cameron failed. It was not his objective to lose the referendum, see his policy collapse and hand over to May. If you watch the Cameron documentary you see his hubris played an almighty part in his downfall. As I say, he’s a tragic figure.
Instead of the division being on the right of British politics, that division has now been closed and the division has been moved to a much more palatable position. Well done Cameron.
Until the opposition is willing to be positive about the future, they're not going to start winning.0 -
Labours interst has always been for anyone but their own Country Wilson ...Blair....Brown too stupid to know one way or another.squareroot2 said:
You mean Labour are the opposite.?🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣SouthamObserver said:
Absolutely - party before country every single time for the Tories.Philip_Thompson said:
I hate to do a HYUFD but as a former and habitual Tory voter you may be more divided than ever before, "we" are not.Jonathan said:
Cameron hasn’t exorcised anything, We’re more divided than before, The difference is your preferred side is in the ascendancy, which leads you to the conclusion job done. Our relationship with Europe will always be an issue. It always has been , long before the EU.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
But either way, Cameron failed. It was not his objective to lose the referendum, see his policy collapse and hand over to May. If you watch the Cameron documentary you see his hubris played an almighty part in his downfall. As I say, he’s a tragic figure.
Instead of the division being on the right of British politics, that division has now been closed and the division has been moved to a much more palatable position. Well done Cameron.0 -
Here we go again. The NHS claim was a palpable lie and a fallacy, without which remain would have won.kle4 said:
He told us not to do it but we did. That's on us. People act like there cannot have been Brexit sentiment and point to various polling and so blame him for 'causing' it, but simple fact is people showed their view when asked.DavidL said:
The hatred or contempt amongst remainers for Cameron is, with respect, irrational. What Cameron did was respond to enormous public pressure that had been building for a very long time. I think its called democracy.DecrepiterJohnL said:
What was it you most admired about David Cameron's ministry? The near-loss of Scotland? The loss of Europe? The unnecessary austerity? The NHS changes? The introduction of UC or its crippling by the Chancellor?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
So, in Scotland, the SNP had achieved an absolute majority in Holyrood on a manifesto seeking a referendum. Do you think, in a democracy, that Cameron could really say no? He did the right thing and won.
The position was the same for the EU. This was not some wild fancy, it was a view held by the majority of the British people who had been lied to and misled about various treaties and their effects since at least 1992. Refusing such a referendum again would have been seriously undemocratic and undermined our social society. In this case he lost but the referendum was not a mistake: it was an inevitable consequence of living a democracy.
The lie and fallacy were initially deployed by Cameron in the AV campaign.0 -
Well, Clegg/Cameron would have put the EU issue "to bed" for "a generation" - I think the vote wouldn't have been that close, before Greece.moonshine said:
A more interesting question is whether the Cleggasm would have persisted had Clegg have stuck with his earlier policy that an EU in-out referendum was the right courseMalmesbury said:
I keep coming back to the start of the coalition. If the LibDems had said yes to the referendum then, it would have been 65/35 in. Job jobbed.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
An outright win like that would have torpedoed Farage & Co.
1 -
I guess that the difference is that the Tories claim very loudly and relentlessly to be patriots.squareroot2 said:
You mean Labour are the opposite.?🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣SouthamObserver said:
Absolutely - party before country every single time for the Tories.Philip_Thompson said:
I hate to do a HYUFD but as a former and habitual Tory voter you may be more divided than ever before, "we" are not.Jonathan said:
Cameron hasn’t exorcised anything, We’re more divided than before, The difference is your preferred side is in the ascendancy, which leads you to the conclusion job done. Our relationship with Europe will always be an issue. It always has been , long before the EU.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
But either way, Cameron failed. It was not his objective to lose the referendum, see his policy collapse and hand over to May. If you watch the Cameron documentary you see his hubris played an almighty part in his downfall. As I say, he’s a tragic figure.
Instead of the division being on the right of British politics, that division has now been closed and the division has been moved to a much more palatable position. Well done Cameron.
0 -
I wouldn't call Wilson or brown stupid, of that's what you are sayingsquareroot2 said:
Labours interst has always been for anyone but their own Country Wilson ...Blair....Brown too stupid to know one way or another.squareroot2 said:
You mean Labour are the opposite.?🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣SouthamObserver said:
Absolutely - party before country every single time for the Tories.Philip_Thompson said:
I hate to do a HYUFD but as a former and habitual Tory voter you may be more divided than ever before, "we" are not.Jonathan said:
Cameron hasn’t exorcised anything, We’re more divided than before, The difference is your preferred side is in the ascendancy, which leads you to the conclusion job done. Our relationship with Europe will always be an issue. It always has been , long before the EU.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
But either way, Cameron failed. It was not his objective to lose the referendum, see his policy collapse and hand over to May. If you watch the Cameron documentary you see his hubris played an almighty part in his downfall. As I say, he’s a tragic figure.
Instead of the division being on the right of British politics, that division has now been closed and the division has been moved to a much more palatable position. Well done Cameron.0 -
It seems that Cameron's critics consist of those who hated the EU referendum because they lost itRochdalePioneers said:
The Coalition was seen in the round as good government. And the Cameron / Osborne half of the quad utterly outmanoeuvred the Clegg / Alexander half by managing to deflect all the credit to the Tories (especially for LD policies) and deflect all the blame to the LDs (especially for Tory policies).Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
Winning an outright majority was a stunning victory as nobody expected it least of all Cameron. Sadly that was the absolute zenith of his ministry - the pure Tory government that followed was dire, was getting eaten by that fool Farage and Cameron massively misjudged his own talent and forced through a referendum against his own senior team's advice.
I was very content with the coalition government and give Cameron credit for putting the EU question to public
To all those who attack Cameron for offering a vote on our membership of the EU I would simply say why on earth were you all so complacent and lost a very winnable proposition
Maybe look at your own role and failure4 -
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...3 -
Mr. Malmesbury, interesting. I don't recall hearing that but it sounds plausible.0
-
He has been my choice for PM for some time and I endorse your commentsRochdalePioneers said:
Having spoken to him one on one I absolutely get it. The man is relatable on a level that so many other Tories are not. His media team are top notch. His rapid response to the pandemic was unprecedented. The image is someone who understands people - that is worth a lot in a government of mentalists.Jonathan said:What is curious about Sunak is his vocal fan base. He’s not done much much beyond reacting to the pandemic. He has doled out emergency funds, launched a few headline measures, but mainly presided over an unprecedented collapse in the public finances. It’s odd. He has certainly carefully crafted a social media persona. But that doesn’t explain the fan base. Whatever he says today some will claim he is the next PM. Odd. I don’t get it.
0 -
Direct democracy is not how our democracy is supposed to work at all.moonshine said:
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...0 -
This is silly season stuff. If the Speaker denied a government with a huge majority from reading a finance bill he would be out on his arse for politicising the office of Speaker.RochdalePioneers said:
I'm not sure that he can - unless he really does want to torpedo the Treasury Bench by allowing a stack of UQs about the budget before Sunak is allowed to summarise the various media rounds in his actual speech.rottenborough said:Morning all
Has Hoyle cancelled Rishi yet?
Given that Hoyle is trying to hold the upper hand against the government I can't see this - the Budget Speech is one of the big set-piece parliamentary events. How he skewers government business after the speech is more likely the tactic he will use.1 -
I think that he tipped the playing field in favour of in as far as he properly could. He got his "renegotiation" although Merkel in particular misjudged that. He had project fear in the Treasury throughout. He lined up all the usual suspects in the CBI and he did his best to get Labour on board too but was frustrated by the idiot.kle4 said:
He told us not to do it but we did. That's on us. People act like there cannot have been Brexit sentiment and point to various polling and so blame him for 'causing' it, but simple fact is people showed their view when asked.DavidL said:
The hatred or contempt amongst remainers for Cameron is, with respect, irrational. What Cameron did was respond to enormous public pressure that had been building for a very long time. I think its called democracy.DecrepiterJohnL said:
What was it you most admired about David Cameron's ministry? The near-loss of Scotland? The loss of Europe? The unnecessary austerity? The NHS changes? The introduction of UC or its crippling by the Chancellor?DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
So, in Scotland, the SNP had achieved an absolute majority in Holyrood on a manifesto seeking a referendum. Do you think, in a democracy, that Cameron could really say no? He did the right thing and won.
The position was the same for the EU. This was not some wild fancy, it was a view held by the majority of the British people who had been lied to and misled about various treaties and their effects since at least 1992. Refusing such a referendum again would have been seriously undemocratic and undermined our social society. In this case he lost but the referendum was not a mistake: it was an inevitable consequence of living a democracy.
And he still lost because a majority were not persuaded of the benefits (of which there were several) and did not believe the downsides (of which there were also several, albeit much exaggerated). The argument boils down to the proposition that the majority view of the British people should have been ignored by those who knew better than them. Again. It's wrong.3 -
“Supposed to” according to edict laid out by Ishmael. Following a manifesto pledge by the party which won the general election, our democratically elected representatives in Parliament voted by 544 to 33 to hold a referendum on EU membership. You’re just a sore loser so are still coming up with this crap all these years later.IshmaelZ said:
Direct democracy is not how our democracy is supposed to work at all.moonshine said:
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...2 -
They're supposed to be judged on both.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
A PM has two jobs: Prime Minister of the country, and Party Leader for his own Party.
HYUFD goes too far in putting one before everything else under all circumstances, but its a juggling act it isn't either/or. To neglect either position is to ask for failure.0 -
Before the referendum, there was little comment on that. The idea that "we don't do referendums here" seems to have arisen afterwards.IshmaelZ said:
Direct democracy is not how our democracy is supposed to work at all.moonshine said:
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...1 -
Some people put party before country, but I don't think most do, although they might tend to think who they support is always right and their opponents always wrong.squareroot2 said:
Labours interst has always been for anyone but their own Country Wilson ...Blair....Brown too stupid to know one way or another.squareroot2 said:
You mean Labour are the opposite.?🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣SouthamObserver said:
Absolutely - party before country every single time for the Tories.Philip_Thompson said:
I hate to do a HYUFD but as a former and habitual Tory voter you may be more divided than ever before, "we" are not.Jonathan said:
Cameron hasn’t exorcised anything, We’re more divided than before, The difference is your preferred side is in the ascendancy, which leads you to the conclusion job done. Our relationship with Europe will always be an issue. It always has been , long before the EU.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
But either way, Cameron failed. It was not his objective to lose the referendum, see his policy collapse and hand over to May. If you watch the Cameron documentary you see his hubris played an almighty part in his downfall. As I say, he’s a tragic figure.
Instead of the division being on the right of British politics, that division has now been closed and the division has been moved to a much more palatable position. Well done Cameron.
I also don't think for a moment that could be said for Wilson, Blair or Brown and certainly none of them could be called stupid. I think they all came over as very bright, although I think Brown in particular was very ill suited for the job.
You seem to lack any objectivity when it comes to Labour. You never come on here ad objectively dismantle them. It just seems to be a hatred and you seem to think we are all in cahoots on a plot with Labour to rubbish the Tories (even though a significant number of us don't even support Labour).2 -
No I'm not, and what a playground insult.moonshine said:
“Supposed to” according to edict laid out by Ishmael. Following a manifesto pledge by the party which won the general election, our democratically elected representatives in Parliament voted by 544 to 33 to hold a referendum on EU membership. You’re just a sore loser so are still coming up with this crap all these years later.IshmaelZ said:
Direct democracy is not how our democracy is supposed to work at all.moonshine said:
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...
Referendums were never part of the set up, and a parliamentary vote that makes them part of the set up doesn't legitimise them any more than a parliamentary vote to hand all legislative powers back to the monarch would be legitimate. Even you can't be arsed to pretend that they have any legitimacy, because I don't detect any principle based argument for them from you. Why haven't you clamoured for referendums on lockdown, or mask wearing, or today's budget, or anything at all, ever?0 -
You'd have to be pretty incurious about history not to have seen the point beforehand.Malmesbury said:
Before the referendum, there was little comment on that. The idea that "we don't do referendums here" seems to have arisen afterwards.IshmaelZ said:
Direct democracy is not how our democracy is supposed to work at all.moonshine said:
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...0 -
Much like the idea that the referendum was only “advisory” and could be safely ignored. It’s oft forgotten that voting is the mechanism used in democracies to let the steam out and stop the pot from boiling over, allowing gradual evolution of governance and civil society in tandem, rather than sudden and brutal revolution. Some on this would do well to consider that wrt to Scotland I think.Malmesbury said:
Before the referendum, there was little comment on that. The idea that "we don't do referendums here" seems to have arisen afterwards.IshmaelZ said:
Direct democracy is not how our democracy is supposed to work at all.moonshine said:
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...2 -
I would suggest that had Cameron won you would have moved onIshmaelZ said:
No I'm not, and what a playground insult.moonshine said:
“Supposed to” according to edict laid out by Ishmael. Following a manifesto pledge by the party which won the general election, our democratically elected representatives in Parliament voted by 544 to 33 to hold a referendum on EU membership. You’re just a sore loser so are still coming up with this crap all these years later.IshmaelZ said:
Direct democracy is not how our democracy is supposed to work at all.moonshine said:
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...
Referendums were never part of the set up, and a parliamentary vote that makes them part of the set up doesn't legitimise them any more than a parliamentary vote to hand all legislative powers back to the monarch would be legitimate. Even you can't be arsed to pretend that they have any legitimacy, because I don't detect any principle based argument for them from you. Why haven't you clamoured for referendums on lockdown, or mask wearing, or today's budget, or anything at all, ever?
There are far too many who were on the losing side in denial about the fact they lost a winnable argument and cannot accept the result1 -
The fault wasn't so much the offering of the referendum as the hubris involved in both thinking he should take the lead role on one side of it - rather than standing above it as did Wilson in the 1970s - and in believing he would stroll to victory without making any particular effort to do his homework.Big_G_NorthWales said:
It seems that Cameron's critics consist of those who hated the EU referendum because they lost itRochdalePioneers said:
The Coalition was seen in the round as good government. And the Cameron / Osborne half of the quad utterly outmanoeuvred the Clegg / Alexander half by managing to deflect all the credit to the Tories (especially for LD policies) and deflect all the blame to the LDs (especially for Tory policies).Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
Winning an outright majority was a stunning victory as nobody expected it least of all Cameron. Sadly that was the absolute zenith of his ministry - the pure Tory government that followed was dire, was getting eaten by that fool Farage and Cameron massively misjudged his own talent and forced through a referendum against his own senior team's advice.
I was very content with the coalition government and give Cameron credit for putting the EU question to public
To all those who attack Cameron for offering a vote on our membership of the EU I would simply say why on earth were you all so complacent and lost a very winnable proposition
Maybe look at your own role and failure
Having a single vote without any worked up "leave" proposition was a clear mistake on such a key constitutional issue. He should either have got the leave side to come up with the specifics of what leave would mean (as you can bet the UK government will insist, whenever the Scots get their next referendum), or set down a two-stage process with a vote 'in principle' followed by the parliamentary decisions on leaving followed by a ratification vote on the detail.
Leading the remain campaign himself was a mistake; in particular it made it difficult for Labour to throw itself more fully behind the campaign, and inevitably turned some voters to see it as a proxy for voting on the government.
And that's before we consider his role in the 'renegotiation' - which was a clear failure of presentation, which is supposed to be his professional competence.3 -
GFA vote in NI?IshmaelZ said:
Direct democracy is not how our democracy is supposed to work at all.moonshine said:
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...
AV referendum?
Indyref?0 -
The validity of an idea is independent of whether you understand it or not.moonshine said:
Much like the idea that the referendum was only “advisory” and could be safely ignored. It’s oft forgotten that voting is the mechanism used in democracies to let the steam out and stop the pot from boiling over, allowing gradual evolution of governance and civil society in tandem, rather than sudden and brutal revolution. Some on this would do well to consider that wrt to Scotland I think.Malmesbury said:
Before the referendum, there was little comment on that. The idea that "we don't do referendums here" seems to have arisen afterwards.IshmaelZ said:
Direct democracy is not how our democracy is supposed to work at all.moonshine said:
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...0 -
"In November 2009, the Committee began an inquiry into “the role of referendums in the UK’s constitutional experience”. Referendums, by which citizens are given the opportunity to express a view on specific issues ... But in comparison with some other democracies, the referendum has been little used in the United Kingdom. "Malmesbury said:
Before the referendum, there was little comment on that. The idea that "we don't do referendums here" seems to have arisen afterwards.IshmaelZ said:
Direct democracy is not how our democracy is supposed to work at all.moonshine said:
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldselect/ldconst/99/99.pdf
2009 Government Briefing Note1 -
Naah, I wasn't on any particular side, and delegated my vote to my 17 year old son. The conversation was about the fundamental dishonesty of almost everything Cameron was involved in.Big_G_NorthWales said:
I would suggest that had Cameron won you would have moved onIshmaelZ said:
No I'm not, and what a playground insult.moonshine said:
“Supposed to” according to edict laid out by Ishmael. Following a manifesto pledge by the party which won the general election, our democratically elected representatives in Parliament voted by 544 to 33 to hold a referendum on EU membership. You’re just a sore loser so are still coming up with this crap all these years later.IshmaelZ said:
Direct democracy is not how our democracy is supposed to work at all.moonshine said:
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...
Referendums were never part of the set up, and a parliamentary vote that makes them part of the set up doesn't legitimise them any more than a parliamentary vote to hand all legislative powers back to the monarch would be legitimate. Even you can't be arsed to pretend that they have any legitimacy, because I don't detect any principle based argument for them from you. Why haven't you clamoured for referendums on lockdown, or mask wearing, or today's budget, or anything at all, ever?
There are far too many who were on the losing side in denial about the fact they lost a winnable argument and cannot accept the result1 -
"Never"?IshmaelZ said:
No I'm not, and what a playground insult.moonshine said:
“Supposed to” according to edict laid out by Ishmael. Following a manifesto pledge by the party which won the general election, our democratically elected representatives in Parliament voted by 544 to 33 to hold a referendum on EU membership. You’re just a sore loser so are still coming up with this crap all these years later.IshmaelZ said:
Direct democracy is not how our democracy is supposed to work at all.moonshine said:
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...
Referendums were never part of the set up, and a parliamentary vote that makes them part of the set up doesn't legitimise them any more than a parliamentary vote to hand all legislative powers back to the monarch would be legitimate. Even you can't be arsed to pretend that they have any legitimacy, because I don't detect any principle based argument for them from you. Why haven't you clamoured for referendums on lockdown, or mask wearing, or today's budget, or anything at all, ever?
So if they'd never been used before 2016 then how do you explain 1975 and 2011?
Not to forget:
1973 Northern Ireland border poll on leaving the UK and joining the Republic
1979 Scottish devolution referendum
1979 Welsh devolution referendum
1997 Scottish devolution referendum
1997 Welsh devolution referendum
1998 Greater London Authority referendum
1998 Northern Ireland Belfast Agreement referendum
2004 North East England devolution referendum
2011 Welsh devolution referendum
2014 Scottish independence referendum
And far many more local referendums than its possible to list.
Maybe before the 1970s they were never part of the set up, but by 2016 they were.2 -
"This time next year, Ishy, we'll be Brexiteers!"IshmaelZ said:
The validity of an idea is independent of whether you understand it or not.moonshine said:
Much like the idea that the referendum was only “advisory” and could be safely ignored. It’s oft forgotten that voting is the mechanism used in democracies to let the steam out and stop the pot from boiling over, allowing gradual evolution of governance and civil society in tandem, rather than sudden and brutal revolution. Some on this would do well to consider that wrt to Scotland I think.Malmesbury said:
Before the referendum, there was little comment on that. The idea that "we don't do referendums here" seems to have arisen afterwards.IshmaelZ said:
Direct democracy is not how our democracy is supposed to work at all.moonshine said:
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...0 -
I don't think there is a 'supposed to'. University seats was how our democracy was supposed to work, until it wasn't. Votes for women wasn't how our democracy was supposed to work, until it was. The expansion of the franchise wasn't how our democracy was supposed to work, until it was.IshmaelZ said:
Direct democracy is not how our democracy is supposed to work at all.moonshine said:
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...
The referendum was the direct result of our indirect democracy failing to represent a significant chunk of public opinion for 30 years or so. I remember John Major's argument that we shouldn't have a referendum on Maastricht because that's not the way we do things. It was disingenuous then and it's disingenuous now.
The main argument that I can see against a referendum is that indirect democracy allows us the ability to pretend all our disagreements are just the result of 'stupid politicos' - direct democracy shines a spotlight on our disagreements that we would rather not have.7 -
Indeed - while little used, I have seen nothing suggest that previous referenda were illegitimate or wrong.TheWhiteRabbit said:
"In November 2009, the Committee began an inquiry into “the role of referendums in the UK’s constitutional experience”. Referendums, by which citizens are given the opportunity to express a view on specific issues ... But in comparison with some other democracies, the referendum has been little used in the United Kingdom. "Malmesbury said:
Before the referendum, there was little comment on that. The idea that "we don't do referendums here" seems to have arisen afterwards.IshmaelZ said:
Direct democracy is not how our democracy is supposed to work at all.moonshine said:
Funny understanding of democracy on this forum sometimes. Politicians react to democratic pressure. Presumably far more than 52% felt it appropriate to have a specific say on our relationship with Europe. That there was a referendum with the result then enacted after not one but two further general elections, shows to me that in the end our democracy worked as it is supposed to.RochdalePioneers said:
Philip is both right and wrong (which is usual). Yerp was an issue not going away. The problem was that the referendum scheme was not done because the country needed it. It was because the Tories were under threat from UKIP.IshmaelZ said:
Some exorcism.Philip_Thompson said:
His time as PM ended up as such an "abject failure" that having been behind in almost every poll in the 2010-15 Parliament, and having surprisingly won quite a narrow majority in 2015 . . . he managed to set his party up for another two General Elections and still be strong favourites for the next election too.Jonathan said:
Well quite, Camerons time as PM ended in an abject failure, That is demonstrably obvious. Unlike other PMs he was not a victim of ‘events’, he carefully crafted the conditions of his own failure. He played with fire for short term political expediency and destroyed himself. History will judge him a tragic figure and one of our worst PMs.SouthamObserver said:
I am not so sure history will be as kind as you are! Cameron's legacy is what we are living through now: a deeply divided country that is poorer than it should be, less relevant internationally and whose citizens have lost an unprecedented amount of freedom, with more on the way. Mistaking well-spoken verbal fluency for intelligence is the perennial British problem.DavidL said:
Don't agree about Cameron. I think he was a good PM and the Coalition government in particular was one of our better governments who eased us out of a very difficult situation with surprisingly little pain. As for Sunak he is clearly very bright. My slight concern is that his meteoric rise has given him very little experience of governing or politics outside his comfort zone of finance. I'd like to see him spread his wings a bit but his boss probably wouldn't.SouthamObserver said:Sunak is another Dave Cameron. Very well presented, not much there. Hopefully, if he does get the top job he will not do as much damage as Cameron did.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldselect/ldconst/99/99.pdf
2009 Government Briefing Note
https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/vote-in-general-elections/referendums-held-in-the-uk/1 -
I miss Bercow! He would absolutely have told Sunak he could would only be called to speak if he addressed matters not already dealt with in the 17 press releases.RochdalePioneers said:
I'm not sure that he can - unless he really does want to torpedo the Treasury Bench by allowing a stack of UQs about the budget before Sunak is allowed to summarise the various media rounds in his actual speech.rottenborough said:Morning all
Has Hoyle cancelled Rishi yet?
Given that Hoyle is trying to hold the upper hand against the government I can't see this - the Budget Speech is one of the big set-piece parliamentary events. How he skewers government business after the speech is more likely the tactic he will use.2
This discussion has been closed.