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Sunak sees a colossal drop in his favourability ratings – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited April 2022 in General
imageSunak sees a colossal drop in his favourability ratings – politicalbetting.com

The figures from Ipsos-MORI are really quite dramatic. These are Favourable: 26% (-10 from March) Unfavourable: 44% (+11) Net: -18.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 7,981
    edited April 2022
    1st in 1st out.

    Later peeps :D:D
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
  • I am the inspiration for this thread.
  • Latest favourability numbers from @YouGov not looking good for anyone (4-5 April, changes with 23-24 March):

    Starmer: -25 (down 4)
    Sunak: -29 (down 14)
    Truss: -29 (-)
    Johnson: -42 (down 8)
    Patel: -57 (up 2)

    Hatred for everyone.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited April 2022
    Fair to say Boris is no longer under threat from Rishi as he was at the start of the year, nor is Rishi even heir apparent as next Tory leader when Boris does go.

    The Spring Statement has clearly hit his ratings, while Wallace and Boris have been seen to have acted in a statesmanlike fashion over Ukraine.

    He is still in the frame but just one of many not clear frontrunner
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379
    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    Ah, so you voted for the impossible. Well, that's your choice - but the effect of it was to delegate the choice of PM to the average voter.

    Making you confront reality is the exact opposite of gaslighting you.
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379
    edited April 2022
    FPT:

    Applicant said:

    2/ This months trends do seem economy related given the sharpness of Sunak's fall compared to Johnson.

    Boris Johnson's numbers worsen a little but not to the same extent (changes from March);

    Favourable: 25% (-2)
    Unfavourable: 54% (+2)

    Bye Boris!

    Boris 25, Rishi 26, SKS 30.

    All very much of a muchness, and a fair reflection of the atrocious state of our politics right now.
    Fair enough.

    How did politics get into an atrocious state?

    How does Britain get its politics out of this atrocious state?

    Not snark, but a genuine important question, though I'll be a reluctant Turkish conscript if I know the answer.
    How? We voted for it. We vote for the people who make us feel good about ourselves and not those who do the right thing for the country.

    The easiest way to lose an election is to say "I'll be honest: we have a problem here, it's going to cost everyone money to fix it". For example, May tried that in 2017 and everyone howled her down with "dementia tax!"

    Therefore, the logical strategy for SKS is to sail by saying virtually nothing while the government is forced by circumstances to acknowledge there's a problem, so he can win effectively by default. Having policies means acknowledging that there are problems (perhaps even acknowledging that some of them haven't been created by the current government) and giving the people a choice between bad and worse - and risking that they will judge that he is worse.

    How do we get out of it? I wish I knew.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,960
    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.
  • Latest favourability numbers from @YouGov not looking good for anyone (4-5 April, changes with 23-24 March):

    Starmer: -25 (down 4)
    Sunak: -29 (down 14)
    Truss: -29 (-)
    Johnson: -42 (down 8)
    Patel: -57 (up 2)

    Hatred for everyone.

    Not hatred - just not favourable and understandable

  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    Rishi "David Milliband" Sunak.
  • Latest favourability numbers from @YouGov not looking good for anyone (4-5 April, changes with 23-24 March):

    Starmer: -25 (down 4)
    Sunak: -29 (down 14)
    Truss: -29 (-)
    Johnson: -42 (down 8)
    Patel: -57 (up 2)

    Hatred for everyone.

    Not hatred - just not favourable and understandable

    You must be gutted that Starmer is out ahead in all polls now.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    edited April 2022
    I suspect it's his and his wife's decisions rather than her Russian links that are his problem. Supporting elitest education by their £100,000 donation is foolish beyond words. It spells out his views on the desirability of privilege.
  • HYUFD said:

    Fair to say Boris is no longer under threat from Rishi as he was at the start of the year, nor is Rishi even heir apparent as next Tory leader when Boris does go.

    The Spring Statement has clearly hit his ratings, while Wallace and Boris have been seen to have acted in a statesmanlike fashion over Ukraine.

    He is still in the frame but just one of many not clear frontrunner

    I agree with you
  • Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    You're sensible, voting for neither gives you some moral backbone.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited April 2022
    Pulpstar said:

    Rishi "David Milliband" Sunak.

    Michael Portillo very much in the same category too.

    What is it with Crown Princes for a party nearing the end of its time in government that they bottle it and the PM survives?
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Roger said:

    I suspect it's his and his wife's decisions rather than his Russian links that are his problem. Supporting elitest education by their £100,000 donation is foolish beyond words. It spells out his views on the desirability of privilege and they are unattractive in the extreme.

    Nah, it is as @Sandpit notes:

    handing out money = popular
    taking it back = unpopular

    We are a quite straightforward people, you know.

    And everyone just about on PB said that this would be the case. And lo it has come to pass.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,343
    edited April 2022

    Latest favourability numbers from @YouGov not looking good for anyone (4-5 April, changes with 23-24 March):

    Starmer: -25 (down 4)
    Sunak: -29 (down 14)
    Truss: -29 (-)
    Johnson: -42 (down 8)
    Patel: -57 (up 2)

    Hatred for everyone.

    IMHO this is largely because we are in a peculiar position of stasis. This is reflected in the news agenda, which has plenty of big story potential, but no general 'direction of travel' - there is no narrative about where the sunlit uplands are once you have done X, Y and Z.

    In particular no-one either in media, politics, commentary (or PB) is convincingly pointing towards actual and real solutions on the big issues.
    These include

    Covid
    Ukraine
    Russia
    Public finances (debt, deficit, inflation, interest rates, tax, spend)
    Climate change
    The infinite demands on health and social care
    After Brexit what?

  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,959
    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    And as I detailed on the previous thread, because of Ukraine, there was no window for Sunak to move on the top job.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,960
    HYUFD said:

    Fair to say Boris is no longer under threat from Rishi as he was at the start of the year, nor is Rishi even heir apparent as next Tory leader when Boris does go.

    The Spring Statement has clearly hit his ratings, while Wallace and Boris have been seen to have acted in a statesmanlike fashion over Ukraine.

    He is still in the frame but just one of many not clear frontrunner

    Hey, "Wallace" rhymes with "Boris". Who knew.
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379
    TOPPING said:

    Roger said:

    I suspect it's his and his wife's decisions rather than his Russian links that are his problem. Supporting elitest education by their £100,000 donation is foolish beyond words. It spells out his views on the desirability of privilege and they are unattractive in the extreme.

    Nah, it is as @Sandpit notes:

    handing out money = popular
    taking it back = unpopular

    We are a quite straightforward people, you know.

    And everyone just about on PB said that this would be the case. And lo it has come to pass.
    Indeed. "We vote for the people who make us feel good about ourselves and not those who do the right thing for the country."

    Maybe I should expand that comment into a header...
  • Latest favourability numbers from @YouGov not looking good for anyone (4-5 April, changes with 23-24 March):

    Starmer: -25 (down 4)
    Sunak: -29 (down 14)
    Truss: -29 (-)
    Johnson: -42 (down 8)
    Patel: -57 (up 2)

    Hatred for everyone.

    Not hatred - just not favourable and understandable

    You must be gutted that Starmer is out ahead in all polls now.
    Not at all - it is unsurprising and he may win in 2024 but that is a long time away in political terms

    Indeed I really am neutral on who is next PM, as quite frankly I do not envy anyone the problems we are facing just now and for years into the future
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,002
    edited April 2022
    Sandpit said:

    Chancellor handing out sweeties with borrowed money is popular.

    Chancellor handing out tax rises is less popular.

    Who knew?

    He absolutely should have done more for the less well off
  • Latest favourability numbers from @YouGov not looking good for anyone (4-5 April, changes with 23-24 March):

    Starmer: -25 (down 4)
    Sunak: -29 (down 14)
    Truss: -29 (-)
    Johnson: -42 (down 8)
    Patel: -57 (up 2)

    Hatred for everyone.

    Not hatred - just not favourable and understandable

    You must be gutted that Starmer is out ahead in all polls now.
    Not at all - it is unsurprising and he may win in 2024 but that is a long time away in political terms

    Indeed I really am neutral on who is next PM, as quite frankly I do not envy anyone the problems we are facing just now and for years into the future
    Neutral but you'll vote Tory anyway!
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789
    Russian nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky is dead after a long battle with covid.
  • Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
  • Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    You were one of his biggest cheerleaders, ROFL
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,960

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    And as I detailed on the previous thread, because of Ukraine, there was no window for Sunak to move on the top job.
    What's that they say about Events?

    He should've moved back in December. Waiting for perfect timing when you already have a perfectly serviceable one to hand is always a mistake. Although, the fact that he hesitated and lost the moment, makes me feel like I'm glad he didn't end up as PM.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    TOPPING said:

    Roger said:

    I suspect it's his and his wife's decisions rather than his Russian links that are his problem. Supporting elitest education by their £100,000 donation is foolish beyond words. It spells out his views on the desirability of privilege and they are unattractive in the extreme.

    Nah, it is as @Sandpit notes:

    handing out money = popular
    taking it back = unpopular

    We are a quite straightforward people, you know.

    And everyone just about on PB said that this would be the case. And lo it has come to pass.
    People like being paid not to work, cuts in taxes, and mostly don’t see the borrowed or printed money.

    People don’t like taxes and interest rates going up, and price inflation above wage inflation.

    The Chancellor did very well during the pandemic, getting the various schemes up and running quickly and without too many bad edge cases - but it was really expensive, and now that money needs to be paid back.

    The government will be praying that the (global) economy recovers sufficiently that they have enough headroom to make tax cuts before the next election - which is now almost certainly heading for May 2024.
  • Latest favourability numbers from @YouGov not looking good for anyone (4-5 April, changes with 23-24 March):

    Starmer: -25 (down 4)
    Sunak: -29 (down 14)
    Truss: -29 (-)
    Johnson: -42 (down 8)
    Patel: -57 (up 2)

    Hatred for everyone.

    Not hatred - just not favourable and understandable

    You must be gutted that Starmer is out ahead in all polls now.
    Not at all - it is unsurprising and he may win in 2024 but that is a long time away in political terms

    Indeed I really am neutral on who is next PM, as quite frankly I do not envy anyone the problems we are facing just now and for years into the future
    Neutral but you'll vote Tory anyway!
    You have no idea how I will vote and it is up to Starmer to make a case

    I am not voting conservative in may
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,336
    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    I totally agree. Blaming someone for not voting for either of the 2 main party leaders is tantamount to gaslighting, basically forcing every to vote Starmer/Johnson etc. The last time I looked i didn't live in either Holborn or Uxbridge, therefore I couldn't vote for them anyway. I voted for one of the people on my ballot paper. Sadly the winner was that wet fish "Simon Hart", who I never voted for anyway. Don't blame me for electing him or any other tory!
  • Latest favourability numbers from @YouGov not looking good for anyone (4-5 April, changes with 23-24 March):

    Starmer: -25 (down 4)
    Sunak: -29 (down 14)
    Truss: -29 (-)
    Johnson: -42 (down 8)
    Patel: -57 (up 2)

    Hatred for everyone.

    Not hatred - just not favourable and understandable

    You must be gutted that Starmer is out ahead in all polls now.
    Not at all - it is unsurprising and he may win in 2024 but that is a long time away in political terms

    Indeed I really am neutral on who is next PM, as quite frankly I do not envy anyone the problems we are facing just now and for years into the future
    Neutral but you'll vote Tory anyway!
    You have no idea how I will vote and it is up to Starmer to make a case

    I am not voting conservative in may
    You won't vote Labour.
  • Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    You were one of his biggest cheerleaders, ROFL
    Just as you cheered on Corbyn, but I have admitted he has disappointed me and I have attacked his budget since it was announced

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Corbyn on us
  • CorrectHorseBatteryCorrectHorseBattery Posts: 21,436
    edited April 2022

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    You were one of his biggest cheerleaders, ROFL
    Just as you cheered on Corbyn, but I have admitted he has disappointed me and I have attacked his budget since it was announced

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Corbyn on us
    Yes but you're trying to pretend that you saw this coming, when you didn't.

    You were saying literally a month ago how "Rishi must take over now".

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Rishi on us.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    Ah, so you voted for the impossible. Well, that's your choice - but the effect of it was to delegate the choice of PM to the average voter.

    Making you confront reality is the exact opposite of gaslighting you.
    As an aside, I do not share your contempt for the "average" voter. I don't like the choices other people made, but that's their choice.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    And as I detailed on the previous thread, because of Ukraine, there was no window for Sunak to move on the top job.
    20/20 hindsight. If he had gone in hard and fast he could have VONCed Boris out and we'd have gone in to the war under PM pro tem Raab. Once you are at that stage no amount of oooh this is no time for self indulgent leadership contests is going to resurrect boris or de-PM Raab
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Sandpit said:

    TOPPING said:

    Roger said:

    I suspect it's his and his wife's decisions rather than his Russian links that are his problem. Supporting elitest education by their £100,000 donation is foolish beyond words. It spells out his views on the desirability of privilege and they are unattractive in the extreme.

    Nah, it is as @Sandpit notes:

    handing out money = popular
    taking it back = unpopular

    We are a quite straightforward people, you know.

    And everyone just about on PB said that this would be the case. And lo it has come to pass.
    People like being paid not to work, cuts in taxes, and mostly don’t see the borrowed or printed money.

    People don’t like taxes and interest rates going up, and price inflation above wage inflation.

    The Chancellor did very well during the pandemic, getting the various schemes up and running quickly and without too many bad edge cases - but it was really expensive, and now that money needs to be paid back.

    The government will be praying that the (global) economy recovers sufficiently that they have enough headroom to make tax cuts before the next election - which is now almost certainly heading for May 2024.
    I'm sure there was plenty of fraud in the whole furlough/subsidy process but can you imagine the flak he would have taken if there had been more rigorous checks on it all.

    For me the biggest missed opportunity was, pre-vaccine, not to have paid people meaningfully to isolate. By not doing this, the isolation policy was unfair and ineffective.
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379
    Sandpit said:

    TOPPING said:

    Roger said:

    I suspect it's his and his wife's decisions rather than his Russian links that are his problem. Supporting elitest education by their £100,000 donation is foolish beyond words. It spells out his views on the desirability of privilege and they are unattractive in the extreme.

    Nah, it is as @Sandpit notes:

    handing out money = popular
    taking it back = unpopular

    We are a quite straightforward people, you know.

    And everyone just about on PB said that this would be the case. And lo it has come to pass.
    People like being paid not to work, cuts in taxes, and mostly don’t see the borrowed or printed money.

    People don’t like taxes and interest rates going up, and price inflation above wage inflation.

    The Chancellor did very well during the pandemic, getting the various schemes up and running quickly and without too many bad edge cases - but it was really expensive, and now that money needs to be paid back.

    The government will be praying that the (global) economy recovers sufficiently that they have enough headroom to make tax cuts before the next election - which is now almost certainly heading for May 2024.
    It was always going to be then, though - the boundary review deadline isn't until 1st July 2023 and it always seemed unlikely that, with a majority of ~80, an election would be willingly chosen to be on boundaries set from the electoral register of the year 2000.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    I totally agree. Blaming someone for not voting for either of the 2 main party leaders is tantamount to gaslighting, basically forcing every to vote Starmer/Johnson etc. The last time I looked i didn't live in either Holborn or Uxbridge, therefore I couldn't vote for them anyway. I voted for one of the people on my ballot paper. Sadly the winner was that wet fish "Simon Hart", who I never voted for anyway. Don't blame me for electing him or any other tory!
    No it isn't. Gaslighting has a specific meaning which is not the meaning you think it has.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,168

    Latest favourability numbers from @YouGov not looking good for anyone (4-5 April, changes with 23-24 March):

    Starmer: -25 (down 4)
    Sunak: -29 (down 14)
    Truss: -29 (-)
    Johnson: -42 (down 8)
    Patel: -57 (up 2)

    Hatred for everyone.

    Not hatred - just not favourable and understandable

    You must be gutted that Starmer is out ahead in all polls now.
    Not at all - it is unsurprising and he may win in 2024 but that is a long time away in political terms

    Indeed I really am neutral on who is next PM, as quite frankly I do not envy anyone the problems we are facing just now and for years into the future
    2024 is a long time away. Neither a global pandemic or Russian imperialist expansion were issues at the last election and look what's happened since.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    TOPPING said:

    Roger said:

    I suspect it's his and his wife's decisions rather than his Russian links that are his problem. Supporting elitest education by their £100,000 donation is foolish beyond words. It spells out his views on the desirability of privilege and they are unattractive in the extreme.

    Nah, it is as @Sandpit notes:

    handing out money = popular
    taking it back = unpopular

    We are a quite straightforward people, you know.

    And everyone just about on PB said that this would be the case. And lo it has come to pass.
    I think popularity/unpopularity questions are more visceral than that. Why else would Patel's negative scores go off the scale? What's she done wrong? They are answered by the heart as much as the head. Sunak has got under peoples skin. They don't trust him and they don't much like him. Same with Johnson now. Those feelings aren't shifted by a change of policy.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,089
    HYUFD said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Rishi "David Milliband" Sunak.

    Michael Portillo very much in the same category too.

    What is it with Crown Princes for a party nearing the end of its time in government that they bottle it and the PM survives?
    It's an awfully hard thing to time. Attack too early and the incumbent will successfully fight you off. Leave it too late and you will be taking over the ruined remains of a party headed for defeat. And who wants to do that?

    It's also awfully hard to find the right person. Too close to the top (like Brown or Callaghan, say, or Sunak today) and they can't convincingly sell themselves as New Management. Too distant (say Portillo or Redwood in '95, Hestletine in '90, Wallace now) and they are an untried novice... Better stick to nurse. Major pulled it off by having been in top jobs but for about seven minutes and by promising to ditch the Community Charge. Johnson had been FS (albeit badly) which, combined with sheer oomph, turned out to be enough.

    So, if Johnson goes before '24, it will be because things are going badly. I suspect the big ambitious beasts will find an excuse to sit it out, so the coming defeat isn't on their CV. In which case, the next leader is someone ambitious who recognises that a Hail Mary pass is the only pass they are likely to get. I wonder who?
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    You were one of his biggest cheerleaders, ROFL
    Just as you cheered on Corbyn, but I have admitted he has disappointed me and I have attacked his budget since it was announced

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Corbyn on us
    Yes but you're trying to pretend that you saw this coming, when you didn't.

    You were saying literally a month ago how "Rishi must take over now".

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Rishi on us.
    What would you have have done differently to RS over the past 2 years?

    He has had to deal with the biggest Government spending scheme since WW2 in order to preserve companies and peoples jobs. It was incredible how quickly the schemes were set up, they were run very efficiently and they worked. It was an amazing achievement and the Country remains at full employment.

    Now he is looking to recover a tiny percentage of that money he is apparently the worst chancellor ever,

    What utter nonsense!!

  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,959
    IshmaelZ said:

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    And as I detailed on the previous thread, because of Ukraine, there was no window for Sunak to move on the top job.
    20/20 hindsight. If he had gone in hard and fast he could have VONCed Boris out and we'd have gone in to the war under PM pro tem Raab. Once you are at that stage no amount of oooh this is no time for self indulgent leadership contests is going to resurrect boris or de-PM Raab
    My detail was precisely NOT hindsight. Go read it.

    The idea of going into war with PM pro tem Raab is risible.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,168

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    I totally agree. Blaming someone for not voting for either of the 2 main party leaders is tantamount to gaslighting, basically forcing every to vote Starmer/Johnson etc. The last time I looked i didn't live in either Holborn or Uxbridge, therefore I couldn't vote for them anyway. I voted for one of the people on my ballot paper. Sadly the winner was that wet fish "Simon Hart", who I never voted for anyway. Don't blame me for electing him or any other tory!
    Can I just point out, purely out of pedantry, that Starmer's constituency of Holborn & St Pancras covers a lot more than Holborn or St Pancras? The wards included in the constituency are now: Bloomsbury, Camden Town with Primrose Hill, Cantelowes, Gospel Oak, Haverstock, Highgate (not to be confused with Highgate ward in Haringey), Holborn and Covent Garden, Kentish Town, King's Cross, Regent's Park, and St Pancras and Somers Town.
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379

    Latest favourability numbers from @YouGov not looking good for anyone (4-5 April, changes with 23-24 March):

    Starmer: -25 (down 4)
    Sunak: -29 (down 14)
    Truss: -29 (-)
    Johnson: -42 (down 8)
    Patel: -57 (up 2)

    Hatred for everyone.

    Not hatred - just not favourable and understandable

    You must be gutted that Starmer is out ahead in all polls now.
    Not at all - it is unsurprising and he may win in 2024 but that is a long time away in political terms

    Indeed I really am neutral on who is next PM, as quite frankly I do not envy anyone the problems we are facing just now and for years into the future
    2024 is a long time away. Neither a global pandemic or Russian imperialist expansion were issues at the last election and look what's happened since.
    Indeed. It's still far from certain that there won't be a change in the Tory leadership before the next election, for a start - and that, if it were to happen, would change everyone's strategies.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    Yep.

    Appalling budget. One of the worst in my living memory.

    Total misjudged, totally out of touch, too focused on winning a non-existent leadership bid, too captured by Treasury.

  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,002
    edited April 2022

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    You were one of his biggest cheerleaders, ROFL
    Just as you cheered on Corbyn, but I have admitted he has disappointed me and I have attacked his budget since it was announced

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Corbyn on us
    Yes but you're trying to pretend that you saw this coming, when you didn't.

    You were saying literally a month ago how "Rishi must take over now".

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Rishi on us.
    I was but as it turns out I was wrong and very disappointed in him as I have said, though he may yet become leader and by the way there is no contest when it comes to Corbyn
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,461
    Sandpit said:

    TOPPING said:

    Roger said:

    I suspect it's his and his wife's decisions rather than his Russian links that are his problem. Supporting elitest education by their £100,000 donation is foolish beyond words. It spells out his views on the desirability of privilege and they are unattractive in the extreme.

    Nah, it is as @Sandpit notes:

    handing out money = popular
    taking it back = unpopular

    We are a quite straightforward people, you know.

    And everyone just about on PB said that this would be the case. And lo it has come to pass.
    People like being paid not to work, cuts in taxes, and mostly don’t see the borrowed or printed money.

    People don’t like taxes and interest rates going up, and price inflation above wage inflation.

    The Chancellor did very well during the pandemic, getting the various schemes up and running quickly and without too many bad edge cases - but it was really expensive, and now that money needs to be paid back.

    The government will be praying that the (global) economy recovers sufficiently that they have enough headroom to make tax cuts before the next election - which is now almost certainly heading for May 2024.
    Sunak has already promised an income tax cut from 20p to 19p before 2024, hasn't he?
    I do hope you're not doubting his word.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    HYUFD said:

    Fair to say Boris is no longer under threat from Rishi as he was at the start of the year, nor is Rishi even heir apparent as next Tory leader when Boris does go.

    The Spring Statement has clearly hit his ratings, while Wallace and Boris have been seen to have acted in a statesmanlike fashion over Ukraine.

    He is still in the frame but just one of many not clear frontrunner

    Just wait until the leaks about "Treasury blocks new defence spending" start....
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    What would you have done differently (and how would you have paid for it?)
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926

    HYUFD said:

    Fair to say Boris is no longer under threat from Rishi as he was at the start of the year, nor is Rishi even heir apparent as next Tory leader when Boris does go.

    The Spring Statement has clearly hit his ratings, while Wallace and Boris have been seen to have acted in a statesmanlike fashion over Ukraine.

    He is still in the frame but just one of many not clear frontrunner

    Just wait until the leaks about "Treasury blocks new defence spending" start....
    Close but no cigar:-

    Rishi Sunak blocks green homes plan that would have lowered energy bills
    Whitehall officials livid over Treasury’s refusal to fund scheme making properties more energy efficient as cost of living crisis bites

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/04/05/rishi-sunak-turns-spending-taps-green-homes-plan-cut-energy/ (£££)
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    I totally agree. Blaming someone for not voting for either of the 2 main party leaders is tantamount to gaslighting, basically forcing every to vote Starmer/Johnson etc. The last time I looked i didn't live in either Holborn or Uxbridge, therefore I couldn't vote for them anyway. I voted for one of the people on my ballot paper. Sadly the winner was that wet fish "Simon Hart", who I never voted for anyway. Don't blame me for electing him or any other tory!
    I'm not blaming anyone for voting for a third party - there's an awful lot of the country where it would make sense to do so in tactical terms, and plenty more where doing so is unlikely to affect the local winner anyway.

    All I'm doing is challenging the idea that voting for a third party is "voting against both PM candidates" because one of the two will always become PM. Saying that you voted for a third party "to vote against both" seems to me more like trying to convince yourself that you are morally righteous. And maybe you are.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718

    Latest favourability numbers from @YouGov not looking good for anyone (4-5 April, changes with 23-24 March):

    Starmer: -25 (down 4)
    Sunak: -29 (down 14)
    Truss: -29 (-)
    Johnson: -42 (down 8)
    Patel: -57 (up 2)

    Hatred for everyone.

    Not hatred - just not favourable and understandable

    You must be gutted that Starmer is out ahead in all polls now.
    Not at all - it is unsurprising and he may win in 2024 but that is a long time away in political terms

    Indeed I really am neutral on who is next PM, as quite frankly I do not envy anyone the problems we are facing just now and for years into the future
    Neutral but you'll vote Tory anyway!
    You have no idea how I will vote and it is up to Starmer to make a case

    I am not voting conservative in may
    HYUFD will be round with the boys!
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    Holy f*ck! Just got my email from British Gas.

    Our electricity costs are going to be £3,943 this year. Last year on a fixed deal we were paying £1,345.

    That's a 293% increase with more to come in October! 😬

    I can help but laugh that we're being charged 28.455p a unit and being paid 5.57p for the units we export from our PV panels.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    Latest favourability numbers from @YouGov not looking good for anyone (4-5 April, changes with 23-24 March):

    Starmer: -25 (down 4)
    Sunak: -29 (down 14)
    Truss: -29 (-)
    Johnson: -42 (down 8)
    Patel: -57 (up 2)

    Hatred for everyone.

    Not hatred - just not favourable and understandable

    You must be gutted that Starmer is out ahead in all polls now.
    Not at all - it is unsurprising and he may win in 2024 but that is a long time away in political terms

    Indeed I really am neutral on who is next PM, as quite frankly I do not envy anyone the problems we are facing just now and for years into the future
    Neutral but you'll vote Tory anyway!
    You have no idea how I will vote and it is up to Starmer to make a case

    I am not voting conservative in may
    HYUFD will be round with the boys!
    Rubbish. @HYUFD votes for parties other than the Cons.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    I totally agree. Blaming someone for not voting for either of the 2 main party leaders is tantamount to gaslighting, basically forcing every to vote Starmer/Johnson etc. The last time I looked i didn't live in either Holborn or Uxbridge, therefore I couldn't vote for them anyway. I voted for one of the people on my ballot paper. Sadly the winner was that wet fish "Simon Hart", who I never voted for anyway. Don't blame me for electing him or any other tory!
    I'm not blaming anyone for voting for a third party - there's an awful lot of the country where it would make sense to do so in tactical terms, and plenty more where doing so is unlikely to affect the local winner anyway.

    All I'm doing is challenging the idea that voting for a third party is "voting against both PM candidates" because one of the two will always become PM. Saying that you voted for a third party "to vote against both" seems to me more like trying to convince yourself that you are morally righteous. And maybe you are.
    There were not "two" candidates for PM. There were MULTIPLE from a theoretical point of view, and only ONE from a realistic point of view.
  • Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    What would you have done differently (and how would you have paid for it?)
    I would have ensured UC and benefit payments were matched to CPI inflation for this year
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184

    HYUFD said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Rishi "David Milliband" Sunak.

    Michael Portillo very much in the same category too.

    What is it with Crown Princes for a party nearing the end of its time in government that they bottle it and the PM survives?
    It's an awfully hard thing to time. Attack too early and the incumbent will successfully fight you off. Leave it too late and you will be taking over the ruined remains of a party headed for defeat. And who wants to do that?

    It's also awfully hard to find the right person. Too close to the top (like Brown or Callaghan, say, or Sunak today) and they can't convincingly sell themselves as New Management. Too distant (say Portillo or Redwood in '95, Hestletine in '90, Wallace now) and they are an untried novice... Better stick to nurse. Major pulled it off by having been in top jobs but for about seven minutes and by promising to ditch the Community Charge. Johnson had been FS (albeit badly) which, combined with sheer oomph, turned out to be enough.

    So, if Johnson goes before '24, it will be because things are going badly. I suspect the big ambitious beasts will find an excuse to sit it out, so the coming defeat isn't on their CV. In which case, the next leader is someone ambitious who recognises that a Hail Mary pass is the only pass they are likely to get. I wonder who?
    Yes, you have to be in the right place at the right time. You can put yourself in the right place but whether it is the right time is to a large extent out of your control. But it's no good not putting yourself in the right place on the grounds that it's the wrong time, because it may suddenly become the right time, and then you'll be in the wrong place at the right time. That was what happened in 2016. It became the right time, but no-one was in the right place, so it went to Theresa May, who had been in the same place for 6 years, waiting (or possibly not waiting) for it to become the right time.

  • Latest favourability numbers from @YouGov not looking good for anyone (4-5 April, changes with 23-24 March):

    Starmer: -25 (down 4)
    Sunak: -29 (down 14)
    Truss: -29 (-)
    Johnson: -42 (down 8)
    Patel: -57 (up 2)

    Hatred for everyone.

    Not hatred - just not favourable and understandable

    You must be gutted that Starmer is out ahead in all polls now.
    Not at all - it is unsurprising and he may win in 2024 but that is a long time away in political terms

    Indeed I really am neutral on who is next PM, as quite frankly I do not envy anyone the problems we are facing just now and for years into the future
    Neutral but you'll vote Tory anyway!
    You have no idea how I will vote and it is up to Starmer to make a case

    I am not voting conservative in may
    HYUFD will be round with the boys!
    He has no chance, he voted Plaid and I am not voting Plaid for sure !!!!!
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,087
    edited April 2022
    Morning all.

    An interesting little piece arguing that Putin's Russia is more like Mussoline's Italy than Hitler's Germany:
    https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/ukraine-the-end-of-russian-power/

    And a more lighthearted one on why US Americans don't like roundabouts:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqcyRxZJCXc
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    And as I detailed on the previous thread, because of Ukraine, there was no window for Sunak to move on the top job.
    20/20 hindsight. If he had gone in hard and fast he could have VONCed Boris out and we'd have gone in to the war under PM pro tem Raab. Once you are at that stage no amount of oooh this is no time for self indulgent leadership contests is going to resurrect boris or de-PM Raab
    My detail was precisely NOT hindsight. Go read it.

    The idea of going into war with PM pro tem Raab is risible.
    It may be risible, but if you get the letters in you get an immediate VONC, if that succeeds Pig Dog is out and Raab goes to see Queenie and there you have it. There's no mechanism for reversing any of that on grounds of "risibility."

    Gray interim report was 31 January, coulda had fatty out by 3 Feb.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,263
    Applicant said:

    FPT:




    Fair enough.

    How did politics get into an atrocious state?

    How does Britain get its politics out of this atrocious state?

    Not snark, but a genuine important question, though I'll be a reluctant Turkish conscript if I know the answer.

    How? We voted for it. We vote for the people who make us feel good about ourselves and not those who do the right thing for the country.

    The easiest way to lose an election is to say "I'll be honest: we have a problem here, it's going to cost everyone money to fix it". For example, May tried that in 2017 and everyone howled her down with "dementia tax!"

    Therefore, the logical strategy for SKS is to sail by saying virtually nothing while the government is forced by circumstances to acknowledge there's a problem, so he can win effectively by default. Having policies means acknowledging that there are problems (perhaps even acknowledging that some of them haven't been created by the current government) and giving the people a choice between bad and worse - and risking that they will judge that he is worse.

    How do we get out of it? I wish I knew.
    FWIW, I've always found people open to a reasonably honest description of the issues and why I'm favouring X rather than Y - even if they disagree, they like being treated like adults. I did build up a large personal vote over the years (compare the Broxtowe results in 1992-2010 with the national results in the same period) primarily by lots and lots of late-night emails similar to my posts here.

    The problem is that this sort of retail politics is almost impossible for someone like Starmer (or Johnson or Davey) trying to talk to 50 million voters. You can put out a message, e.g. "pay more tax to help dementia sufferers" but anything more than a couple of sentences won't make it into national consciousness, and the inevitable counterattacks will muddy the waters and often neutralise it.

    An interesting counter-example is Labour's programme in 2017, which almost produced a surprise victory despite the widespread scepticism that dogged Corbyn even then. The reason that almost worked is that the Mail and Sun thought it was so awful that they highlighted it, giving far more coverage than any programme usually gets, whereupon a lot of voters thought it didn't sound bad at all.

    So working out policies that your opponents will attack and which people will still think sound good is the magic formula. The windfall tax on energy companies who have paid enormous dividends is a good example - one can attack it as discouraging investment, or bad for pension funds, but it passes the smell test as something simple, comprehensible and credible. But it's obviously only a contribution to the much deeper financial issues. We need a few more like that - more council tax bands for larger properties and modest reductions to the cheapest ones would be another easy hit. But above all we need a general theme tying the individual policies together. My main criticism of Labour at present is not a lack of detailed policies but a lack of clear direction - even if it was one that I didn't especially like. The Government looks exhausted and past its sell-by date - we need to show we're not exhausted at all, and ready to tackle the issues in a way that looks after most people as well as possible.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,959
    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    And as I detailed on the previous thread, because of Ukraine, there was no window for Sunak to move on the top job.
    20/20 hindsight. If he had gone in hard and fast he could have VONCed Boris out and we'd have gone in to the war under PM pro tem Raab. Once you are at that stage no amount of oooh this is no time for self indulgent leadership contests is going to resurrect boris or de-PM Raab
    My detail was precisely NOT hindsight. Go read it.

    The idea of going into war with PM pro tem Raab is risible.
    It may be risible, but if you get the letters in you get an immediate VONC, if that succeeds Pig Dog is out and Raab goes to see Queenie and there you have it. There's no mechanism for reversing any of that on grounds of "risibility."

    Gray interim report was 31 January, coulda had fatty out by 3 Feb.
    You were NEVER getting the letters in to a backdrop of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    You clearly have not talked to any Conservative MPs on the matter, so your views can be dismissed as uninformed twaddle.
  • Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    You were one of his biggest cheerleaders, ROFL
    Just as you cheered on Corbyn, but I have admitted he has disappointed me and I have attacked his budget since it was announced

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Corbyn on us
    Yes but you're trying to pretend that you saw this coming, when you didn't.

    You were saying literally a month ago how "Rishi must take over now".

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Rishi on us.
    I was but as it turns out I was wrong and very disappointed in him as I have said, though he may yet become leader and by the way there is no contest when it comes to Corbyn
    Johnson, Corbyn and Sunak are just as bad as each other.
  • Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    You were one of his biggest cheerleaders, ROFL
    Just as you cheered on Corbyn, but I have admitted he has disappointed me and I have attacked his budget since it was announced

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Corbyn on us
    Yes but you're trying to pretend that you saw this coming, when you didn't.

    You were saying literally a month ago how "Rishi must take over now".

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Rishi on us.
    I was but as it turns out I was wrong and very disappointed in him as I have said, though he may yet become leader and by the way there is no contest when it comes to Corbyn
    Johnson, Corbyn and Sunak are just as bad as each other.
    Corbyn is in a league of his own by a country mile
  • Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    You were one of his biggest cheerleaders, ROFL
    Just as you cheered on Corbyn, but I have admitted he has disappointed me and I have attacked his budget since it was announced

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Corbyn on us
    Yes but you're trying to pretend that you saw this coming, when you didn't.

    You were saying literally a month ago how "Rishi must take over now".

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Rishi on us.
    What would you have have done differently to RS over the past 2 years?

    He has had to deal with the biggest Government spending scheme since WW2 in order to preserve companies and peoples jobs. It was incredible how quickly the schemes were set up, they were run very efficiently and they worked. It was an amazing achievement and the Country remains at full employment.

    Now he is looking to recover a tiny percentage of that money he is apparently the worst chancellor ever,

    What utter nonsense!!

    What would I have done differently? Not increase National Insurance.

    Furthermore if there's room for tax cuts (planned for Income Tax) then that should go 100% into reversing the NI hike, not being gifted to those who don't pay NI.

    Sunak isn't the worst Chancellor in history, that accolade still belongs to one Gordon Brown, but Sunak has stolen his clothes and is wearing them. NI is raised because its 2p in tax rises but the media says 1p, Brown knew that and Sunak is copying him.

    I may have tipped him at 250/1 but I don't want a poundshop Gordon Brown in Downing Street.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    I totally agree. Blaming someone for not voting for either of the 2 main party leaders is tantamount to gaslighting, basically forcing every to vote Starmer/Johnson etc. The last time I looked i didn't live in either Holborn or Uxbridge, therefore I couldn't vote for them anyway. I voted for one of the people on my ballot paper. Sadly the winner was that wet fish "Simon Hart", who I never voted for anyway. Don't blame me for electing him or any other tory!
    No it isn't. Gaslighting has a specific meaning which is not the meaning you think it has.
    He's certainly trying to gaslight me in the sense that he's trying to tell me what I know to be factually true is actually not, and that a part of that factual truth is my own intentions when I did the thing that I did. There are two strands here: what I did, and what I meant by doing that. What I did was to vote for the Lib Dems. Blandly, simply, uncontroversially that was a vote against all the other parties.
    What I intended from that was that (amongst other things) my voice would be registered as saying I this country would be run by people other than Boris and Corbyn. Obviously that was a forlorn hope, clearly there was only going to be one winner, but I didn't feel that I should silence my own voice just because I was in a minority.

    Anyone who says that I was not opposed to Boris and Corbyn is therefore gaslighting me, telling me things that I know to be true (and that I know better than anybody else on this whole earth) are false.
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379
    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    I totally agree. Blaming someone for not voting for either of the 2 main party leaders is tantamount to gaslighting, basically forcing every to vote Starmer/Johnson etc. The last time I looked i didn't live in either Holborn or Uxbridge, therefore I couldn't vote for them anyway. I voted for one of the people on my ballot paper. Sadly the winner was that wet fish "Simon Hart", who I never voted for anyway. Don't blame me for electing him or any other tory!
    I'm not blaming anyone for voting for a third party - there's an awful lot of the country where it would make sense to do so in tactical terms, and plenty more where doing so is unlikely to affect the local winner anyway.

    All I'm doing is challenging the idea that voting for a third party is "voting against both PM candidates" because one of the two will always become PM. Saying that you voted for a third party "to vote against both" seems to me more like trying to convince yourself that you are morally righteous. And maybe you are.
    There were not "two" candidates for PM. There were MULTIPLE from a theoretical point of view, and only ONE from a realistic point of view.
    Now who's gaslighting? I distinctly remember the 2019 election and the possibility that Corbyn - who massively outperformed expectations just two years earlier - could have done so again and become PM.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    And as I detailed on the previous thread, because of Ukraine, there was no window for Sunak to move on the top job.
    20/20 hindsight. If he had gone in hard and fast he could have VONCed Boris out and we'd have gone in to the war under PM pro tem Raab. Once you are at that stage no amount of oooh this is no time for self indulgent leadership contests is going to resurrect boris or de-PM Raab
    My detail was precisely NOT hindsight. Go read it.

    The idea of going into war with PM pro tem Raab is risible.
    It may be risible, but if you get the letters in you get an immediate VONC, if that succeeds Pig Dog is out and Raab goes to see Queenie and there you have it. There's no mechanism for reversing any of that on grounds of "risibility."

    Gray interim report was 31 January, coulda had fatty out by 3 Feb.
    You were NEVER getting the letters in to a backdrop of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    You clearly have not talked to any Conservative MPs on the matter, so your views can be dismissed as uninformed twaddle.
    There was no such backdrop on 31 January

    That's gaslighting right there
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    I totally agree. Blaming someone for not voting for either of the 2 main party leaders is tantamount to gaslighting, basically forcing every to vote Starmer/Johnson etc. The last time I looked i didn't live in either Holborn or Uxbridge, therefore I couldn't vote for them anyway. I voted for one of the people on my ballot paper. Sadly the winner was that wet fish "Simon Hart", who I never voted for anyway. Don't blame me for electing him or any other tory!
    No it isn't. Gaslighting has a specific meaning which is not the meaning you think it has.
    He's certainly trying to gaslight me in the sense that he's trying to tell me what I know to be factually true is actually not, and that a part of that factual truth is my own intentions when I did the thing that I did. There are two strands here: what I did, and what I meant by doing that. What I did was to vote for the Lib Dems. Blandly, simply, uncontroversially that was a vote against all the other parties.
    What I intended from that was that (amongst other things) my voice would be registered as saying I this country would be run by people other than Boris and Corbyn. Obviously that was a forlorn hope, clearly there was only going to be one winner, but I didn't feel that I should silence my own voice just because I was in a minority.

    Anyone who says that I was not opposed to Boris and Corbyn is therefore gaslighting me, telling me things that I know to be true (and that I know better than anybody else on this whole earth) are false.
    It would be the same as sending HMRC a cheque for £100 to register your desire that we should all be taxed more.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    You were one of his biggest cheerleaders, ROFL
    Just as you cheered on Corbyn, but I have admitted he has disappointed me and I have attacked his budget since it was announced

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Corbyn on us
    Yes but you're trying to pretend that you saw this coming, when you didn't.

    You were saying literally a month ago how "Rishi must take over now".

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Rishi on us.
    I was but as it turns out I was wrong and very disappointed in him as I have said, though he may yet become leader and by the way there is no contest when it comes to Corbyn
    Corbyn Derangement Syndrome triggers Whataboutery of the highest order.

    Once again, Corbyn isn’t even a Labour MP, never mind Labour leader.

    Get over it.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    You were one of his biggest cheerleaders, ROFL
    Just as you cheered on Corbyn, but I have admitted he has disappointed me and I have attacked his budget since it was announced

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Corbyn on us
    Yes but you're trying to pretend that you saw this coming, when you didn't.

    You were saying literally a month ago how "Rishi must take over now".

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Rishi on us.
    I was but as it turns out I was wrong and very disappointed in him as I have said, though he may yet become leader and by the way there is no contest when it comes to Corbyn
    Johnson, Corbyn and Sunak are just as bad as each other.
    I remain of the opinion that whoever persuaded Corbyn to stand for Leader did neither him nor the Labour Party any favours. He wasn't ever, and isn't now leadership material, except perhaps of some minor sub-group within a greater whole.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,097
    Goodbye Dishi Rishi.

    Meanwhile I've finally been seen by a doctor. Broken rib confirmed but they were checking for a lung complication which appears not to be present.

    I'm back and have just seen this on Sky News:

    Six hospitals tell public to avoid A&E amid 12-hour waits
    Six hospitals have issued a joint warning for people to stay away from emergency departments except for in "genuine, life-threatening situations".

    The announcement was made after a surge in attendances left some patients waiting for up to 12 hours.

    Hospital trusts across West Yorkshire and Harrogate in North Yorkshire - an area covering more than 2.5 million people - said that due to current pressures they were forced to prioritise patients presenting with acute illness or injuries.

    Dr Andrew Lockey, emergency medicine consultant with Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, said: "It's really important that people only come to an accident and emergency department if they really need to.

    "Our hospitals are extremely busy, and people are having to wait a long time to be seen.

    "Over the past two weeks we've faced huge challenges with the sharp uplift in the number of people attending accident and emergency.

    "This places additional pressure on our teams who are responsible for treating patients with serious and life-threatening conditions."

    The clinical director of a hospital in Lancashire previously said patients were regularly waiting more than two days for a bed.

    "For the past few months we have on a regular basis had more than 50 patients waiting for a bed and that wait being in excess of 60 hours," Graham Ellis, the clinical director of Royal Preston hospital, told executives in a letter leaked to the Health Service Journal.

    He added: "We have witnessed senior experienced staff crying with frustration and anger as they have had to resuscitate patients in the waiting room, examine in the viewing room and CT changing room, seen patients leave the department as they have been pulled out of a cubicle to allow someone more unwell to be treated in their former space and patients die without the dignity of privacy."

    West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts said its most recent figures show a 14.2% increase in attendance compared with the same week last year.

  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,097

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    You were one of his biggest cheerleaders, ROFL
    Just as you cheered on Corbyn, but I have admitted he has disappointed me and I have attacked his budget since it was announced

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Corbyn on us
    Yes but you're trying to pretend that you saw this coming, when you didn't.

    You were saying literally a month ago how "Rishi must take over now".

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Rishi on us.
    What would you have have done differently to RS over the past 2 years?

    He has had to deal with the biggest Government spending scheme since WW2 in order to preserve companies and peoples jobs. It was incredible how quickly the schemes were set up, they were run very efficiently and they worked. It was an amazing achievement and the Country remains at full employment.

    Now he is looking to recover a tiny percentage of that money he is apparently the worst chancellor ever,

    What utter nonsense!!

    What would I have done differently? Not increase National Insurance.

    Furthermore if there's room for tax cuts (planned for Income Tax) then that should go 100% into reversing the NI hike, not being gifted to those who don't pay NI.
    t.

    Not to mention disgraceful splurged money on fraudulent loans, wasted contracts for tory chums, letting Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes wash dirty money through London.

    It goes on and on.

    This 'what would you have done differently' is the last feeble breath of a dying Government.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Rishi "David Milliband" Sunak.

    Michael Portillo very much in the same category too.

    What is it with Crown Princes for a party nearing the end of its time in government that they bottle it and the PM survives?
    It's an awfully hard thing to time. Attack too early and the incumbent will successfully fight you off. Leave it too late and you will be taking over the ruined remains of a party headed for defeat. And who wants to do that?

    It's also awfully hard to find the right person. Too close to the top (like Brown or Callaghan, say, or Sunak today) and they can't convincingly sell themselves as New Management. Too distant (say Portillo or Redwood in '95, Hestletine in '90, Wallace now) and they are an untried novice... Better stick to nurse. Major pulled it off by having been in top jobs but for about seven minutes and by promising to ditch the Community Charge. Johnson had been FS (albeit badly) which, combined with sheer oomph, turned out to be enough.

    So, if Johnson goes before '24, it will be because things are going badly. I suspect the big ambitious beasts will find an excuse to sit it out, so the coming defeat isn't on their CV. In which case, the next leader is someone ambitious who recognises that a Hail Mary pass is the only pass they are likely to get. I wonder who?
    Yes, you have to be in the right place at the right time. You can put yourself in the right place but whether it is the right time is to a large extent out of your control. But it's no good not putting yourself in the right place on the grounds that it's the wrong time, because it may suddenly become the right time, and then you'll be in the wrong place at the right time. That was what happened in 2016. It became the right time, but no-one was in the right place, so it went to Theresa May, who had been in the same place for 6 years, waiting (or possibly not waiting) for it to become the right time.

    Glad you cleared that up 😂
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379

    Applicant said:

    FPT:




    Fair enough.

    How did politics get into an atrocious state?

    How does Britain get its politics out of this atrocious state?

    Not snark, but a genuine important question, though I'll be a reluctant Turkish conscript if I know the answer.

    How? We voted for it. We vote for the people who make us feel good about ourselves and not those who do the right thing for the country.

    The easiest way to lose an election is to say "I'll be honest: we have a problem here, it's going to cost everyone money to fix it". For example, May tried that in 2017 and everyone howled her down with "dementia tax!"

    Therefore, the logical strategy for SKS is to sail by saying virtually nothing while the government is forced by circumstances to acknowledge there's a problem, so he can win effectively by default. Having policies means acknowledging that there are problems (perhaps even acknowledging that some of them haven't been created by the current government) and giving the people a choice between bad and worse - and risking that they will judge that he is worse.

    How do we get out of it? I wish I knew.
    FWIW, I've always found people open to a reasonably honest description of the issues and why I'm favouring X rather than Y - even if they disagree, they like being treated like adults. I did build up a large personal vote over the years (compare the Broxtowe results in 1992-2010 with the national results in the same period) primarily by lots and lots of late-night emails similar to my posts here.

    The problem is that this sort of retail politics is almost impossible for someone like Starmer (or Johnson or Davey) trying to talk to 50 million voters. You can put out a message, e.g. "pay more tax to help dementia sufferers" but anything more than a couple of sentences won't make it into national consciousness, and the inevitable counterattacks will muddy the waters and often neutralise it.
    Indeed so. Once to try to talk to 50 million voters you have to go through journalists - and they have a vested interest in muddying the waters,
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,263
    By the way, it's interesting that Israel's government (which from a distance seems rather good and much better than its predecessor) has just lost its majority, as a senior MP has defected to Netanyahu with a hint that he might be made health minister (there is I believe an obscure religious dispute going on about hospitals which I've not followed). The Knesset is now deadlocked 60-60, and new elections look possible.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    I totally agree. Blaming someone for not voting for either of the 2 main party leaders is tantamount to gaslighting, basically forcing every to vote Starmer/Johnson etc. The last time I looked i didn't live in either Holborn or Uxbridge, therefore I couldn't vote for them anyway. I voted for one of the people on my ballot paper. Sadly the winner was that wet fish "Simon Hart", who I never voted for anyway. Don't blame me for electing him or any other tory!
    I'm not blaming anyone for voting for a third party - there's an awful lot of the country where it would make sense to do so in tactical terms, and plenty more where doing so is unlikely to affect the local winner anyway.

    All I'm doing is challenging the idea that voting for a third party is "voting against both PM candidates" because one of the two will always become PM. Saying that you voted for a third party "to vote against both" seems to me more like trying to convince yourself that you are morally righteous. And maybe you are.
    There were not "two" candidates for PM. There were MULTIPLE from a theoretical point of view, and only ONE from a realistic point of view.
    Now who's gaslighting? I distinctly remember the 2019 election and the possibility that Corbyn - who massively outperformed expectations just two years earlier - could have done so again and become PM.
    Average Tory lead from GE triggering to polling day was about 10%. There was no realistic chance that Corbyn would be PM after the 2019 election, only a theoretical chance.
    Of course, if you want to wheel in theoretical chances, then Swinson "could" have become PM. Or Boris could have dropped dead on the campaign trail and Mark Francois "could" have become PM. Or Jenny Jones. Or Ian Blackford at the head of some highly exotic coalition. Plenty of things "could" have happened but were never going to happen.
    The only people who really thought Corbyn might actually beat Boris were the Momentum frothers, and they were utterly deluded.
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379
    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    I totally agree. Blaming someone for not voting for either of the 2 main party leaders is tantamount to gaslighting, basically forcing every to vote Starmer/Johnson etc. The last time I looked i didn't live in either Holborn or Uxbridge, therefore I couldn't vote for them anyway. I voted for one of the people on my ballot paper. Sadly the winner was that wet fish "Simon Hart", who I never voted for anyway. Don't blame me for electing him or any other tory!
    No it isn't. Gaslighting has a specific meaning which is not the meaning you think it has.
    He's certainly trying to gaslight me in the sense that he's trying to tell me what I know to be factually true is actually not, and that a part of that factual truth is my own intentions when I did the thing that I did. There are two strands here: what I did, and what I meant by doing that. What I did was to vote for the Lib Dems. Blandly, simply, uncontroversially that was a vote against all the other parties.
    What I intended from that was that (amongst other things) my voice would be registered as saying I this country would be run by people other than Boris and Corbyn. Obviously that was a forlorn hope, clearly there was only going to be one winner, but I didn't feel that I should silence my own voice just because I was in a minority.

    Anyone who says that I was not opposed to Boris and Corbyn is therefore gaslighting me, telling me things that I know to be true (and that I know better than anybody else on this whole earth) are false.
    I'm not querying your intentions - I'm just pointing out the effect of your actions.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    IshmaelZ said:

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    And as I detailed on the previous thread, because of Ukraine, there was no window for Sunak to move on the top job.
    20/20 hindsight. If he had gone in hard and fast he could have VONCed Boris out and we'd have gone in to the war under PM pro tem Raab. Once you are at that stage no amount of oooh this is no time for self indulgent leadership contests is going to resurrect boris or de-PM Raab
    Spot on. You have been right on process all along. I was right on the outcome (Boris is Going Nowhere) because I could see that the PCP was a bunch of spineless sycophantic cowards.

    But, to claim there was “no window” is ludicrous. There was a window. Sunak and the PCP fluffed it.
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    You were one of his biggest cheerleaders, ROFL
    Just as you cheered on Corbyn, but I have admitted he has disappointed me and I have attacked his budget since it was announced

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Corbyn on us
    Yes but you're trying to pretend that you saw this coming, when you didn't.

    You were saying literally a month ago how "Rishi must take over now".

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Rishi on us.
    I was but as it turns out I was wrong and very disappointed in him as I have said, though he may yet become leader and by the way there is no contest when it comes to Corbyn
    Corbyn Derangement Syndrome triggers Whataboutery of the highest order.

    Once again, Corbyn isn’t even a Labour MP, never mind Labour leader.

    Get over it.
    Given that the electorate's only alternative to having had Boris as PM for the last 2.5 years is having had Corbyn as PM for the last 2.5 years, then the comparison is fair.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    TOPPING said:

    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    I totally agree. Blaming someone for not voting for either of the 2 main party leaders is tantamount to gaslighting, basically forcing every to vote Starmer/Johnson etc. The last time I looked i didn't live in either Holborn or Uxbridge, therefore I couldn't vote for them anyway. I voted for one of the people on my ballot paper. Sadly the winner was that wet fish "Simon Hart", who I never voted for anyway. Don't blame me for electing him or any other tory!
    No it isn't. Gaslighting has a specific meaning which is not the meaning you think it has.
    He's certainly trying to gaslight me in the sense that he's trying to tell me what I know to be factually true is actually not, and that a part of that factual truth is my own intentions when I did the thing that I did. There are two strands here: what I did, and what I meant by doing that. What I did was to vote for the Lib Dems. Blandly, simply, uncontroversially that was a vote against all the other parties.
    What I intended from that was that (amongst other things) my voice would be registered as saying I this country would be run by people other than Boris and Corbyn. Obviously that was a forlorn hope, clearly there was only going to be one winner, but I didn't feel that I should silence my own voice just because I was in a minority.

    Anyone who says that I was not opposed to Boris and Corbyn is therefore gaslighting me, telling me things that I know to be true (and that I know better than anybody else on this whole earth) are false.
    It would be the same as sending HMRC a cheque for £100 to register your desire that we should all be taxed more.
    Well, no. I'd write to my MP to register that opinion. At least they have the power to do that. HMRC don't set tax rates.
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    You were one of his biggest cheerleaders, ROFL
    Just as you cheered on Corbyn, but I have admitted he has disappointed me and I have attacked his budget since it was announced

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Corbyn on us
    Yes but you're trying to pretend that you saw this coming, when you didn't.

    You were saying literally a month ago how "Rishi must take over now".

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Rishi on us.
    What would you have have done differently to RS over the past 2 years?

    He has had to deal with the biggest Government spending scheme since WW2 in order to preserve companies and peoples jobs. It was incredible how quickly the schemes were set up, they were run very efficiently and they worked. It was an amazing achievement and the Country remains at full employment.

    Now he is looking to recover a tiny percentage of that money he is apparently the worst chancellor ever,

    What utter nonsense!!

    What would I have done differently? Not increase National Insurance.

    Furthermore if there's room for tax cuts (planned for Income Tax) then that should go 100% into reversing the NI hike, not being gifted to those who don't pay NI.

    Sunak isn't the worst Chancellor in history, that accolade still belongs to one Gordon Brown, but Sunak has stolen his clothes and is wearing them. NI is raised because its 2p in tax rises but the media says 1p, Brown knew that and Sunak is copying him.

    I may have tipped him at 250/1 but I don't want a poundshop Gordon Brown in Downing Street.
    So how would you pay for Social Care or would you just keep avoiding the problem?
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,959
    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    And as I detailed on the previous thread, because of Ukraine, there was no window for Sunak to move on the top job.
    20/20 hindsight. If he had gone in hard and fast he could have VONCed Boris out and we'd have gone in to the war under PM pro tem Raab. Once you are at that stage no amount of oooh this is no time for self indulgent leadership contests is going to resurrect boris or de-PM Raab
    My detail was precisely NOT hindsight. Go read it.

    The idea of going into war with PM pro tem Raab is risible.
    It may be risible, but if you get the letters in you get an immediate VONC, if that succeeds Pig Dog is out and Raab goes to see Queenie and there you have it. There's no mechanism for reversing any of that on grounds of "risibility."

    Gray interim report was 31 January, coulda had fatty out by 3 Feb.
    You were NEVER getting the letters in to a backdrop of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    You clearly have not talked to any Conservative MPs on the matter, so your views can be dismissed as uninformed twaddle.
    There was no such backdrop on 31 January

    That's gaslighting right there
    You're an idiot. I wouldn't even bother with the effort of gaslighting you.
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379
    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    I totally agree. Blaming someone for not voting for either of the 2 main party leaders is tantamount to gaslighting, basically forcing every to vote Starmer/Johnson etc. The last time I looked i didn't live in either Holborn or Uxbridge, therefore I couldn't vote for them anyway. I voted for one of the people on my ballot paper. Sadly the winner was that wet fish "Simon Hart", who I never voted for anyway. Don't blame me for electing him or any other tory!
    I'm not blaming anyone for voting for a third party - there's an awful lot of the country where it would make sense to do so in tactical terms, and plenty more where doing so is unlikely to affect the local winner anyway.

    All I'm doing is challenging the idea that voting for a third party is "voting against both PM candidates" because one of the two will always become PM. Saying that you voted for a third party "to vote against both" seems to me more like trying to convince yourself that you are morally righteous. And maybe you are.
    There were not "two" candidates for PM. There were MULTIPLE from a theoretical point of view, and only ONE from a realistic point of view.
    Now who's gaslighting? I distinctly remember the 2019 election and the possibility that Corbyn - who massively outperformed expectations just two years earlier - could have done so again and become PM.
    Average Tory lead from GE triggering to polling day was about 10%. There was no realistic chance that Corbyn would be PM after the 2019 election, only a theoretical chance.
    Of course, if you want to wheel in theoretical chances, then Swinson "could" have become PM. Or Boris could have dropped dead on the campaign trail and Mark Francois "could" have become PM. Or Jenny Jones. Or Ian Blackford at the head of some highly exotic coalition. Plenty of things "could" have happened but were never going to happen.
    The only people who really thought Corbyn might actually beat Boris were the Momentum frothers, and they were utterly deluded.
    Obviously your view of the 2019 election was different from mine. It seems obvious to me that the leader of a party that starts with 200+ seats can possibly become PM and one that starts with fewer than 20 can't.

    The last time there was no effective choice of PM at a general election was 2005.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    Applicant said:

    Endillion said:

    As I recall, it was widely held on here that Sunak had to move for the top job before March, because by April, the tax rises, rise in energy prices and general inflation hitting would make him very unpopular and hence much worse placed to challenge.

    Well done, everyone.

    It didn't have to be that way but he totally misjudged the budget and is justifiably paying the price
    You were one of his biggest cheerleaders, ROFL
    Just as you cheered on Corbyn, but I have admitted he has disappointed me and I have attacked his budget since it was announced

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Corbyn on us
    Yes but you're trying to pretend that you saw this coming, when you didn't.

    You were saying literally a month ago how "Rishi must take over now".

    You do not get to play judge when you would have imposed Rishi on us.
    I was but as it turns out I was wrong and very disappointed in him as I have said, though he may yet become leader and by the way there is no contest when it comes to Corbyn
    Corbyn Derangement Syndrome triggers Whataboutery of the highest order.

    Once again, Corbyn isn’t even a Labour MP, never mind Labour leader.

    Get over it.
    Given that the electorate's only alternative to having had Boris as PM for the last 2.5 years is having had Corbyn as PM for the last 2.5 years, then the comparison is fair.
    Not so. The discussion was about Wales’ future vote: Corbo doesn’t come into it.

    As I say, get over it.
  • Alphabet_SoupAlphabet_Soup Posts: 2,703
    I dispute the idea, implicit in many comments on here, that the principal aim of a senior cabinet minister must be to challenge and supplant the PM, and they should seize the opportunity to do so whenever it arises. Some of them are better than this - serious politicians concerned for the welfare of the country rather personal advancement (even if we may disagree about their policies). Sunak falls into this category, as did David Miliband. I'd happily vote for a party led by either of them.

    Starmer, of course, bided his time while in opposition. Not quite the same thing.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535

    Russian nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky is dead after a long battle with covid.

    If Putin and Lavrov would follow him that would be great.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184

    Russian nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky is dead after a long battle with covid.

    He coughed so violently that he was flung backwards through a third floor window?
    Not many foreign opposition politicians who have campaign quotes which stick in my memory, but his was one:
    "I would bomb Japan. I would sail our large navy around their small island, and if they so much as peeped, I would nuke them."
    On the whole, I think the world is better off without him.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    I totally agree. Blaming someone for not voting for either of the 2 main party leaders is tantamount to gaslighting, basically forcing every to vote Starmer/Johnson etc. The last time I looked i didn't live in either Holborn or Uxbridge, therefore I couldn't vote for them anyway. I voted for one of the people on my ballot paper. Sadly the winner was that wet fish "Simon Hart", who I never voted for anyway. Don't blame me for electing him or any other tory!
    No it isn't. Gaslighting has a specific meaning which is not the meaning you think it has.
    He's certainly trying to gaslight me in the sense that he's trying to tell me what I know to be factually true is actually not, and that a part of that factual truth is my own intentions when I did the thing that I did. There are two strands here: what I did, and what I meant by doing that. What I did was to vote for the Lib Dems. Blandly, simply, uncontroversially that was a vote against all the other parties.
    What I intended from that was that (amongst other things) my voice would be registered as saying I this country would be run by people other than Boris and Corbyn. Obviously that was a forlorn hope, clearly there was only going to be one winner, but I didn't feel that I should silence my own voice just because I was in a minority.

    Anyone who says that I was not opposed to Boris and Corbyn is therefore gaslighting me, telling me things that I know to be true (and that I know better than anybody else on this whole earth) are false.
    I'm not querying your intentions - I'm just pointing out the effect of your actions.
    If by "effect" you mean the fact Boris is PM... I'd heap all the blame/praise for that onto Conservative voters. I don't get to share in any of the glory or regret that comes from that outcome.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    I called Sunak a busted flush when he didn't resign and challenge in December. I regret I did no It go in heavier laying him them, I felt I didn't understand the Next Con Leader market and shied away.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    Ah, so you voted for the impossible. Well, that's your choice - but the effect of it was to delegate the choice of PM to the average voter.

    Making you confront reality is the exact opposite of gaslighting you.
    That attitude is typical of those who support the undemocratic FPTP system.
    The reality is that a vote for other than the two largest parties is a protest vote against the absurdity.

    The reality seems to be that you don't believe in democracy.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    Russian nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky is dead after a long battle with covid.

    I hate to be so blunt about this, but the world is a better place without him in it.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Farooq said:

    TOPPING said:

    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    I totally agree. Blaming someone for not voting for either of the 2 main party leaders is tantamount to gaslighting, basically forcing every to vote Starmer/Johnson etc. The last time I looked i didn't live in either Holborn or Uxbridge, therefore I couldn't vote for them anyway. I voted for one of the people on my ballot paper. Sadly the winner was that wet fish "Simon Hart", who I never voted for anyway. Don't blame me for electing him or any other tory!
    No it isn't. Gaslighting has a specific meaning which is not the meaning you think it has.
    He's certainly trying to gaslight me in the sense that he's trying to tell me what I know to be factually true is actually not, and that a part of that factual truth is my own intentions when I did the thing that I did. There are two strands here: what I did, and what I meant by doing that. What I did was to vote for the Lib Dems. Blandly, simply, uncontroversially that was a vote against all the other parties.
    What I intended from that was that (amongst other things) my voice would be registered as saying I this country would be run by people other than Boris and Corbyn. Obviously that was a forlorn hope, clearly there was only going to be one winner, but I didn't feel that I should silence my own voice just because I was in a minority.

    Anyone who says that I was not opposed to Boris and Corbyn is therefore gaslighting me, telling me things that I know to be true (and that I know better than anybody else on this whole earth) are false.
    It would be the same as sending HMRC a cheque for £100 to register your desire that we should all be taxed more.
    Well, no. I'd write to my MP to register that opinion. At least they have the power to do that. HMRC don't set tax rates.
    Exactly. That's why I used the analogy. It would be making a personal gesture while ignoring the reality of how taxes are raised and the likelihood of any change as a result (probably similarly to writing to your MP about it, that said).

    You voted LD because you didn't want either Johnson or Corbyn to win but the reality is that one of them would win because the LDs would not.

    It is the "none of the above" fallacy. None of the above means one of the above for certain.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043
    Alistair said:

    I called Sunak a busted flush when he didn't resign and challenge in December. I regret I did no It go in heavier laying him them, I felt I didn't understand the Next Con Leader market and shied away.

    I doubt he will even be an MP in five years time.

    There is a time and tide and he failed to take it.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    edited April 2022
    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Farooq said:

    Applicant said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    "Britain deserves better than this Conservative cost of living crisis."

    Does suggest "Britain deserves a Labour cost of living crisis."

    Utter lack of alternative ways to deal with it.

    You've not watched the video, then? It is a clunky slogan though.
    Morning, everybody. By no means as cold today.

    The slogan strips down to 'Britain deserves better', though, and that could be quite potent.

    Because one can't say, surely, and certainly from this side of the fence, that Bad Dog's government shows us in a good light.
    Did Blair's government show us in a good light? So much ephemeral image fluff to strains of 'things can only get better', followed by a disastrous war and an economic crisis within ten years. Such a wasted opportunity.

    The only major crisis Blair had to deal with was 9/11. Johnson, in just a handful of years, has had Covid and Ukraine to deal with. IMV (and I know you'll disagree): he hasn't done too badly on either, and very well in some respects.
    Blair did not really have to deal with 9/11, and his response was probably counter-productive. Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense. We've followed the American lead on sanctions, and continued military cooperation that began under his predecessors. Afghanistan, well, least said, soonest mended. Covid and Brexit were the main crises Boris faced and is facing.
    "Similarly, Boris has not really had to deal with the Ukrainian invasion in any real sense."

    Wow. That seems rather disconnected with reality. Boris has been one of the strongest allies with Ukraine so far (as, to be fair, have the government since 2014/5).

    Note how Russia seems keen to put the UK first amongst their enemies? That's why.
    Russia thought Boris was their friend, that’s why.

    Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing. Which, along with clinging to his job, is the only thing the clown is good at.
    Yes, he thought the PM of the country that was actively training the military of the country he had attacked - and wanted to attack again - was a friend.

    FFS. I know some people hate Boris, but sometimes hatred can lead to a certain amount of irrationality...

    "Otherwise it’s mostly been posturing."

    Again, this seems rather an odd comment. It's been far from posturing, given the limits of what we can actually do. Compare, say, to Germany or France...
    The extent of Johnson's (and his party's) entanglement with Russian wealth is a slow burn story that will likely be running when the immediate military crisis is over. The Russians will have thought all that time grooming him might have been worth something; another misjudgement since the only reaction that would save his skin, at least in the short term, was to go over the top in the other direction.

    Training the Ukranians was a decision taken by the Coalition, which I doubt the clown was even aware of until it came to matter.
    Oh, come on. You are being ridiculous. Operation Orbital was extended in 2019 and expanded in 2020, well before this war. The idea Johnson knew nothing of it is a little ridiculous.
    No it isn't. You forget, I've spent time with him both in public and private. His lack of awareness as to where he is, what he's supposed to be doing and the history and background to anything is closer to zero than in anyone I've ever met.
    And you seem a rather impartial observer. Compare, say, with Nick's interactions with him, which seemed a lot fairer and nearer to the real Johnson (fnarr, fnarr).

    (Jesus. People's irrational hatred of Johnson is turning me, someone who was criticising him before most on here, and who has never voted for him, into a defended of him!)
    If it were just me, you might have a point.

    But I invite you to review what a whole stack of people who've interacted with Johnson - professionally and personally - have said, from his schooldays onwards, and to notice his lack of friends and allies.

    The only people who rate him are those who don't know him.
    Yes, someone who lacks friends and allies managed to get himself elected to a number of positions, and became PM. He did that through lacking friends and allies, obviously ...

    Many people in the 2000s were saying how friendly Blair and Brown were, yet we saw that was a lie even before Brown got power.

    Again, I stress I don't think Johnson is a good PM. But neither do I think he's the venal, nasty and lazy one his haters on here make him out to be. He's a flawed individual, but then so was Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, and May.
    Boris is singularly unsuited to this moment. We need someone able to deal with reality rather than spin lies.
    Well, it's a real shame that Labour gave us the option of voting for an anti-Semite who called this war wrong.

    If having Boris as PM is bad, then Labour need to accept some blame for putting up a far worse candidate at GE 2019.

    I mean, just look at the wrongheadedness of StW's statement on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Signed by Jeremy.
    https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/list-of-signatories-stop-the-war-statement-on-the-crisis-over-ukraine/

    Do you honestly think Corbyn, someone too spineless to say whether he's had the Covid vaccine, and who is utterly wrong on the Ukrainian war - would have handled the two crises better?
    Gold plated whataboutery. If you voted for Boris you take the lions share for this nonsense. It was perfectly possible not to vote for either. My late father in law, a lifelong Tory, cast his last vote for the Lib Dems because he didn’t trust Boris.
    Voting for neither was just washing your hands of the unpalatable decision between two inadequate candidates and leaving it to others.
    Absolute horseshit. You don't get to push the blame onto those of us who actively opposed both.
    I'm sorry if you don't like the reality that there was a choice at the last general election of exactly two possible Prime Ministers.
    That's odd, I seem to remember more parties standing nationally than just those two.
    Perhaps you mean just those with a realistic chance of winning? In which case you're still wrong, the Conservatives were very obviously going to win it.

    So there was a choice of ONE, and I said no. And I was right.
    No, I meant those with a possible chance of winning, which is why I used the word possible...

    As for where I put the blame? Primarily on to the Labour MPs who didn't understand their leadership election format and gave Corbyn the nominations in the first place.

    I don't blame anyone for washing their hands of the choice, but to pretend you "opposed both" is risible.
    If everyone had done what I'd done, we'd not have either Boris or Corbyn as PM. It's actually that simple.

    You're starting to resemble that Northern Irish joke, when new kid moves into the street and the other kids ask is he's a Protestant or a Catholic. "Neither, I'm a Muslim," he replies. And after a long pause, the other kids ask "yeah, but are you a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?"

    Ask yourself this, if someone didn't want either Boris or Corbyn as PM, what the hell else COULD they do other than vote for a third party?
    They could wash their hands of the choice and vote for a third party, but that would be delegating the choice to other voters.

    Since (like everyone else who posts here) you are more informed than the average voter and (like the vast majority of people who post here) you are more intelligent than the average voter, delegating the choice to the average voter seems to me to be a strange thing for you to have done.
    Can you actually stop trying to gaslight me, please?

    I know what I voted for, which was emphatically "neither of them". That was a considered, deliberate choice and it starts and ends there. My choice wasn't "delegated" to anyone else, I made it myself. What appears on another person's ballot paper is THEIR choice, not mine.
    I totally agree. Blaming someone for not voting for either of the 2 main party leaders is tantamount to gaslighting, basically forcing every to vote Starmer/Johnson etc. The last time I looked i didn't live in either Holborn or Uxbridge, therefore I couldn't vote for them anyway. I voted for one of the people on my ballot paper. Sadly the winner was that wet fish "Simon Hart", who I never voted for anyway. Don't blame me for electing him or any other tory!
    No it isn't. Gaslighting has a specific meaning which is not the meaning you think it has.
    He's certainly trying to gaslight me in the sense that he's trying to tell me what I know to be factually true is actually not, and that a part of that factual truth is my own intentions when I did the thing that I did. There are two strands here: what I did, and what I meant by doing that. What I did was to vote for the Lib Dems. Blandly, simply, uncontroversially that was a vote against all the other parties.
    What I intended from that was that (amongst other things) my voice would be registered as saying I this country would be run by people other than Boris and Corbyn. Obviously that was a forlorn hope, clearly there was only going to be one winner, but I didn't feel that I should silence my own voice just because I was in a minority.

    Anyone who says that I was not opposed to Boris and Corbyn is therefore gaslighting me, telling me things that I know to be true (and that I know better than anybody else on this whole earth) are false.
    I'm not querying your intentions - I'm just pointing out the effect of your actions.
    If by "effect" you mean the fact Boris is PM... I'd heap all the blame/praise for that onto Conservative voters. I don't get to share in any of the glory or regret that comes from that outcome.
    Conservative MPs, rather than voters, when "the most sophisticated electorate in the world" chose as its leader, and thus, immediately, our Prime Minister, a man they must have known was a lazy, shambolic, pathological liar who was susceptible to all the charges they were making against Corbyn.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 38,879
    Sunak was given the Chancellor's job specifically because he was considered a lightweight mediocrity, which is basically why all current Cabinet ministers are in place. So it is no surprise that this is exactly what he has turned out to be.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    Sunak was given the Chancellor's job specifically because he was considered a lightweight mediocrity, which is basically why all current Cabinet ministers are in place. So it is no surprise that this is exactly what he has turned out to be.

    Not really, or are you forgetting that he successfully managed one of the biggest state interventions in the economy in recent history?
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