Running focus groups in England & Scotland over past few days & I think for perceptions of Starmer personally the Robbins sacking is one of the worst things he has done. Other things obviously hurt more politically but this seems to have gone directly to how people feel about him
Everywhere it’s “scapegoat” “fall guy” “doing what he was told” “buck stops with the PM” and it’s not about the who knew what where when, or following it that closely but a sense of unfairness
Feels right. I'm not a Starmer hater - I find a lot of the abuse sloppy and unhinged - but the Robbins thing has landed badly with me. If it wasn't for my betting position I'd now be onboard with an exit and leadership contest this summer.
This just proves you’re a slow learner. Which you are
The rest of us realised Starmer is a venal prick many months ago. You’ve now caught up. Belatedly
Ironically this means I’m not that outraged by the Robbins sacking. But only because I already accept this is what Starmer does. So I expect nothing better
He achieves nothing, he believes in almost nothing (except his career and hating Britain), he is largely a void. But he is very good at forcing blame for his own mistakes onto others. I’ll give him that
I said similar earlier. We sound like the Boris haters that "always knew" he was a wrongun whose character faults would lead him to destruction in the end! Although I think we acknowledged Boris was mortal, and had his bad points. The problem for Sir Keir fans is they thought his worst qualites were being too pure, too naive and honest for a politician, rather than seeing he was a scheming, dishonest snide from the start, so the disappointment is greater
“Which Reform tribe are you? Take this quick quiz!
Q1: the English language: A. Is ever-evolving and open-source B. Has correct and incorrect usage
Q2: what do you hate most? A. Immigrants B. Wind turbines
Q3: Liz Truss was: A. Into kink B. On the right track, economically”
Etc”
I don't really hate wind turbines - how can you hate an object? Though I do believe that people regarding them as beautiful just stems from a misguided associating with 'cheap, clean energy' - we regard belching smoke stacks as ugly because of their association with planetary destruction. But perhaps there is a beauty in a belching smoke stack. It means prosperity - energy turning into things. People in gainful work. Plants and trees growing with greater vigour. I wonder if people did find them beautiful in the early days of industrialisation (though obviously whole sooty cities of them wasn't very nice).
Dark satanic mills?
They gained that reputation yes. Perhaps we have always regarded industry as ugly from the beginning. I haven't really read around it.
Industry lured agricultural workers with the promise of better pay and year-round work but machines were often dangerous, accommodation cramped and air, food and water polluted.
The life of a menial agricultural worker was long hours of hard work, seasonal unemployment and continual deprivation.
It was not some 'merry old England' rural idyll.
For that matter the problems of the modern rural working class are often overlooked.
Until 100 years ago the rural working classes rarely left their village, unless to somewhere nearby that was within walking distance. After WW1, local buses enabled them to go to the nearest market town for the pictures, dancing and to meet non local people. Since the destruction of local bus services, they now need a car. If they don’t, and particularly if they are elderly, they can rarely leave their village again. Progress followed by regress. Edited to remove previously unnoticed gubbins.
At least two of my mid-19th ancestors left rural SW Wales to work in the mines. For an example of rural walking, see ‘The Diary of Thomas Jenkins of Llandeilo’, written in the mid 19th Century.
Running focus groups in England & Scotland over past few days & I think for perceptions of Starmer personally the Robbins sacking is one of the worst things he has done. Other things obviously hurt more politically but this seems to have gone directly to how people feel about him
Everywhere it’s “scapegoat” “fall guy” “doing what he was told” “buck stops with the PM” and it’s not about the who knew what where when, or following it that closely but a sense of unfairness
Feels right. I'm not a Starmer hater - I find a lot of the abuse sloppy and unhinged - but the Robbins thing has landed badly with me. If it wasn't for my betting position I'd now be onboard with an exit and leadership contest this summer.
This just proves you’re a slow learner. Which you are
The rest of us realised Starmer is a venal prick many months ago. You’ve now caught up. Belatedly
Ironically this means I’m not that outraged by the Robbins sacking. But only because I already accept this is what Starmer does. So I expect nothing better
He achieves nothing, he believes in almost nothing (except his career and hating Britain), he is largely a void. But he is very good at forcing blame for his own mistakes onto others. I’ll give him that
Cool detached judgement happens to be one of my strong suits. It's been that way all my life.
“Which Reform tribe are you? Take this quick quiz!
Q1: the English language: A. Is ever-evolving and open-source B. Has correct and incorrect usage
Q2: what do you hate most? A. Immigrants B. Wind turbines
Q3: Liz Truss was: A. Into kink B. On the right track, economically”
Etc”
I don't really hate wind turbines - how can you hate an object? Though I do believe that people regarding them as beautiful just stems from a misguided associating with 'cheap, clean energy' - we regard belching smoke stacks as ugly because of their association with planetary destruction. But perhaps there is a beauty in a belching smoke stack. It means prosperity - energy turning into things. People in gainful work. Plants and trees growing with greater vigour. I wonder if people did find them beautiful in the early days of industrialisation (though obviously whole sooty cities of them wasn't very nice).
Dark satanic mills?
They gained that reputation yes. Perhaps we have always regarded industry as ugly from the beginning. I haven't really read around it.
Industry lured agricultural workers with the promise of better pay and year-round work but machines were often dangerous, accommodation cramped and air, food and water polluted.
The life of a menial agricultural worker was long hours of hard work, seasonal unemployment and continual deprivation.
It was not some 'merry old England' rural idyll.
For that matter the problems of the modern rural working class are often overlooked.
I don't think it is a major thing, but I think there is an undercurrent of societal thought that industrialising was all one big mistake and life was better before.
I'd not have liked to have personally been there during the industrialising years, but I'm very grateful they happened.
Prelapsarianism is common in politics. Reform UK. Want to go back 75 years. The Greens want to go back 400-4000 years.
If Labour aren’t to have a female leader then they should think out of the box and go for Al Carns .
He could at least tell the plastic patriot Farage to go fxck himself .
If Ed Miliband ends up as leader then Labour deserve to become extinct .
Al Carns might be a really good Prime Minister for 2035 or so. Maybe. That he's being promoted now, and the response isn't hysterical laughter, is a sign of just how frivolous our politics has become.
That's not to say he shouldn't be on our screens attracting NF as much as he can. Same goes for Burnham and the rest of them. One reason for all of this is that we have all let No 10 become the source and focus of everything, and then wondered why it keeps collapsing.
I don’t think you needs years of experience as an MP to become PM .
If Labour want a fresh start then I see no reason why Carns shouldn’t become leader .
He would represent an enormous gamble, though. What evidence is there that he'd actually be any good at it ?
I don't know that it's even possible to be good at it any more. AI, social media, etc. are changing society way faster than our system of democratic governance and legislative regime can adapt.
Maybe get AI Carns in then
Al Carns is Labour's Ben Wallace, a barely plausible figure from a military background. It is hard to see any route to Downing Street opening up in the next year or two.
The new Dan Jarvis. Everybody likes a soldier. It's something to do with the shoulders, the set of the head, the steady gaze and voice. It reassures. It says, "it's ok you're safe now".
Heath was our last PM who served in the Army.
I am not convinced that our voters really like ex military politicians, and military command is very different to the skills needed for parliamentary politics.
He was also the last PM whose political personality was completely forged by WW2. That idealistic vision of Western Europe moving beyond antagonism and nation states.
Yes, and it is quite interesting how public memory of WW2 has evolved over the years. From building a land fit for heroes, to establishing post-nationalist international organisations in the cause of peace to mawkish sentimentality and cable tying flags to lamposts.
"We stood alone once, we can do it again"
I remember that (and variations) in vox pops during the Brexit negotiations in support of the hardline No Deal position.
Those people will all be voting Reform now, I'd imagine.
Alone, apart from our large multicultural, multiethnic empire...and a lot of refugees of fighting age...
I do wonder if our reliance on said Empire in the war helps to explain our inability to stand up for western modernity and why we've made such a virtue of multiculturalism.
Western modernity is multicultural.
Conflating diversity with modernity is at the root of a lot of our present problems. Progress comes from new technology, not demographic transformation.
But the mere act of defining modernity or progress in technological terms is a rejection of earlier definitions of progress in terms of the Volk, of the advancement of one ethnic group. Technocracy is definitionally anti-racist.
Technocracy ≠ technology.
The biggest advances in technology often come from different groups finding new ways to kill each other or avoid being killed.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Mahmood’s spokesman dismissing something as “tittle-tattle”: that means it’s true. If it was simply false, he’d have said that. “Tittle-tattle” is belittling what was said, but not actually denying it.
The first runner to state that they will keep Reeves as Chancellor will be the winner in my view. Odd that Rachel from accounts should be a touchstone against doom, but a quick glance at the Labour backbenches and it seems so very clear.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
Problem is women left liberal leaders don’t have that great a record against populist right leaders, see Gillard, Hillary and Harris.
A white male more macho than Ed Miliband and with a bit more personality than Starmer is their best bet eg their own Biden or Albanese or Carney or Macron. On that basis Streeting or Burnham
'A white male more macho than Ed Miliband'
Are you serious
It is time labour appointed a woman, not some white macho male
Most women would already vote Labour over Reform, with a few having gone Green or LD or still Tory. It is males, especially white males, who are now massively for Farage over Starmer and where Reform has its biggest lead
“Which Reform tribe are you? Take this quick quiz!
Q1: the English language: A. Is ever-evolving and open-source B. Has correct and incorrect usage
Q2: what do you hate most? A. Immigrants B. Wind turbines
Q3: Liz Truss was: A. Into kink B. On the right track, economically”
Etc”
I don't really hate wind turbines - how can you hate an object? Though I do believe that people regarding them as beautiful just stems from a misguided associating with 'cheap, clean energy' - we regard belching smoke stacks as ugly because of their association with planetary destruction. But perhaps there is a beauty in a belching smoke stack. It means prosperity - energy turning into things. People in gainful work. Plants and trees growing with greater vigour. I wonder if people did find them beautiful in the early days of industrialisation (though obviously whole sooty cities of them wasn't very nice).
Dark satanic mills?
They gained that reputation yes. Perhaps we have always regarded industry as ugly from the beginning. I haven't really read around it.
Industry lured agricultural workers with the promise of better pay and year-round work but machines were often dangerous, accommodation cramped and air, food and water polluted.
The life of a menial agricultural worker was long hours of hard work, seasonal unemployment and continual deprivation.
It was not some 'merry old England' rural idyll.
For that matter the problems of the modern rural working class are often overlooked.
I don't think it is a major thing, but I think there is an undercurrent of societal thought that industrialising was all one big mistake and life was better before.
I'd not have liked to have personally been there during the industrialising years, but I'm very grateful they happened.
Prelapsarianism is common in politics. Reform UK. Want to go back 75 years. The Greens want to go back 400-4000 years.
Running focus groups in England & Scotland over past few days & I think for perceptions of Starmer personally the Robbins sacking is one of the worst things he has done. Other things obviously hurt more politically but this seems to have gone directly to how people feel about him
Everywhere it’s “scapegoat” “fall guy” “doing what he was told” “buck stops with the PM” and it’s not about the who knew what where when, or following it that closely but a sense of unfairness
Feels right. I'm not a Starmer hater - I find a lot of the abuse sloppy and unhinged - but the Robbins thing has landed badly with me. If it wasn't for my betting position I'd now be onboard with an exit and leadership contest this summer.
This just proves you’re a slow learner. Which you are
The rest of us realised Starmer is a venal prick many months ago. You’ve now caught up. Belatedly
Ironically this means I’m not that outraged by the Robbins sacking. But only because I already accept this is what Starmer does. So I expect nothing better
He achieves nothing, he believes in almost nothing (except his career and hating Britain), he is largely a void. But he is very good at forcing blame for his own mistakes onto others. I’ll give him that
I find it rather deplorable that the only thing that's turning these Sir loyalists away from him is the fact that he has sacked a blob member. Freezing grannies fine, silenced booming bang victims fine, giving away £38bn and a strategic island fine, eroding free speech and jury trials fine, appointing mandelson fine, economy in free fall fine, but SACKING A WONDERFUL PUBLIC SERVANT LIKE THAT IS TRULY BEYOND THE PALE.
The first runner to state that they will keep Reeves as Chancellor will be the winner in my view. Odd that Rachel from accounts should be a touchstone against doom, but a quick glance at the Labour backbenches and it seems so very clear.
I think the opposite. Rachel is clearly never going to get a job under any other leader, and is kept on only because Starmer knows that removing your chancellor results in losing your own job.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
Problem is women left liberal leaders don’t have that great a record against populist right leaders, see Gillard, Hillary and Harris.
A white male more macho than Ed Miliband and with a bit more personality than Starmer is their best bet eg their own Biden or Albanese or Carney or Macron. On that basis Streeting or Burnham
Hillary got more votes than Trump, just in the wrong places.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
It's a decent person spec. The challenge is attaching a name to it.
You're not describing Cooper, I don't think you're describing Mahmood (yes, some agree with her policies, but she is putting them forward with waaay too much relish). I'm unconvinced it's Rayner. I guess it could be Phillipson. Nothing too awful has happened in education, and she didn't embarass herself in the deputy leadership election.
I do think they need someone to do the John Major thing of getting the self-procaimed Big Beasts to naff off.
God forbid a politician have conviction eh?
True socialists know you can have a welfare state, or you can have open borders. You cannot have both.
Unfortunately most of the Labour party are, in the immortal words of Clem, 'not up to it'.
“Which Reform tribe are you? Take this quick quiz!
Q1: the English language: A. Is ever-evolving and open-source B. Has correct and incorrect usage
Q2: what do you hate most? A. Immigrants B. Wind turbines
Q3: Liz Truss was: A. Into kink B. On the right track, economically”
Etc”
I don't really hate wind turbines - how can you hate an object? Though I do believe that people regarding them as beautiful just stems from a misguided associating with 'cheap, clean energy' - we regard belching smoke stacks as ugly because of their association with planetary destruction. But perhaps there is a beauty in a belching smoke stack. It means prosperity - energy turning into things. People in gainful work. Plants and trees growing with greater vigour. I wonder if people did find them beautiful in the early days of industrialisation (though obviously whole sooty cities of them wasn't very nice).
Dark satanic mills?
They gained that reputation yes. Perhaps we have always regarded industry as ugly from the beginning. I haven't really read around it.
Industry lured agricultural workers with the promise of better pay and year-round work but machines were often dangerous, accommodation cramped and air, food and water polluted.
The life of a menial agricultural worker was long hours of hard work, seasonal unemployment and continual deprivation.
It was not some 'merry old England' rural idyll.
For that matter the problems of the modern rural working class are often overlooked.
I don't think it is a major thing, but I think there is an undercurrent of societal thought that industrialising was all one big mistake and life was better before.
I'd not have liked to have personally been there during the industrialising years, but I'm very grateful they happened.
Prelapsarianism is common in politics. Reform UK. Want to go back 75 years. The Greens want to go back 400-4000 years.
The Greens just want to go back to 2017.
🎵🎶🎵🎶 Oh Jeremy Corbyn 🎵🎶🎵🎶
I presume must be odds on he does a turn on Pyramid stage at Glasto this year.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
Problem is women left liberal leaders don’t have that great a record against populist right leaders, see Gillard, Hillary and Harris.
A white male more macho than Ed Miliband and with a bit more personality than Starmer is their best bet eg their own Biden or Albanese or Carney or Macron. On that basis Streeting or Burnham
Hillary got more votes than Trump, just in the wrong places.
Which is the US system, FPTP like we have, Biden got votes in the right places and beat Trump in the Electoral College and popular vote
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
“Which Reform tribe are you? Take this quick quiz!
Q1: the English language: A. Is ever-evolving and open-source B. Has correct and incorrect usage
Q2: what do you hate most? A. Immigrants B. Wind turbines
Q3: Liz Truss was: A. Into kink B. On the right track, economically”
Etc”
I don't really hate wind turbines - how can you hate an object? Though I do believe that people regarding them as beautiful just stems from a misguided associating with 'cheap, clean energy' - we regard belching smoke stacks as ugly because of their association with planetary destruction. But perhaps there is a beauty in a belching smoke stack. It means prosperity - energy turning into things. People in gainful work. Plants and trees growing with greater vigour. I wonder if people did find them beautiful in the early days of industrialisation (though obviously whole sooty cities of them wasn't very nice).
Dark satanic mills?
They gained that reputation yes. Perhaps we have always regarded industry as ugly from the beginning. I haven't really read around it.
Industry lured agricultural workers with the promise of better pay and year-round work but machines were often dangerous, accommodation cramped and air, food and water polluted.
The life of a menial agricultural worker was long hours of hard work, seasonal unemployment and continual deprivation.
It was not some 'merry old England' rural idyll.
For that matter the problems of the modern rural working class are often overlooked.
I don't think it is a major thing, but I think there is an undercurrent of societal thought that industrialising was all one big mistake and life was better before.
I'd not have liked to have personally been there during the industrialising years, but I'm very grateful they happened.
Prelapsarianism is common in politics. Reform UK. Want to go back 75 years. The Greens want to go back 400-4000 years.
The Greens just want to go back to 2017.
🎵🎶🎵🎶 Oh Jeremy Corbyn 🎵🎶🎵🎶
I presume must be odds on he does a turn on Pyramid stage at Glasto this year.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
Cleverly wouldn’t throw his lot in with Farage though, so as I said if Kemi can’t get many Labour or LD tactical votes Cleverly might
On topic... it's hard to see Ed M developing into a coronating situation. Labour show no signs of halting their headlong pursuit of Fukker votes and Ed M, being the human embodiment of Net Zero, is Belphagor to the vaping class.
Labour have been going after the Fukker vote? I must have missed that, apart from the Mahmood stuff which I feel must be ineffective because they give the impression of doing it very reluctantly and with most of the membership hating her.
And Our Ange is said to be keen on reversing the Mahmood changes, and kicking out the Home Sec
Basically Labour are doing everything they possibly can to deliver a Reform government
In other news the FT has a new Saturday “lunch with” article today (where they lunch with a notable person and chat about the food and the notable person and their views: an oddly excellent format)
This weekend it’s Lord Chagos Hermer, the controversial Attorney General. The comments below the line are brutal and contemptuous of Hermer, so much so that one FT journalist tried to wade in and complain about the rage and hatred and change the tone, but he failed, and so they’ve closed comments completely. Before noon on the day of publication
And this is the FT! Not the Telegraph. The anger and disgust now directed at Labour is, I think, unprecedented
It's that wording of Hermer's which is shocking - "leaving us a little wiggle room if there have been no killings". It's the kind of clever cynical phrasing so reminiscent of Post Office lawyers with no apparent regard to the substance or any ethical considerations.
“Which Reform tribe are you? Take this quick quiz!
Q1: the English language: A. Is ever-evolving and open-source B. Has correct and incorrect usage
Q2: what do you hate most? A. Immigrants B. Wind turbines
Q3: Liz Truss was: A. Into kink B. On the right track, economically”
Etc”
I don't really hate wind turbines - how can you hate an object? Though I do believe that people regarding them as beautiful just stems from a misguided associating with 'cheap, clean energy' - we regard belching smoke stacks as ugly because of their association with planetary destruction. But perhaps there is a beauty in a belching smoke stack. It means prosperity - energy turning into things. People in gainful work. Plants and trees growing with greater vigour. I wonder if people did find them beautiful in the early days of industrialisation (though obviously whole sooty cities of them wasn't very nice).
Dark satanic mills?
They gained that reputation yes. Perhaps we have always regarded industry as ugly from the beginning. I haven't really read around it.
Industry lured agricultural workers with the promise of better pay and year-round work but machines were often dangerous, accommodation cramped and air, food and water polluted.
The life of a menial agricultural worker was long hours of hard work, seasonal unemployment and continual deprivation.
It was not some 'merry old England' rural idyll.
For that matter the problems of the modern rural working class are often overlooked.
I don't think it is a major thing, but I think there is an undercurrent of societal thought that industrialising was all one big mistake and life was better before.
I'd not have liked to have personally been there during the industrialising years, but I'm very grateful they happened.
Prelapsarianism is common in politics. Reform UK. Want to go back 75 years. The Greens want to go back 400-4000 years.
The Greens just want to go back to 2017.
🎵🎶🎵🎶 Oh Jeremy Corbyn 🎵🎶🎵🎶
I presume must be odds on he does a turn on Pyramid stage at Glasto this year.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
Comments like this make me look forward to a properly right wing agenda that an IMF bailout would necessitate.
I know I keep banging on about this, but it's pointless changing Starmer until Labour picks an ideology (if that's the right word) - what are the problems facing the UK and how do we fix them. Miliband has an ideology - do lots of Green stuff, that'll fix things. Mahmood has an ideology - deport everybody who isn't Christian or Hindu, and how dare somebody call her a racist for saying that you dirty white liberal you. Streeting has an ideology - privatise things, that'll fix things!
Miliband - Green Labour Mahmood - Blue Labour Streeting - New Labour
To be honest, I'm not convinced by any of them, but in terms of the marketplace of ideas, that's what's on the table.
I feel this illustrates a problem. The word 'ideology' is hard. The examples here are hardly ideology, they are the alleged one word solutions to what look like single issues of of the manifold.
I suggest ideology is a pyramid. What sort of concepts you put at the top both tells you what to expect, and also declares how serious you are about the universe and everything.
For example, Reform have at least two competing concepts at or towards the top of the pyramid. Two are: nationalist post WWII social democrat and the other, entirely inconsistent, is some sort of nationalist free market buccaneering libertarianism. Both accompanied by a sneaking regard for autocracy. The first belongs to the voters of Clacton etc, the second to Nigel Farage in his natural evolved habitat.
I can just about do this about Reform. As to Labour, not a clue. And if I read him rightly even the great Nick Palmer doesn't know either. Tories? Don't ask. Greens? The mirror of Reform - two competing and incompatible systems fighting. Not being looked at closely because unlike Reform they are not (yet) taken seriously.
Er, blush. Yes, it's not knowing what Labour stands for any more that is making me flirt with the Greens - I went along with Blair even though I wasn't sure about aspects of his project, as the existence of a project was exciting in itself. It was interesting that Zack won overwhelmingly - I think that part of that was simply relief at the offer of a reasonably clear vision, even if it was not entirely realistic. Moreover, what discussion of strategy goes on in Labour seems focused on what will work to win back voters (whether from Reform or elsewhere) - IMO we should be discussing a) what we think is right and b) how to sell it and who to sell it to, not putting b) first.
Thanks. The problem is deep seated in our trivial age. To trivialise it further there is a sort of progression from:
Blair: What counts is what works (meaning what is good for the country as a whole; tendentious but could be well intended)
Next: What counts is what works (meaning what is good for party PR and our voters and would be voters)
Next: What counts is what works (meaning how we maximise our supporters in the next election)
Next and current: What counts is what works (meaning how can we so demonise and blame everyone else that as many as 28% or so of voters will think we are the least worst option in an election in which all parties talk in vapid cliches).
“Which Reform tribe are you? Take this quick quiz!
Q1: the English language: A. Is ever-evolving and open-source B. Has correct and incorrect usage
Q2: what do you hate most? A. Immigrants B. Wind turbines
Q3: Liz Truss was: A. Into kink B. On the right track, economically”
Etc”
I don't really hate wind turbines - how can you hate an object? Though I do believe that people regarding them as beautiful just stems from a misguided associating with 'cheap, clean energy' - we regard belching smoke stacks as ugly because of their association with planetary destruction. But perhaps there is a beauty in a belching smoke stack. It means prosperity - energy turning into things. People in gainful work. Plants and trees growing with greater vigour. I wonder if people did find them beautiful in the early days of industrialisation (though obviously whole sooty cities of them wasn't very nice).
Dark satanic mills?
They gained that reputation yes. Perhaps we have always regarded industry as ugly from the beginning. I haven't really read around it.
Industry lured agricultural workers with the promise of better pay and year-round work but machines were often dangerous, accommodation cramped and air, food and water polluted.
The life of a menial agricultural worker was long hours of hard work, seasonal unemployment and continual deprivation.
It was not some 'merry old England' rural idyll.
For that matter the problems of the modern rural working class are often overlooked.
I don't think it is a major thing, but I think there is an undercurrent of societal thought that industrialising was all one big mistake and life was better before.
I'd not have liked to have personally been there during the industrialising years, but I'm very grateful they happened.
Prelapsarianism is common in politics. Reform UK. Want to go back 75 years. The Greens want to go back 400-4000 years.
The Greens just want to go back to 2017.
🎵🎶🎵🎶 Oh Jeremy Corbyn 🎵🎶🎵🎶
I presume must be odds on he does a turn on Pyramid stage at Glasto this year.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
Problem is women left liberal leaders don’t have that great a record against populist right leaders, see Gillard, Hillary and Harris.
A white male more macho than Ed Miliband and with a bit more personality than Starmer is their best bet eg their own Biden or Albanese or Carney or Macron. On that basis Streeting or Burnham
Hillary got more votes than Trump, just in the wrong places.
Which is the US system, FPTP like we have, Biden got votes in the right places and beat Trump in the Electoral College and popular vote
The electoral college is FPTP on steroids, with a deliberate bias towards smaller states, which currently favours the GOP.
“Which Reform tribe are you? Take this quick quiz!
Q1: the English language: A. Is ever-evolving and open-source B. Has correct and incorrect usage
Q2: what do you hate most? A. Immigrants B. Wind turbines
Q3: Liz Truss was: A. Into kink B. On the right track, economically”
Etc”
I don't really hate wind turbines - how can you hate an object? Though I do believe that people regarding them as beautiful just stems from a misguided associating with 'cheap, clean energy' - we regard belching smoke stacks as ugly because of their association with planetary destruction. But perhaps there is a beauty in a belching smoke stack. It means prosperity - energy turning into things. People in gainful work. Plants and trees growing with greater vigour. I wonder if people did find them beautiful in the early days of industrialisation (though obviously whole sooty cities of them wasn't very nice).
Dark satanic mills?
They gained that reputation yes. Perhaps we have always regarded industry as ugly from the beginning. I haven't really read around it.
Industry lured agricultural workers with the promise of better pay and year-round work but machines were often dangerous, accommodation cramped and air, food and water polluted.
The life of a menial agricultural worker was long hours of hard work, seasonal unemployment and continual deprivation.
It was not some 'merry old England' rural idyll.
For that matter the problems of the modern rural working class are often overlooked.
I don't think it is a major thing, but I think there is an undercurrent of societal thought that industrialising was all one big mistake and life was better before.
I'd not have liked to have personally been there during the industrialising years, but I'm very grateful they happened.
Prelapsarianism is common in politics. Reform UK. Want to go back 75 years. The Greens want to go back 400-4000 years.
The Greens just want to go back to 2017.
🎵🎶🎵🎶 Oh Jeremy Corbyn 🎵🎶🎵🎶
Jezza was the man but now we've got another ...
It's Zack. It's Zack. It's Zack to who we all belong
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
So... Angela Rayner?
From what I can see the Tories came back into power from the wilderness through David Cameron. A relatively liberal Eton posh boy Tory who was a good communicator.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
Comments like this make me look forward to a properly right wing agenda that an IMF bailout would necessitate.
Comments like this make me feel sorry for all the right-wingers who still fantasise about an IMF bailout that they’re never going to see.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
Problem is women left liberal leaders don’t have that great a record against populist right leaders, see Gillard, Hillary and Harris.
A white male more macho than Ed Miliband and with a bit more personality than Starmer is their best bet eg their own Biden or Albanese or Carney or Macron. On that basis Streeting or Burnham
'A white male more macho than Ed Miliband'
Are you serious
It is time labour appointed a woman, not some white macho male
Most women would already vote Labour over Reform, with a few having gone Green or LD or still Tory. It is males, especially white males, who are now massively for Farage over Starmer and where Reform has its biggest lead
And chase labour voting women away with a white macho male
Haven't we learnt yet how toxic Trump, Hegseth and Farage are ?
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
So... Angela Rayner?
From what I can see the Tories came back into power from the wilderness through David Cameron. A relatively liberal Eton posh boy Tory who was a good communicator.
Labour are already in power, they need to hold the voters Starmer won in 2024 not try and pick a female Corbyn like Rayner.
Cameron had to win voters who voted for Blair and New Labour over Howard’s Tories in 2005
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
Cleverly wouldn’t throw his lot in with Farage though, so as I said if Kemi can’t get many Labour or LD tactical votes Cleverly might
It is interesting that you think that someone like Cleverly can show enough ankle to attract Lib Dem and Labour switchers, without sending equal (or higher) numbers of traditional Tory voters to Reform. It would at least involve a firm commitment to Net Zero and remaining in the ECHR. Those would cause a massive hemorrhage to the right.
“Which Reform tribe are you? Take this quick quiz!
Q1: the English language: A. Is ever-evolving and open-source B. Has correct and incorrect usage
Q2: what do you hate most? A. Immigrants B. Wind turbines
Q3: Liz Truss was: A. Into kink B. On the right track, economically”
Etc”
I don't really hate wind turbines - how can you hate an object? Though I do believe that people regarding them as beautiful just stems from a misguided associating with 'cheap, clean energy' - we regard belching smoke stacks as ugly because of their association with planetary destruction. But perhaps there is a beauty in a belching smoke stack. It means prosperity - energy turning into things. People in gainful work. Plants and trees growing with greater vigour. I wonder if people did find them beautiful in the early days of industrialisation (though obviously whole sooty cities of them wasn't very nice).
Dark satanic mills?
They gained that reputation yes. Perhaps we have always regarded industry as ugly from the beginning. I haven't really read around it.
Industry lured agricultural workers with the promise of better pay and year-round work but machines were often dangerous, accommodation cramped and air, food and water polluted.
The life of a menial agricultural worker was long hours of hard work, seasonal unemployment and continual deprivation.
It was not some 'merry old England' rural idyll.
For that matter the problems of the modern rural working class are often overlooked.
I don't think it is a major thing, but I think there is an undercurrent of societal thought that industrialising was all one big mistake and life was better before.
I'd not have liked to have personally been there during the industrialising years, but I'm very grateful they happened.
Prelapsarianism is common in politics. Reform UK. Want to go back 75 years. The Greens want to go back 400-4000 years.
The Greens just want to go back to 2017.
🎵🎶🎵🎶 Oh Jeremy Corbyn 🎵🎶🎵🎶
Jezza was the man but now we've got another ...
It's Zack. It's Zack. It's Zack to who we all belong
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
Problem is women left liberal leaders don’t have that great a record against populist right leaders, see Gillard, Hillary and Harris.
A white male more macho than Ed Miliband and with a bit more personality than Starmer is their best bet eg their own Biden or Albanese or Carney or Macron. On that basis Streeting or Burnham
'A white male more macho than Ed Miliband'
Are you serious
It is time labour appointed a woman, not some white macho male
Seems eminently plausible they could still elect a woman who is more macho than Ed Milliband.
“Which Reform tribe are you? Take this quick quiz!
Q1: the English language: A. Is ever-evolving and open-source B. Has correct and incorrect usage
Q2: what do you hate most? A. Immigrants B. Wind turbines
Q3: Liz Truss was: A. Into kink B. On the right track, economically”
Etc”
I don't really hate wind turbines - how can you hate an object? Though I do believe that people regarding them as beautiful just stems from a misguided associating with 'cheap, clean energy' - we regard belching smoke stacks as ugly because of their association with planetary destruction. But perhaps there is a beauty in a belching smoke stack. It means prosperity - energy turning into things. People in gainful work. Plants and trees growing with greater vigour. I wonder if people did find them beautiful in the early days of industrialisation (though obviously whole sooty cities of them wasn't very nice).
Dark satanic mills?
They gained that reputation yes. Perhaps we have always regarded industry as ugly from the beginning. I haven't really read around it.
Industry lured agricultural workers with the promise of better pay and year-round work but machines were often dangerous, accommodation cramped and air, food and water polluted.
The life of a menial agricultural worker was long hours of hard work, seasonal unemployment and continual deprivation.
It was not some 'merry old England' rural idyll.
For that matter the problems of the modern rural working class are often overlooked.
Until 100 years ago the rural working classes rarely left their village, unless to somewhere nearby that was within walking distance. After WW1, local buses enabled them to go to the nearest market town for the pictures, dancing and to meet non local people. Since the destruction of local bus services, they now need a car. If they don’t, and particularly if they are elderly, they can rarely leave their village again. Progress followed by regress. Edited to remove previously unnoticed gubbins.
At least two of my mid-19th ancestors left rural SW Wales to work in the mines. For an example of rural walking, see ‘The Diary of Thomas Jenkins of Llandeilo’, written in the mid 19th Century.
My great grandfather used to walk to his work at a quarry past the workhouse in St Asaph
Remarkable that 2 of his great great grandchildren were born in that same workhouse in 1966 & 1971, but now a maternity hospital
The Guardian coverage of this sad story is odd. having outlined the facts about an assisted death in Switzerland it then goes on about the failure of the current domestic bill in parliament.
But the two have no link at all. The failed bill only applies to those with 6 months or less to live, which does not apply here. It is an odd and jarring juxtaposition.
(By the way, as a supporter of assisted dying, the six month limitation is, IMO, one of its major weaknesses. The hardest cases, calling for our maximal compassion are precisely those where the term of unbearable suffering is indefinitely, maybe decades, long.)
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
Cleverly wouldn’t throw his lot in with Farage though, so as I said if Kemi can’t get many Labour or LD tactical votes Cleverly might
It is interesting that you think that someone like Cleverly can show enough ankle to attract Lib Dem and Labour switchers, without sending equal (or higher) numbers of traditional Tory voters to Reform. It would at least involve a firm commitment to Net Zero and remaining in the ECHR. Those would cause a massive hemorrhage to the right.
Traditional Tory voters have already gone Reform, Kemi has failed to win them back and indeed lost even some who voted for Rishi in 2024 to Reform.. So the Tories need to get tactical votes from LDs, Labour and Greens in Tory held seats to compensate and Cleverly is likeliest to do so, reforming not leaving automatically the ECHR and still committing to Net Zero 2050 would be enough, while allowing some North Sea oil drills
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
Problem is women left liberal leaders don’t have that great a record against populist right leaders, see Gillard, Hillary and Harris.
A white male more macho than Ed Miliband and with a bit more personality than Starmer is their best bet eg their own Biden or Albanese or Carney or Macron. On that basis Streeting or Burnham
'A white male more macho than Ed Miliband'
Are you serious
It is time labour appointed a woman, not some white macho male
Seems eminently plausible they could still elect a woman who is more macho than Ed Milliband.
They should decide the Labour Leadership by a bacon sandwich eating contest.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
Problem is women left liberal leaders don’t have that great a record against populist right leaders, see Gillard, Hillary and Harris.
A white male more macho than Ed Miliband and with a bit more personality than Starmer is their best bet eg their own Biden or Albanese or Carney or Macron. On that basis Streeting or Burnham
'A white male more macho than Ed Miliband'
Are you serious
It is time labour appointed a woman, not some white macho male
Not Phillipson. She has the same disregard for the law as Starmer does - saying one thing to Parliament, the complete opposite to the courts and something else to the press. Untrustworthy.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
Problem is women left liberal leaders don’t have that great a record against populist right leaders, see Gillard, Hillary and Harris.
A white male more macho than Ed Miliband and with a bit more personality than Starmer is their best bet eg their own Biden or Albanese or Carney or Macron. On that basis Streeting or Burnham
'A white male more macho than Ed Miliband'
Are you serious
It is time labour appointed a woman, not some white macho male
Most women would already vote Labour over Reform, with a few having gone Green or LD or still Tory. It is males, especially white males, who are now massively for Farage over Starmer and where Reform has its biggest lead
And chase labour voting women away with a white macho male
Haven't we learnt yet how toxic Trump, Hegseth and Farage are ?
There is zero evidence Labour voting women would leave as Streeting or Burnham were leader so stop writing rubbish. Trump beat two female leaders, only a white male beat him
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
Problem is women left liberal leaders don’t have that great a record against populist right leaders, see Gillard, Hillary and Harris.
A white male more macho than Ed Miliband and with a bit more personality than Starmer is their best bet eg their own Biden or Albanese or Carney or Macron. On that basis Streeting or Burnham
'A white male more macho than Ed Miliband'
Are you serious
It is time labour appointed a woman, not some white macho male
Seems eminently plausible they could still elect a woman who is more macho than Ed Milliband.
I don't see an issue with his being macho or not macho. I think those who remember him from 2015 don't give him enough credit for having more presence now, hard years in opposition have had an effect.
He's still not good enough to justify the high ratings Labour members give him, and personally I'm not a fan of him in his current role.
On topic... it's hard to see Ed M developing into a coronating situation. Labour show no signs of halting their headlong pursuit of Fukker votes and Ed M, being the human embodiment of Net Zero, is Belphagor to the vaping class.
Labour have been going after the Fukker vote? I must have missed that, apart from the Mahmood stuff which I feel must be ineffective because they give the impression of doing it very reluctantly and with most of the membership hating her.
And Our Ange is said to be keen on reversing the Mahmood changes, and kicking out the Home Sec
Basically Labour are doing everything they possibly can to deliver a Reform government
In other news the FT has a new Saturday “lunch with” article today (where they lunch with a notable person and chat about the food and the notable person and their views: an oddly excellent format)
This weekend it’s Lord Chagos Hermer, the controversial Attorney General. The comments below the line are brutal and contemptuous of Hermer, so much so that one FT journalist tried to wade in and complain about the rage and hatred and change the tone, but he failed, and so they’ve closed comments completely. Before noon on the day of publication
And this is the FT! Not the Telegraph. The anger and disgust now directed at Labour is, I think, unprecedented
It's that wording of Hermer's which is shocking - "leaving us a little wiggle room if there have been no killings". It's the kind of clever cynical phrasing so reminiscent of Post Office lawyers with no apparent regard to the substance or any ethical considerations.
Yes it’s genuinely repulsive. What a worm. And he’s apparently Starmer’s only friend in the cabinet or maybe in government. Which - as @DavidL points out - is very telling
The FT comments fiasco is hilarious. It shows how out of touch the liberal media blob has become. They are so detached they thought this interview with Hermer would go down well? Right after the “wiggle room” revelations?
And then the FT journalists go below the line to criticise the readers. And of course this makes it all worse. Partly because their tone is so revealingly snooty and affronted: “this man is important and we like him and he’s a human rights lawyer how dare you be rude”
Running focus groups in England & Scotland over past few days & I think for perceptions of Starmer personally the Robbins sacking is one of the worst things he has done. Other things obviously hurt more politically but this seems to have gone directly to how people feel about him
Everywhere it’s “scapegoat” “fall guy” “doing what he was told” “buck stops with the PM” and it’s not about the who knew what where when, or following it that closely but a sense of unfairness
Feels right. I'm not a Starmer hater - I find a lot of the abuse sloppy and unhinged - but the Robbins thing has landed badly with me. If it wasn't for my betting position I'd now be onboard with an exit and leadership contest this summer.
This just proves you’re a slow learner. Which you are
The rest of us realised Starmer is a venal prick many months ago. You’ve now caught up. Belatedly
Ironically this means I’m not that outraged by the Robbins sacking. But only because I already accept this is what Starmer does. So I expect nothing better
He achieves nothing, he believes in almost nothing (except his career and hating Britain), he is largely a void. But he is very good at forcing blame for his own mistakes onto others. I’ll give him that
I find it rather deplorable that the only thing that's turning these Sir loyalists away from him is the fact that he has sacked a blob member. Freezing grannies fine, silenced booming bang victims fine, giving away £38bn and a strategic island fine, eroding free speech and jury trials fine, appointing mandelson fine, economy in free fall fine, but SACKING A WONDERFUL PUBLIC SERVANT LIKE THAT IS TRULY BEYOND THE PALE.
I suspect it's because so many voters have worked for managers like him and not liked it. So the impression given of slopey shoulders combined with statements you can't entirely trust resonates
On topic... it's hard to see Ed M developing into a coronating situation. Labour show no signs of halting their headlong pursuit of Fukker votes and Ed M, being the human embodiment of Net Zero, is Belphagor to the vaping class.
Labour have been going after the Fukker vote? I must have missed that, apart from the Mahmood stuff which I feel must be ineffective because they give the impression of doing it very reluctantly and with most of the membership hating her.
And Our Ange is said to be keen on reversing the Mahmood changes, and kicking out the Home Sec
Basically Labour are doing everything they possibly can to deliver a Reform government
In other news the FT has a new Saturday “lunch with” article today (where they lunch with a notable person and chat about the food and the notable person and their views: an oddly excellent format)
This weekend it’s Lord Chagos Hermer, the controversial Attorney General. The comments below the line are brutal and contemptuous of Hermer, so much so that one FT journalist tried to wade in and complain about the rage and hatred and change the tone, but he failed, and so they’ve closed comments completely. Before noon on the day of publication
And this is the FT! Not the Telegraph. The anger and disgust now directed at Labour is, I think, unprecedented
It's that wording of Hermer's which is shocking - "leaving us a little wiggle room if there have been no killings". It's the kind of clever cynical phrasing so reminiscent of Post Office lawyers with no apparent regard to the substance or any ethical considerations.
Yes it’s genuinely repulsive. What a worm. And he’s apparently Starmer’s only friend in the cabinet or maybe in government. Which - as @DavidL points out - is very telling
The FT comments fiasco is hilarious. It shows how out of touch the liberal media blob has become. They are so detached they thought this interview with Hermer would go down well? Right after the “wiggle room” revelations?
And then the FT journalists go below the line to criticise the readers. And of course this makes it all worse. Partly because their tone is so revealingly snooty and affronted: “this man is important and we like him and he’s a human rights lawyer how dare you be rude”
Utter wankers
Leigh Day, one of the firms involved in this, instructed my husband to do some work for them decades ago - on a boring local authority/planning matter. He is still waiting to be paid. Bastards!
I've never really understood why Starmer used up political capital to ignore all the potentially qualified MPs to bring in Hermer as AG.
A minor thing in itself, but it made an enemy of Thornberry for life and, much like when Cameron was made Foreign Secretary, rather obviously tells all the MPs none of them were considered up to the job.
Whatever one thinks of the quality of MPs, or the legally qualified among them, it's not a vote of confidence to ignore every one of them for the job. How great a lawyer could Hermer really be to make up for that?
Edit: There's also potential resentment from all the rest in Cabinet - they did the hard yards knocking on doors, gladhanding activists and colleagues, doing press interviews and other thankless tasks, and some non-politician comes in and gets to tell them all what to do without that shared background of political struggle?
On topic... it's hard to see Ed M developing into a coronating situation. Labour show no signs of halting their headlong pursuit of Fukker votes and Ed M, being the human embodiment of Net Zero, is Belphagor to the vaping class.
Labour have been going after the Fukker vote? I must have missed that, apart from the Mahmood stuff which I feel must be ineffective because they give the impression of doing it very reluctantly and with most of the membership hating her.
And Our Ange is said to be keen on reversing the Mahmood changes, and kicking out the Home Sec
Basically Labour are doing everything they possibly can to deliver a Reform government
In other news the FT has a new Saturday “lunch with” article today (where they lunch with a notable person and chat about the food and the notable person and their views: an oddly excellent format)
This weekend it’s Lord Chagos Hermer, the controversial Attorney General. The comments below the line are brutal and contemptuous of Hermer, so much so that one FT journalist tried to wade in and complain about the rage and hatred and change the tone, but he failed, and so they’ve closed comments completely. Before noon on the day of publication
And this is the FT! Not the Telegraph. The anger and disgust now directed at Labour is, I think, unprecedented
It's that wording of Hermer's which is shocking - "leaving us a little wiggle room if there have been no killings". It's the kind of clever cynical phrasing so reminiscent of Post Office lawyers with no apparent regard to the substance or any ethical considerations.
Yes it’s genuinely repulsive. What a worm. And he’s apparently Starmer’s only friend in the cabinet or maybe in government. Which - as @DavidL points out - is very telling
The FT comments fiasco is hilarious. It shows how out of touch the liberal media blob has become. They are so detached they thought this interview with Hermer would go down well? Right after the “wiggle room” revelations?
And then the FT journalists go below the line to criticise the readers. And of course this makes it all worse. Partly because their tone is so revealingly snooty and affronted: “this man is important and we like him and he’s a human rights lawyer how dare you be rude”
Utter wankers
Starmer and Hermer both have voices that are incongruous with their CVs.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
Problem is women left liberal leaders don’t have that great a record against populist right leaders, see Gillard, Hillary and Harris.
A white male more macho than Ed Miliband and with a bit more personality than Starmer is their best bet eg their own Biden or Albanese or Carney or Macron. On that basis Streeting or Burnham
'A white male more macho than Ed Miliband'
Are you serious
It is time labour appointed a woman, not some white macho male
Most women would already vote Labour over Reform, with a few having gone Green or LD or still Tory. It is males, especially white males, who are now massively for Farage over Starmer and where Reform has its biggest lead
And chase labour voting women away with a white macho male
Haven't we learnt yet how toxic Trump, Hegseth and Farage are ?
There is zero evidence Labour voting women would leave as Streeting or Burnham were leader so stop writing rubbish. Trump beat two female leaders, only a white male beat him
But you’ve only got an n of 3 there. The relationship is not statistically significant.
On topic... it's hard to see Ed M developing into a coronating situation. Labour show no signs of halting their headlong pursuit of Fukker votes and Ed M, being the human embodiment of Net Zero, is Belphagor to the vaping class.
Labour have been going after the Fukker vote? I must have missed that, apart from the Mahmood stuff which I feel must be ineffective because they give the impression of doing it very reluctantly and with most of the membership hating her.
And Our Ange is said to be keen on reversing the Mahmood changes, and kicking out the Home Sec
Basically Labour are doing everything they possibly can to deliver a Reform government
In other news the FT has a new Saturday “lunch with” article today (where they lunch with a notable person and chat about the food and the notable person and their views: an oddly excellent format)
This weekend it’s Lord Chagos Hermer, the controversial Attorney General. The comments below the line are brutal and contemptuous of Hermer, so much so that one FT journalist tried to wade in and complain about the rage and hatred and change the tone, but he failed, and so they’ve closed comments completely. Before noon on the day of publication
And this is the FT! Not the Telegraph. The anger and disgust now directed at Labour is, I think, unprecedented
It's that wording of Hermer's which is shocking - "leaving us a little wiggle room if there have been no killings". It's the kind of clever cynical phrasing so reminiscent of Post Office lawyers with no apparent regard to the substance or any ethical considerations.
Yes it’s genuinely repulsive. What a worm. And he’s apparently Starmer’s only friend in the cabinet or maybe in government. Which - as @DavidL points out - is very telling
The FT comments fiasco is hilarious. It shows how out of touch the liberal media blob has become. They are so detached they thought this interview with Hermer would go down well? Right after the “wiggle room” revelations?
And then the FT journalists go below the line to criticise the readers. And of course this makes it all worse. Partly because their tone is so revealingly snooty and affronted: “this man is important and we like him and he’s a human rights lawyer how dare you be rude”
Utter wankers
Tonight's lottery numbers would be handy if you want us to subscribe to the FT at £60 a month.
Anyway I am sitting in 18 degree sunshine, brilliant clear blue sky, staring at Black Combe and listening to bird song and the sheep and lambs baah-ing in the field opposite.
Anyway I am sitting in 18 degree sunshine, brilliant clear blue sky, staring at Black Combe and listening to bird song and the sheep and lambs baah-ing in the field opposite.
Apropos nothing at all.
For your sake I hope that is indeed brilliant blue sky, not Bluesky.
I was out at a country park earlier, it was glorious. A sunny April is abotu the best time of year, not too hot. Bless this green land.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
Problem is women left liberal leaders don’t have that great a record against populist right leaders, see Gillard, Hillary and Harris.
A white male more macho than Ed Miliband and with a bit more personality than Starmer is their best bet eg their own Biden or Albanese or Carney or Macron. On that basis Streeting or Burnham
'A white male more macho than Ed Miliband'
Are you serious
It is time labour appointed a woman, not some white macho male
Most women would already vote Labour over Reform, with a few having gone Green or LD or still Tory. It is males, especially white males, who are now massively for Farage over Starmer and where Reform has its biggest lead
And chase labour voting women away with a white macho male
Haven't we learnt yet how toxic Trump, Hegseth and Farage are ?
There is zero evidence Labour voting women would leave as Streeting or Burnham were leader so stop writing rubbish. Trump beat two female leaders, only a white male beat him
'Writing rubbish' - not unique on this forum nor a stranger to your goodself
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
Cleverly wouldn’t throw his lot in with Farage though, so as I said if Kemi can’t get many Labour or LD tactical votes Cleverly might
It is interesting that you think that someone like Cleverly can show enough ankle to attract Lib Dem and Labour switchers, without sending equal (or higher) numbers of traditional Tory voters to Reform. It would at least involve a firm commitment to Net Zero and remaining in the ECHR. Those would cause a massive hemorrhage to the right.
Traditional Tory voters have already gone Reform, Kemi has failed to win them back and indeed lost even some who voted for Rishi in 2024 to Reform.. So the Tories need to get tactical votes from LDs, Labour and Greens in Tory held seats to compensate and Cleverly is likeliest to do so, reforming not leaving automatically the ECHR and still committing to Net Zero 2050 would be enough, while allowing some North Sea oil drills
The Tories won 24% in 2024. They are now on around 19%, so they have fallen back around 5% - you are assuming that means all the right wing Tories have already left, and there are no more to go. That seems a completely unwarrantable assumption. I'd say a majority of Tory voters are righties to a varying extent - the lib dem tendency is more of a parliamentary phenomenon than a voter one. Your ideas would be an electoral catastrophe.
On topic... it's hard to see Ed M developing into a coronating situation. Labour show no signs of halting their headlong pursuit of Fukker votes and Ed M, being the human embodiment of Net Zero, is Belphagor to the vaping class.
Labour have been going after the Fukker vote? I must have missed that, apart from the Mahmood stuff which I feel must be ineffective because they give the impression of doing it very reluctantly and with most of the membership hating her.
And Our Ange is said to be keen on reversing the Mahmood changes, and kicking out the Home Sec
Basically Labour are doing everything they possibly can to deliver a Reform government
In other news the FT has a new Saturday “lunch with” article today (where they lunch with a notable person and chat about the food and the notable person and their views: an oddly excellent format)
This weekend it’s Lord Chagos Hermer, the controversial Attorney General. The comments below the line are brutal and contemptuous of Hermer, so much so that one FT journalist tried to wade in and complain about the rage and hatred and change the tone, but he failed, and so they’ve closed comments completely. Before noon on the day of publication
And this is the FT! Not the Telegraph. The anger and disgust now directed at Labour is, I think, unprecedented
It's that wording of Hermer's which is shocking - "leaving us a little wiggle room if there have been no killings". It's the kind of clever cynical phrasing so reminiscent of Post Office lawyers with no apparent regard to the substance or any ethical considerations.
Yes it’s genuinely repulsive. What a worm. And he’s apparently Starmer’s only friend in the cabinet or maybe in government. Which - as @DavidL points out - is very telling
The FT comments fiasco is hilarious. It shows how out of touch the liberal media blob has become. They are so detached they thought this interview with Hermer would go down well? Right after the “wiggle room” revelations?
And then the FT journalists go below the line to criticise the readers. And of course this makes it all worse. Partly because their tone is so revealingly snooty and affronted: “this man is important and we like him and he’s a human rights lawyer how dare you be rude”
Utter wankers
Leigh Day, one of the firms involved in this, instructed my husband to do some work for them decades ago - on a boring local authority/planning matter. He is still waiting to be paid. Bastards!
Leigh Day are one of the firms involved in the slavery reparations movement too.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
Cleverly wouldn’t throw his lot in with Farage though, so as I said if Kemi can’t get many Labour or LD tactical votes Cleverly might
It is interesting that you think that someone like Cleverly can show enough ankle to attract Lib Dem and Labour switchers, without sending equal (or higher) numbers of traditional Tory voters to Reform. It would at least involve a firm commitment to Net Zero and remaining in the ECHR. Those would cause a massive hemorrhage to the right.
Traditional Tory voters have already gone Reform, Kemi has failed to win them back and indeed lost even some who voted for Rishi in 2024 to Reform.. So the Tories need to get tactical votes from LDs, Labour and Greens in Tory held seats to compensate and Cleverly is likeliest to do so, reforming not leaving automatically the ECHR and still committing to Net Zero 2050 would be enough, while allowing some North Sea oil drills
The Tories won 24% in 2024. They are now on around 19%, so they have fallen back around 5% - you are assuming that means all the right wing Tories have already left, and there are no more to go. That seems a completely unwarrantable assumption. I'd say a majority of Tory voters are righties to a varying extent - the lib dem tendency is more of a parliamentary phenomenon than a voter one. Your ideas would be an electoral catastrophe.
The larger portion of Tories are probably still more Reform adjacent than LD adjacent even now, but those who've left to Reform need to be willing to head back, and thus far that doesn't seem to be happening. So the question migth be would fishing in smaller poor of centristy types be more effective or not.
I'm not convinced it would be, but I think there's still a lot of complacency in the Tory high command about their position.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
Cleverly wouldn’t throw his lot in with Farage though, so as I said if Kemi can’t get many Labour or LD tactical votes Cleverly might
It is interesting that you think that someone like Cleverly can show enough ankle to attract Lib Dem and Labour switchers, without sending equal (or higher) numbers of traditional Tory voters to Reform. It would at least involve a firm commitment to Net Zero and remaining in the ECHR. Those would cause a massive hemorrhage to the right.
Traditional Tory voters have already gone Reform, Kemi has failed to win them back and indeed lost even some who voted for Rishi in 2024 to Reform.. So the Tories need to get tactical votes from LDs, Labour and Greens in Tory held seats to compensate and Cleverly is likeliest to do so, reforming not leaving automatically the ECHR and still committing to Net Zero 2050 would be enough, while allowing some North Sea oil drills
The Tories won 24% in 2024. They are now on around 19%, so they have fallen back around 5% - you are assuming that means all the right wing Tories have already left, and there are no more to go. That seems a completely unwarrantable assumption. I'd say a majority of Tory voters are righties to a varying extent - the lib dem tendency is more of a parliamentary phenomenon than a voter one. Your ideas would be an electoral catastrophe.
Pretty much all the most rightwing Tories have gone Reform otherwise Reform would not now be leading the polls would they!
Cleverly is hardly a LD either, he backed Leave. It is the current trajectory leading to electoral catastrophe because as long as Reform remain ahead of the Tories as the main party of the right, without tactical votes from Labour and LD and Green voters in Tory seats the Tories would be lucky to get 50 to 100 seats at the next general election. Then Reform would take over the Tories anyway, sending the party as a stand-alone entity extinct unless we got PR. Kemi would go down in history as the last leader of the Conservative Party, Reform and the LDs would consume its carcass
AfD 28 % CDU/CSU 24 % SPD 14 % GRÜNE 12 % DIE LINKE 11 % BSW 3 % FDP 3 %
From 2023: every european election: 🔵 The People's Democrats (center-right) - 31% 🔴 Soviet Worker's Party (center/center-left) - 22% ⚫️ Citizen's Forum (fascist) - 19% 🟠 Wow! (center) - 11% 🟣 Friendship Is Magic (left) - 9% 🟢 Green Party - 8%
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I fear you are five decades out of date.
It sometimes feels like there are a lot of old men on this site living in a different time period.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
Cleverly wouldn’t throw his lot in with Farage though, so as I said if Kemi can’t get many Labour or LD tactical votes Cleverly might
It is interesting that you think that someone like Cleverly can show enough ankle to attract Lib Dem and Labour switchers, without sending equal (or higher) numbers of traditional Tory voters to Reform. It would at least involve a firm commitment to Net Zero and remaining in the ECHR. Those would cause a massive hemorrhage to the right.
Traditional Tory voters have already gone Reform, Kemi has failed to win them back and indeed lost even some who voted for Rishi in 2024 to Reform.. So the Tories need to get tactical votes from LDs, Labour and Greens in Tory held seats to compensate and Cleverly is likeliest to do so, reforming not leaving automatically the ECHR and still committing to Net Zero 2050 would be enough, while allowing some North Sea oil drills
The Tories won 24% in 2024. They are now on around 19%, so they have fallen back around 5% - you are assuming that means all the right wing Tories have already left, and there are no more to go. That seems a completely unwarrantable assumption. I'd say a majority of Tory voters are righties to a varying extent - the lib dem tendency is more of a parliamentary phenomenon than a voter one. Your ideas would be an electoral catastrophe.
The larger portion of Tories are probably still more Reform adjacent than LD adjacent even now, but those who've left to Reform need to be willing to head back, and thus far that doesn't seem to be happening. So the question migth be would fishing in smaller poor of centristy types be more effective or not.
I'm not convinced it would be, but I think there's still a lot of complacency in the Tory high command about their position.
In most Tory held seats even now the combined Tory, Labour and LD vote is far bigger than the projected Reform vote. It is not a small pool
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
Cleverly wouldn’t throw his lot in with Farage though, so as I said if Kemi can’t get many Labour or LD tactical votes Cleverly might
It is interesting that you think that someone like Cleverly can show enough ankle to attract Lib Dem and Labour switchers, without sending equal (or higher) numbers of traditional Tory voters to Reform. It would at least involve a firm commitment to Net Zero and remaining in the ECHR. Those would cause a massive hemorrhage to the right.
Traditional Tory voters have already gone Reform, Kemi has failed to win them back and indeed lost even some who voted for Rishi in 2024 to Reform.. So the Tories need to get tactical votes from LDs, Labour and Greens in Tory held seats to compensate and Cleverly is likeliest to do so, reforming not leaving automatically the ECHR and still committing to Net Zero 2050 would be enough, while allowing some North Sea oil drills
The Tories won 24% in 2024. They are now on around 19%, so they have fallen back around 5% - you are assuming that means all the right wing Tories have already left, and there are no more to go. That seems a completely unwarrantable assumption. I'd say a majority of Tory voters are righties to a varying extent - the lib dem tendency is more of a parliamentary phenomenon than a voter one. Your ideas would be an electoral catastrophe.
Pretty much all the most rightwing Tories have gone Reform otherwise Reform would not now be leading the polls would they!
Cleverly is hardly a LD either, he backed Leave. It is the current trajectory leading to electoral catastrophe because as long as Reform remain ahead of the Tories as the main party of the right, without tactical votes from Labour and LD and Green voters in Tory seats the Tories would be lucky to get 50 to 100 seats at the next general election. Then Reform would take over the Tories anyway, sending the party as a stand-alone entity extinct unless we got PR. Kemi would go down in history as the last leader of the Conservative Party, Reform and the LDs would consume its carcass
Exactly, many of 'the most' right wing may have gone, but the others, all along the spectrum, are there still. Your suggestion would send many more of them off, and potentially gain nothing. Look at Mexican Pete's post. He'd love the Tories to go centrist. Any chance of him actually voting for such a party? Nope.
Mahmood’s spokesman dismissing something as “tittle-tattle”: that means it’s true. If it was simply false, he’d have said that. “Tittle-tattle” is belittling what was said, but not actually denying it.
Oh hell, what's she done now?
It’s in the header. She hasn’t done anything.
And kudos to @TSE for avoiding the temptation to use “strong and stable” in reference to Miliband
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
Cleverly wouldn’t throw his lot in with Farage though, so as I said if Kemi can’t get many Labour or LD tactical votes Cleverly might
It is interesting that you think that someone like Cleverly can show enough ankle to attract Lib Dem and Labour switchers, without sending equal (or higher) numbers of traditional Tory voters to Reform. It would at least involve a firm commitment to Net Zero and remaining in the ECHR. Those would cause a massive hemorrhage to the right.
Traditional Tory voters have already gone Reform, Kemi has failed to win them back and indeed lost even some who voted for Rishi in 2024 to Reform.. So the Tories need to get tactical votes from LDs, Labour and Greens in Tory held seats to compensate and Cleverly is likeliest to do so, reforming not leaving automatically the ECHR and still committing to Net Zero 2050 would be enough, while allowing some North Sea oil drills
The Tories won 24% in 2024. They are now on around 19%, so they have fallen back around 5% - you are assuming that means all the right wing Tories have already left, and there are no more to go. That seems a completely unwarrantable assumption. I'd say a majority of Tory voters are righties to a varying extent - the lib dem tendency is more of a parliamentary phenomenon than a voter one. Your ideas would be an electoral catastrophe.
The larger portion of Tories are probably still more Reform adjacent than LD adjacent even now, but those who've left to Reform need to be willing to head back, and thus far that doesn't seem to be happening. So the question migth be would fishing in smaller poor of centristy types be more effective or not.
I'm not convinced it would be, but I think there's still a lot of complacency in the Tory high command about their position.
In most Tory held seats even now the combined Tory, Labour and LD vote is far bigger than the projected Reform vote. It is not a small pool
The pool of those voters who would ever vote Tory is a small pool.
Then she us even more stupid than I thought. Gove was about the only Tory worth having in the cabinet after 2010.
In the last decade or more there have been so few politicians who really have ideas and are capable of thought. Gove is prominent amongst these. Whatever area he was put into he came up with different ideas. Some would not work, of course, (and I don't want to trigger @ydoethur) but he was at least willing to analyse and identify the problems. Very, very rare in this world of politicians who would like to think themselves technocrats, if only they were remotely competent.
Anyway I am sitting in 18 degree sunshine, brilliant clear blue sky, staring at Black Combe and listening to bird song and the sheep and lambs baah-ing in the field opposite.
Apropos nothing at all.
Let me show you my balcony. In part inspired by your beautiful garden
A year ago this was a bleak non space. Then a friend said “Fucksake get some greenery out there”
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
Cleverly wouldn’t throw his lot in with Farage though, so as I said if Kemi can’t get many Labour or LD tactical votes Cleverly might
It is interesting that you think that someone like Cleverly can show enough ankle to attract Lib Dem and Labour switchers, without sending equal (or higher) numbers of traditional Tory voters to Reform. It would at least involve a firm commitment to Net Zero and remaining in the ECHR. Those would cause a massive hemorrhage to the right.
Traditional Tory voters have already gone Reform, Kemi has failed to win them back and indeed lost even some who voted for Rishi in 2024 to Reform.. So the Tories need to get tactical votes from LDs, Labour and Greens in Tory held seats to compensate and Cleverly is likeliest to do so, reforming not leaving automatically the ECHR and still committing to Net Zero 2050 would be enough, while allowing some North Sea oil drills
The Tories won 24% in 2024. They are now on around 19%, so they have fallen back around 5% - you are assuming that means all the right wing Tories have already left, and there are no more to go. That seems a completely unwarrantable assumption. I'd say a majority of Tory voters are righties to a varying extent - the lib dem tendency is more of a parliamentary phenomenon than a voter one. Your ideas would be an electoral catastrophe.
Pretty much all the most rightwing Tories have gone Reform otherwise Reform would not now be leading the polls would they!
Cleverly is hardly a LD either, he backed Leave. It is the current trajectory leading to electoral catastrophe because as long as Reform remain ahead of the Tories as the main party of the right, without tactical votes from Labour and LD and Green voters in Tory seats the Tories would be lucky to get 50 to 100 seats at the next general election. Then Reform would take over the Tories anyway, sending the party as a stand-alone entity extinct unless we got PR. Kemi would go down in history as the last leader of the Conservative Party, Reform and the LDs would consume its carcass
Exactly, many of 'the most' right wing may have gone, but the others, all along the spectrum, are there still. Your suggestion would send many more of them off, and potentially gain nothing. Look at Mexican Pete's post. He'd love the Tories to go centrist. Any chance of him actually voting for such a party? Nope.
They aren’t, most hard rightwingers are now in Reform. See the polls here in the US presidential election, most Reform voters would have voted for Trump, most of those still voting Tory for Harris.
Mexican Pete has made clear he might vote for a Cleverly led Tory party if he lived in a Tory held seat to beat Reform but never for a Kemi led Tory party
Anyway I am sitting in 18 degree sunshine, brilliant clear blue sky, staring at Black Combe and listening to bird song and the sheep and lambs baah-ing in the field opposite.
Apropos nothing at all.
Let me show you my balcony. In part inspired by your beautiful garden
A year ago this was a bleak non space. Then a friend said “Fucksake get some greenery out there”
So I did.
Can't quite work out if its a garden or the makings of a rather delicious meal to be honest.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
Cleverly wouldn’t throw his lot in with Farage though, so as I said if Kemi can’t get many Labour or LD tactical votes Cleverly might
It is interesting that you think that someone like Cleverly can show enough ankle to attract Lib Dem and Labour switchers, without sending equal (or higher) numbers of traditional Tory voters to Reform. It would at least involve a firm commitment to Net Zero and remaining in the ECHR. Those would cause a massive hemorrhage to the right.
Traditional Tory voters have already gone Reform, Kemi has failed to win them back and indeed lost even some who voted for Rishi in 2024 to Reform.. So the Tories need to get tactical votes from LDs, Labour and Greens in Tory held seats to compensate and Cleverly is likeliest to do so, reforming not leaving automatically the ECHR and still committing to Net Zero 2050 would be enough, while allowing some North Sea oil drills
The Tories won 24% in 2024. They are now on around 19%, so they have fallen back around 5% - you are assuming that means all the right wing Tories have already left, and there are no more to go. That seems a completely unwarrantable assumption. I'd say a majority of Tory voters are righties to a varying extent - the lib dem tendency is more of a parliamentary phenomenon than a voter one. Your ideas would be an electoral catastrophe.
The larger portion of Tories are probably still more Reform adjacent than LD adjacent even now, but those who've left to Reform need to be willing to head back, and thus far that doesn't seem to be happening. So the question migth be would fishing in smaller poor of centristy types be more effective or not.
I'm not convinced it would be, but I think there's still a lot of complacency in the Tory high command about their position.
In most Tory held seats even now the combined Tory, Labour and LD vote is far bigger than the projected Reform vote. It is not a small pool
The pool of those voters who would ever vote Tory is a small pool.
Completely disagree, otherwise they would not have dominated politics for the last 50 years, with the exception of the Blair interlude. I would accept that the contents of that pool are significantly smaller than they once were.
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
Cleverly wouldn’t throw his lot in with Farage though, so as I said if Kemi can’t get many Labour or LD tactical votes Cleverly might
It is interesting that you think that someone like Cleverly can show enough ankle to attract Lib Dem and Labour switchers, without sending equal (or higher) numbers of traditional Tory voters to Reform. It would at least involve a firm commitment to Net Zero and remaining in the ECHR. Those would cause a massive hemorrhage to the right.
Traditional Tory voters have already gone Reform, Kemi has failed to win them back and indeed lost even some who voted for Rishi in 2024 to Reform.. So the Tories need to get tactical votes from LDs, Labour and Greens in Tory held seats to compensate and Cleverly is likeliest to do so, reforming not leaving automatically the ECHR and still committing to Net Zero 2050 would be enough, while allowing some North Sea oil drills
The Tories won 24% in 2024. They are now on around 19%, so they have fallen back around 5% - you are assuming that means all the right wing Tories have already left, and there are no more to go. That seems a completely unwarrantable assumption. I'd say a majority of Tory voters are righties to a varying extent - the lib dem tendency is more of a parliamentary phenomenon than a voter one. Your ideas would be an electoral catastrophe.
The larger portion of Tories are probably still more Reform adjacent than LD adjacent even now, but those who've left to Reform need to be willing to head back, and thus far that doesn't seem to be happening. So the question migth be would fishing in smaller poor of centristy types be more effective or not.
I'm not convinced it would be, but I think there's still a lot of complacency in the Tory high command about their position.
In most Tory held seats even now the combined Tory, Labour and LD vote is far bigger than the projected Reform vote. It is not a small pool
The pool of those voters who would ever vote Tory is a small pool.
Rubbish. 45% of LDs and a third of Labour voters and even a quarter of Green voters say they would tactically vote Conservative to beat Reform. I have found it on the doorsteps this campaign, even a young BME woman with a nose stud said they would hold their nose to re elect the Tory councillor in their ward when you tell them the alternative is a Reform councillor such is their loathing of Farage and Reform
Anyway I am sitting in 18 degree sunshine, brilliant clear blue sky, staring at Black Combe and listening to bird song and the sheep and lambs baah-ing in the field opposite.
Apropos nothing at all.
Let me show you my balcony. In part inspired by your beautiful garden
A year ago this was a bleak non space. Then a friend said “Fucksake get some greenery out there”
So I did.
Can't quite work out if its a garden or the makings of a rather delicious meal to be honest.
“Which Reform tribe are you? Take this quick quiz!
Q1: the English language: A. Is ever-evolving and open-source B. Has correct and incorrect usage
Q2: what do you hate most? A. Immigrants B. Wind turbines
Q3: Liz Truss was: A. Into kink B. On the right track, economically”
Etc”
I don't really hate wind turbines - how can you hate an object? Though I do believe that people regarding them as beautiful just stems from a misguided associating with 'cheap, clean energy' - we regard belching smoke stacks as ugly because of their association with planetary destruction. But perhaps there is a beauty in a belching smoke stack. It means prosperity - energy turning into things. People in gainful work. Plants and trees growing with greater vigour. I wonder if people did find them beautiful in the early days of industrialisation (though obviously whole sooty cities of them wasn't very nice).
Dark satanic mills?
They gained that reputation yes. Perhaps we have always regarded industry as ugly from the beginning. I haven't really read around it.
Industry lured agricultural workers with the promise of better pay and year-round work but machines were often dangerous, accommodation cramped and air, food and water polluted.
The life of a menial agricultural worker was long hours of hard work, seasonal unemployment and continual deprivation.
It was not some 'merry old England' rural idyll.
For that matter the problems of the modern rural working class are often overlooked.
I don't think it is a major thing, but I think there is an undercurrent of societal thought that industrialising was all one big mistake and life was better before.
I'd not have liked to have personally been there during the industrialising years, but I'm very grateful they happened.
Prelapsarianism is common in politics. Reform UK. Want to go back 75 years. The Greens want to go back 400-4000 years.
The people who took the revolutionary act of chopping off the head of an appointed monarch did so in the name of defending England's ancient liberties. A lot of progress has historically been achieved by looking backwards.
Then she us even more stupid than I thought. Gove was about the only Tory worth having in the cabinet after 2010.
In the last decade or more there have been so few politicians who really have ideas and are capable of thought. Gove is prominent amongst these. Whatever area he was put into he came up with different ideas. Some would not work, of course, (and I don't want to trigger @ydoethur) but he was at least willing to analyse and identify the problems. Very, very rare in this world of politicians who would like to think themselves technocrats, if only they were remotely competent.
Being a technocrat is usually an excuse for having no vision.
Anyway I am sitting in 18 degree sunshine, brilliant clear blue sky, staring at Black Combe and listening to bird song and the sheep and lambs baah-ing in the field opposite.
Apropos nothing at all.
Let me show you my balcony. In part inspired by your beautiful garden
A year ago this was a bleak non space. Then a friend said “Fucksake get some greenery out there”
So I did.
Can't quite work out if its a garden or the makings of a rather delicious meal to be honest.
Then she us even more stupid than I thought. Gove was about the only Tory worth having in the cabinet after 2010.
In the last decade or more there have been so few politicians who really have ideas and are capable of thought. Gove is prominent amongst these. Whatever area he was put into he came up with different ideas. Some would not work, of course, (and I don't want to trigger @ydoethur) but he was at least willing to analyse and identify the problems. Very, very rare in this world of politicians who would like to think themselves technocrats, if only they were remotely competent.
Being a technocrat is usually an excuse for having no vision.
And I say that as a natural technocrat.
Me too. I think that I am at the point in my career where I should be looking to make a difference. To change things for the better. But I have not been ambitious enough, willing enough to tolerate the arseholes and build the kind of consensus that you really need to change things. Its hard work and I have ducked out. A technocrat, doing the best with what other people set, is likely to be the height of my ambitions (well, that and the odd first on PB, obviously).
On topic, might I offer the following advice to the Labour Party? It may not be felt welcome - may not be felt genuine - but trust me, as a Tory, we've been here. Get this wrong and you could be facing two more changes before the election. And if so, the voters will hate you for it.
Following Starmer, the very LAST thing you need as a replacement is a slightly weird, somewhat aloof, supercilious north London wanker of a guy. Be brave. Skip a generation. SERIOUSLY consider a woman. (You are fifty plus years overdue, for God's sake.) Choose someone the voters haven't already rejected. Choose someone the voters don't yet actively dislike.
You may hate the Tories. But at least learn from them.
The Tories and Labour BOTH need to up their game to prevent PM Farage. Start now.
I'd be happy for the Tories to survive and thrive as pro-European Heathites.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
Had Jenrick been elected leader in 2024 the Tories may have stayed ahead of Reform in the polls. Now though with he having gone Reform and Reform leading the polls it is tactical votes from Labour, LD and Green voters in Tory held seats to beat Reform the Tories need. If Kemi can’t get those in May then Cleverly might
I can't see many Labour or Lib Dem voters putting an X in the box for the Tories whilst they are so incredibly right wing. No point voting for a party that is quite likely to throw it's hat in with the fascists. At the moment at least.
Cleverly wouldn’t throw his lot in with Farage though, so as I said if Kemi can’t get many Labour or LD tactical votes Cleverly might
It is interesting that you think that someone like Cleverly can show enough ankle to attract Lib Dem and Labour switchers, without sending equal (or higher) numbers of traditional Tory voters to Reform. It would at least involve a firm commitment to Net Zero and remaining in the ECHR. Those would cause a massive hemorrhage to the right.
Traditional Tory voters have already gone Reform, Kemi has failed to win them back and indeed lost even some who voted for Rishi in 2024 to Reform.. So the Tories need to get tactical votes from LDs, Labour and Greens in Tory held seats to compensate and Cleverly is likeliest to do so, reforming not leaving automatically the ECHR and still committing to Net Zero 2050 would be enough, while allowing some North Sea oil drills
The Tories won 24% in 2024. They are now on around 19%, so they have fallen back around 5% - you are assuming that means all the right wing Tories have already left, and there are no more to go. That seems a completely unwarrantable assumption. I'd say a majority of Tory voters are righties to a varying extent - the lib dem tendency is more of a parliamentary phenomenon than a voter one. Your ideas would be an electoral catastrophe.
The larger portion of Tories are probably still more Reform adjacent than LD adjacent even now, but those who've left to Reform need to be willing to head back, and thus far that doesn't seem to be happening. So the question migth be would fishing in smaller poor of centristy types be more effective or not.
I'm not convinced it would be, but I think there's still a lot of complacency in the Tory high command about their position.
In most Tory held seats even now the combined Tory, Labour and LD vote is far bigger than the projected Reform vote. It is not a small pool
The pool of those voters who would ever vote Tory is a small pool.
Rubbish. 45% of LDs and a third of Labour voters and even a quarter of Green voters say they would tactically vote Conservative to beat Reform. I have found it on the doorsteps this campaign, even a young BME woman with a nose stud said they would hold their nose to re elect the Tory councillor in their ward when you tell them the alternative is a Reform councillor such is their loathing of Farage and Reform
Yeah, it really depends which version of the Tories. Badenoch seems to be digging in to their core vote. Quite the opposite of Cameron. The days of 'I agree with Nick' won't be replicated with Kemi and Ed (or anyone else). Cleverly? Well, there won't be any agreement but it makes it possible to attract anti-Reform in a binary split.
Comments
The biggest advances in technology often come from different groups finding new ways to kill each other or avoid being killed.
I have never voted Conservative and I particularly disliked the Johnson premiership but anything they do to kill the fascist parties stone dead has to be welcome.
Despite the eulogising of Badenoch on here I read her as being incredibly weak. Cleverly, despite his hubris would have been better.
Had Jenrick not journeyed from Cameroon to performatively cruel fascistic primate he would have been a great leader for the Tories.
🎵🎶🎵🎶 Oh Jeremy Corbyn 🎵🎶🎵🎶
True socialists know you can have a welfare state, or you can have open borders. You cannot have both.
Unfortunately most of the Labour party are, in the immortal words of Clem, 'not up to it'.
Blair: What counts is what works (meaning what is good for the country as a whole; tendentious but could be well intended)
Next: What counts is what works (meaning what is good for party PR and our voters and would be voters)
Next: What counts is what works (meaning how we maximise our supporters in the next election)
Next and current: What counts is what works (meaning how can we so demonise and blame everyone else that as many as 28% or so of voters will think we are the least worst option in an election in which all parties talk in vapid cliches).
The butler must be pleased.
It's Zack. It's Zack. It's Zack to who we all belong
From what I can see the Tories came back into power from the wilderness through David Cameron. A relatively liberal Eton posh boy Tory who was a good communicator.
And chase labour voting women away with a white macho male
Haven't we learnt yet how toxic Trump, Hegseth and Farage are ?
Cameron had to win voters who voted for Blair and New Labour over Howard’s Tories in 2005
https://x.com/Wahlrecht_de/status/2048047103193027055
AfD 28 %
CDU/CSU 24 %
SPD 14 %
GRÜNE 12 %
DIE LINKE 11 %
BSW 3 %
FDP 3 %
Remarkable that 2 of his great great grandchildren were born in that same workhouse in 1966 & 1971, but now a maternity hospital
But the two have no link at all. The failed bill only applies to those with 6 months or less to live, which does not apply here. It is an odd and jarring juxtaposition.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/apr/24/mother-ends-life-at-swiss-clinic-four-years-after-sons-death
(By the way, as a supporter of assisted dying, the six month limitation is, IMO, one of its major weaknesses. The hardest cases, calling for our maximal compassion are precisely those where the term of unbearable suffering is indefinitely, maybe decades, long.)
https://x.com/naomi2009/status/2047983252112036210
He's still not good enough to justify the high ratings Labour members give him, and personally I'm not a fan of him in his current role.
With its scapegoat gone, Europe is forced to finally get honest with itself
Life after Viktor Orbán means that, in the future, leaders will have no one to blame but themselves.
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-leaders-cyprus-summit-divisions-ukraine-energy-budget-talks
The FT comments fiasco is hilarious. It shows how out of touch the liberal media blob has become. They are so detached they thought this interview with Hermer would go down well? Right after the “wiggle room” revelations?
And then the FT journalists go below the line to criticise the readers. And of course this makes it all worse. Partly because their tone is so revealingly snooty and affronted: “this man is important and we like him and he’s a human rights lawyer how dare you be rude”
Utter wankers
A minor thing in itself, but it made an enemy of Thornberry for life and, much like when Cameron was made Foreign Secretary, rather obviously tells all the MPs none of them were considered up to the job.
Whatever one thinks of the quality of MPs, or the legally qualified among them, it's not a vote of confidence to ignore every one of them for the job. How great a lawyer could Hermer really be to make up for that?
Edit: There's also potential resentment from all the rest in Cabinet - they did the hard yards knocking on doors, gladhanding activists and colleagues, doing press interviews and other thankless tasks, and some non-politician comes in and gets to tell them all what to do without that shared background of political struggle?
Apropos nothing at all.
What a crock.
I was out at a country park earlier, it was glorious. A sunny April is abotu the best time of year, not too hot. Bless this green land.
https://www.leighday.co.uk/our-services/human-rights/reparations/
Mind you hammers just scored to lead
I'm not convinced it would be, but I think there's still a lot of complacency in the Tory high command about their position.
Cleverly is hardly a LD either, he backed Leave. It is the current trajectory leading to electoral catastrophe because as long as Reform remain ahead of the Tories as the main party of the right, without tactical votes from Labour and LD and Green voters in Tory seats the Tories would be lucky to get 50 to 100 seats at the next general election. Then Reform would take over the Tories anyway, sending the party as a stand-alone entity extinct unless we got PR. Kemi would go down in history as the last leader of the Conservative Party, Reform and the LDs would consume its carcass
every european election:
🔵 The People's Democrats (center-right) - 31%
🔴 Soviet Worker's Party (center/center-left) - 22%
⚫️ Citizen's Forum (fascist) - 19%
🟠 Wow! (center) - 11%
🟣 Friendship Is Magic (left) - 9%
🟢 Green Party - 8%
https://x.com/njsilvadyne/status/1642637834988158976
It sometimes feels like there are a lot of old men on this site living in a different time period.
A year ago this was a bleak non space. Then a friend said “Fucksake get some greenery out there”
So I did.
Mexican Pete has made clear he might vote for a Cleverly led Tory party if he lived in a Tory held seat to beat Reform but never for a Kemi led Tory party
Trump droning on about holding all the cards !
https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54117-what-is-the-tactical-voting-landscape-in-february-2026
Appealing to modernity is very unusual.
And I say that as a natural technocrat.
Thought of @Foxy