The majority of Brits say Sir Keir Starmer is a decent man – politicalbetting.com
The majority of Brits say Sir Keir Starmer is a decent man – politicalbetting.com
Some crumb of comfort for the Prime Minister from More in Common is that 54% of Brits say he is a decent man sadly I don’t think that will save him and Labour from a shellacking when 74% of Brits say he is not cut out to be Prime Minister.I wish I could understand the 7% of Brits who say Starmer isn’t a decent man but he is cut out to be Prime Minister.
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People who think you’re decent, but an incompetent numpty, aren’t your friends; neither are those fewer number of people thinking you’re up to the job but intent on wreaking evil upon the world.
The only silver lining for Starmer is that 19% is nowadays sometimes a per cent or two higher than the proportion of voters willing to back his party.
To be a medieval King, you had to be a hard arsed bastard who would kill your best friend at the drop of a hat.*
Henry VI was a lovely human being, but a total catastrophe as King.
Similarly, to be PM it helps to be a cold, ruthless, efficient, backstabbing git. It's not compulsory but it can help.
Probably the most amiable person ever to be PM was Alec Douglas-Home. He lasted eleven months. After him, Stanley Baldwin. Electorally a genius, politically something of a lacklustre PM.
*of course, this could be taken too far. If you killed everyone until they began to think you were second cousin to a upas tree, or kept raping other men's wives, or kept stealing everyone's lands, that could upset them too. See Richard III, John and Richard II. But then, for our PMs case, look at Liz Truss.
But the Mandelson and now Lord Hermer scandals paint him as the worst of the scumbag lawyers, hiding behind process while seeking to destroy the state from the inside.
That his senior staff turnover is so high, says he’s happy to throw anyone under the bus to protect his own reputation.
The vast majority of modern commercialised research can be traced back to "curiosity driven" research.
Even in commercial settings that tends to be true. It's why Bell Labs produced so many ideas which ended up being worth billions, but very few of which they made any money from themselves.
The UK's problem is not so much in research funding as it is in our perennial inability to truly capitalise on what we discover.
I think Starmer's biggest problem is he just wants to be liked, and that is not how politics works and means you cannot take unpopular decisions, though ironically the one he did may well be fatal to his premiership
He simply is not PM material and he probably is a decent man, but overwhelmed by the office
This is from a centrist journalist who blocked me on twiter because I criticised Sir Keir.
https://bsky.app/profile/rentouljohn.bsky.social/post/3mkcruieisc24
https://x.com/MattWallace888/status/2048252780171952625
There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined.
1) Rishi Sunak
2) Bill Cash
3) David Cameron
4) Dominic Cummings
Edit: That the Government did not, immediately, form the Royal Company of Unicorn Tusk Bearers, a ceremonial anti-terrorism unit, compete with mid-Tudor uniforms, is blight upon our national story.
The financial services bill is already being drafted and will be included in the legislative package for the next parliamentary session to be set out in the speech on May 13, according to several officials briefed on the measure.
Legislation is needed to complete several planned reforms to key pillars of City regulation, such as scrapping the payments watchdog and overhauling the financial ombudsman.
https://www.ft.com/content/5811b388-1b45-42c9-b2a3-baa72e7807b8
The system of democracy is about the ability to overthrow the government, at intervals. Without having to go through the whole mess of civil war, heaps of dead people etc.
He isn't a complete idiot, so 2 is out.
However, he is bone idle *except* when it comes to causing trouble or advancing his career. So 4 might be the best fit but it's not perfect.
The events of the last few weeks, have demonstrated that Starmer is incapable of turning that corner. I can understand rolling the dice with Mandelson, but I cannot understand the incompetent cover up. If he'd told it as it is I believe he had a defence. Throwing everyone under the bus is not a defence.
This is the straw that broke the camel's back. One has to consider the poor political calls and the subsequent U turns. He is not up to the job.
Hopefully it won't go downhill like that political late bloomer, Sir Keir Starmer.
I hope Keir sticks around though, changing PMs all the time is just boring, and policy changes that will happen seem likely to be for the worse not the better, as it'll be to ditch things the Members don't like and I don't trust party memberships.
There are questions about his time at the DPP...
DEFEND
MAGA
My mother spent hours on the floor of a private (NHS) room on the day she died during the midst of the Princess of Wales Hospital, Bridgend scandal of 2011. Soaked in cold piss on a hospital floor for hours, what a way to spend one's last day on this earth.
Was never going to be great, excellent General Staff, hopelessly undercooked for the top job. (That he couldn't tame the job is the job's fault, not his. Ditto May, ditto Starmer.)
First year, he did OK at clearing up done of the mess left by his disastrous predecessors. But then he seemed to panic about the polls and went all culture warrior, fiscal instability, creating elephant traps for his successor.
If any PM could have dealt with the election-losing nettles, that have been growing for decades, it was the one on track to lose.
He is an exceptionally poor politician. That would be forgivable if he was getting results but this government looks as paralysed as Boris's and much of Sunak's. There is no sense of purpose, no drive to address our multitude of problems, no ideas other than soldiering on and hoping something turns up.
A great leader would have known to put effort into checking Cummings's sanity before giving him.control of the machine, and BoJo was too lazy to do that.
I suspect Sunak was persuaded that salting the earth for Starmer was a good idea for the future. However no one expected the Reform challenge, Trump, nor Starmer to be as calamitously ineffective as he has been so he didn't need Sunak's help to look ridiculous.
As long as not to Farage.
Carbon fibre.
The latest shoes basically have a large carbon fibre spring in the sole, rather like the the running springs we see in the Paralympics.
They’re said to be worth around 3%, and the authorities now have technical regulations around the designs.
I have no doubt whatsoever if I was in that situation I’d definitely take a bottle as well as filling up a glass to take.
My dilemma is more profound. Starmer staying is catastrophic. Starmer being replaced by Milliband is catastrophic, A Reform government would be catastrophic and the Reform-lite Conservatives under Badenoch would be equally catastrophic.
Starmer going is the first piece of the jigsaw, followed by an anyone but Ed Prime Minister. I'd take my chances after that.
Or Emily Thornbury.
If I was faced with Burnham and Thornbury as the only two options on the ballot, I'd be drawing a cock and balls.
It will certainly be portrayed as a disaster in some quarters though. But hopefully we will be disastering ourselves richer rather than progressing ourselves into the poorhouse.
Not for reasons of policy, but because he's incapable of maintaining good relations with colleagues for longer than about six weeks. Look at the turmoil at the top of UKIP and the fact that Reform -a party with half a dozen MPs that's been around for about two years- has had more defections and desertions and expulsions than the Liberal Democrats have had since their inception.
Farage has also shown a... willingness... to take money from people he shouldn't, and to take money to say stupid things on Cameo.
Reform needs to move past Farage, if it's going to be anything other than a disaster in power.
However people are not suddenly pining for a return to the Tories after the SKS shitshow.
At some point a government is going to have to get to grips with actually deporting people who have nothing to contribute and serious criminal records.
I am also aware that you remain the only poster who considers Truss's budget to be an unfortunate accidental missed opportunity.
I also think Danny Kruger is excellent.
Here he is being interviewed from the right, and implacably (and rightly) opposed ethno-nationalism in favour of civic nationalism. There is nobody in Labour who is thinking about how to implement a positive programme for Government, if they're thinking at all. Indeed their crowning ambition is to give away more of their own powers.
https://youtu.be/_4f9JJZyVo0?si=xqCeScnHYAM3Cg65
NEW: Cole Allen spewed anti-Christian and anti-Trump rhetoric on his social media accounts, said he wanted to target the Trump admin in his manifesto, according to CBS News.
According to Allen’s sister, he sent the manifesto to his family before the incident.
Allen had also attended a No Kings rally in California and was a part of the group named 'The Wide Awakes,' per Fox News.
I agree they've had a messy start - I don't lay 100% of that at Farage's door.
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/returns-of-unauthorised-migrants-from-the-uk/
I speak for the pensioner middle class socialist mob.
It's the same problem as Trump and Peron. A charasmatic character who latches onto justifiable anger. But who -for various reasons- is unsuitable for power.
The idea that Labour is poor at deporting people simply does not match the facts.
You need to reinvent yourselves as Ted Heath Tories. You would walk it back into Downing Street.
Which is why the Tories need to keep well clear of Reform.
Although your second paragraph is bob-on.
I don't think he really wants it anyway. It suits him to be shouting from the sidelines. Even if he did manage to become PM, and was capable of being really good at it, there must be so many vested interests of the establishment intwined into the civil service etc that he would get no help from anyone
Waste of money as far as I am concerned.
I’m bored of the wall to wall coverage . I look forward instead to the wall to wall coverage of the Royal visit instead !