General British politics discussion thread

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120644300#Comment_120644300

Wow, and I thought The Economist was expensive!

Sam Russell

Guardian headline : Media shuns Tory party conference over demands for attendance fee

I see the Tories are trying to charge the media to attend their party conference, but the media are refusing to pay.

Maybe they could get a few of their wealthy MPs to stump up for the media. After all, they want to media to report their conference, don't they?

Perhaps not.

Water John

Some of their dodgy wealthy donors might be an option for the Tory party.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120642349#Comment_120642349

The FT caters to the preconceptions and preferences of its target market just as much as any other newspaper. It's what newspapers have to do to surivive.

The thing is, the FT's target market has a preference for objective reality, accuracy and truth. The FT's target market is the commercial and financial classes who make money by running real-world businesses of one kind or another. To succeed at that you have to have a realistic perception of the world around you, so the FT's readers want to know that what they read in the paper will be truthful, reliable, accurate, balanced, etc, and will leave them well-informed.

It's not always an exciting newspaper to read, and the focus on business and politics at the expense of culture and social topics is not to everyone's taste. But you can be sure that they are not running a slate of slanted stories designed to fuel your outrage about something in order to influence your vote or your political position.

Sam Russell

The FT also prints its paper on PINK paper which may or may not be of significance to its readers. :)

Water John

Yes unbleached, very environmentally friendly😀

breezy1985

During a visit to London over the weekend I was shocked at how quiet the place was particularly in regards to tourist areas that I would have a lot of experience in from working in hospitality there.

Been looking for various figures on the subject and it felt like it was a lot worse than the 87% of previous years prediction below.

https://www.visitbritain.org/2023-tourism-forecast

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120682630#Comment_120682630

Last weekend had train strikes so a lot of the intercity stuff was not running

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120683741#Comment_120683741

Ya I know I got caught in the Stansted strike.

It certainly had an affect on numbers if they were down 75% of trains from the airport and I still was on a half empty carriage.

But it's not just that weekend if it's the numbers I was quoted from friends in the industry.

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120683829#Comment_120683829

Given what I've heard about hospitality and WFH I can believe those figures..

ancapailldorcha

I'm in Amsterdam in a poorly judged holiday and I can't wait to get back to London. It's absurdly well set up both for tourism and in general. TfL is by far the best public transport system I've ever used and the best museums are free unlike here where they cost a fortune and must be booked online. I can't even visit the Anne Frank House or the Van Gogh museum because they've sold out ages ago. My fault of course but it's impossible to see a major London attraction have the same problem.

I'm sad that fewer people appear to be visiting London. Every time I visit an EU capital, I become that little bit more convinced that I live in the best city in Europe.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120685048#Comment_120685048

I've noticed a few cracks emerging in TFL services but it is still the best around with the only real downfall being the lack of 24hr trains.

Museums in London are amazing but special exhibitions and the other tourist stuff like London Eye or Tower of London are no less expensive than anywhere else and will sell out as I learned Sunday.

One thing Brexit really hurt was the tremendous goodwill other Europeans had for the UK. It's a complete contrast to the hostile attitude the English have for them.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120683956#Comment_120683956

Work from home is doing serious damage to certain areas. Waterloo for instance has the double problem of tourist and office drop off.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120685099#Comment_120685099

Yeah, the Tower, the other HRPs and the Zoo are appalling rip offs as is Kew Gardens.

Strikes are only a recent problem but I hope the Unions can get a settlement that they're happy with. It's quite an inconvenience for me as I work on site but it is what it is.

I hope we can get some kind of prudent regulation for WFH soon. It's clearly the way things need to go. A close friend is having to relocate to Leeds because of high property prices here but her work are insisting on two in office days a week. It could be a real boost to less affluent areas far from London but the government would rather campaign than act.

breezy1985

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/07/labour-landslide-election-victory-poll-keir-starmer-rishi-sunak-conservatives-constituency-boundaries

New polls out and mostly telling us nothing we didn't know.

Past the clickbait title it gives various scenarios of how it will turn out but looking good for Labour in both England and Scotland.

Leroy42

I think Sunak is actually a big problem for the Tories. he is really struggling with the job, and his delivery continues to be terrible. He got a bounce after taking over from Truss, but he continually seems to make the wrong decisions. His latest decision to go bring the Covid inquiry to court is going to play out poorly for him. His recent trip to Dover to proclaim his 'stopping the boats' was working was ripped apart by a journalist asking if strong winds were the bigger reason.

I assume it was felt that the longer he was in the office, the more distance to Truss and Johnson's time as PM and the better chance they had of winning back some votes but based on his performance to date I can't see him providing that. He was always facing a tough challenge, but are the Tories starting to realise that Sunak is actually a vote loser rather can a winner?

ancapailldorcha

His whole selling point was professionalism and competence along with a break from the scandal-riven years of Truss and Johnson.

Of course, he immediately fatally undermined any credibility he had from the outset by keeping Suella Braverman as Home Secretary. It was nice to see some form of rapprochement with Emmanuel Macron and the EU but we all knew where this was heading: culture wars and scandal culminating in defeat.

He's a 21st century John Major without any achievements to offset the corruption and graft.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120686171#Comment_120686171

He might be worried the Covid enquiry will remind everyone that he was at all the same parties that got Johnson sacked.

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120685099#Comment_120685099

The real disaster zone is the National Rail franchises, which in the case of Avanti is so bad that they've stopped selling advance tickets for a lot of their services. No wonder WFH has got cemented.

Ahwell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120686209#Comment_120686209

The Covid Inquiry seems to be taking a keen interest in the "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme that he brought in when he was Chancellor.

"Eat Out to Help Out was launched in August 2020. It allowed diners to claim 50% off more than 160m meals at a cost to the Treasury of about £850m. In the process, it also drove new Covid-19 infections up by between 8 and 17%, according to a study carried out by Thiemo Fetzer, an economist at the University of Warwick, a few weeks later." https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/03/sunak-under-fire-as-stupid-eat-out-to-help-out-scheme-to-be-focus-of-covid-inquiry

To put it bluntly, it killed people. So yeah, I think he is worried alright.

Podge_irl

It was also basically a rounding error on what happened that autumn and winter.

Eat Out to Help out was potentially bad policy, but it was also pretty defendable policy. Skipping Cobra meetings, illegal gatherings in govt buildings, and general lies and obfuscation seem to be far worse.

Strazdas

Sunak is a bit of a strange one. Seems very conciliatory on relations with Ireland and the EU26 and yet is surprisingly right wing and hawkish on immigration and refugees (there's not that much evidence that he differs with Braverman on this).

Ahwell

Perhaps, but I think he can also be criticised for not increasing statutory sick pay - meaning people who tested positive for Covid going to work because they couldn't afford not to.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120687657#Comment_120687657

Sure, he can be criticised for that and I think it was dreadful policy (and still is just in general). But it ties into the fairly poor welfare policies in the UK in general.

Inquiries shouldn't really be looking at the merits or demerits of policy choices though - they need to look at whether there were procedural and conduct issues and indeed if there was a negligent and foreseeably terribly policy choice (which are different outcomes also). There is scope for a review to look at policy choices to inform future efforts but that's not what this is.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120687648#Comment_120687648

He mostly just has no spine or ideas of his own.

He got the chancellor's job by agreeing to be a doormat.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120687714#Comment_120687714

Well we know there were conduct issues because there is proof Sunak was at lockdown parties.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120687724#Comment_120687724

Well we know there were conduct issues because there is proof Sunak was at lockdown parties.

Yes, that and poor governance in general is where I think the inquiry should focus.

I don't think any comments on EOHO is going to change a single person's mind politically at this point either (not that being political is the inquiry's job). But I'd say if they focus on that that Sunak would be thrilled more than anything else.

Water John

The other side is that all that you write about Sunak and Braverman is factored into the polling. Yet much of the Lb lead is soft. So that could narrow a lot in the run up to a GE. 30 seats in Scotland seems very optimistic.

Leroy42

It's not the policy, its that apparently he ignored the scientific advice.

I agree that individual policy decisions shouldn't be held against a politician, but the process of arriving at that decision should be.

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120687478#Comment_120687478

EO2HO for all its faults probably saved some busineses and livlihoods, so while bad it did have some measure of well-meaning. Ireland's 18-month lockdown was pure indecision.

Peregrinus

The purpose of the Covid enquiry is not to demonise (or sanctify) particular politicians, but to look at the overall handling of the pandemic, the preparation, the resources, the processes, the policies, and the outcomes in a systemic way, so as to learn useful lessons for the next pandemic.

But obviously a side-effect of it may be to damage or enhance the reputation of particular politicians, and that side-effect is of more importance to those politicians that the main purpose of the exercise is. That's why it's important that the enquiry be independent, and why politicians' attempts to constrain or direct the enquiry will most likely be politically damaging to those politicians.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120686171#Comment_120686171

I think the big problem for the Tories is, actually, that their leader is not the big problem. If it were, they could fix their problem by ditching their leader and appointing a competent and popular one, if they had anybody competent and popular. But voters aren't pissed off with Sunak; they're pissed off with the Tories. That's a much more difficult problem to fix. Truth to tell, it can't be fixed in the time available before the next election.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120688097#Comment_120688097

Its not a technocracy, he's perfectly entitled to ignore scientific advice.

Beyond which, it is a governments job to parse all advice from multiple sources and make the decisions afterwards. Scientific advice from experts is, by definition, going to be very narrowly focused (and frequently lacks consensus).

EO2HO is fundamentally a non-event in scale of the pandemic and response as a whole.