General British politics discussion thread

Joe_ Public · 29-09-2021 4:07pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117954794#Comment_117954794

I'm not somebody who was ever very pro Biden, but one thing i believe he has got right is in not alienating the left wing of his party. They helped him win the election and he has reciprocated by making some concessions in his policies, that is a good thing. A lot of people close to Starmer are fond of citing Biden as a model, but saying "winning is more important than unity" is not to my mind following the Biden example. I don't think you can win without unity anyway, the two are quite possibly indivisible, and i think Burnham would understand that better than Starmer. Maybe Sadiq Khan too.

ancapailldorcha · 29-09-2021 8:41pm

Take the WW2 stuff elsewhere please.

fiveleavesleft · 30-09-2021 2:56pm

Starmer's on the frothy topics today. Favourite Bond? Starmer wants a female Bond.

Plus this on 5 live. Interesting because he has totally given up on Scotland & is going full on woo the Red Wall. Maybe he has to but why stick with the phoney patriotism which has been getting him nowhere for the last year? Cringey stuff to be honest. Also I thought he was Mr. Forensic. He was asked for 3 but answered with 1000's!😀

https://twitter.com/bbc5live/status/1443488830716272640

Joe_ Public · 03-10-2021 11:08am

Watching Marr earlier, I'm having a hard time deciding which was worse, Andy Burnham declaring himself a fan of Michael Gove or Johnson's utterly shambolic performance, riddled with its customary quota of evasions, half truths, blustering and empty pledges. Burnham probably worse, because you at least expect that of the pm. The high - or should that be low? - point was Johnson, probably deliberately, misinterpreting Marrs question about 120,000 pigs potentially being slaughtered due to a shortage of butchers as one about animal rights. Andrew, I'll explain to you again, we kill animals all the time, the public understands this! Your "hecatomb of pigs", he said at one point. Almost beyond farce or parody.

Anyway, Andy really seems to like Michael, which is a noteworthy endorsement given it's only a matter of weeks a young Gove was heard on tape sounding off about those "dirty northerners." But "Michael" is a man of vision and integrity, apparently, who will do great things for levelling up. "A minister who gets things done." I'd love to ask a few teachers what they made of that interview with a much touted future leader of labour this morning.

A Dub in Glasgo · 03-10-2021 12:10pm

I listened to Johnson on Marr and dear me, what a pathetic man Johnson is. Burnham should be ashamed of himself for brown nosing Gove

https://twitter.com/PeterStefanovi2/status/1444587708215709696

fiveleavesleft · 03-10-2021 12:15pm

Burnham was never the sharpest. Hope he isn't getting too cocky with all the praise.

Joe_ Public · 03-10-2021 12:30pm

They flashed up a page from the mail in the newspaper section which had two labour stories on it - a threat to Starmer that Burnham was being lined up to take over if he doesn't shape up and something about 3 labour mps contemplating defecting to the tories.

Why and who from labour is spinning these stories to the rag mail is interesting. The first I'm not sure, the obvious impact was to force Burnham into an immediate retraction and commitment to Starmer, but the second seems an obvious plant by a section of the party to convince Starmer he needs to keep pushing more to the right. If they concerned the potential defections of leftist labour mps, they'd be welcoming it. The story is almost certainly b'**** anyway, but they know Starmer is more than likely to take the hint, just to be on the safe side. That's my theory anyway!

breezy1985 · 03-10-2021 12:33pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117970277#Comment_117970277

It's the Mail they don't need sources they just make things up

fiveleavesleft · 03-10-2021 12:42pm

Yeah I get the feeling he is been lead by the nose by Mandelson. The way he dumped his whole team & surrounded himself with a bunch of Blairite nobodies was revealing.

The other rumour this week is that they are going to make a move against Ed Miliband. I felt the conference had a anti-Ed feel to it. Be a shame in my opinion Starmer's cabinet is dire, Ed is one of the few decent ones.

Joe_ Public · 03-10-2021 1:14pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117970331#Comment_117970331

Well, that's the formula it would seem at least. Just recreate the 1990s, cool brittania, best buddies with Rupert again, loads of op eds in the Sun, talk about crime a lot, aspiration, "hard working families" etc, and hey presto, we're on the road to power again! Only problem is the tories, despite the mess they're creating, don't appear to be imploding quite as conveniently as they did back then. So not sure on it's own, it'll be anywhere near enough.

I agree on Miliband. Very impressed with his work on the green new deal over the past number of years. Bit disheartening to hear those repeated rumours about his place in the shadow cabinet.

fiveleavesleft · 03-10-2021 1:30pm

The flaw is they are not really interested in the 90's. What they want to recreate is mid 2000's late New Labour period. Corporate, managerial & authoritarian, the New Labour that was turning off people in droves. Sometimes think Labour 2015-2017 was closer to Labour 1994-1997 than many care to admit.

20silkcut · 03-10-2021 3:09pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117970200#Comment_117970200

2017 brexit means brexit

2019 Get brexit done

2021. Let’s see what happens

Thats the Tory policy now let’s see what happens.

breezy1985 · 04-10-2021 1:15pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117970465#Comment_117970465

I'm not sure it was a change of direction more a less charismatic leader mixed with voter fatigue and the Iraq war that turned some people off.

It took a coalition to beat them so was it really "turning people off in droves"

fiveleavesleft · 05-10-2021 12:47am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117974301#Comment_117974301

Well they did lose 5 million votes, they lost Scotland the first "Red Wall" & their grip on the old heartlands slipped which would have disastrous consequences. Parties all around them booned & there certainly was real dislike amongst people of all stripes over the direction they were going.

Not a New Labour hater, they were a fine government in many ways & did a lot of good stuff. Interestingly a new series began tonight on BBC:

https://youtu.be/HNnu6J3eN5A

Joe_ Public · 05-10-2021 8:43am

Mandelson on the forlorn Brown after the string of events that led to Blair becoming leader: "Gordon didn't know who to rely on. Didn't know who his true friends were." Well, he definitely knew he couldn't rely on you anyway, Pete, and that you were never the true friend you claimed to be. That much you can be certain about!

breezy1985 · 05-10-2021 9:21am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117977724#Comment_117977724

It was more the reasoning for the losses I had an issue with. They did lose that election of course so their were losses but the wipeouts really only came later.

CaitCat · 05-10-2021 9:27am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117950626#Comment_117950626

I think Mark Drakeford has done a great job in Wales. I'm not a fan of Labour but I think he handled the pandemic well.

He's not a charismatic as most modern politicians, but he gets his head down and gets the job done.

PommieBast · 05-10-2021 11:04am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117977724#Comment_117977724

People forget that in 2005 Labour only chalked up 34% of the vote and were a swing of 1-2% from losing their majority.

Peregrinus · 06-10-2021 1:42am

1000px-United_Kingdom_votes_%25.svg[1].png

The Labour vote peaked in 1997 and declined thereafter to a low in 2010. Obviously not all of the decline was due to the GFC, which happened in 2008; more than half of the fall had accrued by 2005. The trend since 2010 has been modestly upwards; there was a huge spike under Corbyn in 2017, but he lost most - though not quite all - of that in 2019 (though still polling better than either Brown or Milliband had been able to). Starmer, of course, has yet to fight an election.

T

Seth Brundle · 06-10-2021 9:14am

Looks like the Tories are getting even tougher on the vulnerable in society.

Patel is going to use whatever forces she can, including the military, to turn back asylum seekers...

https://twitter.com/OxfordDiplomat/status/1445639606611812355

Raab also has plans to overhaul the "nonsensical" Human Rights Act...

https://twitter.com/euromove/status/1445337157141422086

One must wonder, where they plan on going with this level of toughness.

I also note that Raab has again hit the headlines for another blunder on TV. This time he misunderstands the definition of mysogny to include violence by women against men...

https://twitter.com/JimMFelton/status/1445645448077725698

Peregrinus · 06-10-2021 9:23am

The fact that Raab clearly has no idea what misogyny is tells you all you need to know about how much he cares about the status and treatment of women in the UK.

pixelburp · 06-10-2021 9:25am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117982245#Comment_117982245

The moment any politician or politically aligned public figure opines about a "Common Sense" approach, that's the point I shudder and presume any given legislation is about to get riven with manipulation and abuse. As the oft repeated remark from Maya Angelou goes, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

ancapailldorcha · 06-10-2021 10:06am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117982273#Comment_117982273

Bear in mind that this is the same man who, a year ago thought that taking the knee was a Game of Thrones thing.

It's not really toughness at the end of the day, it's the opposite. They know they have no argument for the next election so their play is to try and shore up their base by pretending that these changes will only affect people they despise, ie the working classes, liberals, the left and foreigners. It comes across as pathetically weak more than anything else.

Ironically, the one thing that might actually damage them, PR was defeated at the Labour conference when 95% of trade unions voted it down.

Peregrinus · 06-10-2021 10:21am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117982431#Comment_117982431

Yeah, and he's also the guy who was not to discover until the age of 45 that Great Britain is an island, a surprising amount of whose trade is conducted through the channel ports. So I think it's fair to say that is relationship with reality is a fairly distant one.

Sam Russell · 06-10-2021 11:06am

Raab was also the Brexit secretary who, at the height of the Good Friday agreement being central to Brexit negotiations, admitted that he had never read the 38 page booklet detailing the GFA and was sent to every household on the island of Ireland and supported by the vast majority of voters in both jurisdictions of the island - by huge majorities compared to that of the 52% who voted for Brexit.

Raab has a serious deficit when it comes to smarts, even more than his deficit when it comes to brain power. People with his intellect are best advised not to speak up lest they be thought stupid, but not to speak up lest they remove any doubt.

The Tories appear to select MPs without regard to talent or intelligence - just loyalty. They then promote the least talented.

ancapailldorcha · 06-10-2021 11:18am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117982674#Comment_117982674

Raab is a former human rights lawyer. There's nothing in his background that easily explains the silly remarks he's made over the years.

Sam Russell · 06-10-2021 11:55am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117982726#Comment_117982726

I wonder how he did at school? Top of the class?

ancapailldorcha · 06-10-2021 11:57am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117982929#Comment_117982929

I wouldn't know. I just think it's noteworthy that he's a former human rights lawyer who doesn't understand the term "misogyny".

Sam Russell · 06-10-2021 12:09pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117982945#Comment_117982945

I think that is the point I am making. Perhaps the career adviser told him that he was only fit to become a Tory MP.

Joe_ Public · 06-10-2021 12:40pm

Interesting that in the week of the Pandora papers and another orgy of offshore evasion and corruption, Johnson delivers a conference speech that is a paean to the big city banker types who have their mitts all over it. The covid vaccine was a triumph of pure capitalism, he claims, nothing at all to do with the 97% of funding that came from the public purse. The big corporate donors will be well reassured anyway.

General British politics discussion thread

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