General British politics discussion thread

There is an audible extract from Rory Stewart's book, Politics on the Edge, available on, The Rest is Politics, podcast. It tells when Rory meets his new boss Liz Truss. Absolutely bonkers.

It's not surprising any more but Braverman and the Tories continue to punch down on immigrants.

Independent reports criticising the way centres are run? Well, let's just cancel inspections and not renew the inspector's contract while we're at it.

No accountability, no desire to acknowledge problems, just continue to treat some of society's most vulnerable poorly and put more obstacles in place so nothing can be done about it.

It's like she's fully embraced the Cruella nickname.

Sunak to bring net zero speech forward to today.

"Do those unions really think they're members would be better off if Labour was in power in England instead?"

Yes.

Yes, they do; because any alternative Government would not continue the Tories current spending and taxation plans

Do you ever actually analyse politics in even the vaguest depth or is your username ironic?

The astonishing thing is the Sunak openly admits what is going on here; "Our political system rewards short-term decision-making that is holding our country back [and this is why, in the run-up to a general election, I am abruptly reversing a settled long-term policy adopted with cross-party support; I hope to minimise the scale of my party's inevitable loss in that election and I am prioritising that over the country's interests]".

Does he think that, by admitting what he is doing, he somehow defused criticism for doing it? It's a surprisingly common belief among selfish, entitled bastards that if they boast about being selfish, entitled bastards this somehow invalidates criticism of their selfishness, entitlement and bastardry.

To be fair to Thatcher — much as I dislike being fair to Thatcher — it was in fact the Argentinians who started that war, not Thatcher. And while I wouldn't have made the same strategic or tactical choices that she did in the prosecution of that war, I don't think we can say that her choices were a deliberate sacrifice of long-term national interest for short-term political gain. Given who she was, her personality and her values, it's entirely possible that her judgment was that assertive resistance to an armed attack was the right thing to do in the national interest.

In the event it turned out to be electorally very advantageous for her, but I'm not convinced that that was her primary motivation. Apart from anything else, it was by no means a given; with the benefit of hindsight, events unfolded in a way that worked out well for her popularity, but it could have been very different.

This is an entirely different situation. This isn't an external event which has been forced on Sunak; this is a reversal of a policy which Sunak himself advanced, and which parliament endorsed with bipartisan support.

Well, we'll know soon enough how this affects the polls. But most polls suggest that the net zero target is popular, and that the number of people who want more to be done to address climate change is greater than the number who want less to be done.

There's a vocal group, but I think a relatively small minority, who have the screaming habdabs over anything that might affect private motoring, but I suspect most members of that group are people who are likely to vote Tory anyway. This measure may be targetted not so much at winning votes back from Labour as at preventing Tory votes bleeding to Reform and similar groups.

I think you're overplaying things there.

Carrington didn't make it clear that the UK would respond with force to an invasion - that's very different to "would not object".

No leader of any country would survive allowing another country to unilaterally invade their territory without strong response.

Thatcher had many, many faults but responsibility for the Falklands conflict lies with the Argentinian junta, not her.

He's blatantly going for the racist and anti-science vote with some of his recent decisions - certainly not providing 'leadership' on anything.

The Fire Brigades Union was disabused of that idea 20 years ago.

they aren't pay rises, they are pay restorations as they had substantial pay cuts imposed upon them since 2010.

everyone will be better off with labour in power, whether small or big, whether starmer is the man for the job himself is a different question though, but there is no doubt he will be better then the current shower of junk no matter how bad he is.

from what i can see, generally outcomes seem to be better during a labour government then a tory one, at least since 1979.

not really, dispite them being prohibited from withdrawing their labour they were still better paid and better treated.