General British politics discussion thread

... and a period during which the UK was part of the EU/Single Market, allowing for frictionless trade in both the raw materials and the finished products.

Therein lies the difficulty of separating the real world from the imaginative world of statistical spinning. Under normal circumstances, private enterprise will find a way to "make stuff, and make stuff work" regardless of what colour government is in charge. And conversely, if those circumstances change to create much more difficult circumstances (like self-imposed trade barriers) then even a wholesale change in government won't mask the short- to medium-term consequences of same ... but a decade later any downward trend in the stats will be attributed to the government in charge at the time, not (necessarily) the one that set things in motion.

FT.com: BoJo hosting GB News general election special

To be honest it might actually be worth watching just to see what their "analysis" is 😂

I imagine he will use election night to stick the knife into Sunak and anyone who betrayed him.

While also pretending he takes no responsibility for the battering.

By any stretch of the imagination, it's a bizarre move. A recent UK prime minister presenting his own current affairs show on a tacky, populist TV channel populated by cranks and conspiracy theorists. There's something quite Trumpian about it all. Arlene Foster ending up on it was weird, but this is even more weird.

This isn't a normal unpopular government though. It's a government that has been purged of talent especially at the top after 5 different Prime Ministers and god knows how many cabinet changes.

When childrens homes are running at a 19% profit for private equity funds, you know priorities are upside down;

According to that tweet, what McDonald said was: We won"t rest until we have justice, until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea can live in peaceful liberty.

On the face of it, it seems innocent enough, until you read that from the river to the sea is a contentious term. I suspect it's that phrase that got him suspended.

Gaza should most certainly be compared to the Nazi ghettos.

Whatever about showing support after the shock of the initial Hamas attack the Israeli response has certainly made the call for peace talks a very easy decision and Labour are increasingly finding themselves on the wrong side of moral and public opinion by not calling for one.

Some of the evidence coming out of the Covid enquiry is really grotesque, but not at all surprising.

“Chief whip says ‘I think we should let the old people get it & protect others’. PM says ‘a lot of my backbenchers think that & I must say I agree with them’ “

”Johnson told Lee Cain, his director of communications, via WhatsApp in October 2020: “Jeeez. I must say I have been slightly rocked by some of the data on covid fatalities. The median age is 82-81 for men 85 for women. That is above life expectancy. So get COVID and live longer. Hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital (4 per cent) and of those virtually all survive. And I no longer buy all this nhs overwhelmed stuff. Folks I think we may need to recalibrate. There are max 3m in this country aged over 80”.”

“Covid is nature’s way of dealing with old people”.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/31/natures-way-of-dealing-with-old-people-the-damning-messages-revealed-to-covid-inquiry

Yeah, they really were rats in the bucket during Covid. Apparently Cummings had it in for Hancock, called another a 'c1nt' which he defended as saying, "I said worse about my male colleagues" and so on.