BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION - 4TH JULY

can’t help but think Sunak just wants to go back to a life of privilege and is fed up being PM - a good way for him to just bow out - you can tell that his heart isn’t in what he says - he’s just going through the motions - he’s just stopping short of saying “please don’t vote for us”

The day he announced it the Spectator (essential reading for Tories) were ready to lead with a story on what a terrible time it "would be" to call an election not knowing the very thing was about to happen.

yeah I don’t disagree at all

Became a poisoned chalice as soon as bonking boris rocked in to town

An Irish interest, Morgan McSweeney the Labour Director of elections is from Macroom. Sue Gray one time ran a pub in Newry. Morgan's cousin, Clare Mugovan is an advisor to Leo Varadkar.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/may/24/meet-the-top-teams-the-key-election-advisers-to-sunak-and-starmer

Sunak welshed on the £1000 bet with Piers Morgan over the Rwanda horsesh1t aswell, #10 say they're not going to pay up.

He joined to Tories at Oxford where politics is just a game for posh boys and a chance at a bit of fame and glory. You win the game by becoming PM, there is no bonus points for being a good PM and if anything you would lose points for putting in effort.

he married in to money, are you suggesting he should just become kept man?

Why write a cheque you cannot cash? Sunak just looks more foolish than ever.

It's all quite fascinating. Rwanda was an important policy plank for Sunak, and he was unable to implement it thanks to the legal challenges of the NGO lobby groups. Its failure has severely damaged his personal reputation and that of the Conservative party.

Rumour mill tonight that all is not well in the Sunak camp….seems like things are kicking off behind the scenes.

Legal challenges and NGO lobbying? He made up a law to overrule the Supreme Court!

It failed because it was performative nonsense from the start. It was a scheme designed for a photo op, it was never going to actually work. It cost the UK 500m and within the deal they agreed to take as many Rwanda deported as they sent so net impact was always going to be zero.

It was a policy Sunak didn't need to tie himself to. He had plenty of opportunity to sidestep it. He could have put it on the long finger when he became PM. Yes it is important, but getting cost of living down, getting interest rates down, improving the NHS are the real issues. He could have easily led on that.

But even having tied himself to it at the start, the supreme Court ruling gave him another out. He could have parked it claiming a full review would be undertaken in light of the ruling blah blah

But he couldn't see anything but trying to impress the right wing and trying to outdo Reform.

It failed because its an unworkable policy.

He was told be his legal advisers that the latest immigration bill was unlikely to stand up to legal challenges, but he went ahead away.

No Tory PM is ever going to lift a finger to defend the NHS, they hate it, and it's ultimate destruction is going right to plan. The Starmer government will do nothing to reverse the covert privatisation which is driving up costs - they will adopt them as party policy.

He presumably needed a "duvet day" after the week he's had.

Labour say they will lower the voting age to 16 after they win the election.

This is clearly the type of change that should be decided by a referendum as it obviously any changes to electoral laws will be exploited by the government of the day to help increase their vote.

Labour only want this change because it will help them.

Sunak proposing the return of national service is a plot twist I didn't see coming.

Any details of costings or how it would be implemented? Are we going to see UK border officials having to stop young people as they leave GB to interrogate them over their national service status?

A lot of people aren't "enthusiastic" about the current Labour Party because they have absolutely no idea what it is they stand for or what their principles are. They are a blank slate, who are only within a sniff of power because the current Conservative Party are the most horrific iteration of that organisation since the days of Margaret Thatcher and have led Britain into the truly awful situation they presently experience.

But Starmer's "Labour" is an unknown quantity that people are only willing to have a punt on because the Tories have to be eliminated as thoroughly as possible. Which, ironically, is something that some Tories seem to be in favour of, as well, as evidenced by them calling for an election in just over a month's time with the sure knowledge that they will be decimated. Conservative leadership "logic" here seems to be just get it over with.

This thing is, British politics is in a really weird crossroads at present, where they have a situation that a lot of people have finally woken up to the absolute cretinous shambles that the Conservatives are, but the only option open to them is to vote for a party whose only shining attribute is "we're not the Tories".

It's no wonder there a lack of enthusiasm.

There is no constitution so no need for such a referendum.

The Tories have been gerrymandering boundaries for generations giving them an implicit advantage, and then there was the wheeze to insist on photo ID to vote ( a policy designed to undermine a left leaning younger vote). So forgive me for been unmoved if Labour try to rebalance the books a little.