General Politics Thread

[Salt n Vinegar]

1 hour ago, Granny Danger said:

If anyone gets near Johnson with a sword it shouldn’t be to knight him.

 Blair, Johnson and the "honours system" deserve each other. I hold them all in roughly equal contempt. 

[Scott Steiner]

29 minutes ago, Salt n Vinegar said:

 Blair, Johnson and the "honours system" deserve each other. I hold them all in roughly equal contempt. 

That's because you're full of hate.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

14 hours ago, Scott Steiner said:

That's because you're full of hate.

A wee bit ad hominem  for someone who claims to be upset at people being insulting or abusive on here, non?

[Salt n Vinegar]

18 minutes ago, WhiteRoseKillie said:

A wee bit ad hominem  for someone who claims to be upset at people being insulting or abusive on here, non?

If the post you quote was in response to one of mine, it really doesn't bother me at all.  I didn't see the actual post itself as life is too short to bother with that particular 'induhvidual'. 

(For anyone unfamiliar with the term induhvidual, it was accepted by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams as a term to describe a certain sort of person.  One handy, short, definition is "A foolish person, especially one whose blundering creates difficulty for others."  I've decided not to allow SS to create anything at all for me. Others sometimes quote his/her posts, so there's an occasional giggle, but as for direct contact, I'd rather eat cardboard with chopsticks on a sinking ship.)

[coprolite]

19 hours ago, Kima Greggs said:

Labour are never getting another overall majority again anyway. Regardless of how bad the Tories are, the press are more than capable of shitfesting a hung parliament over the line for them.

I remember people saying similar about the Tories in the mid noughties when they were burning through leaders and before King Tony abdicated. Also said about Labour before John Smith. Things changed pretty fast. 
I don’t think that the Tories are about to come unstuck quite so spectacularly any time soon but I do think that time will come. 

[D Angelo Barksdale]

23 minutes ago, coprolite said:

I remember people saying similar about the Tories in the mid noughties when they were burning through leaders and before King Tony abdicated. Also said about Labour before John Smith. Things changed pretty fast. 
I don’t think that the Tories are about to come unstuck quite so spectacularly any time soon but I do think that time will come. 

Fair enough, but those were different times. They may very well win an election, but I struggle to see a path to an overall majority.

Particularly with proposed ID requirements and any further boundary changes/gerrymandering.

[Granny Danger]

50 minutes ago, coprolite said:

I remember people saying similar about the Tories in the mid noughties when they were burning through leaders and before King Tony abdicated. Also said about Labour before John Smith. Things changed pretty fast. 
I don’t think that the Tories are about to come unstuck quite so spectacularly any time soon but I do think that time will come. 

I wonder what impact social media and 24 hour news has and, more importantly, will have in shaping peoples’ thoughts during election campaigns.

In the coming years when the majority of the electorate have been brought up in the social media era I can’t help feel that this could create more volatility in the weeks leading up to polling day.

 

 

[coprolite]

38 minutes ago, Kima Greggs said:

Fair enough, but those were different times. They may very well win an election, but I struggle to see a path to an overall majority.

Particularly with proposed ID requirements and any further boundary changes/gerrymandering.

I'm not a big follower of electoral science and the likes. You could well be right. 

It just seems to me that convincing majorities are usually won not so much by strategies, trying to target certain demographics etc but simply by having a charismatic leader. The big victories in my lifetime have been Thatcher, Blair and the current w****r. All of whom were box office in their own ways. 

[Dawson Park Boy]

21 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

I think a new Tory leader/PM would certainly get a bounce in the polls.  The problem for the Tory Party is twofold.

Firstly, Johnson won’t last much longer, his lies are finally catching up with him and there’s more to come, IMO he will be gone by the Spring.

Secondly, the country is in a mess.  Covid has largely masked the impact of Brexit as has the delays in full implementation of the various regulations.  It’s a ticking bomb.  The financial support for Covid will limit options for the U.K. government for the foreseeable future and inflation is hitting levels not seen for years and is only going to rise.

Any incoming PM will have to deal with these issues and by the time of the next GE will be drowning in problems.  Any popularity bounce will be gone by then.

 

Don’t agree with that.

Firstly, I would like to see a new Tory leader but it might be that Boris plays ball with the sensible wing of the party and does the following :-

Scraps green taxes on energy.

With COP26 now passed he’ll dump all the net zero nonsense

The go ahead will be given for new oil fields to be developed. We badly need the gas therefrom.

Fracking? - not sure but we must follow the US in becoming self sufficient in energy. Green is part of the answer but we must be secure in times of no wind.

After raising taxes to an almost all time high, Sunak will gradually reduce them to incentivise the productive sectors of the economy.

We will emerge from Covid earlier and in better shape than our neighbours.

We are forecast to have the highest growth of western countries in 2022.

The benefits of Brexit after a shaky start will start to come through.

The UK stock market is forecast to boom in 2022.

[NotThePars]

I'm not a big follower of electoral science and the likes. You could well be right. 
It just seems to me that convincing majorities are usually won not so much by strategies, trying to target certain demographics etc but simply by having a charismatic leader. The big victories in my lifetime have been Thatcher, Blair and the current w****r. All of whom were box office in their own ways. 

Not to be a boring Marxist about this but great man (lol) theory doesn’t explain these election wins. Johnson wouldn’t have stonking majority if large parts of the corridors of power in the UK across both sides of the political spectrum hadn’t did their bit to ensure it happened.

[coprolite]

9 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

Not to be a boring Marxist about this but great man (lol) theory doesn’t explain these election wins. Johnson wouldn’t have stonking majority if large parts of the corridors of power in the UK across both sides of the political spectrum hadn’t did their bit to ensure it happened.

Not even in part? Would Dominic Raab (for example) have exploited the opportunity to the same extent? 

I know the "great man*" approach is unfashionable but i also think the Impact of individuals is usually under appreciated as a result. 

*also Lol. 

[NotThePars]

Not even in part? Would Dominic Raab (for example) have exploited the opportunity to the same extent? 
I know the "great man*" approach is unfashionable but i also think the Impact of individuals is usually under appreciated as a result. 
*also Lol. 

I usually am a bit more sympathetic towards it than a few. I definitely think for example you needed a Lenin type in 1917 to move that whole thing out of the deadlock it was in. Even Churchill being an ardent hawk willing to work with Labour in 1940 was possibly beneficial to the Brits staying as gung-ho as they were.

I think Johnson was a useful figurehead for sure but I think he was buttressed by Cummings who was right place right time first and foremost but even then it relied on loads of forces pulling together in the right direction to ensure 2017 didn’t happen again or even worse.

I don’t think we’ll ever fully get to grips with how insane the press and multiple other influential parties were in 2018 and especially 2019. You couldn’t even do a conclusive top ten. Normal Island at its most comprehensively psychotic and focused. From Sky News doing full Tory comms on their “The Brexit Election” reporting to Newton-Dunn publishing fascist propaganda on the front page of the Sun to everyone screaming Russian disinfo at leaked plans for the trade talks involving the NHS. Everyone pretending Boris Johnson was a lying charlatan or at best somehow morally equivalent or less racist than a lifelong anti-racism campaigner.

[Fullerene]

4 hours ago, coprolite said:

I remember people saying similar about the Tories in the mid noughties when they were burning through leaders and before King Tony abdicated. Also said about Labour before John Smith. Things changed pretty fast. 
I don’t think that the Tories are about to come unstuck quite so spectacularly any time soon but I do think that time will come. 

I agree with this.  There is no way to predict where things will be in two years time.

One scenario is that Brexit is not the phenomenal success it was made out to be, Global Britain has failed to arrive and we are still constantly bickering with the EU.

Maybe by then the general public will decide that the whole thing needs to be fixed in some way and any government other than a Tory majority would be the best way to do this.

If such a government introduced a better voting system, maybe we can say goodbye to Tory majority governments in the UK and certainly those held hostage by the Faragist extremists.

Edited January 3, 2022 by Fullerene

[welshbairn]

Attlee was probably the least charismatic politician in British history but accomplished more than any other in his short rule, and under huge financial restraints. Johnson might end up being even more Churchillian than he thinks, post Covid everyone might start thinking it's time for a fresh start. Problem is, although even more uncharismatic, Starmer is no Atlee, nowhere near it.

[Antlion]

15 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Attlee was probably the least charismatic politician in British history but accomplished more than any other in his short rule, and under huge financial restraints. Johnson might end up being even more Churchillian than he thinks, post Covid everyone might start thinking it's time for a fresh start. Problem is, although even more uncharismatic, Starmer is no Atlee, nowhere near it.

[HTG]

6 minutes ago, Antlion said:

[NotThePars]

Attlee was probably the least charismatic politician in British history but accomplished more than any other in his short rule, and under huge financial restraints. Johnson might end up being even more Churchillian than he thinks, post Covid everyone might start thinking it's time for a fresh start. Problem is, although even more uncharismatic, Starmer is no Atlee, nowhere near it.

Attlee had a socialist ideology, a stated burning hatred of the Tories and an empire he could loot to build the welfare state. Starmer has none of these, yes.

[welshbairn]

11 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

Attlee had a socialist ideology, a stated burning hatred of the Tories and an empire he could loot to build the welfare state. Starmer has none of these, yes.

Was Britain still making a profit from the Empire after WW2? Not arguing, I just thought they were only trying to keep hold of it for prestige reasons rather than continued pillaging, and it was getting more expensive to police than was worth the bother. 

 

[renton]

6 hours ago, welshbairn said:

Was Britain still making a profit from the Empire after WW2? Not arguing, I just thought they were only trying to keep hold of it for prestige reasons rather than continued pillaging, and it was getting more expensive to police than was worth the bother. 

 

Britain was bankrupt at wars end, indeed was basically running on lend lease loans after 42.

The Empire had been an economic drain on Britain since the 1920s, which may explain some of the speed on the British side to establish Indian independence.

Around the same time as Atlee established the welfare state, Britain was still demobilising a significantly large armed forces, while providing occupation forces for Germany and Japan, helping feed Germany, enforcing a UN mandate in Palestine and also setting up their own nuclear weapons programme.

Edited January 4, 2022 by renton

[Jacksgranda]

13 hours ago, Fullerene said:

I agree with this.  There is no way to predict where things will be in two years time.

One scenario is that Brexit is not the phenomenal success it was made out to be, Global Britain has failed to arrive and we are still constantly bickering with the EU.

Maybe by then the general public will decide that the whole thing needs to be fixed in some way and any government other than a Tory majority would be the best way to do this.

If such a government introduced a better voting system, maybe we can say goodbye to Tory majority governments in the UK and certainly those held hostage by the Faragist extremists.

Any government that wins under the present system is unlikely to introduce a system of voting which would stop them getting in government again, imo