UK Politics

They don't, that's completely fair and part of the reason they are so useless. I don't think they could even process any new policies before the election now anyway.

But from the Labour point of view it looks like an excuse rather than a cunning plan. We're going to see in a few month no doubt though but if they start springing unpopular policies out of nowhere once they're elected the might find that the electorate views that even less positively than a bit of media scrutiny.

I can't think of too many that they've nicked apart from the stupid non-dom removal. To be honest they're so close together on a load of stuff that they basically tinker around the edges on each others ideas anyway.

 

So called? C'mon Idle, you are pretty much level headed but even the most ardent of Tory voter has to admit the country is in a complete mess due to astonishing levels of incompetence from Westminster. And I have no dog in the fight here, I'm just a curious observer.

 

Boris Johnson is undoubtedly a brilliant political campaigner, but he is utterly incompetent at actually running anything. Most of the Tory parliamentary party recognised this but hitched their wagon behind him because of his campaigning skills and his leading role in the Brexit campaign. Regardless of whether or not you supported or opposed Brexit, it is actually a classic example of his ineptitude. Despite assuring us that there was an oven ready deal, it was clear from the moment it was signed that Johnson didn’t understand the detail of what he’d agreed to and hadn’t a scooby how to make it work for us in the way he’d promised.

There is masses of evidence stretching from his school and university days, through his time as a journalist up to accounts of his time at No 10 describing how totally useless he is. Everything he touches turns to chaos. He is lazy, so easily bored by detail that he never reads his briefs properly, is completely bamboozled by anything numerate and cannot maintain a consistent line on anything because he is so easily swayed by whoever is talking to him.
Johnson is the preeminent example of the way the Eton/Oxford conveyor belt produces wave after wave of entitled toffs who believe that they are destined by birth to run the country. Their education teaches them how to bullshit brilliantly about subjects they know next to nothing about but teaches them nothing about actually running anything. If you doubt this account of him, I suggest you read this book (written by an Oxford contemporary of Johnson, Gove, Cameron, Rees-Mogg et al) which lays it out in grizzly detail:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/chums-how-tiny-caste-oxford-tories-took-over-uk

It was abvious to anyone paying attention that Johnson was totally unsuitable for high office and should never have been allowed anywhere near government, let alone leading it. Until Truss came along and trumped him, he was easily the most incompetent Prime Minister this country has had in living memory, if not ever. It was Partygate that brought him down, but if it hadn’t have been that it would have been something else before long. There’s no way that he would have lasted a full term as PM. He’s a permanent accident waiting to happen.
By contrast, Starmer and Rachel Reeves are serious, competent people who have real experience of actually running things. Reeves has an MSc in Economics from LSE, experience working in commercial banking and at the Bank of England and is a deep thinker and writer on economic theory. She’s been iron-fisted in her determination to base the next Labour government on responsible economic footings and has been in constructive dialogue with leaders of industry and finance for ages. The idea that she would put your pension fund, or the country’s economy, at more jeopardy than the clowns who’ve been in charge for the last fourteen years, is for the birds.

 

This isn't saying that the Conservatives have done a good job....because I don't think they have. They've become weak and cowardly when you need strength and great communication to be able to implement truly Conservative ideas. The whole basis is that you have to be able to make tough decisions and explain why its the right one.

But the "mess" of this country isn't particular to us. Its a Western thing and has been for about the past four years. Europe and America as a group are struggling with a variety of important things from immigration, to policing, to taxation, to investment, to infrastructure. We're all just following the same path and while I think everybody is justified in criticising the government for not trying to tread their own strong path I think some of these issues are much more global and widespread than we see on our doorsteps. That's going to be one of the big issues for the next government.

 

Whichever part is in power next, they need to address this issue.

Billions and billions of tax-payers money flowing to rentier capitalism. Not rewarding entrepreneurship, not rewarding ingenuity.

The 28 billion green investment that upset so many people is a drop in the ocean compared to the money flowing out of the country, whilst essential services are falling apart.

A long-term view needs to be taken, that allows the private sector to provide services where it is sensible to do so, but to remove the ability for huge profits to be made.

 

If essential utilities like say, water, were knocking out the profits they do but with the knowledge that profit was going back in to future proof the infrastructure for future generations then I'd have no problem with that. The fact they are now run to serve the private institutions shareholders tells you all you need to know about modern day Britain. It's an essential part of life FFS.
I did a job a couple of years ago, the guy working the canteen was from Algeria. Was telling me about back home where.tue wages were poor but things like electric and water cost very little and not equal on a scale of economics to this country.
We really are robbed blind in this country to keep the elite in the lap of luxury they are accustomed to.

 

Seeing Sunak now is like watching David Brent have a mental breakdown on The Office.

Yesterday at PMQ he was an absolute disaster. He lost his MP for Dover who is on the front line of the boats crisis who basically roasted him about his plan on Rwanda.

It's like watching a multi car motorway pile up in slow motion at this stage.

We really are going to limp on till the winter with this shitshow aren't we?

 

But it's what comes then thats scary......

 

It's past the point of embarrassment, the titanic has hit the iceberg and Sunak is babbling on about the seating arrangements on the deck. It's like a terminally wounded animal that needs putting out of its misery. It's the last helicopter out of Saigon scenario. I could go on, I've never seen such an appalling shitshow in the politics of this country.

 

In reality the Dover MP aren't really a match, what I see is "The enemy of my enemy, is my friend"

That's the reality of the defection. The Dover MP wants to hit out at Sunak and the Labour Party are more than happy to allow someone to basically go out there and say Sunak's plan is not working, it's an expensive sham and although Government ministers are going out on the airwaves and Sunak himself is parroting the line, crossing are down by a third, the reality is that at this time of the year they have never been higher.

The current polls suggest a 30 point lead to Labour, that on par with Truss days before she was forced to resign.

And all this on the back of beige Keir Starmer, if Labour had a charasmatic leader such as the Labour equivalent of Boris Johnson, Sunak would actually be like the Tories equivalent of Corbyn.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/opinion/britain-conservative-party-elections.html

Good summary article in the NY Times.

 

You couldn’t make it up (#327 in a continuing series):

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/14/home-office-department-processing-rwanda-deportations-told-to-cut-jobs?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The Tories are budget cutting the staff who process Rwanda deportations!!!!

The policy may be batshit crazy, but it’s their only original idea and has to be seen as their flagship policy. It’s what they’re hanging their remaining electoral prospects on. And yet they’re cutting its funding!

Sunak was supposed to be a safe, managerial, pair of hands even if he lacked political nous and charisma. But this makes no managerial sense whatsoever.

 

Natalie Elphicke lobbies the justice secretary as a Tory MP. Nothing is said or done and it sat on for 4 years.

Natalie Elphicke joins labour and the Sunday Papers suddenly have all these stories about her lobbying the justice secretary and comptempt of court/perverting the course of justice.

Where as this is the media and Tories thinking they are damaging Labour, It just goes to show you what the Tories are quite happy to cover up and look the other way at when you bat for their side.

Funnily the government lost a vote by 1 vote this week on not allowing people arrested for serious sexual assault or violence to attend parliment and therefore be suspended until the outcome of any investigation. Natalie Elphicke voted for the amendment to defeat the government which effectively pushed it over the line.

 

And now Sunak has got himself in complete mess by failing to recognise that his Rwanda nonsense is totally at odds with his one effective piece of managerialism - sorting out the chaos that Boris Johnson lumbered him with over the Northern Ireland/Brexit c0ck-up.

 

Doesn't fancy the job here does he?

 

I wish, we have no one with the balls to do it....except Sir Nigel ...

 

Don't like Farage after he got the vote of brexit and then left. The reason Wilders got in and parties like his are gaining support and momentum is down solely to the deranged who thought it was a good idea to let mass immigration go unchallenged. Arseholes like Sunak with no backbone, we have law and order falling apart in front of our eyes, everyday items in supermarkets in locked plastic containers to stop folk walking out with them, knife crime at an all time high. Not just tying this to immigration, the local population too, the good of this land have had enough.