Westminster Politics

[Sweet Square]

Video footage of someone shifting the Overton Window left with the air generated by clapping.

Tbh if people could just look at some long term polling and a bit of political economy, it would help(Also the purity test stuff is very funny considering everything that has happened since 2015, but well history isn’t a thing anymore)

The tories win because Thatcher gave a section of the working class a chance to become home owners. This has resulted in reactionary retirees having similar interest with finance in the city of London. It’s has nothing to do with the fact I got high and metal gear 3 during Election Day in 2015.

Tbh I guess it’s nice people are happy about the potential end of the Tory reign but yeah nothing will really change. Things will continue to decline regardless of the party in power.

I can’t believe you switched the GIF

 

[TheGame]

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[Paul the Wolf]

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The last constituency I lived in the Uk would still be blue according to that map (currently a 32k+ majority)

 

[Fergies Gum]

Its actually criminal that Starmer and the frontbench are not out there calling for an early election.

 

[Sparky Rhiwabon]

Its actually criminal that Starmer and the frontbench are not out there calling for an early election.

What’s the point, they’d just say no

 

[2mufc0]

Mental how these psychos are allowed to be in power.

 

[Mr Pigeon]

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Labour regaining my constituency would be huge but possible because the SNP only gained it in 2019 by a thousand votes (2%), and the MP recently defected to the Alba Party, which was just plain weird. They'll wheel out Gordon Brown for that one since he's still the Fecking Guy around here.

The constituency beside it also going to Labour is a strange one though, since the existing SNP vote would need to swing by a whole 20%/10,000.

 

[Longshanks]

Once again, why on earth would you be in politics if your first thought on gaining a Mugabe level majority was to be petrified of doing too much because of an election five years away? The Lib Dems managed to completely feck over an entire generation (and in terms of their vote share a good two or three more) in one term even involving things they'd not just not campaigned on but categorically ruled out during the negotiations that got them power in the first place. But Starmer has to play slowly, slowly catchy monkey with a majority not even Jo Swinson dreamt she'd get.

As I alluded to, the only person in British (if not world) politics in the last 50 years who would turn this potential majority into the least transformative political term imaginable (good or bad) is the guy whose lap it is falling into. And I'm supposed to sit here being delighted by that.

You have gone full momentum haven't you?

Just shout and scream and cry and ruthlessly attack people until your blue in the face when you come up against any kind of opposition and then wonder why noone actually likes you or trusts you.

Your having a meltdown over something that hasn't happened and is extremely unlikely to happen based on those famously reliable polls along long way out from a GE.

Think we are all aware that Starmer isn't your man, but that's the way the apples have fallen that's democracy.

The facts are Starmer currently looks like a very safe pair of hands in comparison to Truss and co, that's why the polling is the way it is. Put Corbyn or someone similar In charge of labour right now they wouldn't be polling aswell because the average person likes safety and security not wild risk taking stubborn idealism.

 

[finneh]

I've no idea what Labour's position is on the corporation tax hike being canned. Has Starmer commented on that? Didn't come up in the Kuenssberg interview on Sunday.

You are ignoring the proceeds of Labour's proposed windfall tax on energy companies, which would rake in tens of billions of pounds, but you know that.

Unless he's changed his mind since?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/voices/covid-keir-starmer-tax-budget-rishi-sunak-b1808508.html?amp

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.th...-starmer-labour-party-business-covid-pandemic

On the subject of Labours windfall tax it "would only cover a fraction of the total (energy) bill" at £8b extra this winter.

https://www.channel4.com/news/factc...ating-misleading-claim-on-energy-windfall-tax

 

[neverdie]

It’s the same in the US, with the Bernie bros who voted Harambe because Hillary wasn’t good enough for them so they’ll quietly play a role in Trump getting elected,

can't get on board with that one. the dnc was the problem there. they actively worked against the sanders campaign and then the sanders campaign endorsed the official dnc candidate anyway, twice. victim-blaming here.

there is a similarity insofar as the left side in each scenario was targeted by the centrist and right wing sides and continued to support the centrist faction despite this, something the centrist faction cannot return by definition.

i'll go with starmer despite my near certainty that it won't change much or that what is changed is far too narrow to count. this is how he won the leadership election, unless people forget, the good will of the left-leaning members. if nothing else, a labour majority will end the discussion. it'll either deliver or it won't and people will then have to defend their positions. talking about it in general isn't going to change much in itself.

 

[Dobba]

You have gone full momentum haven't you?

Just shout and scream and cry and ruthlessly attack people until your blue in the face when you come up against any kind of opposition and then wonder why noone actually likes you or trusts you.

Your having a meltdown over something that hasn't happened and is extremely unlikely to happen based on those famously reliable polls along long way out from a GE.

Think we are all aware that Starmer isn't your man, but that's the way the apples have fallen that's democracy.

The facts are Starmer currently looks like a very safe pair of hands in comparison to Truss and co, that's why the polling is the way it is. Put Corbyn or someone similar In charge of labour right now they wouldn't be polling aswell because the average person likes safety and security not wild risk taking stubborn idealism.

Yeah, only 'full Momentum' want transformative stuff done by politicians with a massive majority in a country where people are shitting themselves about freezing to death, key workers are reliant on food banks and the country's infrastructure is a decaying nightmare people can barely afford to use.

For everyone else, Viva La Statusquolucion. Give us five years of nothing, Sir Keir!

 

[Smores]

This is why the Tories manage to ruin the country, they’re pragmatic whilst the left whine about not having the perfect person to vote for so they’ll stay at home and cry about it rather than working towards an end goal.

It’s the same in the US, with the Bernie bros who voted Harambe because Hillary wasn’t good enough for them so they’ll quietly play a role in Trump getting elected, meanwhile the cuntbag GOP play the long game and over 30 years have taken over the judicial system with bible bashing judges and achieved the goal of overturning Roe.

I'm genuinely not sure if this supposed to be a parody post or not. Confused by anyone agreeing with it.

The Tory base is far from pragmatic they've spent ages splintering off to Lib Dems, UKIP, BNP in sizeable numbers and largely it got them the polices they wanted. They've very quickly turned against several leaders too.

That hasn't happened to the same extent with the left for several decades. The only time it has happened in recent years was the centrists self sabotaging against the leader they didn't like.

 

[TheGame]

You have gone full momentum haven't you?

Just shout and scream and cry and ruthlessly attack people until your blue in the face when you come up against any kind of opposition and then wonder why noone actually likes you or trusts you.

Your having a meltdown over something that hasn't happened and is extremely unlikely to happen based on those famously reliable polls along long way out from a GE.

Think we are all aware that Starmer isn't your man, but that's the way the apples have fallen that's democracy.

The facts are Starmer currently looks like a very safe pair of hands in comparison to Truss and co, that's why the polling is the way it is. Put Corbyn or someone similar In charge of labour right now they wouldn't be polling aswell because the average person likes safety and security not wild risk taking stubborn idealism.

Spot on.

 

[berbatrick]

The labour right correctly identified the labour left as their primary enemy and purged them. While doing so, they naturally moved to the right on policy. A side-benefit of this move has been to legitimise the party in the eyes of the press, which had made it possible for tory scandals to result in a polling surge. But even if that hadn't happened, the purge itself is the victory. Centrists and right-wingers here recognise this, when they praise 2-time loser Neil Kinnock for giving Thatcher 10 years, but winning the battle that matters.

A vote by the left for Starmer is a vote for irrelevance deeper and grimmer than their current (very dead) status. As the centrists correctly identify, this is a long-term battle. What Reagan and Thatcher show is that this long-term battle isn't won by a series of incremental centre-right, centrist, and centre-left electoral wins, but by a long series of ideological defeats suddenly being reversed by changed economic circumstances. A successful imposition of your agenda means that, for the next few decades, politics are on your terms (FDR, Attlee - Reagan, Thatcher) even if your party is out of power (Eisenhower, Nixon, pre-Thatcher Tories - Blair, Clinton, Obama).

Corbyn had the chance for that once-in-a-generation ideological shift in 2017, but the press and labour right (correctly) tipped the scales by just enough to make him lose. There's no real way of saying when the next chance comes. But Starmer 2024 does not accelerate it.

 

[Berbasbullet]

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A lot of students in this country.

 

[Longshanks]

Yeah, only 'full Momentum' want transformative stuff done by politicians with a massive majority in a country where people are shitting themselves about freezing to death, key workers are reliant on food banks and the country's infrastructure is a decaying nightmare people can barely afford to use.

For everyone else, Viva La Statusquolucion. Give us five years of nothing, Sir Keir!

We don't need wildly transformative stuff done by politicians, wild transformation is fantasy land and it's dangerous and risky.

The majority of the electorate don't like dangerous and risky, the majority of the electorate have families to look after and some assets or debts to service. Wild and transformative is a risk to them, they want to help the more needy but not at a cost to them.

 

[largelyworried]

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[Dobba]

We don't need wildly transformative stuff done by politicians, wild transformation is fantasy land and it's dangerous and risky.

The majority of the electorate don't like dangerous and risky, the majority of the electorate have families to look after and some assets or debts to service. Wild and transformative is a risk to them, they want to help the more needy but not at a cost to them.

Ah, Starmer's dream voter. We meet at last.

 

[neverdie]

We don't need wildly transformative stuff done by politicians, wild transformation is fantasy land and it's dangerous and risky.

we kind of do. minimally, the world needs its major economies to sign up to green new deal legislation. even biden is on board with that, scaled down as it is. beyond that, housing, healthcare, education, and all of these necessities hit by massive underfunding require transformative action. even starmer seems to understand that, which is why you get "fairer and greener" future.

the majority of the electorate requires the kind of transformational change covered by the topics above. whether it comes from the left or from the centre. the centrist doctrine has had to move, at least rhetorically, to accommodate this need. how do you do anything of utilitarian value which isn't transformational at this point? take a look at the mortgage market. the average person's debt, the nhs, the state of the schools, and the list goes on.

if you don't think we need transformational change then you could vote for the tories without any real problem. they don't always feck up mini budgets this badly.

 

[Buster15]

It may have been an illusion for Boris, but for many towns in the North who remained under Labour control, who are now like 'ghost towns' with shopping malls half empty, no proper high street and no new industry startups in over twenty/thirty years, except such as coffee bars and nail bars, etc. that last a year.... maybe only six months, then shut down. These towns need major new investment. Many towns have been living on scraps, either from so called regeneration projects or some were EU funded, but in many cases, it wasn't local industry that got the contracts or the benefit of actually doing the work.

Here's an example of what I mean, where I live there were two EU special projects 5th and 6th (in 2007-8 and in 2010) on a list put forward by the local council and with support from the local chamber of commerce that were accepted for EU funding. They involved work in a local park building a kid's playground and improving the gardens/access in two old folk's homes. The total value was around 15000 euros, the local Labour council let both contracts to companies from outside the area. So, although local children and elderly folk eventually saw the benefit, local industry didn't.

'Levelling up' is required and Labour needs to do it properly.

Point taken.
But it really is important to stress that the problems you highlighted are most certainly not only in the north.
That kind of situation affects pretty much all towns and cities, maybe outside of inner London.

But because it was primarily done to persuade so called red wall voters, people think that it applies just to the north.
For Levelling Up to mean anything, it has to apply across the whole of the UK.

 

[Buster15]

He’s incredibly PR savvy - for all the reasons you’ve just listed.

His image is a careful PR creation, an ‘eccentric’ overly English caricature. A brand.

A novelty figure for the plebs to laugh at while they ravage the country. A bit like… hmm… BORIS JOHNSON.

Trust me, Truss isn’t the PM they’ll go into the next election with, and I very much doubt they ever planned her to be.

It’ll be some ‘personality politician’ like a Johnson, Rees Mogg etc.

And they’ll win.

I will take your word on JRM being an election winner.

 

[TheReligion]

Ah, Starmer's dream voter. We meet at last.

Did Starmer shag your wife and shit in her handbag?

No offence but you seem obsessed with the chap

 

[Buster15]

Listening to some of those radio interviews, it's not that Truss is evil or a bad person. It's that she genuinely has no idea about anything she's talking about, or how damaging last Friday was for the UK. She has programmed responses and gets exposed as incompetent every time she speaks.

Spot on.

 

[Buster15]

The last constituency I lived in the Uk would still be blue according to that map (currently a 32k+ majority)

No wonder you moved....

 

[nickm]

We don't need wildly transformative stuff done by politicians, wild transformation is fantasy land and it's dangerous and risky.

The majority of the electorate don't like dangerous and risky, the majority of the electorate have families to look after and some assets or debts to service. Wild and transformative is a risk to them, they want to help the more needy but not at a cost to them.

No point in saying that to Dobba, the ideologue's ideologue.

 

[neverdie]

No point in saying that to Dobba, the ideologue's ideologue.

to be fair, that post is hard to comprehend. it's one step away from "there is no such thing as society", which is "get out of the way and let the market work", which is "toryism". if people don't see the need for transformational change, then i'd imagine their name is on a tory database somewhere as possible voter. starmer will fail or succeed depending on how he delivers this change across a whole series of tangible metrics like housing, healthcare, and energy. it doesn't make sense, as standalone post, whether you're starmer's biggest fan or his biggest critic because it neglects starmer's own position.

 

[nickm]

to be fair, that post is hard to comprehend. it's one step away from "there is no such thing as society", which is "get out of the way and let the market work", which is "toryism". if people don't see the need for transformational change, then i'd imagine their name is on a tory database somewhere as possible voter. starmer will fail of succeed depending on how he delivers this change across a whole series of tangible metrics like housing, healthcare, and energy. it doesn't make sense, as standalone post, whether you're starmer's biggest fan or his biggest critic because it neglects starmer's own position.

There is a false view presented that anything less than revolutionary change is pointless. In fact, sustained incremental change over time is just as capable of delivering transformational results, it just requires more patience and carefulness, plus it has the benefit of allowing things to be tried and tested.

The ideological right have been just as guilty of this mistake as the ideological left, and last Friday is the proof of what it gets you.

 

[C'est Moi Cantona]

If she carries on burying her head, then a vote of no confidence is surely incoming.

 

[Mr Pigeon]

Video footage found of Truss' interviews this morning

Spoiler

 

[Klopper76]

I'm giving her until end of November. She'll be gone by then if things stay as they are and they continue on the same course. Energy bills will have gone up, mortgage rates will have also increased and cost of living will have gotten worse.

 

[Drainy]

it will be the classic 12 months and then find a reason to get rid.

'1 month makes it look like our feck up, 12 months its your feck up'

 

[Mr Pigeon]

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[neverdie]

There is a false view presented that anything less than revolutionary change is pointless. In fact, sustained incremental change over time is just as capable of delivering transformational results, it just requires more patience and carefulness, plus it has the benefit of allowing things to be tried and tested.

starmer is going to have to sign up to a host of commitments which will promise revoutionary change. i think people have the wrong idea of "revolutionary" sometimes, too. he says he wants to fight the election on the economy which is a good move because the economy is in terrible shape and not liable to change over the next two years, not for the better anyway. to do this he'll have to present an alternative vision of where britain could be and would be under a labour government. this can only be done over key areas like housing, healthcare, and energy. along with education, that's the entire agenda starmer is setting for labour's next election manifesto. all the good/popular noises out of conference could have come from a corbyn frontbench except if it came from corbyn it wouldn't be given a chance. and that's what people were signing up to when they voted for starmer in the first place. corbyn-like policy but not corbyn, or the absence of corbyn's toxicity but the presence of the general social principles which his manifestos did articulate fairly well.

the necessity for transformational change has grown since corbyn left the stage and this is down to a pandemic, an unresolved financial crisis, and the acceleration in the cost of living crisis. starmer proposed a state owned energy company, which is both pragmatic and potentially revolutionary. that's the kind of thing labour needs to be doing, whether it sounds revolutionary or boring. cost these proposals and present them as counter vision to twelve years of tory dystopia.

 

[Paul the Wolf]

No wonder you moved....

I never actually voted when I lived there. Haven't voted in the UK since '97.

 

[FireballXL5]

Has there ever been a bigger collection of cnuts in government?

Thérèse Coffey scraps promised paper on health inequality

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ey-scraps-promised-paper-on-health-inequality

 

[711]

it will be the classic 12 months and then find a reason to get rid.

'1 month makes it look like our feck up, 12 months its your feck up'

Yes, but in addition it wasn't the MP's feck-up, it was the members that voted her in, so they will blame the system and change it so the MPs have much more say in who actually becomes leader.

And they'll probably still feck it up, but I think that's the way they'll go nonetheless.

 

[sun_tzu]

Yes, but in addition it wasn't the MP's feck-up, it was the members that voted her in, so they will blame the system and change it so the MPs have much more say in who actually becomes leader.

And they'll probably still feck it up, but I think that's the way they'll go nonetheless.

Yes she only got 50 mps back her in the first round so she's not exactly got the best base of support

Can see the mps picking the next leader... its actually only quite recently the members have picked

Ids
Cameron
Johnson
Truss

Howard and may were unnaposed I think

 

[dinostar77]

I will take your word on JRM being an election winner.

Rees Moggs is a pantomine villian. A caracutre of a anarexic of a bond villian. Or harry potters new evil boarding school master.

 

[Sparky Rhiwabon]

Labour always do much better in polling than they do when it comes to an actual election.

 

[Drifter]

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