British Politics
Been on holiday for a few weeks, surprised to find no general discussion of British politics so though I'd kick one off.
Tory leadership contest is quickly turning into farce. Trump has backed Boris, which should be reason enough for anyone with half a brain to exclude him.
Of the other candidates Rory Stewart looks the best of the outsiders. Surprised to see Cleverly and Javid not further up the betting, but not sure the Tory membership are ready for a brown PM.
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/bri...
Regarding the LD leadership contest, Jo Swinson is miles ahead of any other candidate (and indeed any of the Tory lot). Should be a shoe in.
Finally, it's Groundhog Day in Labour - the more serious the anti-Semitism claims get, the more Corbyn's cronies write their own obituary by blaming it on outlandish conspiracy theories - this week, it's apparently the Jewish Embassy's fault...
We will have to take comfort wherever we can find it.
This is a bit ridiculous imo. There are young people with valuable life experiences and then there's this kid straight out of boarding school and Oxbridge:
Just a bit more on KS putting party before country.
The smallest possible target strategy which they pretty much admit to using was the same as used in Australia
Albanese deliberately presented an unambitious platform to make his party the smallest possible target for Morrison’s Liberals, who successfully hammered Labor’s bolder reform plans in the 2019 election.
That's why the lesson from the truss debacle (gobbled up by too many) was that pleasing the right leaning organisations was vital. It offered no target. That's why tax rises were ruled out. It's why green investment was cut back so much. It's why everything was ruled out or heavily discounted except for a few bits that played extremely well. Taxing private schools is easy, nationalising railways was more or less happening anyway.
And private equity - who was going to attack that apart from a few of us loonies on the left. The right certainly doesn't mind, the press owners certainly dont mind, business loves it, it provides much needed investment which we all want, it's meets the stupid fiscal financial rules. So that's what we have.
SNP have used today to put out their response to the Cass Review. All the talk of humility, listening etc and yet it's the same old cynical actions just a few hours later.
They claim they couldn't publish earlier due to 'election rules.' They say the review only applied to England, but they're stopping puberty blockers and emphasising psychological treatment anyway (for obvious legal reasons) while pretending they haven't changed policy. They have probably lost much of their keenness to put convicted rapists in women's prisons, though.
People exist in different shades of views everywhere, but ok they're not going to rise to the level of public awareness in this Labour Party, I agree.
Instead we get a boarding school Oxbridge clueless policy wonk weirdo.
"The gap between the share of total votes won by the winning party in the 2024 general election and the share of Parliamentary seats won is the largest on record, BBC Verify has found."
Undemocratic, but neither the public want to shift from FPTP nor will the party in power want to provoke its own demise so this system is stuck with for the foreseeable and unrepresentative government.
"The UK held a national referendum on reform of the voting system in 2011 after the 2010 election delivered a hung parliament and the Conservatives entered a formal coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
The proposal to replace the current first-past-the post system with an “Alternative Vote”, which advocates said would make results more proportional to the national share of votes cast, was rejected by the public, by 68% to 32%.
People exist in different shades of views everywhere, but ok they're not going to rise to the level of public awareness in this Labour Party, I agree.
Instead we get a boarding school Oxbridge clueless policy wonk weirdo.
We're not limited to them coming through the labout party and sure the next leader on the left is unlikely to be like Corbyn. It will be someone far younger and more modern than ujs, let alone corbyn.
I agree with Owen Jones, although I'm not quite as enthisiastic, that in many ways this has been a good election for the left. We have to some extent broken the links wth voting for party. It's more about the cnadidate and that a very good thing that we need to build on. The lie that we have to vote for the least worst option has been badly damaged as many people realise the importance of labour only getting 34%. That lie needs to be battered until it shatters completely.
Bent herself inside out to corrupt herself defending starmer over Gaza and didn't even get the reward
Long-time shadow cabinet minister Emily Thornberry will have no ministerial role in the new Labour government, the BBC understands.
In a statement Ms Thornberry said she is “very sorry and surprised” after not being appointed Attorney General in Sir Keir Starmer’s government, having held the role in opposition for three years.
Sir Keir insisted Ms Thornberry has a "big part to play" in Labour, but did not say in what capacity.
Apparently she was the source of the Starmer is boring quote.
But I don't mind because most people find her overbearingly pompous.
Emily Thornberry is nails on a chalk board and I cannot stand her the least, out of every one in the Labour party. Though it's a race between David Lammy and Wes Streeting for who is in second place.
So we had this thread itt about Matt Goodwin, a political pollstar and far right grifter whose polls the right wingers here like to cite.
For whatever it's worth, People Polling is a member of the British Polling Council and has one of the strong house effects in favour of Labour.
Turns out, as predicted, his polls were by some way the worst of the entire batch, skewing heavily in favour of his beloved Reform party.
"People Polling" is the company, (sole director, Matt Goodwin) that you may remember produced a late poll showing Reform on 20%+. LOL
Yep without a doubt.
He and the more extreme right in general forgot to give up a long time ago.
You're saying batter the idea of voting for the least worst option, because that will lead to Farage?
Farage and Co were far less prone to the mistake of giving up.
That much we need to learn from them. But without a doubt they are way ahead and more likely to benefit than the left.
Alternatively we can continue to give up and farage & co will benefit even more from the hopelessness and continual decay.
The one good thing I can say about Starmer is that I think if push came to shove and a Tory/Reform pact was way ahead of Labour in the polls he would at least strongly consider a Labour/Lib/Green/SNP pact to defeat them.
Maybe. A bit like macron is doing in france. It can buy some time which is valuable but unless that time is used to make serious changes then it's just hoping for very good luck before we run out of time.
A much better bet in my view is to take the risk of demanding some real positive chnage. We're still not favorite but at least we would have a fighting chance
Ironically the way the Labour Party is now a Labour/Lib/Green/SNP pact would drive them leftwards.
If its a pact that comes with the needed adical policies than fantastic I can't see it under starmer or similar but I'd be delighted to be proved wrong
Curious about this. The Lib-Dems feel more left than Labour to me. Do you agree?
Definitely. I don't think it's really debatable from what I've seen of their policies.
Reform. What a shower of ****.
