Tories - Personal Thoughts Over The Last Ten Years

Discussion in 'Politics 2.0' started by bedmond_hornet, Oct 6, 2021.

  1. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Labour are not particularly disunited or at least not enough that a smart leader couldn’t sort it. It’s the classic Labour narrative for the media.

    Starmer was voted for by most of Corbyn’s support and his conference speech was well received other than one or two diehards. If it falls apart it will be Starmer’s fault and the idiotic Mandelson acolytes who are trying to rewrite history, a history in which the UK never fell out of love with New Labour.

    Absolute party chaos, Johnson’s expulsion of two dozen MPs didn’t stop him.
     
  2. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    As for how Johnson’s success will end, he’ll get in again next time and then continue to be crap until he’s ousted by ‘traditional’ Tories. They’ll tell us how awful the last two decades have been and how only they can put it right.
     
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  3. Maninblack

    Maninblack Reservist

    I despise Johnson (and that is not too strong a word for the contempt I have for him). I've never loathed anyone before, whether media figure or personally known, but Johnson really pushes the wrong buttons for me. The choice at the last election was between him and the well-meaning but hopelessly out of his depth Corbyn, so it was a case of voting for the least worst of two very poor options of policies as well as personalities. The covid pandemic and Brexit aftermath proved my misgivings about Johnson's incompetence for the office of PM. However the Tory publicity team and Tory press are highly effective in promoting the 'Boris' brand, the affable, loveable buffoon they've got people calling by his first name as if he were their mate.

    Starmer has a battle on his hands, first and foremost within his own party where some factions are more interested in fighting each other than focussing on the common enemy and then battling the 'Labour are evil' narrative of the Tory press. Until that is sorted - and I don't have the confidence to think it will happen before the next election - Labour will still be unelectable, leaving Johnson and his useless band of corrupt cronies to do what they want in their 'jolly japes' game of running Britain.
     
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  4. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    I think we'll have to agree to disagree.

    I see all sorts of political disputes on social media and Labour supporters seem to be as likely to be arguing with other Labour supporters than they are Tories.

    But even if you are right and the disunity is overblown, it is not how it is perceived in the general populace imho.

    And yes, the purge that Johnson carried out against "remainers" is a case in point. Other than a few former Tory MPs sniping from the sidelines, there are very few Tories that saw it as an issue, despite a large proportion of them supporting remain in the referendum.

    They have the ability to give the impression of support for the current leader and policies that Labour just seem unable to manage.

    And when they get a new leader they are quite capable of changing direction without losing that apparent unity.
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2021
  5. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    Yes and they will get elected again with the new leader. As I say, it works.
     
  6. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Ok, fair enough, but I’d say it’s not so bad across the very broad range of views the Labour Party tries to hold and what there is has resulted from Starmer’s unwillingness to honour the promises he made to get elected leader. I think this could really bite him badly and is an horrific tactical error because he is trying to position the Party around politics the electorate of both sides rejected.

    But not being Johnson could be enough in itself. Events dear boy.
     
  7. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    Yes, I think Starmer is trying not to upset either side of his party but is satisfying no one.

    But that is the problem imho. Corbyn appealed to the left of the party but was undermined by the right. But, if a leader tries to appeal to the centre they are accused of being a Blairite and get undermined by the left.

    Starmer does neither and gets undermined by both sides!

    Unfortunately for you, if there is even a hint that Johnson is losing support he will be replaced. If the next election is between Starmer and Johnson it will only be because Johnson is still very likely to win.
     
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  8. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Johnson won’t be replaced. The whole edifice falls if he goes. The sorry mess is propelled simply by his rhetoric. Remove Johnson as a failure and you admit the whole shebang does not, cannot, work.

    There isn’t another Tory leader right now who could save them in that eventuality. The Party is hostage to him. Only in time (at least one further election cycle) could it transition and it may yet do so.
     
  9. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    He may not be replaced, but he might go of his own accord. It’s long been reported that he doesn’t especially like being PM, that he can earn more elsewhere, and that he isn’t especially popular with his parliamentary party.
     
  10. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    Again I think we will have to agree to disagree.

    Up to recently it looked like Gove was lining himself up to be the next leader. I think he's blown it now.

    But I think the Tories are very good at reading the public mood. If they think the public want a leader less linked to Brexit and the current administration there are plenty of relatively "clean" candidates on the back benches (like the late James Brokenshire).

    The rest of the parliamentary party are quite capable of pivoting to the new message while retaining the same MPs. They have done so many times before.

    And as @Keighley says, there is every chance that Johnson will go early if things start turning against him.
     
  11. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    I think there is a good number of potential leaders, predominantly women and a large minority who are what identitarians would call black or brown, waiting in the Conservative wings. I mentioned this because Labour voted in the only white male from a 3 to 1 female to male short list, that didn't even have any black, brown or trans people in it. A clear indication of the conflict of prejudice within the party.

    Funny, though, how people on here seem to think that shallow pandering is the key to leading a political party these days, and cannot imagine a serious and more cerebral leader than Boris being able to lead the party. I am not sure if that tells us more about the tories or the left leaning opinion of what makes a good leader in the 21st century.

    Personally, I think right now that Boris is the right man, and not just because of his rhetoric, but also because, even with the background of the most devastating crises since WW2, he is doing a reasonable job, promising good future, social improvements, whilst having a history of achieving past promises, many of which were described as impossible by his detractors.

    Why would people not trust him to lead, when he is the man who proved the impossible possible? According to lefties on here and across the whole country. Frankly, I can't imagine a more persuasive recommendation, even if it is coming from his greatest detractors.
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2021
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  12. Lloyd

    Lloyd Squad Player

    Will Dishy Rishi help our steel makers etc get through the gas crisis or is heavy industry not deemed worth saving compared to the vital coffee frothing sector?
     
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  13. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    I think Sunak's a future leader for sure.

    If it all goes **** up in the next couple of years I think he will have to step back and then work his way up through another administration.

    But if the Tory government do manage the economy well over the next few years then I think Sunak could replace Johnson after the next election.

    Either way I think he'll get there sooner or later.
     
  14. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    I fancy the next leader will be another woman. Particularly if Johnson goes on for much longer. I would like to see Kemi Badenoch develop into the job. She gets people virtue signalling, racially pressuring and patronising her because of her background, but she doesn't take an ounce of rubbish from anyone, even reducing leading CRT exponents to non-responsive gibbering wrecks by making arguments to them that they would normally protect themselves from, and not expect from what they would call a brown person.

    And the left hate her and call her a racist, c**n and house n****r because she sees the world differently to them. Anyone who gets that sort of reaction from authoritarian, identitarian left wing fascists should be given strong consideration, in my books.
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2021
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  15. miked2006

    miked2006 Premiership Prediction League Proprietor

    I take a different view.

    Keir has come in from a terrible Labour defeat and done exactly what he should do. Get the backing of those who he needs support (lying if necessary to those who could Ed Miliband him out of the job).

    Then go straight after reducing the power of Momentum and the hard left, who too much of the public despise. Dealing with internal policy
    immediately is sensible, to ensure allies closer to the election don’t get kicked out by ideologues, or reduce the chance of a far left candidate threatening a leadership challenge if they don’t get their way.

    Next, he needs to form a strategy for the next election. He will run on a sensible, trustworthy platform (anti-Boris), so if he commits to anything, and the economic/ political situation changes, the right wing press will jump on it. First, he needs to actually speak with people (only possible post Covid), create a full and costed platform with genuinely popular but radical ideas, without giving too much away, so the other side cannot work on a counter strategy.

    So in summary, I think the when lawyer approach is best: sort out the procedure, gather evidence and then bring everything together in the trial.
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2021
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  16. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    There are a number of contradictions in here mike, not least of all that you want genuinely popular but radical ideas. Ideas maybe like Starmer’s pledges to the party he made to secure the left wing vote, pledges he has now abandoned in favour of striking at the left.

    Amazingly, your conclusion after such bad faith is it is the left that need less influence.

    I know you have had experiences that make you wary of unions at work, but your view of the left simply as the bad guys seems to rely on media stereotype. I’m of the left and I’m a very reasonable guy. I was happy for Starmer to win and for Labour to seek power with a voter friendly compromise built on a green new deal. Starmer has trashed that to follow Mandelson back toward the middle politics the public has completely rejected through Brexit and its rejection of all centre parties. Yet you believe we are the problem and expect a united party.

    Tell me this. Is it ok to lie to your own party? To get elected on a wholly false manifesto? Do you think he’ll never have to account for that one day? It’s given the Tories attack line number one.
     
  17. miked2006

    miked2006 Premiership Prediction League Proprietor

    This is politics. To get funding, you need to laugh at jokes you don’t find funny. To get votes, you have to dress in builders hats and listen to Marge complain that the ATMs are closing and that the local butchers is going to the dogs.

    The issue isn’t lying to the hard left to become leader.

    The issue is that you have to, because the extremists have such sway.
     
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  18. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    Sorry, but I cannot agree with this in any way.

    Labour conference has just show how extremists are wagging the dog that is the current Labour Party, and yet you suggest they have moved into the centrist ground.

    Labour continues to openly embrace racism and indentitarianism, fighting among themselves, with people decrying anti-Semitism whilst members are openly being abused for being Jewish even during those speeches and members again too scared to attend because louts in the party have decided their ideas are not welcome.

    This is happening under Starmer, not two years ago under Corbyn.

    It is clear that you wish to describe current popular views, and Brexit as far right. But the reality of the situation is that Brexit and the Conservatives represent a far more moderate ground than that offered by bonkers Labour, and the fact is, they represent the only current haven from extremism. Can you name a single policy introduced by this left of centre Conservative government that could seriously be described, in relation to all its other policies, as even being right wing? Barnier himself is running on a ‘suspend immigration’ policy in the French Presidential race, so even invoking that little chestnut will not get you very far. Patel’s immigration policies, at worst, must be considered practical, given the state of housing and resources in the country at the moment.

    And this freedom of movement to allow exploitation of the workers is so far right that any true leftie should be embarrassed to even be associated with such an argument. Tony Benn must be spinning in his grave, but he did warn you.

    And your claim to be a reasonable person is also extremely moot. Your range of ‘reasonable’ does not extend beyond the Labour Party, as you explain within the post above, and despite the social policies enacted by the tories under covid, you cannot accept them because they did not come from the Labour Party, and for no other reason.

    I don’t have a problem with the beliefs you have, or that you express them, but I do have a problem with the fact you try to imply that you are ‘of the left’ when your clearly are not, and that you are for the workers, when the actual policies you describe yourself as supporting were traditionally considered right wing and historically anathema to the working class.

    Warning that you need to keep wages down with cheap labour because prices might go up is the most indefensible and contradictory argument a socialist could possibly make.

    Yet who are we hearing that argument from on here?
     
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  19. miked2006

    miked2006 Premiership Prediction League Proprietor

    I do find the Daily Mail all out push on getting civil servants to return to the office bizarre.

    Forget productivity and saving the taxpayer money. Instead, let’s get them to pointlessly trawl to offices, to keep four coffee shops on each street going. Also, f**k business.
     
  20. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    No one that attended or watched any of the Labour conference could possibly agree with that.

    Even Starmer's direct intervention to reassure Rosie Duffield could not persuade her she was safe at conference from misogynyst Labour supporting men who had attacked and threatened her for having opinions they didn't like.

    This ludicrous maintaining of two diametrically opposed parties under the same banner has been ignored for too long, and extremist, middle class intellectual elites are making it very unlikely that ordinary working people will ever find the party an attractive option whilst it is possessed by, what may appear to them (as it does me), a lunatic element that should never be empowered by voting for them.

    All it means is, the country is denied a viable alternative to the tories, whilst middle class elites cling to the one thing that forces their causes (descrbed by yourself as being inconsequential, yet causing massive internal breakdowns, expressions of hatred and threats of assault) into the mainstream of politics. It is not the tory press drawing it to the public's attention, it is conference itself. Why should racist behaviour, like a chairman telling people to put their hand down because they are white, and other chairmen openly saying they are favouring non-white hands, not be highlighted when it is brazenly employed by the Labour Party? If it is a systemic part of the party, that people be shown preference because of the colour of their skin, then such racism must be exposed (before it becomes a norm,) If, as conference clearly indicated it is, a member is so horrified that they would rather it not be mentioned, they would do far better pointing it out and ridding the party of it than pretending it doesn't exist. Unless of course they consider it acceptable policy which they would rather keep hidden from the public, because they know it makes them unelectable.

    I agree with you that these subjects are important but no more so than any other, I believe they need to be debated (just without the manic denouncement of every critic as being morally improper), but I disagree with you that the party is treating them in such a way.

    Your first line perfectly describes the absolute refusal of certain Labour supporters to recognise, let alone deal with, the problem at the heart of their tragic unelectability. Whilst certain supporters deny what every one can see for themselves, the party will never be electable, and can never be taken seriously.
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2021
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  21. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    That isn’t an answer, but you make your prejudices clear.
     
  22. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    WW2 now fully engaged in the struggle. Doesn’t seem terribly good advice to head to the office during an air raid, but then IDS was born in 1954 like many a WW2 shagger.

    779C186E-FBE6-4105-8616-C224CB4AF88C.jpeg
     
  23. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    I wonder why they just didn't use Teams or Zoom back then?

    The Blitz was almost totally carried out after dark so I guess they must have had a lot of night office workers back then. I did not know that.
     
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  24. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    I suspect it is to do with the reorganisation and relocation that is going on at the moment. Sadly, with the civil service adopting an anti tory undercurrent around Brexit, trying to wag the dog, it seems that not returning to the offices is likely a similar attempt to hinder the tories as were the indignations and tantrums that followed them being told to do their jobs and leave the politics to the politicians back in 2019.

    The sooner this set of self important office workers get sorted out, the sooner they can start working from home in their new provincial areas.
     
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  25. Davy Crockett

    Davy Crockett Reservist

    Going off on a WW2 tangent here but if the Germans bombed Buck House\Parliament etc instead
    of the East End then I can only assume that everyone's differences would have been resolved a lot
    earlier .
    A similar argument could be aimed towards the loft insulation brigade . If they pissed of Bojo at Westminster instead of blocking ambulances then they may gain more support from the hoi polloi.

    Back on topic , personal thoughts ?
    Rubbish .
     
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  26. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    I think that most protests these days are intended to make the public feel that there is mass disgust at the tory government, rather than to protest about anything in particular. If there is an actual objective, it seems more to protest tories being the people's choice. That is why their protests effectively impact on the public rather than the decision makers.

    What they are really doing is saying, this is your fault you disgusting oiks. And literally there mantra, you are making us do this.

    The apparent proof of this is that they bare no responsibility for alleviating the causes they campaign for. A popular disclaimer from the XR/Insulate-Britain/Woolies-for-Warmth, when their personal hypocrisy is exposed, is the line "We are all hypocrites". They don't even try to hide their contempt for their own causes.
     
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  27. "Blitz spirit" is totally mythical. Spivs' and muggers' paradise.
     
  28. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    That is exactly the problem...
     
  29. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

  30. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    I love the first response to the tweet. "I'm wondering how the war effort would have coped with us deliberately destroying our own supply chains?"

    This chap doesn't even seem to know that the war effort coped extremely effectively with supply chain issues, after German nazis, Vichey French, Fascist Italians, etc., cut them off for us.

    We had to look elsewhere than Europe, and we managed, whilst at the same time, with our non-European allies, winning the war in Africa, the Middle East and Japan, saving France and Western Europe (parallel to the way we more recently did with investment in vaccine development) from extremist European leaders. Europe wasn't exactly thrilled about that at the time, us being British and all.

    I hope someone has pointed this out to the chap.
     
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