Hey, you missed one !
Heh, I read that post and I didn’t twig. I wonder if Smid did it deliberately.
Let’s say I did… 
Oh, I don’t think anyone misses that PM.
Is it time for a poll? What’s your voting intention?
- Conservative
- Labour
- Liberal Democrats
- Reform
- Green
- SNP
- Plaid Cymru
- Independant
- I’m in Northern Ireland and it’s very complicated
- Small niche party no one knows anything about
- Alba
0
voters
It wasn’t intended as a criticism, only as an observation. We’re in an age of television where the line between governance and entertainment has been blurred. In the US, many people judge their prospective leaders according to the “would you have a beer with them” test, which is absurd. Johnson apparently got most of his support from little more than being an amusing clown, despite his evident incompetence, and his successors, observing his approach, have seemed to want to cultivate a “personality brand” in their presentation. Neither has been successful; Sunak gives the vibe of a spoiled Head Boy who’s trying to bluff his way through a school disciplinary hearing, and Truss came off as a librarian in the young-reader department who’d been damaged by too much LSD. Nevertheless, the attempt was made, which is notable.
Sir Starmer seems to embrace the old-fashioned stolidity of being nothing but a competent suit who will plant himself in the middle of government like a concrete anchor. As others have noted, there is something to be said for a politician who is boring and stable. Nevertheless — and this is the part that’s a criticism — he projects an aura of calm confidence without ever being specific on the question of what he’s calm and confident about.
But after fourteen years of an unending avalanche of idiocy, the block of wood deserves a shot.
But boring doesn’t automatically mean competent. People’s main criticism of Starmer is that it’s unclear whether he has any actual beliefs or if his core philosophy is “say/do nothing controversial and pray your enemies implode”. How that translates into governing is an open question and there’s a real risk that his lack of an animating philosophy is great as an opposition leader but just leads to gridlock and inter-party bickering when in office from a lack of leadership & direction.
The problem with running on “I’m not the other guy” is that your support can be wide but also shallow. There’s a real risk, as predicted in more than one dystopian British near-future fiction that a right wing government would be replaced by an ineffectual left wing centrist pap that disillusioned people so much to politics that it allowed for the rise of an outsider firebrand populist. I think it’s a serious risk the UK is facing in light of a Starmer leadership.
This, a thousand times this, I’ve said it before in this thread and I’ll say it again, if the Labour government does not deliver the UK is at risk of falling into the hands of fascists.
We say “Sir Keir”. Don’t ask me why, it’s just what we do. (Or am I being whooshed?)
j
The prevalent mood is, “time to put the other team into bat”, but there is no great enthusiasm for anything they are offering, and I suspect their support will prove to be shallow and short-lived once it’s all over.
Well, the Tories got caught out making a lot of promises of how great things would be once Brexit happened. And of course- things got worse instead.
The tories blamed the woes of the country on the last Labour Government.
The Blair government started with an emphesis on being prudent and showing that they could manage the economy responsibly however the turning point was when Gordon Brown said he had ended the boom bust economic cycle. Whether the two were connected or not at this point instead of reducing government borrowing (at least in real terms) allowing the government to borrow more at reasonable rates when there is a an economic downturn they spent huge amounts on things like the health service paying for it by bring debt to levels up sifgnificantly. When the UK was not immune to the world downturn around 2008 by the time of the 2010 election deby was at peacetime records.
The tories then spun the story that the only way out of this mess was to cut government expenditure and I think thety were right though they did make sure the wealthy were the least affected. Brexit was always going to take time to settle into a new normal negotiating trade deals and the likes and then Covid and the cost of living crisis brought on by Putin’s war with Ukraine has been ban for the world economy, especially Europe.
Things have got worse since the last election (and since 2010) but I am not sure if the ecomony has done worse than Europe, the GBP EUR FX rate is pretty much exactly where it was in May 2010 and Dec 2019 since 2010 the UK GDP has grown 24% while the EU GDP has grown 15%.
Don’t get me wrong the Tories have done plenty wrong, for example Partygate was a disgrace is is there policies protecting the richest from economic downturn but this does explain why they managed to stay in power since 2010.
Oh blimey:
Yeah. I don’t require politics to be exciting. This isn’t some reality TV talent show, but it’s being increasingly played that way.
He’d be taking one of the bad apples with him. He is a bad apple. Seriously, “Why is it that when I try to make fascism more popular, I suddenly get surrounded by nasty people? Oh woe is me!”
Maybe it’s because of the Head of State/Head of Government dichotomy. Traditionally, the Monarch is the one who’s supposed to be the inspiring leader, while the Prime Minister is just the clerk the Monarch appoints to run the country for them. In real life, this obviously hasn’t been the case for over a century, but I wonder if something of this attitude still remains.
Well, not so much the inspiring leader (not since Gladstone and Disraeli), but the non-controversial representative of the nation as a whole. Prime Ministers are there to be slagged off and if necessary defenestrated while the ship of state sails on with its figurehead seemingly unperturbed.
Checking in from the U.K. interesting I saw on Sky News a few interviews with Tories ‘coming home’ after flirting with Reform earlier.
As a second note, I’ll be at the Fck the Tories party tomorrow night in Liverpool and will be posting live from there:
Yes.
Here in the US, the widespread perception that the Biden administration has been ineffective is rather likely to deliver the USA into full-fledged fascism come the turn of the year.
That most of the blame for the Biden term’s rather small results can be laid directly at the feet of wall-to-wall obstructionism by the RW faction in Congress and in SCOTUS somehow escapes notice. Further the fact the perception is not all that accurate to begin with is largely down to the effectiveness of propaganda bubbles, and the more extreme the more effective.
There is really just one worldwide playbook for bringing in Fascism. It’s well-tested over time and it works. The details adjust to the culture, technology, and particular angsts of the electorate being suborned. But the big picture is both eternal and universal.
True.
Unless your measure of merit is how many beastly people speaking something other than UK-accented English you hear on the bus. By that definition it’s been a success. Racism / Nationalism being yet another standard tent-pole in the Fascist tent. And a perennial vote-spinner.
As in the US, a lot of voters unwittingly vote against their economic interests because they’re more interested in cultural issues they’ve been conditioned to a) find annoying, and b) believe the two parties will / can do something different about.
Ignoring their own economic interests is often driven by a sense of despair that both parties are captured by a vague Establishment that has no concern for their economic interests whatsoever. So if there’s no differentiation to be had in the pocketbook, why not seek cultural affirmation?
And of course certain propagandists spare no effort in encouraging this self-defeating POV.
Yes, my point precisely. Farage speaking of “bad apples” is pure NewSpeak, signifying the opposite of the plain meanings of the words employed.
It’s “Louie from Casablanca” level plausibility.
“I am shocked - shocked - to learn that there is rampant racism in this far-right party built on xenophobia!”