Local government elections across wide swaths of the country. First major electoral test since the General Election.
What he said. ^^^
Basically, the idea here is that Boris may be controversial, generating a lot of media noise, but in the past he has ultimately been a net positive, attracting energy and support for the Conservatives despite his own dodgy approval status. The open question is whether that still holds true, or if the balance has tipped and he’s now a drag on the party. If he’s still a net positive, they will hold their noses and keep him. If not, they’ll dump him. And the conventional wisdom is that the results in May will go a long way toward answering this question.
Thanks for the explanation.
London (the Evening Standard is local to London) local government was always likely to be more Labour. The significant battlegrounds will be elsewhere, in the “red wall” areas, and in strongly Tory areas where the alternative is the LibDems (who are stronger in local than national elections).
Why don’t local issues determine how people vote in local elections?
Most of the voters who are knowledgable about local politics are already politically involved, and thus have already committed themselves to a political party.
Local issues may sway some votes and hence results in some places; but successive central governments have loaded so much more central direction of policy on to local authorities (and shifted the balance of funding nearer 80% or so from central government, while restricting local governments’ ability to raise funding locally) - that both anyone who knows anything about it and those who don’t tend to treat local elections as a referendum on the national government.
I know enough about some of our local candidates and personalities to vote on their individual qualities. But I don’t expect there to be any surprises changing my usual party preferences.
Johnson “advocates” lots of things. He rarely delivers.
He delivered Brexit.
(Let the celebrations resume.)
Much in the same way the IRA “delivered” bombings.
What’s the Brexit death count?
And please don’t respond with those tiresome articles that Brexit supporters are more likely to be Covid vaccine reluctant. I’m asking how many deaths can actually be blamed on Brexit. Then compare it to the number of IRA deaths, and we’ll see if you have a point.
Yes, deaths. Clearly that is the only way that comparison could possibly be read.
But I bet Brexit has cost the country far more and done far more economic damage than the IRA has.
The only death that I’m aware of that could be blamed on Brexit, or rather to Northern Ireland’s reaction to Brexit, was Lyra McKee. And even that blame is weak. 2019 unionist protests over Brexit led to unionist/republican riots. There’s a claim for Brexit as a cause of those riots, but it’s not like previously the two sides had lacked motivation for violence. McKee was apparently killed by a member of the New IRA. Which, grouping Republican groups together, were anti-Brexit.
Well, not quite. (See: Northern Ireland Protocol).
Here we are 6 months later. I thought I heard that Boris Johnson’s term was ending in a few days.
Did they ever decide for sure who is going to be prime minister in the next few days?
New PM to be announced tomorrow (5th Sep).
Almost certainly Truss.
Bravo.
He utterly refused to go when he was forced to resign, insisting he would act as a caretaker PM. As we head towards a gargantuan cost of living crisis that is going to devastate households and businesses, he has spent two valuable months doing fuck all except holidays and photo ops. A corrupt lazy egotist who has been given countless opportunities to take early action to address highly predictable problems and consistently refused to act, with predictably terrible consequences.
How this obviously and nakedly unsuitable clown was allowed to become MP should be a matter for deep reflection on the part of everybody who assured us he the man for the job, but won’t be because when you’ve fucked up that badly you can’t ever admit it without calling into question the entire system that let you make that fuck up…
He should never have got on to their approved candidates list in the first place. They knew he was a serial liar and lazy with it; and then there was the murky business with Darius Guppy. But no prizes for wondering why they took no notice - the old pals act won out, as ever.
As for the succession…