UK Tory leadership campaign Part Two

The bookies are betting on Madam Truss.

Johnson apparently thinks he'll be back as leader within a year.

So whoever wins, will have a split party anyway - if it's Sunak, the right of the party will hate him, if it's Truss then the moderates will hate her, plus the Boris loyalists will be acting like he's a king over the water, with him dripping poison non-stop. Plus the looming possibility of an Uxbridge by-election.

I'm glad there's another thread, as the last one was locked for subscribers after only a few dozen posts!

I was team Mordaunt, but out of Sunak and Truss, I guess I prefer the latter, but not by a big margin. It's not a massive deal for me, as I'll be voting for Starmer. I feel like I can trust Labour again after the shitstorm that was Corbyn and Momentum.

If a thread locked for subscribers, that could be a message that one could contribute to DL.

r3 Would you consider voting Liberal democrat?

Whoever the new leader is the Tory party will unite under her/him, that's how they've managed to survive for several centuries. Both Sunak and Truss will choose ministers from across the party and most probably each other. Boris will probably continue to be a pain in the bum, but not for long - he's too lazy and isn't all that. He's probably still in shock that he was ejected and has an over-inflated concept of his popularity. A general election in a couple of years will get rid of some old timers and bring in fresh MPs.

r6 They didn't unite between 1992-1997 and lost to Labour Perhaps the same is on the cards again?

[quote] isn't all that

Boris isn't all what?

Yeah, that was interesting. Iain Duncan Smith wasn't the choice of MPs but the choice of members. MPs hated him (for good reason - the guy is dim and had no general election appeal) and wanted to get rid of him from day one. I wonder if they'll also be agitated if the new leader does even worse in the polling.

I'm glad the insane, trans-obsessed and Corbyn-obsessed troll hasn't discovered this thread yet.

On topic, big call for the privileges committee to make on Boris Johnson. If they recommend a suspension of ten days or more, they trigger a possible recall petition in his constituency. I'd expect enough signatures to be gathered and then for him to lose any subsequent by-election. Huge step given that he is still for the time being Prime Minister. On the other hand, it's absolutely clear that he brazenly misled the house on multiple occasions over Partygate and refused to correct the record again on multiple occasions.

Might be interesting to ask Sunak and Truss at the next hustings whether BJ misled the House and what punishment he should get.

Since he is deluded enough to think he is going to be PM again looks like he won't be taking the Chiltern Hundreds on stepping down and will stay on the backbenches if he is not recalled. I guess that there aren't so many lucrative offers coming in for him as he might have expected and Carrie has expensive tastes to maintain.

[quote] the Chiltern Hundreds

Even the monarchy doesn’t want a new royal yacht. But Liz Truss does. Royal Yacht Britannia was decommissioned in 1997. Now the Tory leadership hopeful is backing another one despite minimal public and political support.

Big difference between Keir Starmer and Tony Blair, r7.

Fuck off, r10. Labour will struggle to form a government and one reason is their moronic position against women's rights, their opposition to the right of homosexuals to be exclusively same-sex attracted, and their sacrifice of vulnerable children to trans ideology. Sure, for most it won't be the main reason why they won't vote Labour, but it's yet another thing that adds to the image of a Labour party that cannot be trusted. For some people who are traditional Labour voters (women, gays) it will be a reason that prevents us from voting Labour. Labour only lose with this lunatic position, they do not gain.

The Parliamentary Labour Party is still full of Corbyn shit, in particular the disaster that is Angela Rayner.

Boris isn't all that charismatic, endearing, enchanting, or whatever it is that he thinks he is that will win over the country again if he's just given another chance, r8.

r15 Once again, the polling says the exact opposite of everything you claim

Sociopath vs simpleton. Great, that's just what the country needs.

Truss will probably win as there's still enough racism in the Tory membership across England (let's face it, the party is a nonentity elsewhere in the UK) to keep Sunak out.

Haha

Heard more from various Tories, crying over Boris departure, kvelling about the "special magic," and "unique charisma" he supposedly has.

r15 I must admit I can only see a hung parliament being the result of the next UK General election.I think it will be just as messy and problem ridden as the hung parliament of 2017-2019.

SA (R5), I've voted for the Lib Dems before, when Clegg was in charge, but I wasn't impressed by his time in office in the Coalition of Doom.

I thought Farron was a terrible replacement! Too weasely, too religious, too uninspired...

Labour will never win again. It’s too fractured.

We’ve paid £120 million in advance to send just 200 people to Rwanda. That's £600,000 PER PERSON. And still nobody has even been sent there.

This is why I can't take the Conservatives seriously at all. Whether you want to reduce immigration or not this is a total joke, it's fake, PR. Pissing away millions of taxpayer money on something that isn't real.

[quote] "special magic,"

That's an extravagant description but the outgoing PM was an extravagant personality with a keen vision of 'the big picture' looking to Britain's past, present and future.

He was no minion like the improperly-named late PM John Major.

R23 I don't understand why people like you are so confident about that, to be honest. If you look at the history of democratic politics, usually the pendulum swings. People get tired of the incumbent and want a change. Which is actually quite healthy because it at least keeps parties on their toes somewhat.

The only other way I can see it happening is if some other party surges but I don't see any sign of an extra-charismatic leader in any other party to do that. The Lib Dems would be the most obvious but I actually had to look up who their current leader was just now because it'd escaped my mind.

Oh, R24, do have ANY kind of solution to that problem you describe?

R27 I said: whether you are for or against immigration, this is cynical on the part of the Tories. They know it won't work in reality but they're making a big show of it to fake it to voters who are too busy with their own lives to pay close attention to politics. Either way it's irresponsible and wasteful.

OK, R28, but do you have any kind of solution to the problem you describe?

R29 That depends on whether you're for or against high immigration. See, the Tories are being disingenuous here.

So much to play for, because neither loser is likely to be in the next Cabinet. Obvious mutual dislike, and neither would contemplate a demotion. Backbench simmering beckons for the loser, alongside clown-in-exile BJ.

Mediocrity Truss will probably win, as middle England adores mediocrity. The pressure of TV debates will be telling though, she's said to go off like a hand-grenade under stress.

Rishi might just swallow his pride and hang around for one more shot at the crown (still young), or in time do a Miliband or Clegg and take his pick of transcontinental sinecures.

Truss will afford Starmer at least as many open goals every PMQ as BJ did, without the blustering flair in response.

Well, the Tories no longer have council houses to sell off or Brexit so they are going to have to find another new wheeze.

R26, if you look at the history of democratic politics in the UK, you'll find that the Labour party rarely wins and it only wins when it has a compelling message and policy agenda that is in tune with the times, offers a sensible response to the country's problems and focuses on people's daily needs, backed up by specific policy proposals rather than generic slogans. That does not describe the current Labour party.

There isn't a "pendulum swings" phenomenon in the UK. The Tories are the natural winners of general elections and Labour only win when the Tories have been in power for so long that they've run themselves into the ground. You can argue that's the situation now, but there will be a new Tory leader and Labour still lacks positive reasons to vote for it (rather than negative reasons for voting against the Tory party).

The next election doesn't have to be held for another 2.5 years and Labour have a far more disparate group of voters that they need to attract and maintain the support of in order to win the kinds of seats that will get them into power.

R31, Boris Johnson dumped Sajid Javid as Chancellor in favour of Rishi Sunak and then brought Javid back in as Health Secretary, which is a lower position in the ministerial hierarchy than Chancellor. Johnson was the one who had appointed Javid as Chancellor in the first place.

Both Sunak and Truss want to be doing politics and running things, they'll take a so-called lower position if needs be. Their animosity is mostly artificial for the purposes of the competition and it suits Truss to be perceived as the anti-Rishi right now because he's seen as having sold Boris out after Boris made him. Tories aren't as ideological as Labour and the actual policy differences between Sunak and Truss are minimal. Their differences are mainly based around tax and not from ideology but due to what's the best strategy to confront inflation. Those differences can always be triangulated (tax is one area where governments can always be creative).

Sending people to Rwanda is a signal to new emigrants. It says don't come here. The supposed cost savings are what you won't be paying off in the future. I have no idea if it will work.

R35 It doesn't because channel crossings haven't reduced. I remember in Australia Tony Abbott instantly simply sent boats of illegal migrants back and ironically that reduced deaths at sea too.

Who are Conservative party members?

This is a group of around 175,000 individuals who predominantly live in the south, and who in 2017 had an average age of 57, were 97 per cent white British, and were 71 per cent male.

Truss only got the support of 32% of Conservative MPs and Sunak 38% which is relatively low (for comparison Iain Duncan Smith got 33%).

My business landlord is a Conservative member, and is the minority in all areas. Female. Black. Lesbian. Child of immigrants. Even though we're political opposites, I don't ascribe to the theory that left-wingers = good, right-wingers = bad, and feel reasonably hopeful that whoever wins, they'll be an improvement on Johnson.

Nadine's attack on Sunak for wearing expensive clothes seems pretty odd for a Tory. Especially one with Fendi handbags and £6000 diamond earrings.

Meanwhile, Macus Fysh is saying Sunak's campaign is backed by foreign government bots.

People really expect this party to suddenly unite under a new leader once the campaign is over?

^ He's probably referring to China. They seem to be fighting over China and China's influence today. Rishi says that he will ban Confucius Institutes from the UK. Liz says that China Global Times has effectively endorsed Rishi.

From the most recent PopBitch mail out. We might have a new record for most in-jokes crammed into a single paragraph. Ephraim Hardcastle of the Mail wrote this short item recently:

"The mystery of why Defence Secretary Ben Wallace isn't running in the Tory leadership race, having topped a Conservative Home popularity poll, remains a talking point in the party. Like fellow Tory MP Kwasi Kwarteng, Wallace is a long-standing admirer of much-fancied Liz Truss."

It's an extremely neat way to allude to the well-worn Westminster rumour that Liz Truss has enjoyed the odd dalliance with colleagues. But the other rumour – the one about Liz Truss's proclivities against her office desk – makes us wonder if the phrase "long-standing" isn't a gag too.

And the word "topping".

so the hint is that Wallace topped Truss against her desk? Not sure how that would stop him from running unless someone has some kind of proof though.. I know he's married but he could deny it.

They aren't rumours. Truss had an undoubted affair with a fellow MP. Her marriage survived, his didn't. Supposedly both she and Penny Mordaunt have shagged Kwarsi. Regarding cabinet, I very much doubt either Mordaunt or Sunak would join a Truss cabinet. They will assume she will crash and burn and wait to pick up the pieces after the next election. I also rthink the reason Wallace held off was that he doesn't see the Tories winning the next election and is also waiting for better times.

There's also been talk Wallace wants to be Secretary General of NATO

Now turns out the Met only investigated Johnson for two of the six events he was at, despite people at those same events being investigated. So seems he did get special treatment. Just in case anyone thought Partygate was over

Sunak has agreed to be grilled by Andrew Neill but Truss won't.

Sunak would be one-up on Boris facing Neill - BJ always turned down the likelihood of being torn apart by the Paisley pit-bull.

There seems to be mounting dread within the Tory party over this movement to give the membership a vote on whether Boris should stay, with Christopher Hope being the big cheerleader for it.

[quote]Truss had an undoubted affair with a fellow MP. Her marriage survived, his didn't.

Michael Gove?

The debate went well then

[quote]A spokesman for Liz Truss claims that Rishi Sunak is not fit for office: 'Rishi Sunak has tonight proven he is not fit for office. His aggressive mansplaining and shouty private school behaviour is desperate, unbecoming and is a gift to Labour'

[quote]She literally just offered him a Government job live on air.

The mention of Johnson getting the biggest applause of the night from those Tory voters seems ominous

Interesting Lib Dem statement on the debate

I've heard rumours that Gove is gay, R50

With whom was this Truss woman fornicating?

Opinium polling: "Who performed best in the debate?"

Conservative voters Sunak 38%, Truss 47%

All adults: Sunak 39%, Truss 38%

No results for Tory members specifically but they'll almost certainly be more 'Tory' than Conservative voters as a whole, so Truss is still the front-runner.

The 'undoubted affair' that Truss had was be with MP Mark Field. He was assigned as her mentor after she brought down a Labour majority in Hemsworth in 2001. The affair lasted 18 months until June, 2005 when news of it broke in the Daily Mail and ended Field's 12-year marriage. Truss's marriage survived.

Field married again in 2007, just a year after his divorce. Sounds like he wasn't happy in his first marriage. He was also meant to be mentoring Truss, not wooing her.

Just looked it up and Mark Field married Charlie Elphicke's sister Victoria in 2007? Jeez.

r47 Hmm wonder why she's avoiding him...

Yes, it doesn't reflect well on Truss that she won't be questioned by Neill. It suggests that she can't stand by or defend her policies.

R61 she doesn't really have policies. She is just coming up with 'plans' on the fly that either get an interviewer off her back in the moment or she thinks is red meat for the Tory membership. None of it means anything. She should be saying she will carry out the Tory manifesto under which the current government was elected under. I don't personally agree with their manifesto in almost any way but at least the government was elected under it - not her pie in the sky rubbish. Whoever puts enacting some form of proportional representation in the next election will get my vote.

The Sun live TV debate has just crashed and gone off air...

Guess you will be voting Lib Dem, R62, as PR's been their policy forever.

r63 Kate McCann fainted

Truss is hard Right and very Trumpian. She’s all about anti-woke policies. Good for her. The Corbyn cult is going to shit their pants when they see what’s in store for the country.

Reaction to the sudden end to the debate from the spin room - anyone know who the rather good looking guy is, who grabbed his colleague's arm in shock?

Oh no, not the Corbyn-obsessed fuckwit @ R66 again ...

lol

Rishi Sunak has pledged to scrap VAT on energy bills next year in a significant change of strategy as he tries to overhaul Liz Truss’s lead in the race to become the next prime minister.

Eye roll, not surprised. Tories not much different to Labour, they like free money too. And unless you cut something to fund this which is unlikely, he's not saying that, that's what it is.

Meanwhile Liz Truss targets 20 per cent cut in crime by 2024.

The Tory leadership frontrunner would demand that a police officer visits the scene of every burglary following concerns that forces are not doing enough to focus on crimes that affect ordinary people. In an attempt to crack down on the “woke” agenda, Ms Truss would ban police training that focuses on identity politics and reduce the amount of time officers spend investigating comments made on Twitter.

-- This one sounds a bit better to me though 20% is probably ambitious. Maybe police could stop sending dozens of officers to tiny peaceful protests and driving around aimlessly at night too.

R60 Truss is looking like a blond version of Bette Davis in that amusing clip.

r22 Tim Farron was awful I agree! I wish the independents who broke away to form Change UK in 2019 Had made more of a success of it.

r23 I think hung parliaments may be the norm most of the time in the time-everywhere now seems fractured for all main political parties!

r44 Amber Rudd not Penny

Still TeamKemi.

If only more people knew Rishi's mum worked as a pharmacist, and he did her bookkeeping, that could change the whole dynamic of this contest.

"Almost half of Tory voters do not want Boris Johnson to quit, survey says"

There's no real enthusiasm for either of these two finalists, that's for sure.

Tories always bang on about crime. The only way to cut crime that actually works (as opposed to building prisons and raising sentences), is economic prosperity. The figures are perfectly clear - as prosperity rises, crime declines. The New Labour years were remarkably low crime - even the Daily Mail had to contort itself when trying its usual Laour is soft on crime! headlines. They went 'Shocking rise in knife crime!', when this figure didn't go down quite as much as most other areas.

Well he sounds confident about his ability to win over the electorate...

[quote]Boris Johnson’s allies are drawing up a list of Tory MPs in safe seats who might be willing to stand down to create a vacancy for the Prime Minister. Senior sources claimed Mr Johnson was “testing the water” over moving to a constituency with a much larger Conservative majority. Recent polls have suggested he could be in danger of losing his own seat of Uxbridge, where he has a majority of just 7,210, at the next general election.

...

[quote]One insider even suggested Mr Johnson’s allies were prepared to offer honours - including knighthoods and peerages - to loyalist MPs and Tory veterans in safe seats who might contemplate retirement. “It has been discussed. They’re testing the water with MPs with safe seats," they said. "They’re prepared to dangle honours in front of ultra-loyalists and those who might be thinking about standing down anyway”. One name under discussion is that of Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, one of the PM’s closest allies, whose mid-Bedfordshire seat has a 24,600 majority.

[quote] anyone know who the rather good looking guy is, who grabbed his colleague's arm in shock?

I don't know, R67, but there's something a bit "Princess Diana scream" about his body language.

Yeah, did make me assume he's family

Ben Wallace backing Truss - so much for him being the sane one

No 10 was an utter shambles during the pandemic

Badenoch was the only one of the five with an ounce of integrity, regardless of whether you agree with her positions. If she'd had even a couple of years in the Cabinet, I think she would have blown the other second-rate hacks out of the water.

Tugendhat backing Truss too, he wants a job clearly

It's a weird world when the Conservative and Unionist Party has successive serial adulterers as leaders,

Why is that weird, R86? I have committed adultery, haven't you?

I'm not R86 but remember when the Tory party promoted themselves as the party of morality? Back to Basics? (And no, I haven't committed adultery - it's still wrong unless you're in an open relationship.)

[quote]I can only see a hung parliament

Pics please.

Thank god you bitches are old enough to understand this reference.

So Tom Tugendhat is supporting Truss. Mr 'Clean break, fresh start, I was in the army you know' is begging for a seat in the Johnson Continuity Cabinet. Grotesque.

Sunak is hoping that Truss's support is soft and that he can turn things around with the ground game. He'll be talking to lots of Tory activists and members; MPs are being asked to phone bank for him.

Sunday Times polls have found that voting intention has barely changed since Johnson resigned almost a month ago and that both Truss and Sunak poll about the same as him in terms of voter intention.... not good a sign if the Conservatives thought that changing leader would change their fortunes.

If Truss does win, how long until Sunak quits Parliament?

Mordaunt backs Truss, lol

That’s a w&w for the lol, r94. This whole “Tories pick the next UK PM” thing is going to turn into a real shitshow, isn’t it? I mean, Liz Truss!?!?

It's just so pathetically transparent, them begging for a job from her

Truss has also said she won't order lockdowns if Covid cases pick back up and that she was opposed to them before

Meanwhile latest poll shows Labour with a 14 point lead

Why on earth would he quit parliament, r93? Aside from that being a weird response to losing, Truss will probably offer him a place in her government.

Sure, the person you've just spent a month blasting as being totally useless, and who has spent a month calling you totally useless, perfect Cabinet colleagues.

And why? Because he knows now he'll never be PM. And that's the only reason people like Rish! are in it.

Truss planning paycuts for public sector workers outside the south east. We might actually get to general strike territory with her in charge. Winter of Discontent 2: Electric Boogaloo

Sunak was chancellor - anything other than Foreign Secretary would be a demotion which he wouldn't accept and she has too many allies to pay back to give the plum to Rishi. He'll go to the bank benches and wait for her to crash and burn at the next election., so he can move in. He's not 40 yet, so what's a couple of years to him, being the Tory King over the Water? If that doesn't work, then he'll probably dump Parliament and head to the US.

Rishi Sunak is 42 and has decades of political career ahead of him - unless he voluntarily goes into the wilderness of the back benches. They're arguing because there's an election on. They'll forget it all afterwards. Even Penny Mordaunt has just proclaimed herself a Liz Truss fan, after her campaign made all sorts of untoward allegations against Truss.

R100, Sajid Javid was Chancellor. Then Bozo sacked him to make Rishi Sunak Chancellor. A little later, he brought Javid back into government as Health Secretary.

R101 I thought that Mordaunt ran a pretty clean campaign - it was one of the reasons she gave people to pick her.

R96, in that poll Labour has risen by taking 3 points away from the Lib Dems, not from the Tories. Which simply shows that there is a lot of fluidity among the opposition parties.

They haven't changed leader yet, r92. Johnson was a shambles as PM. With him out of the picture and a new PM having had a chance to turn the page and establish a less chaotic way of running the country, things could improve for the Tories. The poll in the Times was carried out between 28 June and 1 July, a month ago.

Mordaunt's supporters (i.e. Mordaunt) accused Truss of breaking protocol and leaking government documents to damage Mordaunt. Now Mordaunt is Liz's new biggest supporter. (The documents Truss is accused of leaking simply show that Mordaunt is a bold-faced liar who now claims she never supported gender self-id when as the minister responsible she was actually trying to sneak it through.)

[quote]Penny Mordaunt backers blame ‘nasty personal attacks’ for defeat

[quote]Liz Truss was accused of leaking documents to discredit her leadership rival

[quote]Penny Mordaunt’s backers have blamed “nasty personal attacks” for allowing Liz Truss to overtake her and face Rishi Sunak in the final stage of the leadership contest.

[quote]Furious Mordaunt supporters accused Truss of leaking government documents designed to discredit her, suggesting a leak inquiry launched by the cabinet secretary might yet derail her campaign.

Truss keeps saying in debates we need bold economic reform but fails to fully explain that she favours radical suppply side economic reform by cutting workers rights to make the economy more dynamic.Basically she is chasing unproven theories and in some cases discredited theories akin to trickle down economics. No wonder she is being light on detail at the moment in public.

Red wall tory voters and brexit voters from those areas did not think they were voting for more economic anxiety and insecurity but thats exactly what they are going to get.

The dumb cunt is going to make inflation worse as well.

I wonder if she'll be able to get through half the stuff she wants though. For example, her ridiculous policy of grammar schools looks doomed to fail.

At least Truss and Sunak have some policy proposals, unlike Labour which has nothing specific to say about anything, except for on the unpopular and backfiring fast trans issue.

What is Labour's education policy? Proposals to make government work better?

R105 Interestingly, one of the reasons U.S. food inflation is higher than ours despite them not having issues with energy supply is a labour supply problem - a lot of workers were fired during the pandemic because it's easy to fire people there. And now a lot of them don't want to go back.

r107 Maybe that's got something to do with the fact that Sunak or Truss are going to be PM in a months time, whereas the next election won't be for years yet.

Truss u-turns on the plan to cut public sector pay. She may yet fuck this up

And she's trying to blame the media misrepresenting her position, when her own press release proves it was accurate reporting. And that just was pushing for such a policy in 2018 when she was Chief Secretary to the Treasury

Not really r109. Labour deliberately don't have any policies for three reasons: 1) they genuinely don't have any proposals for tackling today's problems, 2) Starmer is too scared to define any proposals for fear that they will invite scrutiny and be off-putting to voters, not to mention that his entire political philosophy appears to be to sit on the fence, and 3) fears about triggering more infighting within the deeply divided Labour party (just see this week Starmer's hysterical reaction to Labour front-benchers supporting the strikes).

When he was campaigning to be Labour leader, Starmer had nothing to say about policy either. The only Labour policies we do hear about - aside from the trans - are almost copies of Tory policy.

When Tony Blair became Labour leader there was a huge policy development programme right from the first moment, which is what enabled Labour to win the next three elections.

The only two other Labour leaders to win general elections and become PM since the war are Clement Atlee and Harold Wilson. The Labour party under Atlee promised voters the welfare state and NHS - and delivered. Harold Wilson as Labour leader spoke of the opportunities of the white heat of technology and science and the huge challenges to industry and employment resulting from automation that were sweeping the world and threatening to leave the UK behind. Keir Starmer just spouts whatever witty jibe his speechwriters come up with about Boris Johnson, an easy target.

Don't be misled by the fact that under the shambolic Bojo the Tories are in difficulties. Liz Truss - whether you want to accept it or not - is a lot smarter than she appears (in fact, I'd suggest that appearing a bit naive and innocent is part of her tactic). She will put order back into the Tory party and will also fire a lot more criticism at Labour too - something Boris Johnson doesn't do beyond silly schoolboy humour. And then it'll be a lot less easy for Labour to hide its lack of policy and its own divisions.

Why is that a "fuck up", r110? Surely politicians who respond to feedback and course correct when they've made a mistake is what we want?

There's nothing particularly wrong about what Truss argued in 2018, namely that civil servants in the regions should get lower pay rises than those in London, who have far higher expenses and living conditions. A more sellable way of putting it might be higher weighting for those working in London.

R112 Yeah I didn't bother reading any of that. Given that since the last election we've had a pandemic and a cost of living crisis, why would Labour specify policies now when they don't know what the situation will be when the election actually comes? But maybe if you keep repeating the same shit it'll come true one day - though that hasn't worked out for you on the 'trans issues will make Labour unelectable' front has it?

r112/r113 A reminder to others that this poster claims to not be a Tory, and claims to be an ex-Labour voter.

And if you genuinely need it explained to you why this is a fuck up, you're too stupid to be posting about politics.

Aw little r114, who doesn't bother to read posts and then thinks he knows all about the poster.

"Given that since the last election we've had a pandemic and a cost of living crisis" - Both very good excuses for the the current Tory government as to why things are difficult now, which are apparently nothing to do with them but happening on a global level. But, surely moments of crisis are where you absolutely need an action plan and vague fence-sitting just won't do?

At least r114 admits that Labour have no policies.

The problem with higher pay in London and the south east is that a lot of civil servants are going to think 'would I rather live in London/the south east or the north?'

Truss is going to have to make some more U-turns, I am thinking. This is the campaign, the easy bit, and she's already had to make an U-turn.

R116, London is way more expensive than the rest of the country. The average house price in London is twice the amount of the average house price in Leeds. Add in commuting on public transport, general living costs, and you are still better off on a lower salary in the North than in London/the Southeast. It can't really be fair that people working in the Cardiff Passport Office are getting the same take home amount as people working in the London Passport Office.

R118 Says someone who doesn't care about levelling up. How about you take into account the benefits and opportunities of living in London compared to the rest of the country? Those people could move after all.

Answer me: why did Liz Truss U-turn on this? Why did she do that?

R119, what are the benefits and opportunities of living in London compared to living in Cardiff if you work in the Passport Office, r119? There's already a form of London weighting in the civil service and in many other employment sectors.

Because it sounded like a pay cut, r120

R121 Living in Cardiff is not comparable to living in the capital city with easy access to all the nice parks, museums, galleries, restaurants, rich and well connected people...

R121 I thought that cutting state spending was red meat for Tories normally. No, it's more likely because it contradicts that whole 'levelling up' propaganda that partly won the last election.

The FT's Chris Giles doesn't like Truss's economics (thread linked).

There's no passport office in Cardiff btw.

There is one in Newport, but Newport isn't Cardiff.

r115 No, your post history is how I know all about you. You literally posted in the last thread you're not a Tory but a former Labour voter. And yet all you do is spout Tory lines. Funny that

[quote]But, surely moments of crisis are where you absolutely need an action plan and vague fence-sitting just won't do?

You do realise Labour aren't in government, right? And unlikely to be so for another two years. Are you suggesting the Tories are going to let this crisis go on until the next election? If not, why do Labour need an action plan for a crisis happening now, which (go willing) won't be happening at the next election?

That's right r126, I'm a former Labour voter, and I won't be voting for a party that has ties to a corrupt organisation that tells lesbians such as myself that we're no better than racists if we don't want to have sex with biological men.

Yes, I realise that Labour aren't in government and they're unlikely to be after the next election if they can't come up with some kind of policy direction. I'm not asking for fine-tuned details, just a general idea. What the fuck is Labour's over-arching story on, e.g. education? If we get Starmer as PM what kind of government can we expect to get?

Moreover, having no over-arching policy direction makes it difficult for Labour to criticise the Tories on an actual policy level. This means that all they can talk about is Johnson's incompetence, but he won't be around much longer.

Thanks for correcting me, r125. Just goes to show how much levelling up is needed in this country when we poncey Londoners can't tell the difference between Welsh cities.

R122, are you saying that there aren't nice parks and galleries in the rest of the country? Do you really think that the average civil servant is hobnobbing with people in high places? My mother worked for the civil service in London for 40 years and all she got in the way of networking opportunities was the office Christmas party.

[quote]If we get Starmer as PM what kind of government can we expect to get?

A competent one. It'll make a nice change.

UK inflation rate is currently 9.4% but striking rail workers have only been offered 3% and public sector workers only 4-5%. That's a massive cut in real terms, on top of a decade or more of austerity and wage stagnation. Yet Keir Starmer won't support their industrial action and has ordered his own MPs away from the picket lines - that is until Lisa Nandy forced him to U-turn by going anyway and daring him to sack her.

With this clown in charge of the party, what does any working person have to gain from the prospect of a Labour government? Why should unions piss away their members' hard-earned fees into Labour coffers only for the party to take the money and tell them they should shut up and give in to the bosses?

[quote][R121] Living in Cardiff is not comparable to living in the capital city with easy access to all the nice parks, museums, galleries, restaurants, rich and well connected people...

Cardiff has lots of nice parks, museums, galleries, restaurants and rich and well connected people. It also has a parliament, theatres, major sporting venues, many thriving industries including a huge amount of TV production.

You can get a mansion for the cost of a small flat in London, but public services are quite poor, what with the Labour government having been in power since the 90s.

Both candidates talking about 'reviewing' the BBC licence fee. Which is code for 'that will never happen' as well.

"[Rishi Sunak] announced measures to beef up the Prevent programme on Tuesday night, as part of a bid to boost his flagging campaign to succeed Boris Johnson as the next prime minister.

These would lead to more people being referred to Prevent by widening the definition of “extremism” to include those who “vilify” Britain, with Sunak pledging to focus on “rooting out those who are vocal in their hatred of our country”.

But former counter-terrorism chief Sir Peter Fahy, who was also chief constable of Greater Manchester police, questioned the precise meaning of “vilification”.

He said: “The widening of Prevent could damage its credibility and reputation. It makes it more about people’s thoughts and opinions.

“It is straying into thought crimes and political opinions.”

He added: “Political opposition is not where police should be, it is those who pose a serious threat and risk of violence, not those opposed to political systems.”

"Don't worry, I'm the right kind of brown guy"

Interesting that the sending out of ballot papers has been delayed to improve the security of them. Is someone trying to give Rishi more time to win over the members? It looks fairly hopeless for him though!

Given that she has built up such a lead in the polls, some might think it a little unwise for Truss to pander so obviously to the baser instincts of her audience: particularly when you consider the problems she might be storing up for herself.

But hey, we're a 'family'.

The Truss vote may not be as safe as it seems. There have only been two proper polls since the field was reduced to just the two current candidates, and her rating fell considerably between them (the second has just happened.). It would be hilarious if Tugendhat and Mordaunt swallowing their pride and (ha!) principles by rushing to support her turned out to be a massive miscalculation. Truss will probably still win, but there might be some squirming in the meantime.

That's very worrying R129. I don't understand Starmer's reasoning here at all. If Labour isn't on the side of Labour - uh, WTF?

[quote]I don't understand Starmer's reasoning here at all.

You must be an idiot then. The Tories and the Tory press are desperately trying to pin the strikes on Labour. Complete with some idiot Tory declaring the strikes "a vision of Labour's Britain". So it should be perfectly obvious to anyone with a functioning brain why Starmer wants to distance the shadow Cabinet from the picket lines. But I guess that's why you and ConcernedEuropean are having issues.

Hur Dur Dur Dur Dur R138.

Except that Starmer has just failed to sack Lisa Nandy who went to visit her local picket line with a message of support. His excuse is that he is on holiday and will be back on the 15th. She just exposed how weak he really is.

These people worship Blair, but they can't lay a glove on Blair when it comes to politics. Blair would never have let himself get caught out like this.

Sam Tarry is a total cunt who only played those shenanigans to try to avoid being deselected. I strongly dislike him now. He doesn't care about Labour but only about himself and staying on the gravy train. Say what you like about them, the Tories are better at pulling together.

Even if that is true, only a 180-carat imbecile would put himself in the position where he had to sack a frontbencher for going to a picket line to show support. There's a massive cost of living crisis, inflation is far outstripping wages, foodbank use is through the use and people are having to pay thousands just on their energy bills. And all those workers and trade unionists - core labour voters - just saw Sam Tarry get sacked for standing up for people like them.

What an absolute fucking moron. No wonder the leaderless Tories are nearly back in the lead.

*foodbank use is through the roof but I imagine you worked that out.

[quote] No wonder the leaderless Tories are nearly back in the lead.

What are your sources for this? Politico's poll of polls (it's never a good idea to rely on one single poll) shows little difference.

I didn't use the poll of polls (some of the data used in it will be quite old) but multiple recent pollsters make worrying reading for Starmer, particularly since the Tarry sacking:

YouGov Starmer Approval 31 July: Doing well 28% Doing Badly 54% Net -26

YouGov Voting intention 27-28 July Lab 35% Con 34%

Redfield&Wilton 31 July Best PM Poll: Truss 37%, Starmer 36%

Redfield & WIlton Voting Intention Lab 38% Con 34%

Redfield & Wilton 25-26 July Red Wall Voters Only: Better PM Starmer 40% Truss 35%

IPSOS UK 15-20 July Starmer Favourability: Favourable 24% Unfavourable 43% Net -19%

Opinium Research 21-22 July Forced Choice: Starmer and Labour 40%, Truss and Conservatives 39%

All figures from Twitter Stats for Lefties

Twitter Stats for Lefties??? That's a biased source.

They don't even hide that they're a propaganda twitter account:

"@LeftieStats

Stats blog that supports Corbyn, socialism & trans rights. Partnered with @NovaraMedia"

Oh fuck me why is it always such a trial??

They are literally just posting the numbers taken directly from the pollsters. There is a link to the pollster concerned on each tweet. Please go and check each set of figures out at source if you wish.

I mean if you were an unbiased stats account, why would you advertise that you support Corbyn, socialism, and are affiliated with Novara Media? It's clear that they think that statistics are right-wing biased, so their account is cherry picking stats to favour the left.

That's why I prefer a poll of polls. Because at least that gets everything in and averages it.

Sorry to hammer this but it's just so bad if you care about reasonably fair or objective evidence.. just a big no-no.

OK, OK. You're going to make me do this. Fine.

YouGov voting intention 27-28 July Lab 35% Con 34%

Redfield & Wilton Voting Intenion 31 July Lab 38% Con 34%

Best PM Truss 37% Starmer36%

R149 Like I said earlier it's a bad idea to rely on one poll. Psephologists all agree on that. Outlier polls can be wrong. It is vastly better to take the average of all polls. If multiple subsequent polls show a similar pattern then we can agree that there is something there. But as of yet there isn't that I can see.

IPSOS UK Starmer Favourability 15 July

Favourable 24% Unfavourable 43% Net -19

Now, you're welcome to check the rest of them at source yourselves.

R152 That's not a fair comparison. What's the favourability/unfavs of the current PM, Boris Johnson, for example? And what will it be when Truss or Sunak are PM? I honestly thought that we were talking about general election polls anyway.

R151 It makes sense to consult more than one pollster: different pollsters have different methodologies, which they regularly adjust after major elections, and these methodologies may do a better or worse job at approximating the state of public opinion. If multiple posters are showing a gain in Lab voting intention, a decline in Truss favourability or whatever, it's more likely they are picking up on something real.

Poll of polls can be useful, but they also have flaws:

a) they tend not to pick up on significant recent changes, since they aggregate a whole series of polls taken at different times - perhaps over a month or more - and with different methodologies. If there was a significant negative reaction to a major event: like James Comey's letter which changed the course of the 2016 US Presidential election, for example, this would be less likely to be picked up in a poll of polls. To what extent did Starmer's sacking of Tarry provoke a backlash?

b) the whole point of considering polls separately is *because* they have different methodologies. Some will be better than others! In the 2017 GE Comres was closest to the final result, despite being out on a limb relative to what the rest of the pollsters were predicting.

but yes, other polls have better news for Starmer, so he needn't shoot himself in the head quite yet. Of course any other leader would be 20 points ahead by now.

R152 I've just looked at the link you posted and it's devastating for both Truss and Sunak.

Sunak, among all voters: Favourable 20%. Unfavourable 50%

Among 2019 Con voters favourable 35%, Unfavourable 41%.

Truss, among all voters: Favourable 17%, Unfavourable 45%

Among 2019 Con voters favourable 33%, Unfavourable 25%.

Well if I were Truss I'd argue that I have a positive voting with the coalition of voters that won last time. For comparison purposes we'd need Starmer's ratings amongst Labour voters: they might have slipped recently.

But yes we do live in an era where almost all politicians are varying flavours of unpopular.

The point is that after the Brexit mess, partygate, and now runaway inflation and cost of living, Starmer ought to be streets ahead, but he isn't. He might still win, but only by default.

R156 Only 33% favourability with Tory voters when she's new and throwing promises of tax cuts and whatever else at the Tory membership? I'm a cynic and I think it's more likely that people are going to be disappointed with the reality of her rule.... You can't dress this up any other way; it's a horrible point to start from. Yes, maybe she can turn it around and maybe Starmer will be worse for the electorate by the time of the next election.

[quote]"Keiran Pedley, Director of Politics at Ipsos UK, says of the findings:

Neither Rishi Sunak, nor Liz Truss start from a strong position in terms of public favourability scores and so whichever candidate wins will need to deliver quickly to recover the Conservatives’ challenging current political situation. Both have seen a trend of decline in their ratings, although this is more noticeable for Rishi Sunak. The public as a whole want to hear more about each candidates’ plans to address the cost of living and improve public services such as the NHS and schools, with 2019 Conservatives also keen to hear about plans for immigration and border security as well as economic growth. "

76% of all voters express an opinion of Sunak, 67% of Starmer, and 62% of Truss, but only 58% of 2019 Tories.

With the highest don't knows, she has more room to grow and shape perceptions of her. But this means she'll need to hit the ground running without landing on her face (again).

Frankly her political skills seem shit.

My spidey senses think that Truss is a go-getter and more dynamic than Starmer which plays better in general elections. But on the other hand the Tories have been in power for a long time and they've been shit, and the economy is shit. So he probably has a decent chance despite that.

Truss has achieved next to nothing in years as a cabinet minister. She isn't going to change now. She is all bluster and surface, like Boris.

Truss actually achieved quite a bit as Minister for Women and Equalities, r161. The whole trans shitshow is unravelling, for a start. She gave Kemi Badenoch what she needed as Minister for Equalities to uncover what was going on at the Tavistock youth gender clinic.

r139 No, she wasn't sacked because she told the LOTO office she was planning to visit, did so under the guise of talking to the strikers rather than taking part in the picket, and didn't do a media round. What has actually been said is Starmer will review and make a final decision on the picket line policy when he returns from his holiday.

And Tarry wasn't sacked for attending a picket. He was sacked for doing a media round without permission, for making up policy that the Shadow Cabinet hadn't agreed to, and for promoting himself to shadow SoS for Transport

For someone you claim to be doing so badly, it's odd that you constantly need to make stuff up to attack Starmer.

R152 So a quick switch from voting intention to favourability, because you don't want to post that the latest Ipsos poll has Labour with a 14 point lead.

You're Owen Jones, aren't you?

I'm not, I'm afraid.

You are making stuff up. The message sent to Labour frontbenchers is reproduced below. 'Just visiting to talk to them' is not included as a loophole. Let's hope Starmer can think up a better reason before he gets back that won't make him look like Nandy just handed him his ass.

I did say that there were better polls out there for Starmer. I don't rule out him winning the next election either, although it may come down to whether he or Truss manage to shit the bed the least. I'm not remotely confident as to who that will be.

R163 Exactly - Yesterday Ipsos gave Labour a 14% poll lead, today YouGov give Labour a 1% lead.

THAT IS WHY IT'S BETTER TO AVERAGE ALL POLLS.

No. It makes sense to keep an eye on the polling average. But ultimately, both the IPSOS and the YouGov poll are not of equal value. One is almost certainly going to be much closer to the truth than the other, because of methodology (unless the real lead is 7, in which case both polls are outliers).

So it also makes sense to follow the polls separately.

R166 Okay, explain to me just what makes IPSOS or Yougov methodology better/worse than the other? I know that you're not a psephologist at all because you don't get basic things about polls so good luck with that one.

[quote] 'Just visiting to talk to them' is not included as a loophole

The entire point of a loophole is that it's not made explicit. You're clutching at straws now.

R167 duhhhh, we can't know whether IPSOS or YouGOV are doing better until there is an event against which they can be tested, like a general election.

However, differences in the soundness of the methodology may arise from:

- Sampling procedure (although in this case both pollsters used online surveys) - difficulty in finding a balanced sample - decision to weight for various demographic factors - what to do with new voters/previous non-voters? (everyone says they intend to vote at the next election, but many do not) - Wording of the questions - Decision to prompt or not the names of parties or politicians - Sheer bad luck (the most careful pollster will get a rogue result eventually).

Here's IPSOS on its own methodology -

[quote]duhhhh, we can't know whether IPSOS or YouGOV are doing better until there is an event against which they can be tested, like a general election.

Says it all...

R169 The rest of your waffle is generic information. None of it tells me specifically how you're so confident that one or the other is better than the other.

R168 And if, given the clarity of the instruction he issued, if he comes back from holiday and says, 'it's ok because she was just there to talk rather than to be on the picket' he will look fucking ridiculous, as you well know.

Especially because her team are briefing that she went down to 'show support'.

But, he has to climb down somehow, right?

R171 I'm not confident about one being better than the other. I'm saying that at least one is badly wrong! That's why you have to compare polls from the same pollster and check for movement from multiple posters before being confident that it is real!

Jeez people on this site will argue about anything.

R173 This is what you said:

[quote]One is almost certainly going to be much closer to the truth than the other, because of methodology

When asked what methodology makes what poll 'closer to the truth' you gave me a load of generic crap.

r172 You're still continuing your lie. Again, the Nandy issue is closed. The decision he will make when he returns is whether to change the overall policy or not. Once again, stop making shit up.

[quote]Jeez people on this site will argue about anything.

Don't like? Then stop arguing? Why do YOU keep on arguing with me when you could just stop and move on?

So, either the policy changes retrospectively to permit what Nandy already did....

OR the policy doesn't change but nothing happens to Nandy for having broken it...

Which outcome makes Starmer look worse?

Nandy didn't make up policy on the hoof and claim to be a shadow minister that she wasn't. She got permission first. She's a team player. Tarry isn't.

R174 Mate, are you a little slow?

The explanations for the major differences in the poll results could come down to mere sampling error, but are more likely to come down to differences in methodology between the pollsters. But since I don't know which of the two polls is more likely to be right, I can't tell you as of now which methodology is better.

Pollsters constantly refine their methodology and test it against real-world outcomes, like election results.

Does this make sense even just a little bit?

R179 Wow, so now you claim that you can't tell which poll is better than the other? So why are you fighting so strongly against my position that averaging all polls is roughly the better way to go?

R180

I'm not. I said that it makes sense to keep an eye on an average of the polls. But averaging is a blunt tool which by definition is slow to respond to what may be significant events. Since some pollsters are going to be closer to the mark than others, it also makes sense to track them separately. The most accurate pollster in GE 2017 was ComRes and they were out of line with the rest.

That's really all I'm saying.

R181 But how do you know WHICH pollster is going to be closer to the mark than the other? I kind of already asked you that and you gave me a rubbish generic answer that applies to polling in general. But nothing about how you know that one pollster or the other will be closer to the mark.

LOL he's actually saying you know which pollster is the best AFTER the election

I'm just curious Owen, do you actually deliberately try to make yourself look like an idiot, or does it just happen naturally?

Hindsight is beautiful and perfect. Like a fucking ass.

Polls tend to have a margin of error of 3-4%. So the +1 Labour lead could be correct (or it could range from Lab+4 to Con +2), or the +`14 lead could be correct, but one of them at least is badly wrong, since it's not credible that there can have been a real swing of 13 points in the few days between each poll being in the field.

If we assume for the sake of argument that the Labour lead is +7, then both polls are outliers and are wrong beyond the margin of error. But it is far more likely that one is closer to the mark than the other.

No, we have no way of telling for sure which one is best right now: how could we possibly do that? The best we can go is go on the polling company's track record, and (since methodologies are public) engage in a debate about different aspects of it: whether a particular question is loaded or not, for example.

Is any of this sinking in?

R185 Oh dear, that is not how margin of error works. Cringe, but as I already pointed out, you're not a psephologist.

How do you know which racing tipster is best? Only after the horse race.

How surprising to see Jeremy Corbyn fan and fellow antisemite Concerned European desperate for Labour to fail without his hero in charge.

R186 Here you go mate

R188 It's important not to inhale the glue too deeply.

R189 You linked that but you still don't understand how margin of error works.

OK, OK, margin is the individual scores rather than the lead, I knew I was wrong to oversimplify, R191, nothing get by you that's for sure!

Right, so it could be double what you intuitively think it would be. That's the thing. People don't understand how variable polls can be. Never, ever take 1 poll too seriously.

Hey Concerned European, how do you feel about your man Jeremy calling for Ukraine to be forced into submission by Russia to secure peace?

And the plot by Israel to topple him?

R194 Oh mate, you just read the tweets without watching the video, didn't you?

Never read the tweets without watching the video. Seriously, go back and watch it now.

BTW R194 I'm still aware you are my stalker. You aren't doing your reputation for stability and good mental health a great deal of good on these boards. But if this makes you a little less lonely I'm happy to play along.

Ah bless, Concerned European still defending Jeremy. Anti semites gonna anti semite.

Has it been a while since you've spoken to another person R197? No harm in checking in with a local community group or something.

Corbyn's recent comments on Ukraine and Russia made me want to throw up. It definitely made me think less of Labour. The fact that so many in the party support this man. :-(

Not new but still frightening and horrifying every time Jeremy Corbyn surfaces.

It would have been so easy for "Concerned European" to say "His comments about Ukraine were disgraceful, of course Ukraine should be given weapons to defend themselves from Russia" but no, he has to spin the idea that Saint Jeremy The Wrong'd was smeared or misrepresented.

For a start, he didn't mention Israel in the entire interview, so that's a smear you can retract.

Secondly, he didn't advocate for an end to military aid. He said weapons would not solve the problem: which they won't - unless you think an outright Ukrainian victory is going to happen, which makes you far more optimistic than any military analyst I am aware of. He unequivocally condemned Russia.

He called for negotiations, you may dislike that and dislike him, but it's hardly a fringe position, it's shared by the UN Secretary General.

Oh yes, and I almost forgot.....

R201 Rent free in people's heads but what's the flip side? That flip side is that moderates won't vote for him because he's a nasty and stupid extremist.

[quote][R201] Rent free in people's heads but what's the flip side? That flip side is that moderates won't vote for him because he's a nasty and stupid extremist.

Whoever replaces Truss as foreign secretary will face David Lammy.

That's David Lammy who nominated Corbyn for the leadership and continued to defend him, including lecturing Jews "don't talk to me about racism".

And every time Lammy challenges the Tories, they can just throw that back in his face. "You criticise us? You campaigned to put Corbyn in Downing Street with Putinites Andrew Murray and Seamus Milne. Fuck off Lammy"

That's "rent free".

By the standards of the 20th century, Corbyn's social democratic manifesto was pretty moderate: it certainly wouldn't have seemed unfeasibly radical to Harold Wilson.

Most of his positions are pretty mainstream, whether domestic or foreign policy, but well outside what was the acceptable circle for UK political and media opinion, hence the unprecedented and furious onslaught from all sides: what Peter Oborne (a Conservative journalist) rightly described as a political assassination.

I'd tip him to hold Islington North if he ran as an independent.

But hey, what's really sad is how R197 and R200 obviously still think he lives under her bed. You won, you creepy freak! Boris Johnson and Liz Truss are your reward, and much joy may you have of them. Are you confident about paying your fuel bill this winter?

[quote]Corbyn's recent comments on Ukraine and Russia made me want to throw up. It definitely made me think less of Labour.

You think less of the party which threw him out?

[quote]The fact that so many in the party support this man.

They don't though, do they? Most of his supporters were only in for the ride while he seemed popular, and then quickly fucked off. The way Starmer won in the first round and then has had basically no trouble getting rid of the Corbynites from positions of power should be enough to show you Corbyn has little support within the Labour party itself

r201 Because Putin is so well known for being an honourable man who can be trusted?

What would have happened if the west did not provide arms to Ukraine? What would happen now if the west stopped providing them?

R201 Do you advocate that the US should pull out of the START talks?

Above was for R206

[quote]They don't though, do they? Most of his supporters were only in for the ride while he seemed popular, and then quickly fucked off. The way Starmer won in the first round and then has had basically no trouble getting rid of the Corbynites from positions of power should be enough to show you Corbyn has little support within the Labour party itself

Labour MPs did everything within their power to make Corbyn Prime Minister. They wanted Seamus Milne in Downing Street, along with Andrew Murray, the aristrotrot who's currently banned from Ukraine and has rejoined the Communist Party.

You think craven toadies like Angela Rayner and Emily Thornberry are morally superior to the same Tory cunts who did everything to enable Boris Johnson and cover up and excuse his lies? That's Angela Rayner who willingly appeared on tv stations the day Luciana Berger quit Labour saying she didn't believe that Labour had a problem with Jew hate. Angela Rayner and her boyfriend Sam Tarry are scum.

Labour people are mostly infinitely preferable to the Conservatives but there's an awful lot of turds needing to be flushed.

r209 Problem for you is they knew Corbyn was never going to win. They knew from the summer of 2019 that they were done. You should really do some research.

r207 Answer my questions first before you start asking others.

R210 That is my answer. Joe Biden is about to launch the next round of START talks with Putin. Therefore, obviously he doesn't see those negotiations as a pointless exercise. Do you disagree with him? I personally would not pull out of the talks.

[quote][R209] Problem for you is they knew Corbyn was never going to win. They knew from the summer of 2019 that they were done. You should really do some research.

"We knew Boris Johnson would have to resign eventually, that's why we supported him staying as Prime Minister".

And don't expect a reply from Concerned European anytime soon. He's masturbating watching videos of Russian soldiers torturing Ukrainians.

r211 So your answer to the question "What would have happened if the west did not provide arms to Ukraine? What would happen now if the west stopped providing them?" is "Do you advocate that the US should pull out of the START talks?". Again, do you have to put any effort into being that stupid?

r212 Difference being one was actually the PM and in a position of power

[quote][R212] Difference being one was actually the PM and in a position of power

Opposition parties should be subject to lower moral standards than the party in government.

R213. It's a pity how low-grade you are. It was obvious what I meant, and thanks for conceding you would talk to Putin too.

r215 Strawman bullshit. Is everyone just making shit up today or something?

r216 Go on then, explain what you meant.

You were asking whether it made sense for anyone to negotiate with Putin: can he be trusted? And i replied that Biden has decided to engage with him in negotiations on the single most important subject in the world: nuclear arms reduction.

Nothing to do with sending conventional weapons to Ukraine, which of course you already knew, so seriously, fuck off out of here with your embarrassingly low-grade contributions, they do not even have the virtue of being unintentionally funny.

r218 Wait, you were actually answering the obviously rhetorical question? Seriously?

And yes, the US has to negotiate with Russia on nuclear arms. Refusing to do so would be giving the Kremlin a massive PR victory. If you somehow think that means Putin can be trusted, I suggest you remind yourself what happened at Odesa little more than12 hours after the grain export deal was signed.

Besides which, what negotiations do you think would be taking place if the west didn't provide Ukraine arms?

[quote]fuck off out of here with your embarrassingly low-grade contributions

You see, the problem with saying stuff like that is the obvious question is then - if they're so low-grade, why have you been replying to them? If they're so low-grade, why have you struggled so pathetically to respond, and so often resorted to just making stuff up?

All I'm saying is that Biden clearly considers these negotiations worthwhile.

You will also not be able to find a quote, from Corbyn or from me, advocating cutting off the flow of arms to Ukraine. But please search thoroughly for one nonetheless.

Who to trust on Russia's invasion of Ukraine?

Ukraine's foreign minister or Concerned European, a Putin defending Jew obsessed crank?

Someone keeps going on about the latest Ipsos poll that gives Labour a 14-point lead. But the latest Ipsos poll on the question of who would make the best prime minister shows a much trickier picture for Keir Starmer and Labour:

Keir Starmer leads current Prime Minister Boris Johnson by 51% to 31%.

Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are tied on 39% each.

Keir Starmer leads Foreign Secretary Liz Truss by 41% to 35%.

The problem for the Tories is Boris Johnson and Starmer does very well against him. But Johnson is out now and Starmer and Sunak tie, while Truss may be behind Starmer now but there are also many "don't knows".

This shows that the situation is not so simple as voters rejecting the Tories and embracing Labour. Voters are rejecting the bullshit associated with Boris Johnson. They are rejecting things like violating the lockdown rules to have boozy parties and Bozo hiring known gropers and pervs. Remove Johnson from the picture and this supposedly great lead of Starmer/Labour disappears. Also worrying for Starmer is that almost exactly half of voters (49%) don't know what he stands for.

A new Tory leader with a clear policy profile and a far more effective grasp on the functioning of government will be a far greater challenge for Labour, especially if you look at the kinds of seats Labour need to win to get into power.

[quote]I'd tip him to hold Islington North if he ran as an independent.

Thanks for reminding me. Assuming he does run (which isn't a guarantee), when Corbyn loses Islington North it's going to be the highlight of the next general election for me. I don't tip him to win. It's rare for an independent to win since most people vote for the party and I don't see him having anything to take the majority with him. He would probably get the ardent Corbynites but not the majority who just want a Labour party win so I don't see that as enough for him to win outright.

[QUOTE]A new Tory leader with a clear policy profile and a far more effective grasp on the functioning of government will be a far greater challenge for Labour, especially if you look at the kinds of seats Labour need to win to get into power.

I wouldn't hold my breath seeing the rubbish Sunak and Truss are coming out with. That may appeal to Tory members but I don't see anything much that would appeal to the majority of voters, and their favourabilities are bad. At minimum the new leader is definitely going to lose a boatload of seats at the next election. Maybe they can cling on all the same but I don't see either of them having anything to say or do that will turn things around by much.

There are quite a number of figures, particularly left of centre, who won elections, sometimes quite significant ones, and beat their old parties by standing as independents.

These include Dennis Canavan, Margo McDonald, Peter Law, Sylvia Hermon and Ken Livingstone.

Being a well-known figure in the constituency/local area helps, and of course Corbyn has a far bigger platform than any of those names.

If only this wasn't an anonymous website I'd offer you a fun wager.

Yes, too bad we can't have a wager. But it's not guaranteed that he will run. My bet would also be that he won't run as an independent. Partly because of his age and partly because when the figures are run he won't want to go out by losing.

Aren't the three Islington seats going to be reorganised anyway into two as part of overdue boundary commission review, due to be implemented before the election? If this is true, 'North Islington' as such won't exist.

[quote]This shows that the situation is not so simple as voters rejecting the Tories and embracing Labour. Voters are rejecting the bullshit associated with Boris Johnson. They are rejecting things like violating the lockdown rules to have boozy parties and Bozo hiring known gropers and pervs.

You mean all the stuff that was happening whilst Rish! and Truss were both in the Cabinet and did nothing about?

r220 No, he just says it's not achieving anything. You know, except stopping Russia taking over the country and assassinating Zelenskyy

If this war does stop because of a negotiated peace, it will be because those weapons from the west in the hands of brave Ukrainians forced Putin to the negotiating table.

Sure r228, the stuff that had nothing to do with them and that they weren't involved in and which is solely down to Bozo.

Rishi was issued with a fine over Partygate as well.

Oh well, he's paid his dues then, r231. Besides, it doesn't look like he's going to win.

It's odd, it often seems that the one most 'obvious' or desperate to win doesn't win. Whitelaw, Michael Portillo, David Davis, George Osborne (yes, he never ran but he was leading the betting odds for years), Jeremy Hunt, and now Sunak.

r230 The low standards of the Tory party. Just ignore the fact they chose to remain in the Cabinet headed by the incompetent who broke his own rules and hired pervs and was openly corrupt. Nothing to do with them at all.

Interest rate spike, prediction of recession and double-digit inflation - and both the PM and Chancellor are on holiday. The PM and Chancellor both Rish! and Truss were fine keeping in place over the summer

"Concerned European" is the type of leftist who thinks Israel is an evil colonial power who has no right to exist and supports the rights of Palestinians to "overthrow their oppressors" and thinks Ukrainians should just give up territory to Russia and let their children be raped and murdered in then name of peace.

Gee R236 it really must cause you actual physical pain to see me posting, right?

Good to know, I'll keep at it and will be sure to sign every post, just for you.

Let's see if we can give you a stomach ulcer by Christmas shall we?

Kisses.

Pointing out you're a Putin sympathiser is a public duty, not something that will make me ill.

R235 Yep. Went grocery shopping today and was thinking 'wow, a lot of prices have noticeably gone up significantly'. And the Tories are sounding as if they wish they could be in opposition when they're in government with a big majority.

r239 Plus warm banks are being set up for this winter. But I'm sure the Tories will blame that on people not having self-immolation skills

It's their own fault for allowing so much money printing and low inflation rates. Not to mention awful things like Sunak's 'Eat out to help out' which I hated it at the time and thought stupid. Places like Japan and Switzerland don't have high inflation because they didn't do money printing.

Printing money was the entire basis of Labour policy under Jeremy Corbyn, r241. It's not quite clear what Labour's economic and budgeting is now under Starmer, though, because they don't have any policy.

[quote]Not to mention awful things like Sunak's 'Eat out to help out' which I hated it at the time and thought stupid.

The alternative would have been thousands of businesses going bust, and thousands of suppliers going bust.

R243 Given furlough, no, that would not have happened. And it was in the middle of the pandemic - I also thought it was too soon and asking for another covid spike.

Furlough by itself wouldn't have saved those businesses. They needed to reopen.

And yes there were infections as a result but the boost for people's mental health in going out and returning to normal can't be underestimated.

Yes, reopening is fine but why did he throw billions at something like that? Reopening normally would have been better.

"Bank predicts recession starting this year lasting as long as financial crisis (5 quarters), as deep as 1990s"

Oof for Liz. And she can hide behind the monarchy stuff being when she was 19, but the biggest u-turns have been this week

She also refused to say if she'd strip Johnson of the whip if he's found to have misled Parliament.

And a much, much bigger oof for Rish!. And given this was a Tory event, this means it was likely leaked by a Tory. So much for the blue on blue attacks being over.

Complete with Ben Houchen twisting himself into such a ludicrous knot to try and defend Rish! that even Guido Fawkes mocks him

R249 OMG.. fuck him. Not that Truss is any better but it's clear that none of them truly believe in that 'levelling up' bullshit they espouse.. except possibly Michael Gove.. it's mostly PR propaganda to try to make the busy people who don't have time to look carefully at policies and what's actually done that they care about it. The exact same thing is going on with immigration. The Tories want high immigration and are doing nothing real to limit it while pretending otherwise to reap the electoral benefits. Look at the real figures.

They are both cunts

I just hate that government seems to about PR messaging and not about being honest with voters.

r253 The most despicable recent example of this was them waiting to announce the package to "help" people with energy bills until it could be used as a political diversion from Partygate

You can't make this up - the current Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is Greg Clark, who is MP for...Tunbridge Wells

Liz Truss looks incredibly English. Almost classically so. Round eyes, hawk nose, small chin.

Rish! attempt to clarify. And fails. Raab's face says it all

[quote]Protestor at the Tory leadership hustings in Eastbourne shouts "green new deal now". The audience chants "out, out, out" Truss responds by saying "I will never ever ever allow our democracy to be disrupted" by "militant protestors like Extinction Rebellion"

Someone should remind Liz how women got the vote

[quote]Liz Truss says "we shouldn't be talking ourselves into a recession". Presumably the Foreign Secretary's energy bill hasn't arrived yet.

Our next PM. Jesus christ.

Liz claims that she can prevent us from having a recession which made me cringe. No, you can't; it's too late for that. Don't want this to be happening? It's about having done things to prevent it - sensible inflation rates, making sure we can produce a decent amount of energy ourselves, holding off the temptation to do a bunch of 'quantitative easing', etc.

*interest rates

Oh, and that boundary review? The BBC analysed it and concluded that it undoubtedly benefits the Conservatives. I think that's pretty shitty a thing to do too. Not very democratic or fair play.

A useful Twitter thread on the state of the UK economy at present:

That's how it works, though, R262. Some previous boundary reviews greatly benefitted Labour, the one in the 90s, for example. But then Tony Blair got stuck in, put resources into making comments, suggestions and offering alternatives which, because they made sense, were accepted by the Boundary Commission. Labour today just whimpers 'gerrymandering!' (it isn't) and does nothing.

[quote]Oh, and that boundary review? The BBC analysed it and concluded that it undoubtedly benefits the Conservatives. I think that's pretty shitty a thing to do too. Not very democratic or fair play.

The Labour government in Wales is introducing a change to the electoral system that increases the number of elected members by over 50% and puts more power in the hands of parties in selecting candidates and removes a direct link between constituencies and directly elected representatives.

Which party will benefit the most? You'll never guess! Well it's LABOUR, which has been in power since the Senedd was created in the 90s. Smaller parties and independent candidates will be impossible to elect.

It's what parties who like to stay in power do.

[quote]Which party will benefit the most? You'll never guess! Well it's LABOUR

The article you linked to does not back up that claim. In fact it contains this line:

[quote]The GMB, Community and Usdaw unions had warned the plans could make it harder for Labour to retain power.

which seems to suggest the opposite of what you claim

r259 if elected as Prime minister Liz Truss is setting herself up for failure with this claim tax cuts will prevent recession because when they dont she will be hoisted on her own petard and have all her claims and rhetoric thrown back in her face.

And not only that, but she's saying tax cuts will also solve the cost of living crisis. Except the most vulnerable in society won't feel those cuts, because they make so little they don't pay tax.

[quote]The GMB, Community and Usdaw unions had warned the plans could make it harder for Labour to retain power.

The unions want to keep the constituency party link because it gives them influence over who controls the candidate selection rather than the party.

The BBC did some analysis on their politics show and it showed that with the new voting system Labour would do better at the expense of the small parties which have benefitted from the current regional list.

Seeing as there's no way the Tories and Plaid will ever enter in a coalition agreement it means that Labour's position is more secure with Plaid enabling them to stay in power. It's why Plaid and Labour have agreed the deal.

And yet the largest and most influential unions backed it.

Do you think Labour will do badly out of the new voting system? Do you think the proposed set up will lead to the demise of Labour or strengthen their hand on government?

Your stupidity is exposed by the fact that you act like those are the only two options.

Well feel free to share your analysis

I've always felt that the reason Plaid haven't done as well as the SNP is that people in Wales can be snobby about who speaks Welsh or not.

[quote]I've always felt that the reason Plaid haven't done as well as the SNP is that people in Wales can be snobby about who speaks Welsh or not.

Have you ever been to Wales? That sounds like a comment from someone who doesn't actually live in the UK.

R275 Are you talking about yourself? Seriously, because that's an insane comment to make.

Another thing that amuses me about Plaid is that lots of farmers and similarly conservative types vote for them because 'Welsh language - patriotic' when Plaid's actual policies, last I looked, are quite similar to the SNP's - left-wing, liberal bent. Pro-gay rights and that kind of thing. My socially conservative mother told me that she voted for Plaid and I said, 'oh, I like their policies on this and that' (naming the liberal, left wing ones) and the cognitive dissonance on her face was so funny to see.

That comment genuinely sounded like someone who had never been to Wales and didn't understand basic politics.

Plaid haven't done as well as the SNP because Wales isn't anywhere near as polarised as Scotland or consumed by grievance (also a very sectarian country) and because Welshness is more patriotic in nature compared to the nationalistic elements of Scottishness which has a lot more in common with the English nationalism of "it's their fault" and "we're better than you".

Look for a Carwyn Jones interview on why Labour is the party of Wales - he explains it very well.

There are also elements of Plaid which touch on ethnic nationalism - a Wales First approach - which is that Welshness is part of the bloodline and there is a unique Welsh identity that in danger and needs protecting. That's repellent to most Welsh people and most people in Wales. See Adam Price's insincere apology for comparing Wales to victims of the African slave trade.

The language issue isn't really a problem for Plaid, but their leadership candidates are. Adam Price is a pompous dickhead who seems stunned into amazement with his own stunning oratory. And the less said about Leanne Wood the better.

Wales voted to leave the EU but is far more dubious about leaving the UK. There's a rise in flag waving and protests copied from Scotland but no one pays any attention to Plaid's proposals for independence because no one takes them seriously. No one living along the M4 corridor accepts a hard border at Chepstow is viable or a new currency is optional.

R278 Sadly in politics the impression/image matters more than the reality. You aren't Welsh, I can tell, anyway.

[quote][R278] Sadly in politics the impression/image matters more than the reality. You aren't Welsh, I can tell, anyway.

Spoken like a true ethno-nationalist.

R280 Another projection.

r278 You don't like or rate Leanne Wood I take it?

Define "Welsh".

I live in Wales, went to school in Wales, pay taxes in Wales, vote in Wales, would quality for the Welsh football or rugby team.

Do you have to be born in Wales to be Welsh?

Do your parents have to have been born in Wales to be Welsh?

Do you have to speak the Welsh language to be Welsh?

You don't sound very different from the people who don't want Rishi Sunak as a Prime Minister because he isn't really British....

R283 You were the one who first accused me of being someone who hadn't even BEEN to Wales and didn't live in the UK as a way of 'discrediting' what I said about Welsh politics (for the record, I do live in the UK albeit in England now). Your entire post is pure projection because you're the one who likely has near-nothing to do with Wales.

R284, please answer my questions.

Do you consider me Welsh based on what I've written?

[quote][R278] You don't like or rate Leanne Wood I take it?

She spent 6 years as leader of Plaid. The most memorable thing she achieved was being called Natalie by Nigel Farage in a TV debate.

Oh, and losing her seat after she was challenged for the leadership and came 3rd out of 3 candidates.

R285 then how do you not even know basic things like how the Welsh language is kind of a socially stratified thing in Wales? Do you live somewhere like Swansea, Cardiff, near the English border? Because you know, people there are more likely to not know Welsh AND are more likely to not vote Plaid. When was the last time Plaid won in those kind of places?

oh, and those are urban areas, the exact kind of places that Plaid's liberal, left-leaning policies should naturally do well in.....

R287 is close to understanding that there is a geographic divide in Wales.

So close to working out why large areas with student populations, established EU and Commonwealth communities and public services being kept going by oversees workers aren't voting for a ethno-nationalist party but voting for Labour, with its left leaning liberal policies...

[quote]would quality for the Welsh football or rugby team.

Sorry but you have to actually be excellent at football or rugby to qualify for the team/s.

Still laughing at this

[quote]Do you live somewhere like Swansea, Cardiff, near the English border?

Oh my days!

R291 You mock but Plaid don't win in those places do they, despite having the right policies to appeal to urban areas. The SNP don't have that problem. Why's that, really?

Plaid don't appeal to voters along the M4 corridor because

1. They are towns and multicultural cities who have significant numbers of people from other parts of the UK/Europe/World who don't like Plaid's type of nationalism

2. They aren't disappointed enough in Labour to consider Plaid an alternative

3. Plaid's are a separatist party and people living along the M4 corridor know how important the relationship with England is. Unlike Scotland there isn't the same level of grievance directed at Westminster and the Welsh government don't blame all their failings on the Tories in the same way the SNP do after 15 years of government.

4. Welshness in the south isn't about whether you can speak Welsh or not.

5. Adam Price is a pompous twat.

R293 look at a map of where Welsh speakers are concentrated and compare it to a map of Plaid's seats (N.B. they only have 3/40 seats - Ceredigion, Dwyfor Meirionnydd, and Arfon). It's so obvious. What's interesting (and new to me) is that places where there are the least amount of Welsh speakers are very Labour-heavy, while the middle is Conservative-voting areas. But, on reflection, that makes sense too.

Another thing that makes Plaid unappealing is the idea pushed by many of their supporters that you have to be a Welsh speaker to be authentically Welsh.

When Nigel Farage makes comments of "I was walking down a London street and couldn't hear a word of English" most decent people are appalled.

The same is true of Plaid politicians who complain about too much English or even worse SOMALI OR PAKISTANI!!!! being spoken on the streets of Cardiff.

WALES FOR THE WELSH. Ugh.

R295 exactly, in Wales there's a definite connection made between speaking Welsh and being 'truly' Welsh, which is why Plaid win seats in areas with the highest concentration of Welsh-speakers (rural areas in the west) despite having the kind of policies that should appeal to urban areas...

Nationalist areas vote for nationalist parties. Young voters who went to Welsh medium schools aren't hung up about the language dying or too many ethnics taking their jobs.

There isn't a connection in the south, along the M4 corridor or in the valleys communities.

It's a similar reason to why the Tories do so badly in multicultural cities where voters reject that kind of nationalism.

And why does the Welsh speaker choose to live in England, a country who votes for a government he clearly hates? Could it be an economic reason perhaps? Because the Welsh economy outside of the big cities is so weak?

R297 I've never voted Plaid and I don't like them. I'm not a nationalist at all. You find this hard to understand that I can recognise the reality of what goes on in Wales but not subscribe to it myself. Look at the maps. They tell the story. Nuance seems to be hard for you.

[quote]It's a similar reason to why the Tories do so badly in multicultural cities where voters reject that kind of nationalism.

How does this make sense?

[quote]R297] I've never voted Plaid and I don't like them. I'm not a nationalist at all.

LOL

[quote]How does this make sense?

Cities tend to be multicultural younger populations. The ‘coming over her taking our jobs, not learning our language’ mentality that the right wing Tories push might appeal to the ‘left behind’ areas but it doesn’t to people in the cities. Which is why Labour hold seats in cities.

Many in Plaid have the same mentality as right wing Tories. Much of the focus can be on English ‘settlers’ ‘changing our way of life, buying our houses and refusing to lean our language’ grievance but it’s mostly rejected in the towns and cities in the south why is why Plaid do badly.

R300 Your problem is that I come from deep, deep rural and Welsh-speaking Wales which typically votes Plaid Cymru while you likely are living in the rest of Wales (note here that Plaid Cymru only has 3 out of 40 House of Commons seats just to give you an idea of how not that common voting for them is). That's why you don't really understand the real reasons why Plaid Cymru doesn't chime with the rest of Wales. I grew up with 'those' natural Plaid Cymru voters, so I understand them more than you do.

R301 Okay, that doesn't make sense compared to the sentence I quoted, so you must have originally phrased it wrongly. Because normally between Labour and the Tories, the Tories are the more nationalistic of the two, and Labour does better in urban areas.

TO CHANGE THE TOPIC... this is currently a The Times headline:

"Sunak: My wife definitely drinks . . . it massively irritates her that I don’t"

"(Liz Truss will) always be an also-ran in the sex-arse stakes."

I know that the press likes to hint about what they know or have heard so that arse thing about Rish! makes me wonder.

Disgusted, in Tunbridge Wells.

[quote]Liz Truss declines to commit on help for energy bills at Tory hustings, calling it “Gordon Brown economics” to give direct help when taxes are high

She's going to complete her Maggie cosplay by speed running to the poll tax riots

Liz Truss is a duplicitous bitch

Another u-turn, and once again Truss ignores reality to pretend she was misquoted. If she does win this the Labour social media team are going to have a field day with making videos of her denying saying something and smash cut to her saying that exact thing.

[quote]Asked if she was ruling out cash payments to help households pay their bills, Truss said: "That's not what I said. What I said is my priority is making sure we're not taking money off people and then giving it back to them later on."

They are both godawful.

I just don't understand why they're talking about tax cuts and 'handouts' to combat the energy price increases when what I want to hear from them is an useful plan. A plan to make us significantly less reliant on imported energy, for example.

[quote].@trussliz told by a nurse that the NHS has a huge problem with retaining and recruiting nurses and need a pay rise. Truss: "It seems to me the money is going in but we are not seeing the impact of the money on the front line.." Nurse: the real problem is a "lack of funding"

She's going to be an utter disaster as PM. I think she could actually set off a general strike.

re: the NHS, the Tories have been in power for 12 years now, consecutively....

[quote]re: the NHS, the Tories have been in power for 12 years now, consecutively....

And yet the NHS is on its knees in Scotland and Wales as well. The SNP have been in government in Scotland for 15 years and Labour in Wales for 23 years.

It's not *JUST* The Tories, it's the general model for the NHS and Covid as well.

R315 pretty sure that's a logical fallacy... not sure how pointing to other shit approaches redeems the Tories. They just are... equally shit/clueless/have no answers?

[quote]Scotland had significantly better access to NHS dentistry for adults than the other UK nations, with 18% of practices taking on new health-service patients.

[quote]Wales, England and Northern Ireland had broadly similar rates of access, at 7%, 9% and 10% respectively.

Only 82% of dentists in Scotland are refusing new NHS patients compared to 91% in England. #indyref2trigger

r316 Yeah, it's whataboutism, but it's all the Tories have now.

It also requires you to ignore the demographic differences between the nations, such as increased rural communities, increased levels of deprivation. But Tories are used to ignoring that.

[quote][R316] Yeah, it's whataboutism, but it's all the Tories have now. It also requires you to ignore the demographic differences between the nations, such as increased rural communities, increased levels of deprivation. But Tories are used to ignoring that.

Ok, so do you think the SNP's 15 years of government and Labour's 23 years of government have left the Scottish and Welsh NHS in strong and stable (LOL) position? And with the Scottish NHS, remember it was Labour run from 1999 to 2007.

Give me Frank Dobbs (RIP) or Wes Streeting over Virginia Bottomly or Jeremy Hunt any day of the week, but anyone with the most basic knowledge of the NHS knows all 4 nations services function at similar levels with the biggest levels of difference being totally shit compared to absolutely shit.

Convince yourself its whataboutism but the NHS has got much bigger problems than The Tories that any government is going to struggle to sort out.

All I'm reading into this is that the Tories have nothing. No answers. No solutions. So why not try someone else?

r319 I take it you mean Frank Dobson?

[quote]All I'm reading into this is that the Tories have nothing. No answers. No solutions. So why not try someone else?

Absolutely. Just bear in mind the problems the NHS has when its run by "progressive" nationalists in Scotland or socialists in Wales.

"Demographics".

R322 Nothing at all to lose. And like someone posted above, at least dentistry access is better.

[quote][R319] I take it you mean Frank Dobson?

Yes my bad. Looking at Labour's health secretaries under Blair/Brown there were 6 in total. The longest was in post 3 and a half years but they got things done.

It's amazing to think how much Labour invested in and transformed the NHS, yet Miliband and Corbyn refused to celebrate the NHS as an example of why Labour was good for the country.

[quote]And like someone posted above, at least dentistry access is better.

That's exactly what I mean about the difference totally shit and absolutely shit.

R313 wow. What an idiot. She will just saying anything depending on what way the wind is blowing. Long gone are the days when Politicians had credible ideas they were willing to defend, even if it made them unpopular in the moment

Private Eye spot on as ever

R324 what did Corbyn say when refused to honor the NHS? He really was a piece of shit

[quote][R324] what did Corbyn say when refused to honor the NHS? He really was a piece of shit

Both Miliband and Corbyn trashed the Blair/Brown record in government, including their handling of the NHS. They both saw the reforms made by Blair as privatisation.

Whenever Miliband and Corbyn would bring up the failings at NHS England at Prime Minister's Questions Cameron and May would always highlight the failings of NHS Wales, run by Labour since 1999. And my god there are plenty of failings.

Wes Streeting's plan to commission private sector operations to cut waiting lists is bold and ambitious and will work.

Compare that with the Tories who have no plan.

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

"Miliband and Corbyn attacked the Blair/Brown governments' record on handling the NHS"

=

"Corbyn refused to honor the NHS"

You guys are so wonderful. You deserve every accolade going

🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

[quote]They both saw the reforms made by Blair as privatisation

And that's inaccurate how?

[quote]And that's inaccurate how?

Because they weren't privatisation.

Did private companies take over work previously done by the public sector? Yes. That's privatisation.

[quote]Did private companies take over work previously done by the public sector? Yes. That's privatisation.

Commissioning services from private providers isn't privatisation.

If anyone in the future wonders whether they should take our little Welsh Tory seriously, I refer you to his post at r334

So Welsh Labour privatised the NHS when it commissioned services from Swedish doctors in English hospitals to reduce waiting lists?

If you want to pretend that Labour under Blair and Brown privatised the NHS when its reforms saw record satisfaction levels with 7 year on year increases up to when they left office, then scream from the rooftops.

But I'd hazard a guess that "The Tories are privatising the NHS just like Labour did" is not the kind of message that will hurt the Tories. What's why Miliband weaponising the NHS and Corbyn revealing the secret dossier that the Tories are going to sell everything off to Americans saw them humiliated.

But carry on calling everyone a Tory just because they disagree with you.

Oh look, more whataboutism

Yeah, all of this whataboutism isn't convincing me. I'm still going to vote Labour next general election. Whataboutism is pretty weak - you can't even argue the strengths of your party? Just constantly deflecting to try to distract.

Just seen this. Under a Tory govt, in England:

"Salford Royal’s A&E declared unsafe as inspectors find a department struggling to cope

On Monday, inspectors from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) visited Salford Royal Hospital. It was an unannounced visit, the first at the hospital since 2018. Back then, the hospital’s emergency services were rated as “good”, but this visit was less successful. “It did not go well,” one source told us. By the end, the inspectors told staff that the ward was unsafe and recommended immediate action.

When contacted about this by The Mill, a CQC spokesperson said its report would be released in due course, but they did not deny the key details we put to them. They told us: “We can’t give any details of the findings until they are published in the report.” Salford Royal declined to comment on our story, saying they want to wait for the report to be published.

We’ve been told that inspectors found crowded corridors and patients waiting for 90 minutes just to see a triage nurse, six times longer than the target of 15 minutes. "In that period of time, no one knows how well or unwell the patient is,” an A&E nurse on the ward told The Mill. “So no clinician has set eyes on the patient yet. And the inspectors said: 'this is something you need to change. Now.’"

At one point, we’ve been told, the pressure on staff was so great that an inspector had to comfort a nurse who had broken down crying.

Monday is often an A&E department's busiest day, but a member of staff says it wasn’t unusually busy on the day the CQC arrived. In other words, the problems that the inspectors encountered were fairly typical of the kind of pressures the hospital has been under in recent months. “In my experience, it is like this every shift,” one source told us."

Economy not doing well; we could be headed to an official recession.

"The economy shrank by 0.6 per cent in June. The decline has pushed gross domestic product (GDP), the main measure of economic output, into a 0.1 per cent contraction in the second quarter.

Real pay, which is the value of incomes after adjusting for inflation, is falling at its fastest rate in 20 years, meaning that consumers are not able to buy as much as they used to.

The highest inflation rate in decades, coupled with rapidly rising interest rates ...."

Superb front page from the Metro

So, Liz Truss has been explaining why Jewish values are the same as Conservative values.

What are the most important values that these two groups share, you might wonder?

'Setting up your own business' is one.

YouGov poll on nationalising the energy companies

60% support 13% oppose

amongst Conservative voters, 56% support, 22% oppose.

And this from the 29th of May!

Liz Truss dismisses even a windfall tax as 'bashing business'.

The conversation going on in this leadership election bears absolutely no relation to the conversation going on amongst the wider public.

Of course there should be a windfall tax, these few companies have made incredible pure profit by ripping the money out of customers with no choice. The suggestion that the windfall tax would "bash business" suggests these profits were somehow gained fairly through smart business practices, which is untrue. Truss is proving herself to be an absolute idiot.

Plus even if she did genuinely believed it based business, you'd think you'd still want the threat of it give strength to your negotiating position. But nope, not Liz. She's going to make sure the energy companies know she won't do a damn thing if they don't do what she wants.

Precisely R345 she's one weak character. Dumb Boris might have tried to intervene and do something constructive to help in his last weeks, to somewhat save his "legacy", such as it is. No, he's too busy holidaying, showing his true colours yet again.

Plus after her u-turn, Truss insists she doesn't want to give handouts to anyone who doesn't need them. Well what do you think a tax cut is Liz?

The candidates' relentless focus on what the membership wants will crucify them in the end. The last hustings was at Cheltenham, which sounds like a safe Tory seat, but the incumbent's majority is well under 100 - everyone assumes it will be an easy Lib Dem capture with a majority of several thousands. They are in another world if they think they can 'triangulate' or whatever the jargon phrase is, towards the mainstream electorate in time to save their bacon.

To make money from v. low or almost no taxes, we should be like Monaco 1) get rid of poor areas like N.I., Scotland, be only London 2) ban things like gambling for citizens (only foreigners) - generally be v. authoritarian.

love to see the Tories do that.. they never will. Conservatives are conservative in wanting to keep Scotland and N.I. as an example, while libertarians don't like Monaco's authoritarianism.

r348 I think their aim is not just the leadership election, but to throw enough red meat at the base to energise them to vote at the next election, as a strong Tory turnout is really their only chance. After twelve years and (soon to be) four PMs, they have nothing to offer to convert voters from other parties.

They can't win on their base, R350, that's the point. They seem to have fallen for their own rhetoric. It was Brexit and 'levelling up' that won last time (plus, of course the Corbyn factor). Brexit is done, Corbyn gone and Levelling Up a busted flush. Next time I expect swathes of the Red Wall seats to return to Labour, waving the NHS banner high, and a lot of the South-west and soft south-east to go Lib Dem. This isn't the way to stop that.

For Labour to get into government they need the Lib Dems to do well.

For the Lib Dems to do well Tory switchers need to not be scared at the prospect of a Labour government,

Starmer may not excite people but he doesn't scare or repulse voters in the way that Corbyn or Miliband did.

And then of course there's the SNP. The SNP and Tories need each other to shore up their support. Labour need to make clear the SNP will play no part in any coalition and go hard on their record in government and obsession with independence. The more Labour look like a government in waiting the more Scottish voters will feel comfortable moving away from the grievance politics of the SNP, and the more that looks like happening the Tory threat of "Labour in Sturgeon's pocket" will lose any power.

Depressing yet funny article in the Times about our zombie government

[quote]Just hours before the meeting the chancellor’s team discovered that representative was to be Boris Johnson. The prime minister is apparently “so bored” with running what is essentially a “zombie government” that he announced he would be coming along.

[quote]On Friday, Johnson decided to join Zahawi on a trip to Wales to see representatives of Airbus, a routine meeting at which a prime minister would not usually be seen dead, prompting one ministerial aide to suggest Johnson was “giving off David Brent vibes”, after Ricky Gervais’s sitcom character who returned to The Office having lost his job. “Government is a ghost ship,” said a senior official in the party apparatus.

...

[quote]The leadership camps, in turn, are irritated by others, inside and outside the cabinet, who are publicly and privately lobbying for jobs by advancing their own unapproved ideas. “It seems like everybody hates everybody at the moment,” said a veteran ministerial aide.

...

[quote]An envoy from No 10 and several big oil company bosses came up with plans for a cost of living foundation, funded by donations from those firms. Bernard Looney, the chief executive of BP, is understood to have been a supporter of the plans and was prepared to put in more than £1 billion. “The advantage of doing it that way is that you could be much more flexible about what to give money to,” the source said. “Free petrol vouchers for pensioners was one idea, or help for food banks. But Rishi blocked it because he is only keen on ideas he thinks of himself.”

Brilliant, let's have the fossil fuel companies design their own punishment

...

[quote]There is suspicion in Sunak’s camp that Zahawi might be prepared to propose an unpopular measure and introduce before the new prime minister is installed, so that Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, who is expected to become her chancellor, do not have to.

...

[quote]This weekend, a senior source in the Truss camp accused Raab of behaving like a “suicide bomber” and made clear that he would be sacked from the cabinet if Truss won. “We were shocked by the utter hatred of Dominic’s attack on Liz,” the source said. “It was confirmation that for some in the party they would rather lose to Labour than win with Liz.

...

[quote]Clark wanted each announcement to be accompanied by the Twitter hashtag #LevellingUpInAction, which has now morphed into the (arguably more impenetrable) #DLUHCdelivers. About 20 announcements have been made. The level of cabinet activity has irritated Johnson. “He is furious with everybody, because they are unpicking the work of the government and they are freelancing massively,” a source added. “A lot of this stuff is undeliverable and these are the same people who have sat in government for the past three years, making it up to make themselves look popular.”

...

[quote]There is also rage at Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbenchers, for organising a contest that runs throughout the summer, renders the government impotent and gives the new leader little time to get their feet under the table before an autumn of crisis.

[quote]“We are all dancing to the tune of Graham Brady, who wanted to go on holiday,” said a Truss campaign source. It could all have been done by mid- August. Brady deserves a by-election for the timetable.”

...

[quote]In this melee, Sunak is still fighting. He did 29 events with members last week. At a long planned event after the Darlington hustings, a bottle of wine signed by Sunak sold for £180, the one signed by Truss had no takers. Truss fans retort that on a walk around Alderley Edge near Manchester last week, she was mobbed by onlookers who were more interested in her than the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, who drove past at the same time.

'More people paid attention to Liz walking around than the rapist speeding by in a tacky car!' LOL the desperation

The link would help, wouldn't it?

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

R355 Keir deserves a holiday

Yes. How about one of those neverending cruises?

R357 I'm getting tired of your constant negativity

"Boris Johnson spotted in Greece on second holiday in two weeks amid cost of living crisis"

The Tories really are lost. They have nothing, no real solutions, have done nothing much, the economy is bombing, and in 12 years the only real positive I can name from them is legalising gay marriage which is probably only because I'm gay myself.

Boris is a lazy, dishonest, corrupt piece of squidgy shite

Boris, and frankly Sunak and Truss too, only want to be PM for the sake of PM. That is the vibe that I get from them. It seems to be an ambitious game for them as opposed to genuinely wanting to put through positive reforms and improvements.

Completely agree R361 it's all about ego and then the money they can earn after leaving office.

[quote]Boris Johnson takes second foreign holiday in a fortnight. It comes amid claims Prime Minister is 'missing in action' and presiding over 'zombie government' during mounting cost-of-living crisis

Says a lot that it's the Torygraph with this story

I hope Boris doesn't get all those lucrative sinecure positions and goes bankrupt. Of course it won't happen but it seems crazy that such a failure of a leader and MP would be paid so much by private companies just to have him on their letterhead.

r34 On the plus side, Carrie will take half of it in about 18 months

Theresa May was a bit of a failure of a PM and has made well over £1m from making speeches on the circuit. There's a big status to having been PM, regrettably.

YouGov poll for the Times saying three quarters of Tory voters back Labour's plan to prevent the energy cap rise. And it's getting praised even by the likes of Nick Ferrari

So rather than a rushed idea dripped out over days/weeks, we get a costed sensible plan that's well received and has been properly researched and worked on for several weeks. And on top of that, it has the benefit of coming after both leadership contenders unveiled their attempts, and exposed the government for doing fuck all.

So how long until the Tories nick it?

It's not related to the topic, but I love this story:

[quote]One of the unsung behind-the-scenes heroes of the Paxman days of @BBCNewsnight has died. Dave Murden was our driver but so much more than that. He was a source of intelligence on what the guests were saying as they were driven into the show. Famously when Nick Clegg was Deputy PM he was sat in the back of the Dave's blue Merc on the way into TV Centre & asked his aide what were the 3 worst questions Paxman could ask him. They ended up being questions 1, 2 & 3. RIP Dave Murden

R367 I was just wondering this morning what's stopping Tories stealing the smarter ideas of those across the floor?!

Nothing, they regularly do

To follow up on r369/r370 - Labour are actually planning on the Tories stealing their idea once the leadership election is done, and are planning a heavy PR campaign before that happens, so voters link it to them and not the Tories

Meanwhile, after blaming Raab for the passage in that dreary Britannia Unchained book about British workers being idlers - Truss has been caught on tape saying exactly that. Hilariously, she says she wrote the book and it was then mischaracterised - but then says exactly that. She really does love pretending to have been mischaracterised by the media, despite there being evidence she wasn't.

I think my favourite part of this is the defence from the Truss campaign that the comments are "half-a-decade-old", as if five years is a particularly long time.

I love how she shames British workers using the (nominally) communist Chinese but hey, they have a lot more billionaires while successfully making millions work for poverty wages so that should def. appeal to the Tory worldview. On the flipside it's too bad that they don't innovate much because they aren't allowed to think much for themselves.

Tang ping!

Javid has been desperately trying to spin this as being about productivity and that British workers are the hardest workers in the world - shame then that on the recording Truss talks about graft being what was needed. So seems Team Truss will happily carry on with the Trumpian tactic of ignoring reality and facts and evidence and just pretend whatever they say is the truth

No, really, the more this sinks in the more awesome it is. Truss admires a communist country.

I've just looked them up and Javid's comments are quite good (not Truss's though). Productivity IS an issue. There's working hard and there's working smart. I experience this all the time. Too many people putting in a lot of hours for something that should be way more efficient.

[quote]What I also heard her say was that the productivity in the UK versus other comparable countries is generally lower and that’s been a longstanding UK problem and that doesn’t happen because British workers don’t work hard. British workers are amongst the hardest-working in the world.” He added: “I think what she’s talking about is business and investment, because to increase productivity the Government of course has a huge role to play - there’s capital investment, things like infrastructure investment, those areas that get more of it generally of course can do better in terms of productivity. “It’s also about skills investment and making sure that we’re investing in skills across the country, not just in the capital or the South East but right across the country, and that is what’s going to make the difference."

r375 Plus she admits Brexit and immigration are just attempts to distract people from the real issues.

r376 Of course the productivity gap is a serious issue, but it's important to not let them pretend that's what she was talking about, or try to pivot to that as a way to deflect criticism.

I think Levelling Up is going to be for the Tories what Infrastructure was for the Trump admin. The one thing they announce that everyone thinks is a good idea, but also the thing they don't actually do anything about.

New Statesman saying that there will be a house price crash. What do you think? I'm not convinced mainly because a) the population keeps growing by the rate of effectively a new city being added every year b) new housebuilding isn't enough to keep up. However, on the flipside if there's going to be high inflation and a recession, that's got to bite somewhat. But by how much? Hmm.

[quote]Truss indulges in a bit of BBC bashing when Alistair Stewart gets the year she co-authored the 'cut doctors' pay Back to Black report wrong.

[quote]"I always thought you had high quality standards at GB News. It's not the BBC, you actually get your facts right."

A sign of things to come with her as PM

Gove backing Sunak which feels like the last nail in Rish!'s coffin

r380 Maybe but his quote about Truss taking a holiday from reality I expect will be proven accurate by events and come back to haunt her and be used against in the future.

YouGov giving Labour a 15 point lead.

[quote]Westminster Voting Intention: LAB: 43% (+4) CON: 28% (-2) LDM: 11% (-1) Via @YouGov Changes w/ 9-10 Aug.

I really, really hope that Liz sees the bounce any new leader gets in the polls and decides that means it's time for a snap autumn election

Absolutely cringe inducing promo vid for Rish!

Matthew Parris ripping Truss apart in The Times is fun

[quote]No. Ignore those whispers of precaution. Stick to your first impressions. Liz Truss is a planet-sized mass of overconfidence and ambition teetering upon a pinhead of a political brain. It must all come crashing down.

[quote]What are her instincts — not the corrections she’s been forced to row back to, but her personal instincts — on help for the poor, on Theresa May’s “good that government can do”? I think we know.

[quote]I’ll wager that at the outset most readers thought Liz Truss a bit weird, curiously hollow and potentially dangerous. This summer a short period will see such rushes to judgment revised. Then government will descend into a huge effort to contain and defang an unstable prime minister; and we shall revert to our first impressions. Save yourself the detour and stick with them. She’s crackers. It isn’t going to work.

Agreed, R382. God knows I have my issues with Starmer, but I would vote for him in a heartbeat over Truss (or Sunak, for that matter).

The Times reporting Rees Mogg is being lined up by Truss as SoS for levelling up. Even bigger of a shitshow than previously imagined

'Levelling up' makes me cringe. It's another performative PR thing by the Tories that they constantly bang on about to fool voters. I'm shocked Truss is lining up Rees Mogg to be honest - I would have gone for someone more convincing to pretend that you care about levelling up.

Mogg couldn't care less about the lower classes

r387 And what's especially frustrating is it's what's actually needed. But of course they have no interest in actually doing it. It's what makes the Tories so bad - they know what they should be doing, but they just don't.

Sounds like there's lots of empty desks at No 10 for Jacob to leave his notes on.

Inflation officially 10.1%; one bank forecasts 18.6% next year.

Barristers are going to go on indefinite strike from September 5.

The Treasury has proposed that GPs should prescribe money off energy bills (wut). Naturally doctors hate that idea.

Going well, great ideas, I see.

And the PM's spokesperson has said there won't be black outs this winter. So there will be black outs this winter.

Rish! suggesting he wouldn't serve in Truss's cabinet. What was our Tory here saying about how the Tories would unite under their new leader?

Labour is digging up a lot of stuff on Truss, like she was the Environment Minister behind the cuts that have produced waves of sewage on August beaches. They should make her 'new leader's bounce' the shortest on record.

Polling from the Red Wall shows Tories only have a lead on Labour over covid and Ukraine. Labour even has a lead on crime, the economy, and an eleven point lead on immigration.

FT reporting Truss plans to have Kwarteng as chancellor, as expected, Braverman as home secretary, and Cleverly as foreign sec - what the actual fuck?

Also reports Rees Mogg will be in her Cabinet but not as levelling up SoS, and IDS will be making a return to help push even more vulnerable people to suicide

r396 a veritable cornucopia of the mediocre with a handful of the swivel-eyed loons for good measure.

I am going to be so interested to see what actually happens during Truss's reign. She's pitched it hard to the Tory members to win. In other words, does she really mean it and will she do all of those things or will she end up rowing back on a lot of it? And if she does do all that stuff, what's going to happen to the economy and public finances as a result? She is going to find it hard to risk becoming too unpopular with the public because there has to be another election sometime in the next two years so I'm having a hard time seeing her cutting a bunch of things to pay for her tax cuts.

Anecdote from Rory Stewart about what it was like to work for Truss

r398 Plus she's going to have to deal with a split backbench. Complete with Tories in seats vulnerable to Lib Dems maybe thinking that the best way to court the LD vote is to attack Truss, like Raab

Just how shit a politician is Steve Barclay that he thought this was the right way to react?

[quote]Liz Truss has cancelled her BBC One interview with Nick Robinson which was due to air this Tuesday evening (30th August) at 7pm. Ms Truss’ team say she can no longer spare the time to appear on “Our Next Prime Minister”. (1/2)

[quote]The other candidate for the Conservative leadership, Rishi Sunak, was interviewed by Nick on 10th August. We regret that it has not been possible to do an in depth interview with both candidates despite having reached agreement to do so. (2/2)

In other words she only needed it on the calendar to bat off attacks from Rish! about her running from scrutiny, but now her lead is insurmountable she doesn't care.

[quote]"Sunak warning in the FT that markets could lose confidence in the British economy. He accuses Truss of making unfunded spending commitments that could force up inflation and interest rates and increase U.K. borrowing costs, and says he “struggles to see” how Truss’ promises “add up.”

Why do right-wingers keep arguing that taxes are people's own money without adequately covering that taxes pay for many things like pensions, police, schools and explaining how those things will be adequately covered? Truss isn't even bothering to argue that she will cut expenditure to pay for these tax cuts likely because she knows it won't fly - she's saying that she will conduct huge borrowing to pay for the tax cuts. Sunak makes a good point about how borrowing costs will rise drastically and that people may even eventually stop lending to the UK if that amazing strategy goes especially bad.

I notice how the posters who were condemning Labour for not producing a slate of policies, despite being years away from a possible election, have such no criticism for Liz 'I'll announce my cost of living plan when I win the leadership contest' Truss

[quote]Audience member at Tory hustings calls for the abolition of the speed limit. Liz Truss says she’d be “prepared to look at that.”

She really will say anything

'Prepared to look at that' is code for 'won't happen'.

Same thing with her saying that she'll allow things like fracking if it has local support. Code for 'will never happen'.

The older I get, the more I realise how many people in positions of power got there mostly by being good at jostling, not by competence. Boris and Truss are both prime examples of this.

She's going to be an incredibly weak PM, with a useless cabinet.. The MPs didn't want her; the members only took her over Rishi - she wasn't that popular with them before the final two. They'd have preferred Penny Mordaunt. She's the Johnson Loyalty candidate, but he's already undermining her before she even got the role. She's given her opponents inside the party and outside a vast array of soundbites and promises that will bite her in the arse from now till the next election.

Chances of another Tory leadership contest before the next election?

Tories used to throw "magic money tree" at Labour as an insult but they're electing someone who promises one. "Inflation, debt costs and Truss’s pledges risk £60bn UK budget hole" (Lead FT article today).

Apparently Johnson's lawyers are going to claim that the Parliamentary Privileges committee has no right to investigate him or whether he misled the House (which could see him suspended for a period of time which would allow his constituents to petition for him to be recalled, leading to a by-election right in the middle of a disastrous cost of living crisis).

Looks like he might be about to go down in an incredibly entertaining way.

Yet apparently he still thinks he is going to be PM again.

Over £100 grand of public money funnelled to Pannick's chambers in an attempt to defend the indefensible. Remember when they moaned about lawyers trying to infringe the sovereignty of Parliament?!

The most shocking thing about him thinking he can stage a comeback is how he's behaved over the summer. The absolute entitlement to think you can go on a series of holidays and bucket list photo ops whilst the country faces a cost of living crisis, and still think the public would turn to you?

A new poll shows the more the voters see of Truss the less they like her. Her approval ratings have collapsed during the leadership campaign - as much among Tory voters as the general voters. It going to be a painful period for all concerned. I'm wondering if the Tory system will have delivered a leader even less voter-friendly than Labour did when electing Corbyn.

Negotiations are well advanced on the Truss Cabinet, and good god, it's awful. Tim Shipman has the Twitter thread of all the awfulness.

They offered Saj Northern Ireland, lol, though seems rumour is he'll quit at the next election and return to banking

And here we thought there couldn't possibly be a Home Secretary worse than Priti Patel.

Frost thinking he deserves a department at all is laughable, but only willing to accept Foreign Sec? Where does that moron get his arrogance from?

People should know what the real effects of Tory policies are - which incidentally, will be exactly the same effects that voting for the nefarious Keir Starmer would have. We need to force Labour to return to its roots or be obliterated. Also, we need Jeremy Corbyn to return to the party and lead the way to a Socialist transformation in British society.

LOL top comedy post, even more hilarious than your thread accusing the US of using a bioweapon in Argentina

R416 fuck off, we want Corbyn back as much as we want Boris to take up erotic dancing

It's probably a Russian troll.

Interesting that there a lot of Tories (e.g. old school One Nation ones - there are about 60 of these left; Red Wall first termers; those with the Lib Dems on their heels) telling Truss to do/not do this or that (interfere with the Boris enquiry, have a balanced cabinet etc), although they know perfectly well she's going to do the opposite. It looks like they are setting themselves up to rebel.

Toryism in a tweet:

[quote]Truss is shown a chart showing the richest will benefit most from reversing the rise in National Insurance. Truss insists “it is fair”

Meanwhile, Rish! refuses to answer whether he'll be standing in the next election

[quote]A former No. 10 official who advises City firms tells the Sunday Times: “The hedge fund guys now believe a proper Black Wednesday moment could happen.”

But I thought that reducing taxes would increase underlying growth. How come the markets, hedge funds and economists don't seem to think so? /s

[quote]Treasury “insiders” tell the Sunday Times the Truss cost of living plan will “easily exceed” £100 billion, the majority of which will just be added to government borrowing.[/quote]

Underlying growth increase to pay for this! It's gonna happen. /s

r422 Given how much the City made from the last Black Wednesday (along with individuals like Soros, which has always made it odd to me that he's been labelled as a big leftie) they're probably praying for that to happen

Yeah, they are probably preparing to profit from it. Too bad that it'll be the country and the public finances that will be fucked.

Watch Laura Kuenssberg fume as Joe Lycett dismantles her soft-core Tory propaganda masquerading as political analysis.

Look at the state of that lectern. I like the comment that says it looks like a Union flag Jenga tower about to topple over

And it's Truss, obviously. 81,326 votes to Rish!'s 60,399. Meanwhile...

[quote]New Survation polling suggests Labour has a 10-point lead over the Tories - rising to *seventeen* points if Liz Truss is Tory leader up against Keir Starmer

I've seen some theorise that because the contest has gone on for so long and Truss was such a foregone conclusion that she might not get the new leader poll bounce

[quote]The new prime minister-in-waiting Liz Truss says the campaign has showed "the depth and breadth of talent in the Conservative party."

For once, she's right

New thread here