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Recent political stuff:
- The vote to see if Britain should adopt Alternative Voting has failed.
- Lib Dems lose lots of councils and councillors, whilst Labour make the majority of the gains in England.
- The Scottish National Party do really well in the elections.
A link to the BBC politics page containing relevant information.
Edited by Mrph1 on Jun 7th 2024 at 4:50:10 PM
To be blunt, Corbyn's strategy led to a catastrophic defeat for Labour, and gave the Conservatives near-absolute power. And this wasn't a one off, either. The man lost an election to Theresa May, for goodness sake! * He might have criticised the Tories, but no one took any notice of him. I think part of this is that he didn't criticise them on the thing that the electorate was actually interested in, i.e. Brexit. He refused to even take a stance against it until he was forced to by his party, and generally it was the SNP who did most of the criticism of Brexit.
Instead, he criticised them on things like private schools existing, which the UK's far left dislikes, but most of the electorate (rightly or wrongly) is actually ok with at present. This made him popular with the left wing of Labour, but it gave the electorate the impression that Corbyn wanted to force through a bunch of policies that they disagreed with, but that he was fine with everything the Tories were doing with Brexit. Is it any surprise that they didn't vote for him?
The only way his strategy could have worked is if he had somehow managed to change the views of large swathes of the electorate. He didn't just need to make them think he would be a good leader with more integrity than Boris Johnson, he needed to make most of the electorate agree with at least some of his key policies. In short, for his strategy to win him the election, he needed to move a majority of the country to (what is currently) the far left. With some good campaigning, that might be possible over the course of a generation. He needed to do it before the next election.
The more conventional approach, which Starmer is following, is to criticise the Tories mostly on things that the electorate will agree with him on. PMQs isn't really the time to win hearts and minds to left wing politics. There are much better opportunities for that than six questions a week which Boris Johnson gets to respond to with whatever rubbish he feels like trotting out. Criticism at other times is similar - if it gets reported on at all, then we'll hear Labour's criticism, and the Tory response to it, and that's it. It's far better to criticise things which the electorate already disagrees with the Tories on. That gives you the advantage - you force them to alienate themselves with their defence, rather than alienating you and getting the last word in. Leave the hearts-and-minds stuff to other campaigners - or until your policies' successes speak for themselves after you win the election.
Edited by pi4t on Feb 7th 2022 at 5:15:23 AM
Coebyn actually did a lot of work to push back against the idea of Austerity, it’s a big part of why I voted for him the first time (also because I thought I was picking who’d come third, I was hoping that a strong third from Corbyn was get Burnham (my 2nd choice) to move away from the austerity that a chunk of the party were calling for).
The problem is that he got totally outflanked by Boris on the subject. Boris was willing to just lie and claim he’d bring government spending back up, the press were happy to repeat Boris’ lies and Corbyn had no ability to call Boris on his lies.
As for 2017, that wasn’t just Corbyn’s fault. Labour suffered heavily from the “Labour in chaos” narrative that came in large part from the 2016 leadership challenge that the PLP threw together because they really didn’t like the result of the 2015 leadership election.
Edited by Silasw on Feb 7th 2022 at 1:42:41 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Wasn't part of Labour also actively sabotaging Corbyn during his time as party leader?
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Feb 7th 2022 at 8:32:05 PM
We learn from history that we do not learn from historyYes, it was (probably) overplayed by the media but Labour legitimately WAS in a bad way behind the scenes with factional infighting going on and Corbyn not being a very astute operator at playing that game - for better or worse.
Starmer definitely tried to portray himself as the "compromise candidate" which then (as now) lead to accusations of being a bit milquetoast and "Tory Lite" but does seem to have bought the hammer down on some of the more controversial elements of the party.
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."Oh very much. There’s a segment of the party who want nothing more than the party to keep loosing until they can bring about the return of the Blairite faction.
And I don’t mean “people other than Corbyn” by Blairite there, I mean the actual Blairite faction. The likes of Ed Miliband, Andy Burnham and Keir Starmer are seen as traitorous Brownites to them.
The fact that we’ve got serious elements of the party still not over the Blairite-Brownite divide explains a lot of the problem we have as a party.
I think that Corbyn did some cleaning house after 2017 (plus we had that fun little splinter party from the right that lasted five minutes), but it was to late to help his leadership by that point. Starmer is likely reaping the rewards of Corbyn clearing out some of the more deranged elements of the right of the party.
Edited by Silasw on Feb 7th 2022 at 7:54:31 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranThat's probably a fair assessment but Starmer has at least been smart enough to keep that rolling rather than assume "good enough" - for example he's managed to basically eliminate the anti-semitism charges as a line of attack.
A lot of that is arguably timing and change of circumstances (in Labour and elsewhere) but him making a point of visibly acting on the issue was one of his more proactive moves in drawing the line between his leadership and the previous.
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."A small reshuffle took place today:
- Jacob Rees-Mogg became Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities & Government Efficiency.note
- Mark Spencer became Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council.
- Chris Heaton-Harris became Government Chief Whip in the House of Commons and Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury.
- Michael Ellis became Minister for the Cabinet Office.
- Stuart Andrew has become Minister of State for Housing in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
- Heather Wheeler became Parliamentary Secretary in the Cabinet Office.
- James Cleverly became Minister of State for Europe at the FCDO.
- Wendy Morton became Minister of State for Transport.
- Christopher Pincher became Government Deputy Chief Whip in the House of Commons and Treasurer of the Household.
Sir Christopher Slade, Lord Justice of Appeal 1982-91, died yesterday aged 94.
Edited by TommyR01D on Feb 14th 2022 at 8:19:26 AM
Today's stats:
- 00,159,158 (00.2%) deaths
- 18,161,199 (26.8%) cases
- 52,468,730 (77.3%) first doses
- 48,666,801 (71.7%) second doses
- 37,650,239 (55.5%) third doses
The Prince of Wales has tested positive and is self-isolating.[1]
Yesterday marked twenty years since the death of the Princess Margaret.
The Lord Fellowes, Private Secretary to the Sovereign 1990-99, retired from Parliament today aged 80.
Ian Macpherson, 3rd Baron Strathcarron, yesterday won the by-election to replace the 5th Viscount Ridley.[2]
From tomorrow the fully vaccinated no longer need to be tested before or after arriving in the UK. All remaining COVID restrictions in England may end as early as 24th February.[3]
Yesterday Professor Sir Chris Whitty lecture Gresham College on infections which use the respiratory route.
Edited by TommyR01D on Feb 20th 2022 at 1:42:31 AM
Cressida Dick to step down as Metropolitan Police chief
(Insert 'Dick Out' joke here)
jamie-b-good.tumblr.comThe papers aren't exactly kind:
- Cressida Dick has failed women
- UnHerd
- Dick resigns after achieving totally crime-free London
- The Daily Mash
- Leader of Black police body calls Cressida Dick "defensive and dismissive"
- The Guardian
- Cressida Dick could not solve the Met’s problems. She could barely admit they existed
- also The Guardian
- Dame Cressida Dick: The high-flying Met Police chief who couldn't shake controversy
- The Telegraph
- Cold, complacent, complicit – why Cressida Dick had to go
- The Independent
Oh, and there's this one: Cressida Dick has resigned and everyone made the same joke
The selection is supposed to be done by the Home Secretary in consultation with the Mayor of London. However, the Home Secretary is angry that the Mayor didn't consult with her over the reprimand that triggered Cressida Dick's resignation. Given the tension between them right now, this could be a difficult process.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Feb 12th 2022 at 6:00:36 PM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.She keeps wanting refugees to be drowned in the English Channel, she’s been a prominent supporter of Brexit, she’s a notorious bully to the civil servants within her department, she’d deeply opposed to both protesters and human rights lawyers (her comments may have been linked to a far-right terrorist attack against a solicitor’s office) and in 2017 when she was in charge of International Development (then it’s own department) she had secret meetings with the Israeli government that the Foreign Office ween’t told about, so her national loyalty is under question.
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We are likely to have an acting head for a while. Who actually is the acting head?
Edited by Silasw on Feb 12th 2022 at 12:17:08 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranUnlikely. Because of the politics involved in appointing the position, the only other person who could realistically step up temporarily is the Deputy Head, which isn't really that much of a change/improvement.
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."Too bad Khan can't just fire down the line until we get a good cop.
(Wonder if that would mean firing the entire department.)
At risk of getting too much into "defund the police" talk, there is a reason a good chunk of people think it should be dismantled and either rebuilt from the ground up or replaced with an alternative. If the person/people at the top are bad, you're probably going to find a lot more bad people under them.

I’ll take any political strategy that gets the Tories out of government, I’ve stopped being picky at this point.
Jeremy Corbyn’s “I’ll just answer trap questions with answers that can be easily misinterpreted by a hostile press” approach wasn’t getting us anywhere.
Starmer can be annoying passive and a bit of an empty-suit, but at least he’s playing the game, playing it well enough that he might well get killed for it.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran