I see that now.

No one in their right mind can really believe the Starmer's Labour are "not as competent as the Tories" line now. If anyone says that it's a tell-tale sign.

But we don't know how the landscape will look closer to the next election. If somehow covid has been largely neutralised as a major threat, the same people will be citing the vaccination programme as a "reason" to vote Tory again as long as they haven't lost close family/friends from the government's year+ long callous bungling and blame the government for it.

And it might not even be Johnson leading the Tories.

I thought most people would be able to read between the lines on this one, but for those who missed this the phrase "least incompetent" was very much directed as the choice many faced at the last general election, me included.

Dude it was just some gentle ribbing, no need to release the lawnmowers.

Perfectly allowable when we have a historically incompetent government.

Well, quite. Voters are inclined to the 'less mad' option, even if it's Boris Johnson. They are not terribly inclined to right-on student politics, which strike them as posh and silly. They won't tolerate abandonment of the nuclear deterrent and they wouldn't tolerate Corbyn's apologism for the Salisbury poisonings. According to polls they were also surprisingly but gratifyingly hostile to Corbyn's right-on anti-Semitism (which, as the EHRC found, was not the phantom that Corbyn loyalists like to claim -- it's been a screamingly obvious and repugnant factor on the right-on left for many years).

Don't know yet how Rayner's bizarre, drunken 'scum' rant will go down, but her pretence that 'working class' people always talk like that ('Ow do, scum, trouble at mill?') is deeply embarrassing. A lot of working-class people still dislike the use of bad language in public. Bevan's infamous 'lower than vermin' speech of 1948, for which Attlee issued him a polite ticking-off, was believed by several Labour frontbenchers to have cost Labour the '51 election -- they ran up loads of surplus votes in safe seats all right, but they failed in the marginals that determine victory. And Bevan wasn't called a Bollinger Bolshevik for nothing.

https://tidesofhistory.com/2018/07/0...that-lives-on/

Slight alert: that article claims that the Tories opposed the creation of the NHS. In fact the creation of the NHS was Tory policy at the '45 election, it was bipartisan, and the first politician to propose a 'National Health Service' was Churchill in a 1943 radio address. But the Tories didn't like Labour's centralised model and preferred a degree of independence for hospital trusts and GPs -- pretty much the NHS we now have, which is very different from the 1948 version.

This is an interesting article on the creation of the NHS from the Commons Library.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk...ns-of-the-nhs/

Bevan of course had to give way on the thing that Tories and GPs were most annoyed about, which was his plan to make all GPs mere salaried state employees under his personal direction as Minister. Bit Commie, that. And not consonant with the legal and professional responsibilities of doctors.

It's also true that Churchill's 'socialist Gestapo' speech in '45 harmed his party and made Labour look like the 'less mad' option at the time. Bevan's misfortune was that his 'lower than vermin' speech reversed that dynamic. Despite Labour's win in '50 (just about, with a 5.8% swing to the Tories, who gained 90 seats), the public apparently had a lurking feeling that they might be madder than the Tories, and the '51 failure was the result.

Hang on! Calling people names is the best we all know that don't we?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58698406

Labour conference: Not right to say only women have a cervix, says Starmer

REG: I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!

LORETTA: crying

JUDITH: Here! I-- I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.

FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.

REG: What's the point?

FRANCIS: What?

REG: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't have babies?!

FRANCIS: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.

REG: Symbolic of his struggle against reality.

There's a difference between a politician calling their opponent names and someone reminding a poster here that his anti-European immigration stance is racist.

indeed politicians/public figures are generally fair game and it's not mind bogglingly stupid to call them names

KS went up a bit in my estimation today. In part because he wont ask AR to apologise. He could have gone further and told Marr not to be such a patronising wanker but you can't have everything

Labour may as well pack up and go home if this is their perceived route to power.

Good to see people have already found a "reason" to carry on voting Tory.

I think it's more reasons to not vote labour tho

When Corbyn was leader you said you'd vote for Labour if Starmer was leader.

Now that's happened there are new "reasons" for not voting for Labour.

It's almost as if people are allowed to change their minds as new data presents itself...

"Data" that no one cites when asked what the factors are that influence their vote.

People are loyal to or against certain parties, are floating voters or are in a) and pretend to be in b).

Maybe jalfrezi can explain why a Labour front bencher is allowed to change their mind, but ordinary voters are not?

Labour conference: Frontbencher Andy McDonald quits in protest at Sir Keir Starmer

I hope he'll continue to vote Labour as he has always said he would, even if he does disagree with some of its policies.

Waiting till election till I decide, tbh. But the way it's going, it's not looking like I'll be voting labour.

But clearly he has changed his tune on Starmer, which is what this whole conversation is about.

Fwiw I would still vote Labour ahead of the Tories as things stand. However, if he thinks identity politics will play well in Red Wall seats, he has another think coming.

Debating politics in a country that can be brought to chaos by a suggestion that there might, possibly, be a small issue with getting fuel to filling stations seems a waste of effort. But, I’m stuck in a queue to get the last two Jerry cans filled so why not!

Noting that The Sun, The Mail and The Express all have big readerships, this country gets the media, and politicians that it deserves. Discuss…

Wot a shocker!

The conversation is about how people will vote. I suspect he'll still vote for Labour even with Starmer as its leader.

Because he's in your a) category - a loyalist. However, many people are in the b) category, in other words a floating voter, who by definition are allowed to change their mind without having to explain themselves to the former.

Starmer is Blair-lite. the party is marginally more electable than under Corbyn, but still less so than under Brown. Wallowing in arguments about trans rights, and unrealistic minimum wage levels won’t convince many to the contrary.

The tragedy of democracy is that it works. The problem isn't just the awful media - you only have to look at how strongly people argue for voting for parties, people and policies they dont really want.

It's not magic - over time we get what we vote for and we keep voting for what we dont want so that's what we get.

We have to use democracy and that means arguing strongly for what we believe in (not abdicating like we did over Europe) and then fighting for it at the ballot box. And we have to keep on going - democracy works over generations as well as as the latest poll and fashion.