Even the Torygraph has noticed the fatal 'stench of incompetence' that tends to do governments in. And it does kind of catch in the back of your throat, doesn't it?



Meanwhile:--



Starmer has a lot to do, especially after the EHRC report lands in a few weeks, and he could mess up completely, but at the moment he's presented with an open goal.

You have a short memory, May was bloody awful, as bad as any of the numpties being to held to account now.

I dont have a short memory.

May had a highly difficult situation to deal with, she had to negotiate the most favourable terms to the country putting its own dick in a meet grinder, and deal with massive factional infighting in her own party, whilst having to rely on the DUP to do anything.

Im not saying she dealt with the above in any kind of god like way but she made a perfectly decent stab at it.

Also her cabinet could have ministers sorted by capability and not sorted by suck brexits cock.

Boris got Brexit done which is why usual suspects have such a hard time admitting how massively incompetent he and everyone in his cabinet is. The only thing he is has been good at is an act of national self destruction, which fits perfectly in with his consequent total **** show as PM.

Speaking of Wrong-Daily, Starmer should seriously consider appointing her to the position of shadow home secretary. Now I used to work in her constituency, so I can attest to the fact that back then, just before she took the seat, it was a crime-ridden hellhole, but hearing reports now, it's clearly a great place to live, with serious crime levels now at such a low level, that GM Police have nothing better to do than break up children's birthday parties and brag about it on Twitter. If she's been able to turn her part of the country round, imagine what she could do nationwide!

I'm slightly annoyed at Twitter conspiratard claims that Johnson's holiday cottage was 'close to' Rosyth, where Russian-American billionaire Eugene Shvidler's yacht was moored. Applecross is about 140 miles from Rosyth on the far side of the country.

Some of you may recall the 'conversation', for want of a better word, about why Labour lost the Red Wall. Now, first, note that the swing against Labour in those seats was far bigger in 2017 than in 2019. It was in 2017 that the Labour Leavers defected, and that was where all those small and vulnerable majorities came from.

Second, note that, per Pogrund and Maguire's new book Left Out, extracted in the Sunday Times, Labour knew months in advance that they were going to lose last December's election and the only question was by how much. Private polling showed that Remainers, who'd stuck with Labour in 2017, were switching to the Lib Dems. If nothing changed, Labour would be reduced to just 138 seats. That they managed 202 was due to McDonnell forcing the leadership to adopt Starmer's 2nd-ref position to limit the damage. Interestingly but unsurprisingly, McDonnell then immediately lied by saying that Starmer's 2nd-ref position was the problem, when he knew very well, from private polling confirmed by public polls on election day, that the problem was the leadership and that Starmer's 2nd-ref position had succeeded to a remarkable extent in staving off complete humiliation at the polls and denying Johnson a three-figure majority of epic stature.

It's depressing political masturbation.

Brexit was impossible for labour at the election. All strategies were doomed - they were ****ed whichever way they went. Arguments, tensions and blame are par for the course and totally the wrong thing to worry about at all.

Labour should be more concerned with how they allowed themselves to get into an impossible position so that they can try to avoid it happening again. The particulars of how they failed to resolve an impossible situation is just noise.

100% this.

Europe was a problem for the Tories for longer than Labour- from the start of Thatcher till Boris came in. Its been a Labour problem since the referendum really. So Labour have probably benefited more from it as an issue (although, as society, we're all big losers.)

Looking forwards for Labour the problematic issues seem to be the economy and immigration.

The Tories have the NHS, and being "the nasty party"

Either way, like you say, Corbyn, McConnell and their cabal harping on in the background is not helpful.

They got into that position by electing a posh thickie Communist crank as leader and letting his posh thickie Communist crank mates in. They know this.

Note that Andrew Drummond-Murray, appointed by Corbyn to the leader's private office, is the well-known crank aristo from McCluskey's corrupt Unite union who owned a Picasso and was a lifelong member of the Stalinist 'Straight Left' faction of the Communist Party of Britain.

What I trust they have finally grasped is that a large part of the left were long time anti-EU and were not going to be one over by arguments that were almost 100% along the lines of 'you're racist and/or stupid'. That was matched by a very strong pro-EU camp. Labour were ****ed having failed to tackle this a long time ago.

The problem hasn't going away. KS is keeping very quiet about what is still the major political issue of our times (apart from covid) and just hoping it wont be a pivotal election issue next time. He is keeping as quiet as possible, with an comment here and there on the safer bits (I don't know how long he can keep it up) precisely because there is no side he can take that wont batter him politically.

It's never helpful for the old leadership to hang about. i think it's hard for KS as the left are not going away. He will have to keep us on board somehow or else he is just relying on the tories ****ing up so badly that he wins by default - that's very possible of course but it doesn't resolve any underlying problem for Labour or the country.

Brexit has been tragic in many ways. the failure of the pro-EU camp to make the case, particularly on the left, has been a huge part of that. Have to stop doing that.

Why do you think the pro-EU camp used project fear instead of actual positive arguments then?

I'm no EU fanboy, I think it's a hugely flawed project. I'm pragmatic though and came down on the side of remain eventually. With regards to 'project fear' it's a similar problem in any referendum of this sort where the leave side can make all sort of fantastic positive claims about how things will change whereas the remain side is basically selling 'more of the same'.

Many of the arguments that are considered project fear are in a sense positive ones, it's all about the framing. As I said I'm not a huge fan of the EU so instead I'll use a very obvious example from the Scottish referendum (surprise surprise ). Arguments about Scotland losing the barnett formula post independence and over £10bn a year in extra funding were seen as a 'project fear' argument when in reality the same argument is a positive one, i.e. remain within the Union and you continue to benefit from the pooling and sharing of resources that contributes over £10bn a year to the economy.
It tends to be the leave side however who make the most noise and just claim all arguments are negative and therefore 'project fear', even where they are pointing out a positive argument for remaining.

Partly it's a general mistake the left seem to make whereby negative politics has become far too dominant.

But mostly its been decades of failure to take on the Murdoch/Mail/etc over issues such as immigration and anti-EU sentiment. And huge complacency.

And the lack of a leader (tory or labour) who was actually pro-EU can't have helped.

Keir is pretty left wing- he served in a senior position under Corbyn, something lots of centrists wouldn't do. I stand by the fact that the best way to get left wing policies implemented is winning elections, and thats most likely with a more conciliatory message that focuses on the things people want on the left.

Alongside this pushing for a more democratic and direct way of electing parliament through PR.

Yeah, it was pretty annoying. 20 years of "not taking a position" and allowing the poison of anti-EU sentiment to spread without fighting it really didn't help.

Passionate pro-EU politicians are from the Lib Dems, and the Lib Dems don't really promote great national campaigners. It's annoying.

I also think that for 20 odd years the pro-EU camp didn't campaign for its positives like the anti-EU camp. This meant that the positive messages both (a) weren't well crafted & road tested, (b) didn't yet resonate as they were novel, and (c) were fighting years of anti-EU messaging.

It was a colossal failure all around.

This is a really good point.

I remember Gordon Browns "better together" speech as being the only real positive message that was spun, and thats because he was such an experienced campaigner.

Its the UK's biggest loss that he came to power at the end of a dynasty, wrapped in paranoia & ill feeling. We could have been in such a more positive place.

Labour tacitly calling their own voters racist didn't really help get their message across, either.

They do that quite a bit.

So much shooting self in foot.

and stupid

One big problem with the incessant negative campaigning about the Boris Bus is that it was saying to potential brexit voters that they are so stupid that they want to leave the EU because they have been taken in by some silly political message on the side of a bus from an Etonian buffoon

Yes I'm still with KS in that regard. Wouldn't have been my first choice but he has plenty of good points. Including opposing Blair over the Iraq war.

Have to see how it goes.

Equating wanting a bit more democracy and a bit less unelected officials running things with being a stupid racist was a big issue.

Believe it or not, I was in two minds how to vote, but two things mostly decided it for me
1) Cameron grinning like a trained monkey when Obama gave the speech about the UK going to the back of the queue if they leave the EU. (I remember thinking 'whose side are you on?' about Cameron at that point)
2) Sadiq Khan on a TV debate parroting word for word (quite unconvincing) slogans said by Cameron the day before


It all comes down to that moment when Cameron had been talking up needing to change the EU and then going off and asking for maybe 3-4 point scale things and getting barely a 1 point thing, instead of asking for a 9 and taking a 6 - and then trying to tell us he got some good stuff. lol.

The UK leadership, MP's, and media always willingly ignored the structures of the EU. Structure and power in the EU is super democratic for the rest of Europe because their institutions and people are engaged with the EU. The UK wasn't on any level, so of course it become undemocratic because we rejected their democracy.

This meant Cameron's failure was always going to happen- he had no idea how to engage, and thought it worked like the UN with the top leaders overriding the elected institutions. It will be be remembered as the most humiliating part of his leadership. But he didn't need it too. He built it up, then engaged with it in the worst way possible. So so stupid.

EDIT: Over time I've come to accept that leaving the EU was probably the right thing for the UK to do. We didn't engage in it properly, and if we had it would have been successful. But we were never going to turn the population around on it, nor our institutions. I'd vote to stay, given another choice, but, we hampered the success of what is probably the most important alliance over the next 60 years for the Brits. We will gain the benefits of its existence and collective having left it, and hopefully they have a meaningful chance at reform now.

EU reform where the EU are concerned is about centralisation, not democratic appropriateness. They never paid attention to whether certain processes were better done nationally, or regionally or at city-level for example. They pay lip service to it, but then aggressively and actively ignore that side of it. They want it all centralised.

EU should be about environment, standards, infrastructure and security, and aiding to coordinate education and science - you know, the international/global concerns. When it got to be about anything else and national parliaments being made to cowtow to laws that should be decided nationally, it lost a lot of people.

If it had just been the campaign I doubt I would have voted remain as the campaign gave me ~no reasons to want to be part of the EU.

Might not have voted at all although remaining part of something so huge when I have no reason to want to belong to it makes no sense so maybe I'd have voted leave.