uk employment rate is higher than it's ever been so naturally the answer is to kick out all the foreigners http://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandl.../september2016

may is the worst

In the new post-fact politics, just say anything regardless of whether it is true or not.

Probably should have taken the SNP route of losing the referendum coin flip on the sole purpose of their existence, then rather just folding and giving it up as a bad job, win 500+ seats in Westminster instead

May has tried to make the Tories, the SNP of English politics; say what appeals to everyone, throw in some nationalism and hope that no one notices the lies.

wut

Daily Politics said they have unconfirmed reports that he was punched by a colleague.

So someone chinned Stephen Woolfe at a UKIP meeting cos he considered defecting to the tories.

Farrage?

It sounds like it's genuinely life-threatening. Poor guy.

Mike Hookem, whoever that is, is apparently on the run from french police.

or maybe he's fine and we can all start making jokes about this

Shadow cabinet shuffle in progress. Some interesting choices so far.

The Brits excite the Italians and then apologize. Rather amusing especially if know you how divided the Italians are in dialect and in region; especially the north/south split.


uk-apologizes-to-italy-for-racist-form

Italy has been a unified country since March 17, 1861, the Italian embassy pointed out to the British government.


Now that is a laughable comment to make.

Sorry about that

Boris Johnson Barks at Russia

Good old Boris should stick to making fun of leaders and countries by composing Limericks about them; at that he is very good. And it would be so much more effective.

From above link:

Russia has condemned Boris Johnson's call for demonstrations outside its London embassy as "shameful".

The foreign secretary said on Tuesday that he would "like to see" a protest against bombings of the Syrian city of Aleppo, which are being blamed on Vladimir Putin's forces.

But Moscow, which denies the claims, accused him of "Russophobic hysteria".

And the Stop the War Coalition said protests in the UK would not "make a blind bit of difference".

I think May's position on grammar schools indicates that she thinks this too.

She's doing what Labour need to do: espouse a tougher line on immigration coupled with populist rhetoric on how the economy should be managed.

Constraints placed by her party means that her economic policy cannot be as re-distributive as the electorate writ large would like it to be, but any claim she makes regarding controls on immigration has more credibility than equivalent claims made by some hypothetical Labour party which actually wants to win an election. Corbyn, in his infinite stupidity, is an advocate of basically open borders and has likely consigned Labour and the left more generally to 15 more years in the wilderness - years the Conservatives will use to mould the electorate to their liking.

It looks like May will have control over immigration because she's willing to sacrifice any possible trade agreement with the EU. Look at the pound; it's in freefall. Populist rhetoric is a joke and undermines democracy as politics is formed on some dangerous definitions of identity based on race. Labour shouldn't be engaging in underlying racist rhetoric to win.

I think many of the pessimistic outlooks for Labour underestimate how much the Tories are ruining our economy and our country. Labour will be back sooner than you think.

Also, this is hardly the first time we've been told by our wonderful media that one of the two major political parties is finished.

In the 80s the media flocked around the view that Labour would never hold power again; in the late 90s it was the Tories turn to be consigned to the media's dustbin.

Great stories that sell newspapers, but all nonsense.

We see the same thing in the USA with the republicans. The major opposition party is never finished unless they get replaced.

The tragedy with new labour was that labour would have got back to power if they had stuck much closer to their values. Instead they convince themselves it was the 'new' that won it (The Buchanan fallacy as I like to call it)

Obviously polls should be taken with care but when poll after poll are showing figures that are as bad we've ever seen for an opposition party then it's rather telling. Realistically the Tories should be taking a kicking at the moment but it'snot happening, it's not even close to it.

Wrt to Labour in the 80's it took a fairly large change in policy etc for them to achieve power and it'll be the same again.

It's really tough to kick the tories at the moment. No-one has a grip on brexit yet which makes traction impossible - that would include any opposition. May has a free pass until somethign more concrete emerges but it's likely to emerge like a steam train (still not much use for the opposition when it's a real political steam train heading straight at her)

As things become clearer we shall see. Unfortuantely many wont wait until then and we may still be saddled with the new labour fallacy.

I'd say 'fallacy' is the wrong word to use for something that brought Labour it's most successful ever period in electoral history.

Holding the bag while teeing up the next tory government is not being remotely successful.

Those labour supporters who just want to be on the winning side for a while might as well just join the tories. They could argue their very slightly left of tory views there and would do a lot more good.

You illustate the fallacy well though - Australia had their most successful period ever.

By that metric the Labour party must have been a complete and utter failure throughout it's existence then.

how many times must the hard left be comprehensively rejected by the british electorate before you come to terms w the fact that you're going to have to compromise