Renton

Same as me and I've been to all the UK ones which is the only reason I'm semi-respectable. Think it's deliberately including a few places a bit off the beaten track and excluded most capital cities. And Venice not there, fuck right off. Arbitrary.

The deep state is so deep even the ex-PM can't explain what it is? Well I never. Before these rightwing fruitloops started the conspiracy theories, my understanding was the deep state was the network of regulations, constitutional norms, checks, and balances which prevented the executive from over reach and descent into totalitarianism. If that's correct you can see why the likes of Johnson, Truss, and Trump take issue with it.

People voted for Bexit across an entire spectrum of lies, from Lexit to outright racism. The people behind it were certainly far right, I wouldn't include Johnson in that group though personally. So I just don't think you can extrapolate from this that the majority of people in the UK are far right leaning, especially as the Tories did not win the popular vote. People are gullible and believed the lies, simple as that. They've belatedly wised up. Labour will first and foremost give us stability in their first term, competence. I hope you will be pleasantly surprised what they then go on to do., but we'll see. To add btw, I despised Corbyn, still do. But twice I held my nose and voted for him as the lesser of two evils. I would hope those at the left spectrum end of the Labour party could do the same, rather than being a prick like Jones trying to sabotage the party.

Johnson wasn't voted in to deliver a right wet dream though was he? In fact, arguably the opposite. Brexit was never framed that way, and he promised "levelling up". The culture war bollocks almost exclusively came after he was elected. And even in 2019, more people voted for left leaning parties than right. Johnson was elected on a promise to please everybody and to do this he lied to everybody. His lies have ultimately been found out and will destroy his party. As fot GenZ, are they really all enamoured with the likes of Tate? I thought in the UK at least younger people, and increasingly the middled aged, were moving in favour of so called progressive parties. I guess you wouldn't accept Labour as being progressive, but I think you're just wrong on that.

No, I don't regard him in those terms. He is an authoritarian narcissistic psychopath with zero idealogical principles, an extreme version of Johnson. In the UK, people rejected Johnson once they finally realised what he was (I know it was obvious to us). I can't comment on the US, very different country.

And, if you think it's impossible for a major party to go out of existence, consider Canada, 1993. The governing Conservatives then went from 169 seats to 2, and shortly ceased to exist as a party. This is increasingly a possibility for the UK conservatives, and if it happens, I will rejoice.

Also politics is cyclical. There's definitely been a shift to the right internationally recently, nothing to say it won't swing back again. Might take WW3 though.

No he wasn't, he was a popularist only interested in himself, zero idealogy. Gloom is right on this. Neither far right nor far left are getting elected in the UK.

Yeah, stuff like this are a handy gammon detector.

Imagine getting upset over a tiny little flag on the back of a shirt collar? I'm old enough to remember when they butchered the union flag for the 2012 Olympics by making it look like Lisa Simpson giving a blow job. Still fucking raging.

Well, it turns out Princess Kate has been diagnosed with cancer. I hope you're all satisfied, including me.

Ah, the famous Marakesh Bazaars, CT would thrive there back in the day, his spiritual home. "Meester, meester, you buy sofa? Only 20,000,000 Dirham. No? Free fabric protector!"

Give me dull competency any day of the week. Before your time, we used to have one on here, called the grey man. But boy could he kick a football so you can never tell.

No, Blair doesn't count any more because he is apparently far to the left of Starmer and his cabinet. Goal posts were shifted yesterday, can't talk about successes of the past, only allowed to talk about an imagined future. I would also consider myself a "moderate left" if we're putting labels on things, or centre leftist, or whatever label of the Peoples' Front of Judea you want to use. . I'm also a pragmatist and a realist. This country will never vote for the type of socialism promoted by Corbyn and his followers, that's the hard truth of it. I am convinced Owen Jones and the like enjoy being under a neo-facist government so they can twist and moan about the predicament the country is in. Getting elected into power and actually practically helping people, not so much.

One way of looking at it. An odd way I think, thinking they somehow won. The reality as I see it is the tories have been ripped apart from their own right wing. Cameron tried a referundum on Brexit to solve it once and for all, nearly 10 years down the line the lies told about Brexit have destroyed the party completely. Yes, it's true the Overton window may have been shifted right but with the elimination of the tories it can shift leftwards to the centre again. Mind, this is against a backdrop with rightwing parties doing better across all the developed world. Starmer's Labour look quite progressive against this context. And it you can't enjoy a tory annihilation now and again, definitely time to give up on politics.

If that is not an example of PR management I don't know what is. I couldn't give a shit about the England flag either way and I bet Starmer doesn't either. You'd rather he came out and said that and lose voters though I assume. (He can't avoid the subject either because the tory media will inevitably ask).

Out of interest, will you be watching and enjoying the GE? Having a cheer at each Portillo moment? I certainly will. Make no bones about it, getting rid of the tories, maybe for a generation or even forever, means more to me than getting the current Labour party elected. Once it happens, we can take it from there.

Pedant, it's the principle, innit. If the hut had adopted PR, it would be painted in stripes.

Fair enough, I see your point but I do think you owe them the benefit of the doubt. Judge them on their actions after they are in a position to enact those actions, not before in some imagined future reality. UK politics with FPTP is always about compromise. That's democracy Dennis.

He's clearly a sitter. Good man.

I did a fair bit of volunteer work for Labour in '97 and before. In all honesty I think the motivations were to improve the average person's lot in life. That was probably what my tory equivalents believed then too. It's different now on their side. That's one reason they have no volunteers. Leaflets galore, delivered through the post or by a contractor, paid for by cunts like Hester. And people can't see the difference or think it's worth discriminating between the options? Sheesh

Not incentivised to improve people's lives? Even if you're massively cynical of all politicians (and I challenge you to look at Starmers bio and come to the conclusion his motivations are insincere), it makes sense to do this. Otherwise, you end up like the Tories this time round, especially when you have no client media on your side. What do you think motivates the labour party leadership?

I'd expect the fiscal rules to be subject to some creative accounting once Labour are in power. Capital investment on infrastructure projects for instance. We're never becoming a Nordic socialist style democracy in this country (as much as we would like it), just like the US is never getting anywhere close to becoming like the UK, but we can do a fuck of a lot better than this, starting with closer movement towards the EU (which is the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to growth).

If this happened I'd piss myself laughing btw. Not only at tory annihilation, but showing what a fucking farce FTP is when 9% for the LDs gets them 49 seats (up 41 from 2019 when they got 11.8% of the vote) and much as I hate them, Reform get 15% and get - checks notes - zero seats.

LD's as official opposition, according to the latest poll. This would be a sad day for Rayvin, NJS, and Owen Jones. I can't wait.