Flankerl
Well-Known Member
You'll never get it.
FPTP is far too convenient for the party in power, whichever it may be.
Most of the problematic stuff originates in England.
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Rishi Sunak
- Thread starter Rival
- Start date
FPTP is far too convenient for the party in power, whichever it may be.
exchemist
Veteran Member
But the UK has been running different political soap operas north and south of the Scottish border, these last few years, and it is the English soap opera that has finally delivered us Sunak, after the chaos and world-class duplicity and incompetence of Bozo and The Trusster****.
exchemist
Veteran Member
Yes. Though we have also been treated recently to a very Scottish (i.e. low budget) story of intrigue and alleged embezzlement. Just a £100k motor home parked up in Dundee, for God's sake
.Which also comes at just the right time for Labour......
exchemist
Veteran Member
A good start but ultimately deeply disappointing.
He's a competent technocrat in many ways, but evidently has no natural feel for politics. I applauded his resolution of the N Ireland impasse and particularly his willingness to confront or ignore the Daieoupaigh to do so. It was the right call and has paid off - barely a peep out of those constipated old Calvinists since.
But his tacit encouragement of the cruellest form of xenophobia towards illegal migrants has been shocking. How is it that we have Sunak, Patel and Braverman, all of whose families benefitted from immigration from S Asia or Africa to Britain, now pulling up the ladder and going out of their way to stamp, as publicly as possible, on the fingers of those who try to follow them?
And his latest pronouncements delaying the climate change targets treat us as idiots. This nonsense about him "scrapping" a load of invented ideas that were never close to being government policy has been rightly ridiculed. These are just straw men intended to provide fictitious talking points for the Daily Hate and other right wing tabloids - very Trumpy.
And putting back the target for phasing out sales of IC-engines cars, from 2030 to 2035, won't make a blind bit of difference to poor people in today's cost of living crisis. We are 7 years away from the 2030 target and it doesn't prevent sales of second hand IC vehicles, which is what poor people buy. It's BS - and drives a coach and horses through the investment calculations of motor manufacturers and their component suppliers.
All this has the smell of clumsy attempts by his election strategy guru, the Australian Isaac Levido, to create "dividing lines" from Labour, rather than any properly thought out economic or social strategy.
What mandate does Sunak have, never having been elected as PM, and a mere 18months max. out from a general election he is going to lose, for altering long term targets whose achievement will be the task of future governments he won't be part of?
I will give Sunak credit for one detail, though, which is increasing the grant to people installing heat pumps from £5k to £7.5k. That helps, though he will be banking on the take-up being so paltry that it barely costs the government anything.
Altfish
Veteran Member
It'll come, but only the left of centre parties will go for it as it favours them.
Yes, England is the problem (or more correctly southern England)
exchemist
Veteran Member
One further point: he is now said to be planning to reduce inheritance tax. That will just serve to further entrench inherited wealth (I have recent personal experience of how that happens) and thus reduce social mobility, while reducing the tax take that can be spent on socially useful programmes.
How very thoughtful he is, towards the less well-off.......
Yerda
Veteran Member
Continuing the radical neoliberal project of transfering national wealth and assets to chosen private interests, is my guess but I've almost entirely checked out. Mostly seems like governance by soundbites and culture war topics.
The hostility to immigrants and asylum seekers is shameful.
Abandoning the UK committment to net zero (as in our part in not entirely ****ing the climate) is hardly even news worthy given that he's a) a tory b) obscenely wealthy.
The hostility to immigrants and asylum seekers is shameful.
Abandoning the UK committment to net zero (as in our part in not entirely ****ing the climate) is hardly even news worthy given that he's a) a tory b) obscenely wealthy.
exchemist
Veteran Member
That first idea has run out of road. This government has already had to preside over the effective renationalisation of large parts of the railway industry, and now the ineptitude of water privatisation is plain for the voters to see. Not even the Tories are going to propose further privatisations, I suspect.
But Sunak‘s task is hopeless. The latest feeble stuff about 20mph speed limits reminds one irresistibly of John Major’s cones hotline: desperate, trivial, barrel-scraping stuff, from a party out of ideas, out of energy and out of talent.
On the last point, one really has to pinch oneself to take in that Suella Braverman is being talked about as a potential future leader of the party.
I also think the notion of a British “war on woke”, cheerled by Lee Anderthal, is going to go nowhere. People have more real concerns and want a measure of competence in government.
After Johnson and Truss ─ [rude exclamations deleted] ─ Rushi is a welcome relief. Unfortunately not much more than that though.
I'd say he's ─
(a) at least as good as anyone else in the present Conservative ranks,
(b) short of authority in the party, which is fracturing into factions as the certainty of defeat sinks in,
(c) faced with the severe problems planted and studiously watered by Johnson and pals,
(d) has no coherent vision for the UK, and
(e) has no particular insight about what to do, or in what order to do it, or how to pay for it.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
It was mostly northern England and Wales who voted to leave the EU. Much of southern England was appalled by the outcome.
Northern English.
Voted for Brexit.
I live in Kent now, but it seems many English you meet online are southern.... the south has a much denser population. The North is not very well-represented so to many we come off as weirdos. It's pretty unfair. Our way of life is not remotely the same to what I see down south. Villages, rural areas, where I grew up nearly all my life (til a year ago) are even less represented. Most representation is southern urban liberals.
New figures reveal dire levels of regional representation the unelected House of Lords
The warped nature of the House of Lords has once again been revealed, after the ERS found that nearly a quarter of peers are based in London…compared to just 13% of the UK public.
www.electoral-reform.org.uk
My sources (which are of course entirely aligned with the Rejoiners and with Labour) suggest that, as I would expect given the last few years of British politics, he is essentially powerless. That was predicted.
The Conservative Party has been trying way too hard for way too long to remain in power and protect their financial base at all costs. The cost was paid in political and ethical integrity, and now the Party is kept together by stubborness alone and can't govern anymore.
The chickens have at long last come home to roost and, some five or seven years too late, the Tories will finally lose power.
Sunak's role, the role that the Party will allow him to have, is only nominally that of Chief of Government. His real role is that of a marketeer trying to sell a collapsing product to voters that can no longer ignore how things keep falling apart around them.
The Party will have to collapse in some fashion before it can regain a measure of credibility. It is not in the power of the Prime Minister - any Prime Minister really - to avoid that. I would not be surprised if in a year's time many MPs have been lost both to the Lib Dems and to Reform UK and other looney right parties.
TLDR: Sunak is ineffective, but that is the point. The Tories want a PM who will keep some appearances for as long as possible and allow them to split up while out of power. He will probably succeed at being too passive.
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exchemist
Veteran Member
Indeed, though you did once point out to me that Brexit voters were totally misled by the Brexit campaign. I suspect few Leave voters foresaw the way the implementation would be hijacked by extremist( southern, public school) types like Rees-Mogg and Duncan- Smith, working through a mendacious chancer like Bozo. At the time of the vote, Leave voters had been told the UK would stay in the Single Market, little would change and we could have the best of both worlds. [cue hollow laugh]Northern English.
Voted for Brexit.
I live in Kent now, but it seems many English you meet online are southern.... the south has a much denser population. The North is not very well-represented so to many we come off as weirdos. It's pretty unfair. Our way of life is not remotely the same to what I see down south. Villages, rural areas, where I grew up nearly all my life (til a year ago) are even less represented. Most representation is southern urban liberals.
New figures reveal dire levels of regional representation the unelected House of Lords
The warped nature of the House of Lords has once again been revealed, after the ERS found that nearly a quarter of peers are based in London…compared to just 13% of the UK public.
Yes, what Brexit meant was a main issue, but probably moot now.
From so many thousands of miles away, I keep being surprised by how willing to accept such obvious lies for so long the British voters have been.
Brexit was shocking back in 2016, insane in 2019, and the mark of the end of British credibility worldwide as of 2023.
exchemist
Veteran Member
I can't disagree. Maybe it was the last indulgence of a middle-rank nation thinking it still ruled the world. Both Britain and France have had an inflated idea of their own importance, as a result of the empires they relatively recently disbanded. The British are finding out no one listens to them and no one actually cares that much about doing business with them. It will perhaps prove salutary.
But an expensive way to learn!
This is not really how most English where I lived saw it. The main issue is that Remainers seemed to believe that this was a non-issue prior to 2016 and Leavers were entranced by certain politicians. This isn't true. I think this is a southern English misunderstanding because Brexit was just not in anyone's mind there, in the more prosperous parts of England; but in the North, I remember being told as a child that we were not really part of the EU and we were not like the continent (but in plainer language). Most Northern English have had problems with the EU for a long, long time, such that the politicians did not sway them in any direction - they had been firm in their desire to leave for decades - but the perks promised of leaving only heightened the desire to leave, such as NHS money; but NHS money was not really anyone's main concern; as I said, it was a bonus for most Leavers. So these promises were believed on the back of an already potent wish to leave the EU. They gave less politically savvy people reasons when explaining why they wanted to leave, because concepts like 'I don't want to be part of a federal union' are beyond the average Saxon, who doesn't know or use such language, but is infact what he is meaning to say.
Yes, we would like our place on the world stage again. It is a sad time. It's not an egocentric desire moreso a desire for what we know we can be, have been, and are now completely failing.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Indeed. The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on. No point reopening all those old wounds again; it’s time to look ahead. To a future where these Tories are in the bin for at least a generation imo.
I'm not a Labour voter so I don't know where to go. I'm a pretty solid ONC, so.... hard times.