Mailwatch(ed) Forum

There's actually a real Buy British campaign. It's putting in the hard yards by visiting... Melton Mowbray. In case you were thinking of buying a pork pie from China.

I suppose this stuff reflects Ed's new electoral base of (mostly) very wealthy southern seats. Buying nicer, more expensive British stuff is easier for them than it is for Bootle or Middlesbrough. I predict Ed's next campaign will be "stop buying stuff from supermarkets, pop into your local artisan shop".

Rachel Reeves has declined Ed's advice that the government waste its time and money on this stuff.

Mr Moorhouse makes the point here about the futility of retaliatory tariffs by weaker countries. And suggests leaders of the US’s former allies are or should be planning a rules based order without the US that would meet to Davey’s satisfaction. The last time the US pulled comparable shit to this was Nixon taking the Dollar off the Gold Standard. That was the impetus that set the ball rolling for EMU and the SM,

That's a much better argument, and I expect that's Ed's real instinct. Get on the trumpet to South Korea and Brazil, do some groundwork, rather than this new persona of the action man.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Tue Apr 08, 2025 2:19 pm There's actually a real Buy British campaign. It's putting in the hard yards by visiting... Melton Mowbray. In case you were thinking of buying a pork pie from China.

I suppose this stuff reflects Ed's new electoral base of (mostly) very wealthy southern seats. Buying nicer, more expensive British stuff is easier for them than it is for Bootle or Middlesbrough. I predict Ed's next campaign will be "stop buying stuff from supermarkets, pop into your local artisan shop".

Rachel Reeves has declined Ed's advice that the government waste its time and money on this stuff.

He will be singing I'm backing Britain next.

New slogan: "Ask your butcher to vote Lib Dem for you".

https://bsky.app/profile/justified72.bs ... d7s6j7kc2e

It's a theory I suppose.

It's also a good Kipper line.

One reason they crashed so spectacularly in 2015 was that the Kipperish voters they had before now had a better option- eg they used to get votes in Cornwall for saying "the Tories/Labour just need to get rid of the Common Fisheries Policy". They want these voters as much as every other party does, and this is a fairly easy bone to chuck out. You'd think this were a fairly awkward political coalition, but it's one they had up to 2010 (minus students). A Kipper might well vote tactically Lib Dem to cut the Tories down in a southern marginal.

Producers already place Union Jacks on their products and it's often a dubious proposition. 'British designed, British owned, assembled in the UK' etc. How many products nowadays are only produced in one country?
Milton Friedman's pencil is 45 years old

Youngian wrote: ↑Wed Apr 09, 2025 10:30 am Producers already place Union Jacks on their products and it's often a dubious proposition. 'British designed, British owned, assembled in the UK' etc. How many products nowadays are only produced in one country?
Milton Friedman's pencil is 45 years old

I'm wondering how many percent British a Henry Hoover is - but it's a damn sight more British (and superior) to a Dyson.

Robert Saunders reckons that an earlier Buy British campaign struggled once it was spotted that the T-shirts were made in Portugal. I don't know if Ed Davey has shown up in a T shirt, but got to be something like that waiting to bite him on the arse.

How do they square buy British with wanting to rejoin/realign with the EU.

"Buy from liberal international trade partners". Like David Brent, Ed can't say that because it isn't a phrase.

The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Wed Apr 09, 2025 6:06 pm How do they square buy British with wanting to rejoin/realign with the EU.

Bigging up the country you wish to run doesn't mean you want to impose a national autarky. Davey shouldn't be underestimated, he didn't win 70 seats by just appealing to cerebal right of centre voters.

Fair point. I think they won every seat they campaigned in, except Jeremy Hunt's. And the challenge to Hunt meant he was door knocking in Godalming rather than projecting the Tories as sane right-wingers in the national campaign. Surprised Sunak let him do that.

I mean they've only been there 8 months. That's not very long to have completely changed the system of business rates. And seeing he said "reform' rather than "cut" or "scrap", I'm assuming that some businesses would be paying more tax. So "don't do those business tax rises, do ours instead", not a particularly compelling message.

Perhaps there is a better way of doing business rates, but the Lib Dems seem to specialise in this sort of thing. Remember "replace council tax with local income tax"? What happened to that?