[Yug]

Who told Harry Yorke that? The voices in his head?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Not impossible there was a real source, but doubt there was a consensus.

And even if there were, it wouldn't have lasted very long. Survation confirmed that these were old forms from when Rosena ran for Deputy Leader.

[mattomac]

Yeah several journalists ran with it before they seemed to have even consulted Survation, Survation then cleared it up within 2 hours on a Saturday.

Be helpful if Journalists would clarify things before running with it.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Be helpful if Journalists would clarify things before running with it.

To quote Sir Humphrey Appleby, "When did you acquire the taste for such luxuries?"

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yeah several journalists ran with it before they seemed to have even consulted Survation, Survation then cleared it up within 2 hours on a Saturday.

Be helpful if Journalists would clarify things before running with it.

Yep, Though it seems like somebody in Labour who didn't like her did exactly the same, which is also bad.

I've not suggested any problem between Starmer and Dr Rosena. She's in a good job where she gets lots of exposure and knows her stuff.

[mattomac]

Or doesn’t like Starmer, there is some people in the know who seem to like leaking this stuff.

[Tubby Isaacs]

That's a fair point.

[Abernathy]

Obviously he’ll have been doing a fair bit of preparatory work with his team in respect of how he should deal with the new PM, but I’ve been wondering what he’s decided will be the best approach to PM Truss, particularly at Prime Minister’s Questions. Given Truss’s defining clod-hopping wooden awkwardness and strong propensity to the gaffe, does he adopt an attitude of piteous contempt, or out and out merciless ridicule? Outrage and indignance are obviously going to be necessary, particularly since Truss’s casual/callous approach to the prospect of vulnerable pensioners and others not making it through the winter thanks to grotesquely escalating fuel bills and food prices, with only a meaningless tax cut from which to derive cold comfort, echoes Johnson’s “Let the bodies pile high” casual cruelty, but I think it needs to be carefully pitched. I’m thinking that perhaps Starmer’s best option is to adopt a “give ‘er enough rope” approach, safe in the knowledge that she is bound to make an almighty twat of herself sooner rather than later.

I don’t think that Thick Lizzie can really do the relentless despatch box bluster that was Johnson’s specialism.

What do we think, Mailwatchers ?

[Andy McDandy]

She will struggle. She can't think on her feet, has little initiative, and has few original ideas. My guess is that she will parrot out a standard rebuttal to everything, and just keep repeating it.

[Andy McDandy]

In fact I think we've seen it. "You're playing politics when there's a national crisis!"

[Youngian]

She will struggle. She can't think on her feet, has little initiative, and has few original ideas. My guess is that she will parrot out a standard rebuttal to everything, and just keep repeating it.

Not much change from Johnson.

[davidjay]

Johnson's lovable buffoon persona enabled him to get away with his soundbites and bluster. Truss is clearly humourless and will come across like a teacher trying to make a joke. It'll be forced and it'll be insincere.

[Oboogie]

Johnson has his four great lies upon which he relies for protection: he got Brexit done, he saved us from Corbynism, he beat the virus and he's leading the world in winning the war in Ukraine.

What has Truss got?

[Malcolm Armsteen]

What has Truss got?

She's trying to hold in the Tory hernia.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Johnson didn't get away with it for the most part. He wasn't very popular even in 2019, when the situation played to his strenghts (breath of fresh air bloke to break the deadlock, while chucking out promises all over the place, and I'll keep the anti-Western guy out!). He had another load of popularity in time for the May 2021 elections on the back of the vaccine.

[The Weeping Angel]

Ha Ha Ha

[Oboogie]

The person Owen Jones reminds me of most these days is Darren Grimes.

[mattomac]

Yup he has fallen down to that level.

[Crabcakes]

Johnson has his four great lies upon which he relies for protection: he got Brexit done, he saved us from Corbynism, he beat the virus and he's leading the world in winning the war in Ukraine.

What has Truss got?

The same 4 things, equally as baseless as they were for Johnson (Brexit is still ongoing and still unravelling, Corbyn’s awfulness saved us from Corbyn, the NHS beat the virus and all he’s leading in is convenient visits to Ukraine to avoid national scrutiny). Hopefully Starmer will be able to make use of the fact that nothing was unique to Johnson when Truss lays out what her plans are, as it reveals the lie that he ever achieved anything at all.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Jez fans are still going.

https://skwawkbox.org/2022/09/01/starme ... a-factory/

the myth is exploded by the reports from multiple sources, which Starmer has never challenged or corrected, that his father owned the factory in which he worked – and even if not, in those days a family with two earners would have been able to afford bills, even in Surrey.

And his dad went on to become the director of the ‘Donkey Breed Society’, perhaps not your typical humble toolmaker’s retirement activity.

Keir Starmer is a couple of years older than me. I grew up with a dad who was a toolmaker and who would never have even accepted promotion to foreman because it would have meant siding with management. My mother was a stay-at-home mam and we grew up with no central heating, with an outside toilet that used to be kept from freezing in winter by a small meths burner lit in the corner under the cistern pipe – and we didn’t have a phone, nor did any of my friends’ families. My parents only got one years after I left home.

So I know the smell of sh*t when I come across it.

Hilariously no links are given to these "multiple sources" about this factory. Irrespective of what he links to, or doesn't, this factory seems to have left surprisingly little trace. Nobody has piped up to say they worked there or their Dad did, or that they did business with them.

Quite the contrast between the world inhabited by Sir Keir's father (working class life relatively comfortable) and the one occupied by his own family (with one male wage) lived in a hole in the road. What maternity pay did he think Keir's mum would have got? Wouldn't there have been quite a while where she wasn't working? And fuck knows what the "my Dad wouldn't even have accepted a foreman job" has to do with anything.

The best bit though is the stunning claim that Old Man Keir set up some organisation to do with donkeys. Working class people can't do that! They can't what? ! Director doesn't mean Mr Big in a plate glass office.