[Youngian]

Aww. Can't a boy dream a little?

It’s the hope that kills, especially in the Labour Party. Think back five years when Corbyn had snuffed out all hope of removing these arseholes, we are in a dream period.

[Bones McCoy]

What have we learned recently.

That the Tory election campaign will lean heavily on cats, cocks and Coutts.

[Boiler]

Tory Boy Pierce's latest scare tactic for the Mail; vote Starmer, get Blair.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ports.html

Sorry I can't post a snippet, it's not easy on a phone on a moving bus...

[Andy McDandy]

A load of stuff cribbed from Wikipedia, along with a few stretches of the imagination (did Brown force him from office?) and alleged bad stuff that actually makes him look quite good.

In summary, "he's doing alright, the bastard!".

[Youngian]

I’m assuming the Tories aren’t wooing the nostalgic anti Iraq War vote. Therefore ‘Do you want a return to chaos under Blair?’ was brain farted by someone very intellectually challenged like Andrew Pierce.

[Yug]

I'm not sure Fail readers will be frightened by this. While Fail readers are, by definition, cunts, they're not all stupid cunts. Some of them might start comparing the Tory now with the Blair then.

"Ee, when Blair were in Number Ten we 'ad food in t' 'ouse, we could pay t' bills, go down t' pub regular-like, an' still 'ave money in us pockets at t' end of t' month. And there wes none of they damn' forrins comin' ower 'ere in small boats, tekkin all our council 'ouses an' wide-screen TVs an' that. Bit different now, int it."

Selfishness may well push a few more into voting for someone other than the Tory candidate. Or, at least, make the buggers stay at home on Polling day.

[Boiler]

I didn't know whether to put this here or under Guardian columnists, so...

Sunak’s anti-green drive tells us this: we’re heading for the stupidest general election yet

Policies hold very little interest for Conservatives, still less ideas: they want to set Britain’s mood music. Tory arguments as they battle for votes will be so stupid as to make you despair, and some mornings you’ll wake up thinking humanity is a blight, and we should concentrate on preserving the planet for every species besides us. But that doesn’t mean they won’t work.

These licences had only one purpose, which was to back Starmer into a corner where he had to say whether or not he would revoke them – which sure enough, he wouldn’t, because respecting a contract is more important than the climate. So he marked himself out as a lukewarm technocrat without the passion or urgency that the battle for the planet needs, and then it got worse: criticised, perfectly legitimately, by Just Stop Oil, Starmer called them “contemptible” for beliefs that are indistinguishable from those of the UN secretary general.

It’s pointless hand-wringing about these obvious traps that Starmer obediently walks into, but this is the game we’re in now – one in which every Tory move, whether it’s camouflaged as policy or delivered in hate speech, is a bid to disrupt the unity of progressive voters. I do not think it will succeed. But I didn’t think it would succeed in 2019, either.

[Youngian]

If only Keef had the benefit of tactical advice from Zoe Williams

It’s pointless hand-wringing about these obvious traps that Starmer obediently walks into

[Tubby Isaacs]

To be fair to Zoe, she says there she got 2019 wrong.

But the extent of the wrongness was pretty spectacular. She was encouraging people to go to Nuneaton. The Tories won that by 13,000.

[mattomac]

I thought the license thing just helped Starmer, he wouldn’t have to make any difficult decisions over his own pledge because Sunak has over pledged on them.

[Abernathy]

On contemplating that Labour seems consistently to be sustaining a 25 point lead over the Tories, and that not only that, that on the basis of the latest polling in Scotland, Labour is poised to recover at the election around 50% of Scottish parliamentary seats, and also that John Curtice has suggested that the party could be on course for an even bigger landslide victory in 2024 than was achieved by Tony Blair in 1997, I am once more drawn inexorably to the similarities between what happened in the lead up to the 1997 Labour landslide victory, and what is happening now in the lead up to what hopefully will be another landslide victory next year. In doing so, I am of course also mindful of Roy Jenkins’ famous analogy of Labour as a man carefully carrying a priceless porcelain vase along the highly polished floor of a long, long corridor.

In 1997, the Tories had been in government for 13 years, and the public was thoroughly sick of them. The electors had, it seemed, reached a tipping point, whereby the vast majority was firmly resolved on getting rid of the Tory government , whenever the election came.

And here now in 2023, the Tories have been in government for 13 years, and the public is thoroughly sick of them. The electors have, it seems, reached a tipping point, whereby the vast majority are firmly resolved on getting rid of the Tory government , whenever the election comes.

The government of John Major, from 1992 to 1997, had crashed the UK economy right at the start of its five year term, with Norman Lamont’s desperate efforts to keep the pound in the ERM resulting in record high interest rates and the ignominious crash out of the ERM on what became known as “Black Wednesday”.

The Tory government elected in 2019 crashed the UK economy in 2022 under the disastrous, blessedly short-lived premiership of Liz Truss, when she borrowed heavily to finance a package of tax cutting measures for the wealthy.

In 1997, Tony Blair had broadly re-shaped the Labour Party into “New Labour”, an electable alternative well-placed to take advantage of any disaffection with the incumbent government in order to win election back to government, following a catastrophic defeat in 1983 under a unpopular left wing leader .

In 2023, Keir Starmer has broadly re-shaped the Labour Party into an electable alternative, well-placed to take advantage of any disaffection with the incumbent government, in order to win election back to government, following a catastrophic defeat in 2019 under a unpopular left wing leader .

So, amidst all the similarity, what’s the difference? Why is Labour supposedly on track to win a much larger landslide in 2024 than it did in 1997?

I think it’s this : the current iteration of Tory government is simply THE very worst that there has EVER been. They have encumbered the country with (at least) three disastrously incompetent and/or corrupt Prime Ministers in Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss (the jury is still just about out on PM Sunak). They have inflicted untold damage on the country’s economy (and societal fabric) via austerity, then Brexit, and then by lurching shockingly further to the right with a cruel, inhumane, and deeply inefficient policy on immigration and asylum. It’s taken a while, but it seems to me that that these Tories are dancing on an electoral trapdoor and the electorate simply cannot wait to get its collective hands on the release lever. They desperately want to give these bastards a bloody good kicking - and who can blame them ? Bring on the landslide.

[Boiler]

I don't follow politics to the depth that others do here, or indeed have the understanding: but I can safely say that truly, I have never witnessed such an inept, corrupt and in some cases, thoroughly evil characters in my adult life as those that make up the current shit shower.

I wish them all nothing but misfortune: in an ideal world I'd see Sunak reduced to riding a nifty fifty delivering lunches to Delhi office workers and Braverman doing an impression of Clara Petacci.

Yet let's not forget - there are still huge numbers out there who will STILL vote for these cunts because they're scared shitless that someone will get a piece of their pie.

[Youngian]

I don't follow politics to the depth that others do here, or indeed have the understanding

Yes you do, this is an accurate summary

I can safely say that truly, I have never witnessed such an inept, corrupt and in some cases, thoroughly evil characters in my adult life as those that make up the current shit shower.

[Youngian]

So, amidst all the similarity, what’s the difference? Why is Labour supposedly on track to win a much larger landslide in 2024 than it did in 1997?

As the Tories kept reminding the Boris gang, Johnson didn’t win them the GE2019 majority, Jeremy Corbyn did. Kinnock didn’t persuade enough people he should be PM but he was nowhere near the remedial class that Corbyn is in. And remember the shy Tories Labour underestimated under Miliband? Now the Tories will reap the disdain of the shy Bregretters who in the privacy of the ballot box don’t believe there’s any Brexit jam tomorrow despite what they may tell pollsters and their friends. No one likes to admit being a wally whose been mugged off. Latest predictions are that the Tories will lose all Red Wall gains.

[Oboogie]

So, amidst all the similarity, what’s the difference? Why is Labour supposedly on track to win a much larger landslide in 2024 than it did in 1997?

Elections are performance appraisals of the government's record in office. What are the Tories great achievements since 2010? Not easy, is it?
By contrast, however much we despised their policies, it is undeniable that the Thatcher and Major governments achieved many things which were very popular with many people at the time - but they still got a pasting in 1997.

This lot have nothing, even dyed in the wool true blue Tories struggle to come up with anything to boast about. I'm intrigued to see what their three line campaign mantra's going to be this time.

[Abernathy]

Good point. I get the impression they don’t even dare try to suggest what a boon “getting Brexit done” was any more.
It really is starting to look as if 30p Lee was right when he suggested all they had left was whipping up immigrant fury and whether women can have penises.

[Crabcakes]

I think the simple answer is, even if you don’t like Labour, they now look like the average sort of politicians in government that people are used to. Whereas the Tories are blatantly ripping people off left, right and centre while doing literally fuck all.

When basic competence is clearly beyond the vast majority of ministers, you can only hide it so long. People are just exhausted and don’t want to see the same bullshitting nonentities promising the same things they promised 10 years ago and didn’t do. Everything costs more, everything is harder and worse and more complicated. Everything feels like a scam. And *all* of it can be laid directly at the feet of the people in power.

The UK electorate want what the US electorate wanted when they booted out Trump. A break from every single sodding day being another absolute fucking shitshow.

[Oboogie]

Good point. I get the impression they don’t even dare try to suggest what a boon “getting Brexit done” was any more.
It really is starting to look as if 30p Lee was right when he suggested all they had left was whipping up immigrant fury and whether women can have penises.

Brexit is a negative for the majority of the electorate.
Whilst the debate around gender identity is certainly noisy and vitriolic, I'm not convinced that it's a top priority for many people when deciding who to vote for.
As for immigration, well if you promise to stop the boats then you'd better be able to show the people that appeals to that you are indeed stopping the boats.

[mattomac]

Brexit was supposed to “cure” the “immigration problem”, it never could, it never would and it’s left the country poorer due to the reliance we have on immigration.

Throw in the fact they have one achievement in gay marriage that was delivered by Labour votes. Also the economy had started to improve by 1997.

It’s not going to by 2024.

[Oboogie]

Brexit was supposed to “cure” the “immigration problem”, it never could, it never would and it’s left the country poorer due to the reliance we have on immigration.

Throw in the fact they have one achievement in gay marriage that was delivered by Labour votes. Also the economy had started to improve by 1997.

It’s not going to by 2024.

Gay marriage is certainly one achievement I'd credit the Tories with without equivocation.
But:
1. we're not talking about me, because I'm never going to vote Tory whatever they've done. The question is, how do Tory voters feel about it, do the hearts of the majority of them swell with pride at the mention of it?
2. by the time of the next election, The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 will be eleven years old, doesn't reaching that far back rather emphasise that there's nothing more recent?
3. that was under Cameron who was an unpatriotic Remoaner traitor, so I can't see the current Tory Party admitting he ever did anything good - if indeed it was good at all (see point 1.).