Friday 7th May 2021

[refitman]

Morning all.

[GetYou]

I see the new Tory MP for Hartlepool has activated the well-worn line "Labour has taken taken the people of Hartlepool granted for far too long.", which amuses me as I would find it quite difficult to plan around the needs of people who prefer a lying, cheating, sack of shit as their leader to any of the more savoury alternatives.

[RogerOThornhill]

Good (?) Morning.

Interesting analysis from Gavin Barwell.



And the bit where he says "Today's Conservative Party believes in relatively high spending and relatively high taxes" should horrify the frothing right who loathe public sector and want to see it cut to ribbons but they'll accept it.

[gilsey]

Also from Barwell's thread

Labour is increasingly the party of the young, the university educated, the city dweller but it still thinks of itself as the party of the working class

When Labour, and the Conservatives for that matter, get their heads round the idea that young, educated city dwellers are a massive component of the working class we might be able to make some progress.

[Willow904]

Hello all.

I haven't had much time for politics lately but I did manage to vote yesterday. It was very quiet at the polling station but Labour had volunteers knocking on doors trying to get the vote out which I don't think I've seen since Ed Miliband was in charge. There was some hope Dan Norris could do quite well in the mayoral contest I believe and the current Tory is stepping down so they won't benefit from the incumbency effect but I imagine it will remain blue.

I also noticed some talk on the BBC yesterday about the Tories potentially hoovering up the pro union vote in Scotland, an absolutely laughable suggestion given their new role as the English Nationalist Party and certainly there doesn't seem to be much sign of it so far.

[gilsey]

And the bit where he says "Today's Conservative Party believes in relatively high spending and relatively high taxes" should horrify the frothing right who loathe public sector and want to see it cut to ribbons but they'll accept it.

It's already been cut to ribbons. When we see some of that public spending going to councils and social security they might start frothing, but hell might freeze over first.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Eventually the contradictions of this "big Tory tent" will do for it, just as happened to the New Labour version. In the meantime, it would be nice not only for Labour to get its s*** together but for the media to spend more time holding the actual government (rather than the opposition) to account.

[gilsey]

Foster's nailed it here imo. The burning question of the day, do they have to deliver or is talk sufficient?
How crazy that it's a valid question, like commentators having to explain to us why it matters who paid for the wallpaper, as a country we've lost the plot.

[RogerOThornhill]

This is our future - everything good "Because of Brexit", everything bad "Blame the EU".

Speaking in Hartlepool, Boris Johnson also claimed that the country was now benefiting from Brexit. He explained:

This a a place that voted for Brexit. We got Brexit done and then we are able to do other things thanks to that.

It’s thanks to Brexit that we have been able to go ahead with the freeport in the whole of Teesside, do things like take back control of our borders.

We are able to deal with things like the European Super League and, of course, we are able to do things a bit differently when it comes to the vaccine rollout that has been so important and enabled [us] to deliver that faster than other European countries.

How have we ended up with such a liar as PM...who is seemingly untouchable?

[AnatolyKasparov]

Talk is never enough in the end.

And to misquote E A Blair - "if there is hope, it lies with the Welsh"?

A stunning result given the more general picture.

[RogerOThornhill]

I see that a Labour front-bencher has quit his post and had a right pop at the party...in an article he wrote for Policy Exchange.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Is this the one that actually resigned four weeks ago (but nobody noticed)?

[tinyclanger2]

vis a vis SGO's comment last night on Bigg Market:

[AnatolyKasparov]

Leanne Wood, former Plaid leader, loses her seat by a big majority (and she isn't on any of the lists)

Politics can be a pretty rough game.

[tinyclanger2]

More than half of young people now going to university, figures show
Figures also show a gender gap, with women more likely to go to university than men
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/educ ... 22321.html

[RogerOThornhill]

Is this the one that actually resigned four weeks ago (but nobody noticed)?

That's the one.

If you're writing for the current Policy Exchange then you're almost certainly in the wrong party.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Third place in Hartlepool went to an (entirely local) Independent with nearly 10% of the vote.

She is thought to be Labour-sympathetic and surely can't have done worse than the candidate they did pick.

Meanwhile the MASSIVELY ONLINE thing that is NIP got 250 votes, two more than a convicted sex offender.