National News Boris Johnson - Ousted Former PM

[Wallop]

Posh doesn't mean better.

I agree, if I went for a posh accent as my reason to vote I’d have the cretin that is Jacob Rees Mogg on the list together with the incumbent. Not sure what point you’re trying to make.

 

[Wallop]

I've always been impressed by Jess Phillips whenever I hear her interviewed

me too but I don’t think she’s electable - that’s the electorate’s fault not hers.

 

[bazzer9461]

Yeah, but I hardly think in bigger enough numbers to make a difference, shirley?

Sorry Doris but I think you’ll find that there are.

 

[Sheik djibouti]

Sorry Doris but I think you’ll find that there are.

So....you are seriously telling me that there are enough Tory faithful to prevent Sunak becoming their leader because they think he's a funny colour?

Explain to me again why you think these people are the best there is to form a government [emoji848]

 

[QR]

So....you are seriously telling me that there are enough Tory faithful to prevent Sunak becoming their leader because they think he's a funny colour?

Explain to me again why you think these people are the best there is to form a government [emoji848]

And of course Brexit wasn't about such things.

 

[Sheik djibouti]

And of course Brexit wasn't about such things. [emoji848]

Which beautifully illustrates the folly and danger of distilling a complex multi-faceted issue into a binary choice.

It must be comforting for Brexiteers to know that there were probably significantly more than 700k extra who voted leave for exactly that reason. Not the kind of bedfellows anyone can be proud of are they?

However...we're now in a political world of securing the ending you want justifies ANY means to get there.

 

[bazzer9461]

So....you are seriously telling me that there are enough Tory faithful to prevent Sunak becoming their leader because they think he's a funny colour?

Explain to me again why you think these people are the best there is to form a government [emoji848]

It’s not the Tory faithful I’m on about, Rishi could be selected to lead the Tories, it’s the electorate that in on about.

 

[Sheik djibouti]

It’s not the Tory faithful I’m on about, Rishi could be selected to lead the Tories, it’s the electorate that in on about. [emoji2958]

So you are suggesting that there are enough people in the electorate....the electorate that has given the Tories a thumping 80 seat majority, that will turn their back on them because of the colour of their chosen leaders skin...and in the process hand power to another party?

Do you not think that sounds a little far-fetched?

 

[Marked Ox]

It’s not the Tory faithful I’m on about, Rishi could be selected to lead the Tories, it’s the electorate that in on about.

Here you go:

As Britain faces up to racism, it's time the Conservative Party properly addressed Islamophobia

According to a YouGov poll, 54 per cent of Conservative members believe Islam is a threat to the British way of life

inews.co.uk

 

[bazzer9461]

So you are suggesting that there are enough people in the electorate....the electorate that has given the Tories a thumping 80 seat majority, that will turn their back on them because of the colour of their chosen leaders skin...and in the process hand power to another party?

Do you not think that sounds a little far-fetched?

I hate to say it but yes, personally I think he would be a great prime minister. I’ve forgotten the name of the Tory candidate but he was selected by the conservative members of Cheltenham to represent Cheltenham as their MP it was a safe Tory seat…..guess what? He lost.

 

[Sheik djibouti]

I hate to say it but yes, personally I think he would be a great prime minister. I’ve forgotten the name of the Tory candidate but he was selected by the conservative members of Cheltenham to represent Cheltenham as their MP it was a safe Tory seat…..guess what? He lost.

Hmmmm...maybe Rishi won't even get the nod as leader, judging by the systemic Islamaphobia in the Tory faithful as referenced in the article Marked Ox shared.

If accurate - what a dreadful state of affairs and damning endightment on the ruling classes and their supporters. It just goes to show exactly why the issue of race has not gone away, despite some peoples protestations that it is no longer an issue.....

The Cheltenham vote was 1992, where John Taylor was beaten by Lib Dem Nigel Jones. It split the local Tory party apart with many who had expressed concern over his race, being expelled from the party. John Major made him a Peer in 1996 and he was only the third person of Afro-Carribean origin to enter the upper house.

He was later convicted and sent to prison for 12 months as part of the expenses scandal after being found guilty of fiddling over £11k out of the tax payer with false accounting. The judge at the time said it had left an indelible stain on Parliament

I would like to think plenty has changed on the race issue since then, albeit not quickly enough!

Unfortunately the misappropriation of money has gathered pace. Maybe this was around the time that Boris was heard to mutter "hold my beer"

 

[MC Yellow]

Tory landslide. 50% of the vote minimum.

Good call.

 

[MC Yellow]

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant to say.....Calamity for Johnson if Tories don't win.

Huge majority - 16% swing.

No Calamity for BJ, but what does it mean for KS?

 

[bazzer9461]

Just hope that now the Tories have won Hartlepool they stick to their promises so they won’t be humiliated at the next election

 

[RyanioBirdio]

Good call.

Common sense.

That old chestnut.

 

[Sheik djibouti]

I've said it before - Labour are currently a busted flush. They fell massively at the last general election and are still falling. Numerous issues in play as to why, not least of all the pandemic, the aftermath of Brexit, the division of political battle along traditional class lines is no longer being relevant. Political lines have changed and Labour need to change with them if they want to appeal to a wider (and younger) audience.

The vacuum of opposition and ability to hold the government of the day to account is why we are where we are. Tories will just carry on doing what Tories do (ie feathering their own nests before all else), while the Etonians continue lord it over everyone else and desperately try to convince that they have the common touch and really understand the people in the street....that is until the opposition find their USP.....and their balls.....and their unity...and their leadership.....and their mojo.

If they don't then we are truly entering the death spiral of UK democracy, given that sleaze, corruption, misappropriation and palm greasing and making the unfathomably, unfathomably richer, is seemingly a wholly acceptable way to run a country. I know Boris has an ambition to make us into a low tax haven to attract more of the super -rich to "invest" (in Boris and chums, not UK PLC), but it seems he and the government have decided to go the whole hog and make us into a proper full on banana republic while they do it. The stench surrounding the Tories wont go away...it will only get worse but there are just enough people willing to hold their noses right now as much because everything else is made to look like a less palatable option.

We normally catch on to political trends quite late in the day (mainly because of our archaic political system), but the US has moved away from the right for at least the next 4 years...and probably beyond, given the changing demographic in play there. The investment in capital and in the welfare of its people is almost unprecedented and is the biggest investment in improving Americas lot for all WHILST improving prosperity for all in a lifetime. The political landscape in Germany is also changing quite significantly for the first time in a long time after 16 years of Conservatism and a more centerist progressive, socially responsible and environmentally aware/active coalition will more than likely take its place - embracing diversity, moving away from parochialism and nationalism

So it might be dark days for anything centre or centre left in English politics right now, or anything with a social conscience/responsibility, or anything which puts those most in need first, or anything that believes in wealth creation for all, not just as a vehicle to make the rich richer, or anything that truly wants to uphold and improve standards in public life, or anything that truly wants to tackle the serious issues of climate change etc etc. But politics always work in cycles and now more than ever politics is evolving across a broad range of Western democracies. It will all happen whilst the Tories carry on doing the same old same old, because they've been allowed to get away with it yet again. Just as new/old/new Labour's days have been numbered, I won't be at all surprised to see the Tory's eat themselves all over again in the coming months and years, now that Brexit is done and as the Pandemic recedes.

 

[Eaststanding]

I've said it before - Labour are currently a busted flush. They fell massively at the last general election and are still falling. Numerous issues in play as to why, not least of all the pandemic, the aftermath of Brexit, the division of political battle along traditional class lines is no longer being relevant. Political lines have changed and Labour need to change with them if they want to appeal to a wider (and younger) audience.

The vacuum of opposition and ability to hold the government of the day to account is why we are where we are. Tories will just carry on doing what Tories do (ie feathering their own nests before all else), while the Etonians continue lord it over everyone else and desperately try to convince that they have the common touch and really understand the people in the street....that is until the opposition find their USP.....and their balls.....and their unity...and their leadership.....and their mojo.

If they don't then we are truly entering the death spiral of UK democracy, given that sleaze, corruption, misappropriation and palm greasing and making the unfathomably, unfathomably richer, is seemingly a wholly acceptable way to run a country. I know Boris has an ambition to make us into a low tax haven to attract more of the super -rich to "invest" (in Boris and chums, not UK PLC), but it seems he and the government have decided to go the whole hog and make us into a proper full on banana republic while they do it. The stench surrounding the Tories wont go away...it will only get worse but there are just enough people willing to hold their noses right now as much because everything else is made to look like a less palatable option.

We normally catch on to political trends quite late in the day (mainly because of our archaic political system), but the US has moved away from the right for at least the next 4 years...and probably beyond, given the changing demographic in play there. The investment in capital and in the welfare of its people is almost unprecedented and is the biggest investment in improving Americas lot for all WHILST improving prosperity for all in a lifetime. The political landscape in Germany is also changing quite significantly for the first time in a long time after 16 years of Conservatism and a more centerist progressive, socially responsible and environmentally aware/active coalition will more than likely take its place - embracing diversity, moving away from parochialism and nationalism

So it might be dark days for anything centre or centre left in English politics right now, or anything with a social conscience/responsibility, or anything which puts those most in need first, or anything that believes in wealth creation for all, not just as a vehicle to make the rich richer, or anything that truly wants to uphold and improve standards in public life, or anything that truly wants to tackle the serious issues of climate change etc etc. But politics always work in cycles and now more than ever politics is evolving across a broad range of Western democracies. It will all happen whilst the Tories carry on doing the same old same old, because they've been allowed to get away with it yet again. Just as new/old/new Labour's days have been numbered, I won't be at all surprised to see the Tory's eat themselves all over again in the coming months and years, now that Brexit is done and as the Pandemic recedes.

Surely desperation usually follows failure or continued failure, but they’re not failing, Labour are?
The Tories haven’t even had to try that hard to convince anybody that they have the ‘common touch‘; as you said, there’s a vacuum of opposition and they have simply taken advantage of it with ease and without challenge.

 

[Sheik djibouti]

Surely desperation usually follows failure or continued failure, but they’re not failing, Labour are?
The Tories haven’t even had to try that hard to convince anybody that they have the ‘common touch‘; as you said, there’s a vacuum of opposition and they have simply taken advantage of it with ease and without challenge.

I think you are seeing desperation in the wrong context here and maybe my clumsy use of language. They will always remain desperate to prove they are in touch and connected when they clearly are not and have absolutely no concept of what it is like to live like the vast, vast majority. They and their chums in the right-leaning media have done a fantastically hypocritical job of painting the socialists as the champagne quaffing, Westminster bubble inhabiting liberal and metropolitan elite, when in reality, the Tory elite are far more guilty of all those things that and much much worse by being the champagne quaffing landed gentry who own most of the country and the town that the liberal elite supposedly inhabit.

So when it comes to looking down their noses and sneering at the proles while exploiting them - I know who has the longer charge sheet. It is a sleight of hand whataboutism that the Tory elite and the media have carried off to great effect.

But hey, as I said the other day, maybe Champagne Conservatism is just more aspirational than Champagne socialism

 

[Essexyellows]

Looks like those "racist, flag-waving, Brexiteer gammons" have gone out and done what they always do. Put a cross in the box and rattled the system yet again.
Maybe, just maybe, the politicians need to drop the belittling insults and listen to those they purport to represent?

 

[Berliner]

Copied this below from the BTL comments on the Guardian. Perhaps the best summary of the situation I've seen and as someone who grew up just down the coast right on the money. EDITED TO ADD: The comment below isn't from me personally.:

What left wing media fails to understand about Hartlepool is just how broken that place is.
The people that write these articles have absolutely no idea what it is like to come from a family where there are three generations that have never had gainful employment. I grew up in Teesside, and know firsthand that the government statistics on crime and unemployment are complete and utter B*****s. Until you've been sold a sixteenth of hash by a 10 year old through the front window of a terraced house, you really need shup about how you ‘understand the people of that region’.
Hartlepool isn't London. There is generational poverty everywhere you turn. Literally nobody on housing estate after housing estate owns 'assets'. The mere suggestion they ever could is laughable.
And Hartlepool is not in the least bit multi-cultural. The constant TV adverts with mixed race families tossing salad on a plush lawn mean absolutely nothing to them. Those 'other' people simply do not exist in Hartlepool. For Christs sake, they don't trust people from Billingham, never mind Romania.
You just don't get it do you? Keir Starmer swanning in his suit and side parting pretending he understands them, and telling them "what the people of Hartlepool need are jobs" when his party pressed on with trickledown economics and deregulation and resoundingly failed to create a single job up there in 20 years of power, and huge swathes of that community have never worked, and thousands more work shitty hours in shitty jobs that hold them a millimeter above the poverty line. They always will be in working poverty. They know that.
For christ sake, 10 miles down the road in Redcar, the Tories shut down the Steel Mill in order to cut a deal with the Chinese over Hinkley Point, and the people of Redcar still voted for them. Didn’t that give anyone in Labour HQ something to think about??? They don’t give a toss about jobs up there anymore. Most of them have never had a job that did more than stop them from starving.
Starmer and the Labour party offer them absolutely nothing. The bloke hasn't a clue what Hartlepool wants. In truth, Hartlepool stopped wanting or expecting any ecomomic miracle decades ago. Tory, Labour, Tory, Liberal coalitions... none of it made a tiny bit of difference to Teesside, and you can't blame these people for thinking nothing ever will change. They don't expect tech companies, financiers or front-end manufacturing to suddenly turn up, give them all a 500% pay rise and let them save for a dignified retirement.
Sadly though, Johnsons advisers do know what makes them tick. Kicking out foreigners is tangible. Booting out eastern European plasterers and brickies will do for the people of Hartlepool. At least somebody else is getting a kicking, right?
I'm not going to bother saying "until Labour understand this" because even if they did understand this, the truth of the matter is Hartlepool is fucked, and will remain fucked no matter who pretends to be ‘in charge’. That is a stone-cold economic fact.
With his Picaninnies and Letterbox comments, at least somebody is speaking to them in their own language, albeit with his ridiculous Eton accent. The left wont stoop that low, and rightly so! But stop fooling yourselves that Labour have any sort of economic model their sleeve that can resuscitate a town that was dead long, long ago and was barely even alive in the first place.
Is all the above awful? Yes, it is heartbreaking, xenophobic, terrible and cruel. But that is the way it is. And I know, because I used to live in Teesside. The only reasonable way to improve your life chances if you are from Hartlepool is to leave Hartlepool, but ironically, Brexit has made that way more difficult for anyone who understands the matter.
It’s a total shitshow up there man. In fact, the whole country is a s**t show. Heartbreaking, even for somebody who left 20 years ago.