General News Thread

[Jimothy]

1 minute ago, Tommy G said:

Opinions isn't it. He had a massive majority and has been on the ropes from the start, I've got a horrible feeling he's managed to hand the keys to reform at the next election which doesn't bear thinking about.  

Imo he's been on the ropes since day one because the media has had it in for him since day one. You can say you don't form your opinion from the Mail or GBNews but there's no denying our right leaning press lead the agenda in this country and they wanted him gone before he even got through the door of number 10.

[LCFCJohn]

16 minutes ago, String fellow said:

When Boris then later on in 2022 Liz resigned, Sir Keir called for immediate general elections. So what's the difference now? Oh yes, Labour are in power.

As the Tories/other parties would be free to say the same now then?

[fox_up_north]

Oh for God's sake not again.

 

Just get on with the blood job and backbench MPs should know how their bread is buttered

[filthyfox]

14 minutes ago, LCFCJohn said:

As the Tories/other parties would be free to say the same now then?

Honestly, being an MP seems to be a real doss job!

[fox_up_north]

1 hour ago, Jon the Hat said:

What a waste of a massive landslide.  Lets hope they can turn things around.  I mean ultimately, I would prefer to have a new wave of Conservative Government sorting out the real issues, but they are still rebuilding, and an effective Labour government is needed to stop the rise of the Reform.

I heard an interview with Major in which he said massive majorities can actually be a hindrance for a few reasons

 

You get a LOT of lazy (in better and less inflammatory words) MPs

 

You struggle to effectively corral everone round a policy or approach

 

The only way is down

[LCFCJohn]

Just now, filthyfox said:

Honestly, being an MP seems to be a real doss job!

Very mentally and emotionally draining I’d say to be fair. 
 

One of those where thankless task is quite literal. 

[filthyfox]

40 minutes ago, String fellow said:

When Boris then later on in 2022 Liz resigned, Sir Keir called for immediate general elections. So what's the difference now? Oh yes, Labour are in power.

Wpuld be nice to have a GE...  i'm a presiding officer at a polling station!

[FoxesWalk]

34 minutes ago, Jimothy said:

Imo he's been on the ropes since day one because the media has had it in for him since day one. You can say you don't form your opinion from the Mail or GBNews but there's no denying our right leaning press lead the agenda in this country and they wanted him gone before he even got through the door of number 10.

His record in office is mixed, but not terrible, especially by recent standards, it’s actually fairly decent by recent standards. He does however have a massive image problem and definitely cannot win another election as a result. That is partly down to our press as you mention, but he is also quite poor at managing his image. 

[Sampson]

The problem is they've been spending too much time on twitter and listening to people who are never going to vote Labour anyway. You see it on here and everywhere - a lot of the people making out Starmer is the devil would never vote Labour anyway and will vote Tory or Reform. There's nothing wrong with those people saying that. I would never vote Reform either and voted Tory once many years ago but would never vote them now. I rant about Farage and Johnson too, it's natural. But the point is, Farage doesn't listen to people like me who would never vote for him anyway, he knows who his voterbase is, Labour have been listening too much to people who are never going to vote for them,

 

If you listened to twitter and the papers, you'd think all of Labour's voters are northern former mining town baby boomers who go on about "the London bubble" and have swapped Labour for Reform because they see run down former industrial towns, but the polls are very clear that on average (of course there will be exceptions) those people haven't voted Labour in 20 years and Labour were voted in by younger gen z and millennial university-educated social liberalism voters who are very pro Europe and find the anti-immigration rhetoric a turn off and that Labour have lost far more voters to the Green and LibDems than they have lost to Reform. The kind of  voters Labour are chasing hasn't voted Labour in decades and isn't going to vote for them just because they reduce immigration or try to shake this "two-tier Kier" thing - they aren't things put forward by people who are going to vote Labour in 2029, and the more they chase those people the more they lose their actual voter base to Greens and LibDems.

Edited 36 minutes ago by Sampson

[Lionator]

37 minutes ago, Jimothy said:

Imo he's been on the ropes since day one because the media has had it in for him since day one. You can say you don't form your opinion from the Mail or GBNews but there's no denying our right leaning press lead the agenda in this country and they wanted him gone before he even got through the door of number 10.

While this is true, he had a massive mandate and 5 years to do whatever he wanted with it and blew it because he was too cautious and didn’t want to upset the people that wouldn’t like him anyway. So it didn’t really matter what the media thought, he knew the country needed massive changes and he blew his chance so I have little sympathy. 

[Lionator]

2 minutes ago, Lionator said:

While this is true, he had a massive mandate and 5 years to do whatever he wanted with it and blew it because he was too cautious and didn’t want to upset the people that wouldn’t like him anyway. So it didn’t really matter what the media thought, he knew the country needed massive changes and he blew his chance so I have little sympathy. 

Although saying all this, when Andy Burnham does his first speech in his stone island gear, the reform voters will soon change their minds. 

[kenny]

Just now, Lionator said:

Although saying all this, when Andy Burnham does his first speech in his stone island gear, the reform voters will soon change their minds. 

SKS has also been known to rock the Stone Island clobber.

[davieG]

1 minute ago, Lionator said:

While this is true, he had a massive mandate and 5 years to do whatever he wanted with it and blew it because he was too cautious and didn’t want to upset the people that wouldn’t like him anyway. So it didn’t really matter what the media thought, he knew the country needed massive changes and he blew his chance so I have little sympathy. 

...and hampered by his own backbenchers who forced him into U-turns and probably knocked any confidence to push through as everything had to have 100% backing. After all with such a large majority you only need a small percentage to put a block on the PM as the media latch on to a minor scuffle and turn it into a full blown catastrophe. 

[Salisbury Fox]

37 minutes ago, Jimothy said:

Imo he's been on the ropes since day one because the media has had it in for him since day one. You can say you don't form your opinion from the Mail or GBNews but there's no denying our right leaning press lead the agenda in this country and they wanted him gone before he even got through the door of number 10.

To be fair he won a huge majority despite that same media existing. I believe his main problem has been the perception that some of his government’s policies have been at odds with its stated focus on growth. Whether that’s fair or not, many see that as a contradiction. 

[Jimothy]

2 minutes ago, Lionator said:

While this is true, he had a massive mandate and 5 years to do whatever he wanted with it and blew it because he was too cautious and didn’t want to upset the people that wouldn’t like him anyway. So it didn’t really matter what the media thought, he knew the country needed massive changes and he blew his chance so I have little sympathy. 

Oh that i do agree with too. As I'd previously said, I'm not a fan, I just don't hate to guy like some people do.

 

The immigration issue, whilst he has got it down, was calling for a sensible effective solution and he just tried to be Farage Lite on it. Farage supporter will never vote Starmer, they'll only vote Farage, so why chase that vote. Pull away from the divisive politics of the likes of Reform, don't lean towards it. 

 

But I did say previously, there were areas he needed to improve on, but I just don't think he's been a total disaster. The media do play their part though, as they refuse to acknowledge what he's achieved, but equally he's terrible at advertising what he's achieved.

[LCFCJohn]

1 minute ago, Jimothy said:

Oh that i do agree with too. As I'd previously said, I'm not a fan, I just don't hate to guy like some people do.

 

The immigration issue, whilst he has got it down, was calling for a sensible effective solution and he just tried to be Farage Lite on it. Farage supporter will never vote Starmer, they'll only vote Farage, so why chase that vote. Pull away from the divisive politics of the likes of Reform, don't lean towards it. 

 

But I did say previously, there were areas he needed to improve on, but I just don't think he's been a total disaster. The media do play their part though, as they refuse to acknowledge what he's achieved, but equally he's terrible at advertising what he's achieved.

To be fair, I am a Labour voter as I think as a party, they are the most sensible and balanced. Far right and far left is no good and won’t benefit the country in my opinion.

 

But I would like to see illegal immigration controlled better which Labour have been trying to do. A key part is tackling the gangs responsible. But wanting to see a more controlled system is a far cry from the completely racist Reform rhetoric that I cannot stand. So there must be many other centrally minded voters who agree with balanced approach to it. Not just leaving the gates open but not chasing anyone with brown skin down the street Reform style.

[FoxesWalk]

11 minutes ago, Lionator said:

While this is true, he had a massive mandate and 5 years to do whatever he wanted with it and blew it because he was too cautious and didn’t want to upset the people that wouldn’t like him anyway. So it didn’t really matter what the media thought, he knew the country needed massive changes and he blew his chance so I have little sympathy. 

This is broadly true of every PM of the last 15+ years. The UK faces some very difficult and unpopular decisions and no politician is willing to face them. Things will continue to get worse until someone has the balls to face up to problems like the affordability of the triple lock… to name just one that is big enough to kill anyone’s election chances. 

[Lionator]

8 minutes ago, kenny said:

SKS has also been known to rock the Stone Island clobber.

Which is what he should’ve lent into. He’s a massive football fan, his favourite band is Orange Juice, he listens to 6music while cooking with his kids. These are COOL (if not slightly pretentious) things yet he acts like the refbot from robot wars

[Lionator]

1 minute ago, FoxesWalk said:

This is broadly true of every PM of the last 15+ years. The UK faces some very difficult and unpopular decisions and no politician is willing to face them. Things will continue to get worse until someone has the balls to face up to problems like the affordability of the triple lock… to name just one that is big enough to kill anyone’s election chances. 

I just hope Burnham’s experience of what he’s done in Manchester pushes him outside of that box. If he doesn’t do it then I don’t think anyone ‘electable’ ever will. 

[cityfanlee23]

I've always felt the hatred of Starmer is overblown, but was fully expected. It strikes me as odd that many people hold Starmer at the top of the table for "worst pm in history" despite the fact that Tory ideology has sold the country off to the highest bidder (which is in part responsible for most of the issues we have today), and made a political choice to follow austerity whilst the rest of the world chose to follow Gordon Browns plan of borrowing when interest rates were low to invest, whilst our allies were investing and spending into the economy (and growing out of the 2007 crash faster than we did) we made a political choice to go after the poor and disabled, which led to hundreds of thousands of excess deaths. 

Starmer has been nowhere near as bad as that, yet he's hated more than any of them. As I said though, it was expected. 
14 years of "status quo" gave the voters massive fatigue, so when Starmer was elected (largely due to fptp) people were never going to give him 1 year to turn it around, he was given weeks before his polling tanked. 
Starmer lied to the left to become Labour leader, he stood on I think it was 10 core principles, he dropped every single one of them after being elected, then he was elected as PM on a platform of "change" and then proceeded to become the embodiment of the status quo. 

He's nowhere near the worst PM, he just felt a bit like a middle management type that wasn't a born leader, ultimately the hatred feels overblown, and in some limited ways I feel for Starmer. But he could have avoided all of this, if he just implemented changes that actually helped people over wealth. 

A simple example is breaking the link between Renewables and gas prices, which would have cut energy bills for the average household by upto £500 per year, they announced they would break the link, then released their "plan" which involved not actually breaking the link, just slightly loosening it. They caved to the energy giants with pretty much zero push back, they chose the wealthy over the people.

Burnham needs to realise that he has weeks, not months to show genuine direction shift, where he stands up against the Amazons/googles of the world, and stands up for the supermarket workers, the bricklayers and middle classes. That isn't a silver bullet, but it buys him time. The only thing standing between the country and who I believe is the biggest con artist in parliament (Farage) is Burnham. 

We need to find a balance that gives some relief to the lower/middle classes, that includes small/small-med businesses also. We also need Proportional Representation. 

[AKCJ]

Ultimately the cost of living crisis has been the driving factor. People are pissed off at how crap life in the UK is these days.

 

It's a case of the grass is never greener. Life is shit under Labour, it was shit under the Tories and it will be shit after the next election under Reform.

 

 

[st albans fox]

I’m intrigued as to what post ms rayner will get in burnham’s cabinet? 

[leicsmac]

2 minutes ago, AKCJ said:

Ultimately the cost of living crisis has been the driving factor. People are pissed off at how crap life in the UK is these days.

 

It's a case of the grass is never greener. Life is shit under Labour, it was shit under the Tories and it will be shit after the next election under Reform.

 

 

And to expand on this, a lot of people appear to either fail to grasp or grasp all too well that there are degrees of shit, and that we've barely scratched the surface in terms of how shit things can get, based on people's decision making. 

[Tuna]

20 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

I’m intrigued as to what post ms rayner will get in burnham’s cabinet? 

Deputy PM I'd guess