The Boris Bounce

Labour needs to get out of identify politics and also resist going back to far left fairy land politics - take the more sensible (and popular) aspects of the last two manifestos and blend it with some economic realism.

 

Touche.

 

There are more factions within Labour than 2. At the point I’m labelled a ‘centrist dad’ because I think it’s more important to get on with beating the Tories at the next election than discussing a tweet from 2019 by a Labour MP who didn’t like Corbyn, I realise that there’s next to no hope for a party I’ve supported through thick and thin for nearly 40 years.

 

I was thinking about this the other day. In my opinion the metro mayors are a huge opportunity for Labour to try and blood a potential leader. I'm not the biggest Andy Burnham fan, but he's certainly got a higher profile than any of the shadow cabinet now, and as powers increase they can use it to demonstrate their policies on a smaller scale, local to a lot of the seats which the party desperately need to win back. I think this worked very well for Boris Johnson in London. They're also all very winnable for the right person.

Unfortunately they don't seem to be taking it as an opportunity. In my own region they've put up two awful candidates (in Sion Simon and Liam Byrne) against a very good conservative one (Andy Street, who has done a brilliant job of presenting as basically more independent than conservative). Dan Jarvis considers his post to be part-time, and I don't know much about Tracey Brabin in west Yorkshire yet. The metro mayors don't have as much power as I'd like, but I think it will increase - it would be an excellent opportunity for a rising star of the left to really stamp their mark on the nation with proper policies in a proper post. Selection for them should be hyper-competitive, and performance in them should be seen as a rehearsal for national leadership.

 

People don’t like the system – all politicians are the same, they all lie etc.

Johnson is on a winner because they don’t see him as part of the system. They like all his buffoonery and knockabout music hall style. It's entertainment. He’d have been a hit on ‘The Comedians’ alongside Bernard Manning, joking about them foreigners.

How does serious politics compete with that?

 

He’s the biggest liar around though , sacked 2-3, times before it

 

The frightening thing is it doesn't matter. People are fine with his lies, seemingly they are even fine with him lieing to them.

I mean what do you do when you have a pathological liar? Who has been a serial adulterer and doesn't know how many children he has. Who cheated on his wife while she had cancer. Who has serially not reported incomes and interests. Who repeatedly abdicates responsibilities while still being paid for those duties. Who wrote racist columns. Who wrote abusively about women, muslims and black people.

And that's before we get into his time as prime minister and the lies, untruths, suppression of reports and enquiries, corruption, concealment of facts and so on.

Yet people want more.

This is England.

 

Tracy is a former actress but was a close friend of Jo Cox, so she stood for Jo’s seat to continue where Jo had left off.

Strikes me as bright and ambitious, kind and fair not sure she’s leadership material though.

 

People know he lies but they don’t care. We like to think we make our decisions rationally but people are prey to their emotions and we all want to BELIEVE in something. If you believe in what Johnson’s projecting, that unshakeable sense of ‘Britishness’ then facts, the truth and lies are irrelevant.

Let’s face it enough folk believe in God. Is there any evidence he exists? No. Doesn’t matter belief conquers all.

 

Absolutely, this is what Labour seem to have forgotten about small p politics. If your colleagues refuse to engage in debate about your honesty, the question disappears.
It’s easy for Johnson to lie, because it’s consequence free, the only people who mention it are his enemies, and they’re bound to say that aren’t they?

In a discussion here just last week, we had lefty handwringing about Dysons dodgy tax calls with Johnson. A shrug is all we get from Johnson’s supporters, it’s unimportant. Is there any point in mentioning Boris’ brother being made a director of Dyson days after those calls?

it’s simply not important enough.

 

Thats just coincidence though. I mean what are the odds of Jo Johnson getting a job with a company that then asks to dodge more tax? But coincidence none the less.... really.

 

The decent bloke who refused to declare who his backers were in the Labour leadership until the votes had been cast unlike every other candidate , and who were his backers ,a Hedge Funder and Friends of Israel , there’s a shock . Just seen Mandleson on TV saying it’s all Corbyns fault , embarrassing

 

Hitting 'like' doesn't seem right, so I'll just reply to say I agree with every word.

 

It's many peoples fault, Corbyn obviously has to carry some of the can and its going to get worse now BXP and UKIP are all but defunct.

As for funding, I've not seen that, but seemingly it was declared within rules or the MSM would have been howling about it, no?

But then you could open the can of worms that is Len McCluskey. Or the mega storage of worms that is dePfeffel and his myriad cronies and donors, his links with russian oligarchs and even who funded his jaunt to Mustique.

If you want to list the alleged dirt on Starmer and then DePfeffel, I'll tell you now who will use more reams of paper.

 

But the same happened with Thatcher. Enough people turned on her in the end to get a Labour government. To me these elections just seem an addition to the general election. Coivid feels like we've not really had a year pass, and I wouldn't expect a massive swing only a year or so after a new government is elected.

 

The tories won another election, after Thatcher though, when Major beat Kinnock.

 

I'm hoping Nuclear Fusion will save the day; power for all, hydrogen cars etc etc. A long way off unfortunately. Don't get me wrong, the proposed Whitehaven coal mine seems fine to me because I understand it's met-coal (for steel making) and not steam-coal (for power stations) what they'll be mining. I don't know why people have got the two confused.

 

True, but she'd been forced to resign and they were wobbling.

 

People have got the two confused because they know no different, all they hear and see is what’s on the mainstream news, coal is bad, end of

ps, the only reason the tories supported the planning application for the Whitehaven mine was to score more political points over the Labour Party and collect yet more traditional labour voters,
The tories in reality couldn’t give a flying fook about Whitehaven