UK Politics: Last Chrismas we partied so hard, now it was leaked before a repeat.

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

You literally just described a sexier version of John Major.   And compared to this shower of shite he was a fucking titan. 

John Major was almost certainly the last relatively decent leader the Conservative Party had (mayyyyybe on a very good day William Hague was okay) and not a total fucking disaster as Prime Minister, although he was coming from a low base and he did have a Curry-shaped problem lurking in the background. Hell, you could make a reasonable argument he was the last not-a-total-fucking-disaster Prime Minister we had full stop: Brown not having very long in the job and his performance being thrown off by the financial crisis, Cameron managing to create this country's biggest political crisis since the Second World War, May and Johnson fucking up the response to said crisis, Johnson then fucking up the biggest actual non-political crisis since the Second World War, and Blair having that slight "war crimes" problem going on.

But yeah, Hunt would probably not be the candidate you wanted if you wanted a charismatic follow-up to Boris who could excite every corner of the nation. But then that's what people thought they wanted with Boris and that turned out to be a shower of shit. You want someone who might not be exciting but might at least be vaguely competent.

Hunt vs. Starmer in a post-COVID, post-Brexit political landscape would be so boring politics would disappear from the front pages, and I'm frankly very happy for that day to arrive.

[Spockydog]

My brother just described this period as the Age of the Omnibezzle. 

[HoodedCrow]

New favorite song. F ya by Lily Allen. 

[Spockydog]

Downing Street refurb: the money trail, inquiries and questions still to answer

This isn't going away. A senior Tory said on Newsnight tonight that if Lord Geidt, Johnson's ethics advisor, were to resign, this would be very, very, bad for Johnson, because it would probably lead to Bozo having to explain himself before a senior judge.

Part of that explanation would also have to cover where he found the £112k used to pay the suppliers so that Brownlow and the Cabinet Office could be repaid.

The speculation is Geidt will resign in the next few days, having no choice due to this new whatsapp evidence that he was lied to.

 

 

[Raja]

The working from home bit & the COVID pass bit from plan B should have been things we should have had throughout the summer. At least we're going to do that but feels late. Again.

[mormont]

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

John Major was almost certainly the last relatively decent leader the Conservative Party had (mayyyyybe on a very good day William Hague was okay) and not a total fucking disaster as Prime Minister, although he was coming from a low base and he did have a Curry-shaped problem lurking in the background. Hell, you could make a reasonable argument he was the last not-a-total-fucking-disaster Prime Minister we had full stop

Maybe it's because I'm a few years older and remember the Major years better, but this is a very rose-tinted view. I remember that those years were chaos. Black Wednesday, BSE, constant cabinet infighting, the introduction of PFI, rail privatisation, attacks on 'benefit scroungers', sleaze, curbs on trade unions, Michael Howard insisting that 'prison works' and ending the right to silence, the list goes on.

Say what you like about Blair and Brown. They did bad things. But at least you can also point to some good things they did. Can anyone name a single thing the Major government did that was beneficial to ordinary voters?

[Maltaran]

Abolished the poll tax?

[Heartofice]

Kept us out of the Euro

[mormont]

27 minutes ago, Maltaran said:

Abolished the poll tax?

 

15 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Kept us out of the Euro

Major was Chief Secretary to the Treasury when the poll tax was introduced. As for keeping us out of the Euro, yes, in a sense I suppose you could say Black Wednesday successfully did that...

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Unlike Piggy Boy Cameron, he had the balls to put the right wing Brexiteer loons in his party in their place.

Also, he ousted Thatcher.

[Spockydog]

2 hours ago, mormont said:

Say what you like about Blair

He was on course to be remembered as one of the finest Prime Ministers this country has ever seen. Then he let his wife infect him with the Catholicism, and went mad.

 

[Werthead]

5 hours ago, mormont said:

Maybe it's because I'm a few years older and remember the Major years better, but this is a very rose-tinted view. I remember that those years were chaos. Black Wednesday, BSE, constant cabinet infighting, the introduction of PFI, rail privatisation, attacks on 'benefit scroungers', sleaze, curbs on trade unions, Michael Howard insisting that 'prison works' and ending the right to silence, the list goes on.

Say what you like about Blair and Brown. They did bad things. But at least you can also point to some good things they did. Can anyone name a single thing the Major government did that was beneficial to ordinary voters?

It's not a rose-tinted view, it's an acknowledgement that Major was not a great PM, but he appears to be better in retrospect because what has come since has been an almost unending shitstorm, apart from that 1997-2001 period when Blair was relatively sane (intriguingly, a period when his domestic agenda was effectively still being decided by Major's economic policies).

Blair committed this country to an illegal war that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, upended the balance of power in the Middle East and created a shitstorm that led directly to the rise of ISIS. His hands are directly drenched in blood. Suggesting that he was a better Prime Minister than Major is simply erroneous: any positives he did in the domestic agenda were outweighed by him being a war criminal. I don't recall Major doing anything that resulted in that many casualties (I do remember him browbeating the shit out of Clinton about giving succor to IRA terrorists before the peace process was completed, though). Sure, Bush was going to do it anyway, but Blair did not have to tie us to the same millstone and destroy our international reputation in the process.

Even Blair's domestic agenda starts to look a bit more suspect when you realise how many progressive policies he gladly sacrificed so Murdoch would agree to back him, and how he refused to do things like make gay marriage legal (possibly due to his religious beliefs) which even the Tories brought in as a no-brainer almost immediately afterwards.

The abolition of the poll tax was a big deal (for all he helped bring it in, under Thatcher's direction), keeping us out of the Euro was another, but stamping down hard on the Eurosceptics in his party was a big positive and his government also enacted the policies that led to the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process in Northern Ireland, something Blair was happy to accept the credit for although he only rocked up towards the end of the process. Major's government also began the period of economic recovery in 1994 that was already well underway in 1997 when Blair came to power, and Blair/Brown merely continued the Major/Clarke spending plans until well into 1999.  The ERM was a major fiasco (no pun intended) but it was also partially derived from the "unpromising" economic circumstances he inherited from Thatcher in 1990 and was unable to head off; the fact that the UK economy improved significantly afterwards tends to be downplayed. Major was also a genuine (rather than oratorical) One-Nation Conservative and a strong believer in the NHS and public education, rejecting moves to nationalise both despite some opposition from the right wing of the party (forced into general retreat by its defeats over Europe).

He did make some major mistakes, the nationalisation of British Rail being an unending crapocalypse which continues to this very day, and in particular was not able to enforce party discipline and stop his MPs and ministers constantly fucking up in spectacular ways, and despite his belief in the NHS and education, he was unable to find ways of funding them that would attract more votes. Losing Murdoch's support when Murdoch should be a lifelong Tory supporter was also poor going, though to be fair nobody could anticipate the near Nazi-Soviet Pact level of ideological compromise Blair engaged in to make that deal (not even a lot of Blair's own allies).

[mormont]

55 minutes ago, Werthead said:

It's not a rose-tinted view, it's an acknowledgement that Major was not a great PM, but he appears to be better in retrospect

That's pretty much defining a rose-tinted view.

Again, as someone who was 18 when Major came to power and 25 when he left, I remember the era very well and be under no illusions: the Major government was chaotically run, and was ideologically anti-union, pro-privatisation and anti-civil liberties. Major himself was not a decent well meaning chap, but a hard-nosed politician who did what he felt necessary to remain in power (which is the major reason he fought against the Eurosceptics: they were seeking to unseat him, and the main reason the peace process stalled). His 'belief' in the NHS was no more sincere than Johnson's. And if blood on your hands is the metric, let me mention Srebrenica.

You can argue that Iraq was worse than Bosnia, of course, and I wouldn't disagree. But taken as a whole, there is not a shred of doubt that Major's government was worse than Blair's. It's pure revisionism to say otherwise.

I get where you're coming from. You have a visceral response to Blair that you don't have to Major, who nowadays has acquired that patina of 'decency' by being willing to point out the insanity in his current party. But don't let that colour the historical record. Those were awful years.

 

[Werthead]

18 minutes ago, mormont said:

And if blood on your hands is the metric, let me mention Srebrenica.

You can argue that Iraq was worse than Bosnia, of course, and I wouldn't disagree. But taken as a whole, there is not a shred of doubt that Major's government was worse than Blair's. It's pure revisionism to say otherwise.

I get where you're coming from. You have a visceral response to Blair that you don't have to Major, who nowadays has acquired that patina of 'decency' by being willing to point out the insanity in his current party. But don't let that colour the historical record. Those were awful years.

What does Srebrenica have to do with John Major? The local peacekeeping forces on the ground at the point of the massacre were Dutch. There were British forces in the region, but they were under United Nations command and had no authority to intervene (which is something you can take up with the UN). Bosnia was also an in-progress civil war which outside forces were hesitant and dubious about getting involved in and let bloody massacres take place: not just Britain, but the USA, France, Germany and everyone else as well. That's not remotely comparable to making up bullshit about WMDs ready to threaten Britain in 40 minutes (a carefully considered, premeditated and constructed lie) to justify an invasion that killed a million people. Comparing the two is asinine in the extreme.

You also seem to be taking the highly dubious position that "well, Tony Blair was a good Prime Minister with a good government apart from that time he partook in the biggest international war crime in the modern era and got shitloads of people killed to appease his ego," like it's something you can brush under the carpet because he gave the NHS a bit more money than the Tories.

[Spockydog]

42 minutes ago, Werthead said:

You also seem to be taking the highly dubious position that "well, Tony Blair was a good Prime Minister with a good government apart from that time he partook in the biggest international war crime in the modern era and got shitloads of people killed to appease his ego

Over which he says he now feels "sorrow, but no regret."

Fucking psychopath.

 

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

You also seem to be taking the highly dubious position that "well, Tony Blair was a good Prime Minister with a good government apart from that time he partook in the biggest international war crime in the modern era and got shitloads of people killed to appease his ego," like it's something you can brush under the carpet because he gave the NHS a bit more money than the Tories.

My position, as noted above, is that at least you can say of the Blair government that it did some good things. They don't wash out the bad, but neither does the bad wash out the good. Each exists.

Nor does the magnitude of Iraq make Major's shambolic, nasty government somehow better. We can take Blair out of this equation altogether, and simply go to the idea that Major was the last not-a-disaster PM we had. That's just not a characterisation that fits his record. If you want one of those, you need to keep going back.

However, debating the relative merits of governments two decades out of office is probably getting stale so I'll move along!

[BigFatCoward]

Small business minister admits a tory party involves (NOS) balloons and poppers, not cheese and wine. Gove in his element I'm sure. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

Petition re the new law to strip nationality

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/601583

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Petition re the new law to strip nationality

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/601583

Signed.

[Heartofice]

4 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Petition re the new law to strip nationality

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/601583

Not signed