Great, now I'm imagining a Labour Party led by Steve Bruce.
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Great, now I'm imagining a Labour Party led by Steve Bruce.
No, you're right. The Conservatives main strength is squashing any right wing parties that pop up. UKIP, The BNP, etc. All dead in the water. Meanwhile the left has The SNP, The Greens, The Welsh Version of the SNP, and (kind of) The Lib Dems, but that's clearly not enough as nonces like Boydy are more interested in splitting Labour into 2 parties, rather than just supporting Starmer and getting this shower of shite out.
To clarify, I meant the semantic side of the Steve Bruce argument, as in what defines 'good', or in this case 'credible'. But yeah, the left's whole approach is utterly tragic. The excellent Blair/Brown documentary on iPlayer shines a fascinating light on it all. If John Smith hadn't died I don't think we'd have had a Labour government in my lifetime.
That’s true actually. Every time I’ve heard someone from the SNP / Lib Dems / Labour asked about a possible left coalition they immediately reject it. Now these aren’t stupid people, so why can’t they see that they’re essentially shooting themselves in the foot?
In football terms the Tories are Bayern, steamrollering everyone 99% of the time and Labour are Dortmund, unwilling to admit they are actually a feeder club.
Although, I can't even bring myself to care any more tbh. Which is probably what Starmer and the dickheads in control of the labour party now wanted.
Hopefully within the next decade Giggles' worst nightmare comes true anyway.
Could be worse. Italy are about to swear in Mussolini's granddaughter.
He's abandoned every one of the pledges he made to the membership during his leadership campaign.
Starmer is the most astute leader they have had since TB and is very likely to win. He's a complete snake who would sell his principles down the river for 500 votes in a marginal seat, but that's part of the game.
And yes, it would be lovely if it wasn't a 'game', but this is democracy, so it is.
Anyone still dragging JC's name through the mud needs eradicating from the face of the planet.
Is that these?
https://www.clpd.org.uk/wp-content/u...10-Pledges.pdf
If so, I've got as far as number one, which is something he can't keep or break until he gets into power. :cab:
I would Michael Stone an 'elected chamber of regions and nations'.
What's your worst nightmare Giggles?
Labour getting in here will kill off all the nationalist movements for a while, particularly if they aren't a disaster and get a second term.
I, see.
Anyway, so back to these pledges, give they're mostly things you can't deliver on until power is won, what's the real reason you don't like him?
As far as I can see most of it comes from the fact that they 'feel' different to English Tories, particularly the rah rah Boris Johnson types. The SNP won 6 seats in 2010. It exploded after that because they don't like the Tories. I think it has relatively little to do with devolution or institutional issues. Sturgeon's job becomes so much harder with Labour in power here.
This is Scotland and Wales, NI obviously has a whole different set of issues, although I reckon some of that may feed in somewhere as well. Once you have Labour back in UK Gov, the vibe changes even if the policies might not.
No need to worry about them dissolving the unitary state when we can rely on a change of vibe saving the day.
It's vibes that drive that.
I heard on the radio the other day that the Catholics now outnumber the Protestants in Norn-iron, so them leaving must be all but nailed on now.
Couldn’t be further from it. People identifying as British and “Northern Irish” (ie: also British) far outweigh people that identify as Irish, by a large margin too.
That said it’ll keep moving in the other direction if loyalism can’t move itself out of the 1700’s at some stage.
I also read nominal Protestants are increasingly just putting atheist on the survey. The margin of error is probably Eastern Europeans as well.
All time low of £1 : $1.04 this morning.
:sick:
A lot of Catholics will be putting down 'Northern Irish' too, which means they're unlikely to vote to leave the UK if there was a referendum because they've taken the time to look at the mess that would be left once the UK wasn't propping them up with free money. This number will grow too as young Protestants tire of the neanderthals representing them in government up there and turn their back on the outright Britishness too.
The only way I could see any future that lies with us is some Federal type thing, but independence or a tie-in with an independent Scotland is probably more likely.
Isn't your economy doing pretty well? Admittedly I don't keep up to date with Irish politics, but I'm sure I saw you on a list of growth economies.
Given the choice, I would take being a member of up and coming Ireland over King Chaz's dying empire any day.
We have massive problems with housing successive governments Dublin-centric policies, and are heading for a big recession. It also cannot be underestimated how big a financial suck Northern Ireland is. We couldn't afford it as it is, but take away all the UK public service jobs and the place would be even more like the 1800's in about 6 months. Not to mention what another civil war brings to the table.
We might even get an emergency interest rate rise next week for the first time ever.
So it is the case then that this policy is at direct odds with what the BoE are doing?
Utter madness.
The tories are the fiscally responsible party though!
I guess if you get through enough of them you’ll eventually find some who aren’t.
We’d better have a group behind the scenes who’re capable of pulling the plug on this shit.
And what, just keep doing what we were doing for the rest of time? The course has been set. They need to hold their nerve, and, as somebody said somewhere, use it to bounce all the MPs into backing actual pro-growth structural reforms that they would otherwise oppose because of badgers or whatever.
Enjoy the IMF bailout for the sake of doing something different.
It's not ideal from the perspective of making people temporarily better off, but as a general correction it makes sense.
From someone who knows what's going on
"She is taking actions that will drive up inflation and reduce the market's confidence in Sterling and the Government's ability to pay off its debts. At the same time, the BoE are trying to bring inflation under control and also reduce the levels of domestic debt on their books. Add to that the colossal spend on Covid and our woeful productivity and we are really deep in the shit.
The BoE is supposedly independent and have to take whatever actions they see fit to enforce their mandate, which is primarily to protect the Pound and curb inflation. Their main lever will be large hikes in base rates, but that in turn makes the Government strategy of increasing debt even less sustainable. We are entering the kind of basket case cycle you see when an emerging market loses the confidence of the rest of the world. It could genuinely end up in an IMF intervention, it is that serious."
The Bank of England suddenly remembering what its mandate is after twenty years asleep is unfortunate timing admittedly.
"It would have been worse under Labour"
It would be comparable. The left-wing solution to this would be ramming up taxes and borrowing more, but directed at different voters, which would just have the same effects on 'confidence'. It's why there isn't any point freaking out about it.
If Corbyn had been overseeing a fall in the pound like this, the army would have couped him by now.
It's hard to grow when the fuel needed to produce the growth has gone up 22% since January due to currency depreciation alone. Not to mention actual dollar price increases too, which are even more.
Growth in this economy is basically impossible. It's insanity to even try. But then it's all insanity, isn't it? Our nations government is trying to borrow its way out of debt and our nations bank is trying to price people out of borrowing. It's basically a financial civil war.