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5 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Thanks, yes I’m seeing lots of justification around what words mean when you truly analyse them. To me, that feels like the third option, slippery, rather than a fourth option. 

Being clumsy and being slippery are two different things though. I think if you'd said the latter, I'd have no issue with it. But it's not clumsy.

16 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

So a question to @blandy and @cyrusr would your opinion be that he is lying to people like me, to people that think Thatcher was a good thing, or that barrister is clumsy with his words? Or some other 4th option you can see that I can’t?

I think it's the fourth option. He's not explicitly saying that she was good or bad, he's talking in neutral terms. So he's not lying to you (here, anyway), and he's not lying to Sir Bufton-Tufton reading The Telegraph over his morning brandy. 

He's not being clumsy with his words, he's being pretty deliberate with them. He's framing Thatcher in the way that audience sees her, without really offering any opinion. Reassurance that he's Definitely Not Jeremy Corbyn, while not really saying anything at all. 

Whether it's good or bad politics (I've read convincing things from people saying both), I guess we wait and see what happens next year. As Blandy says, I don't think it'll really move the dial much either way. 

56 minutes ago, Jon said:

He's just following the Blair mantra. 

He's following the Cameron mantra. Pick the words that you need to say to make the voters that you need to switch, switch.

For Cameron it was saying a couple of nice things about Blair in The Guardian, for Starmer it's saying a couple of nice things about Thatcher in The Telegraph. 

3 hours ago, bickster said:

4. No one takes Andrea Loathesome seriously

Jenkins. Loathsome is back in the Government as some minor bag carrier in the Department of Health. 

So isn't sending anti-Sunak letters anywhere. 

24 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

This is from the Billy Elliot musical, and I'm surprised the Tory press didn't make more of it and have a go at EJ. 

I can only assume they had no interest in a load of woke, lefty rubbish about a boy wanting to be a dancer and are thus completely unaware of its existence. 

Mostly fun for hearing none-more-establisment Sir Reg describing Michael Heseltine as a Representative for Wellingborough.

On 30/11/2023 at 22:57, foreveryoung said:

Esther McVey on question time?? She's just bonkers, sounds like she don't even know her own job role.

 

She doesn't have a job role. It's a party management thing, not a governance thing. She's literally Minister For Defending Sunak From A Position On The Right Of The Party. Or as Stephen Bush puts it:

It doesn't sound like he's keen on a ceasefire.

4 hours ago, Seat68 said:

Her debut was Tim McGraw, a song that namechecks the country singer of the same name, country hits that followed, Love Story, Teardrops on my Guitar, through to Begin Again and Mean. She has had the odd song during her pop career that have gone to country radio but in recent years her activities have been well away from country music.

I'd say that Our Song is the quintessential, so-country-it's-virtually-pastiche Taylor Swift county song. 

11 minutes ago, Genie said:

It has been confirmed his stance was “it’s nothing to worry about, I’ll have it injected into me to prove how mild it is” so to then fake that it nearly killed him doesn’t quite add up.

If he’d faked getting it then someone close to him like Cummings, Hancock, Vallance, Whitty, NHS staff would have confirmed the lie by now.

It's also a bit flat-earthy, in that there doesn't seem to be any good reason why they'd lie about it. There was nothing in it for him personally for people to think he was ill when he wasn't, and it wouldn't have done anything to help his Government (who, lest we forget, were extremely popular at that point and not really in any need an imaginary boost through a fake illness) 

Also I find it very hard to believe that in his cosplaying Churchill / moment of crisis he'd have willingly handed over control of the country to Dominic Raab for no good reason when he was getting to be on telly every night being In Charge.

Helpful as ever Tone, thanks for the input.

1 hour ago, omariqy said:

Yeah I’m sure it was a ‘make sure you look happy or we will come find you again’

Lots of them will also be leaving friends and relatives behind who are still being held hostage. 

Not sure there's any good sense in giving them a deserved volley of abuse and then sending them back to your husband or son who they still have locked up.

What a nice, uncontroversial statement. Shame he's turned replies off so that his constituents can't tell him what a nice statement he's making.

Liam Conlon selected as Labour candidate for Beckenham & Penge.

12 minutes ago, Genie said:

It’s clever how Johnson, Truss and Sunak have all been completely useless but in unique ways. Quite impressive.

Not sure what the two before them have done to deserve being left off your list.

1 minute ago, Genie said:

Agree to send them back, but then use Hermes to courier them…

Zeus would definitely approve. 

Apropos of nothing, when we went to the British museum my wife was expecting really big versions of this kind of marble and was quite disappointed when it just turned out to be a load of pictures carved onto stones. 

1 minute ago, Stevo985 said:

"Time for a bank chief who lies and tells us what we want to hear!"

To be fair, he only got the job in the first place because they struggled to find another candidate who was happy to lie and tell them what they wanted to hear on Brexit. 

10 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

Rishi sunak is absolutely pathetic. Causing a diplomatic row with greece just because he was unhappy that the greek PM made comments about the elgin marbles.

Grow up rishi. Clown

It's just bizzare. It's been the position of every Greek government for about 200 years, it can hardly have come as a big surprise. 

What next, a hissy-fit with Spain because they'd still quite like Gibraltar back?

1 hour ago, desensitized43 said:

I do wonder if there’s some truth to the theory that people generally get more conservative leaning as they get older.

I'm sure that there are some, but I think on the whole it's a red herring. 

What people are, is interested in maintaining a status quo that benefits them - something which historically happens as you get older. 

Two things that this particular Tory party has done, (a) made it much harder for people to join the group that benefits from the status quo (jobs, property ownership, Brexit etc) and (b) gone to war with the institutions that this group likes and identifies with (BBC, NHS, National Trust etc.)

They've burned both ends of their electoral candle and they're down to the last bit of wick.

40 minutes ago, desensitized43 said:

It's unlikely the Tories, Like Labour are going to voluntarily change the system that's kept one or the other in power for a century.

We all know what's going to happen with Reform etc. There'll be a backroom deal done on deadline day to withdraw their throbby candidates again in exchange for vague promises about how throbby the Tories are willing to be if they get re-elected.

 

Don't think there will this time. Reform have their blueprint, and the names are even the same. In 1993 Canada's Progressive Conservative Party party went from 156 seats down to just 2, largely because of pressure from the right from Preston Manning's (basically the proto-Farage) Reform Party, who went from 1 seat to 52. 

With the mainstream Tory party more or less wiped out, Reform then "merged" back with the remains of the PCP to create a new Conservative Party of Canada, with the Reform policies / people but the prestige and infrastructure of the older party. Last time I checked, they were on track to win the next Canadian election. 

It's not 2019, Reform don't want to help the Tories keep Labour out - they now want the Tories to be wiped out so that they can take their place. 

25 minutes ago, Genie said:

The final nail in the Rwanda policy would be if Rwanda pull out of the deal calling the UK government a bunch of words removed. 
Can I have that for Christmas please? 

Think all the nails have already been hammered in. There's now no more time to get any additional legislation on it through before the next election.  

19 minutes ago, bickster said:

Was that because he’d already had a few goes and missed  

It also didn’t stop the official Labour account tweeting it either

Risks becoming a bit Streisandy as well. 

Tories pushing the extending version of the video, saying how everyone should ackchooally watch the extended version where their leader is instructed how to hammer away like a three year old getting a new Early Learning Centre toy isn't *that* much better than the one everyone was laughing at.

The overall tableau, in any context, is a net negative for the Tories.