The Chairman Mao resembling, Monarchy hating, threat to Britain, Labour Party thread

[LondonLax]

47 minutes ago, bickster said:

Simple to solve. Labour creates enough new Lords to make sure they abolish themselves

That is what the Queensland Government did to abolish its upper house in the 1920s

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensland_Legislative_Council

[Rds1983]

The idea of an independent legislative arm of government like what the HoL is supposed to be isn't a bad idea as the HoC is run by whips. 

The problem is that the HoL isn't really independent and is a cushy, job for life you can pass on to your kids. 

Id prefer it to be reformed somehow (not entirely sure how) to put better controls on the executive arm (the judicial arm is being neutered) to stop that running rampant, but if it can't be and we're stuck with the current form then scrap it. 

[Davkaus]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/vpns-online-safety-bill-labour-champion-b2239810.html

Quote

Labour has urged the government to consider a crackdown on Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) amid concerns that children and teenagers could use them to circumvent age restrictions.

An amendment to the government's Online Safety Bill proposed by MP Sarah Champion on Monday would require telecoms regulator Ofcom to examine whether VPNs are undermining the enforcement of internet regulations.

A VPN is an encrypted connection to the internet that masks a person's location and identity from the websites they are accessing, by routing their data via another computer.

They are commonly used to bypass regional locks on content, by people working remotely who need to access their employer's networks, and by those concerned about their privacy.

Usual think of the children bollocks, This lot won't miss any opportunity to get ever closer to that dream surveillance state

 

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/vpns-online-safety-bill-labour-champion-b2239810.html

Usual think of the children bollocks, This lot won't miss any opportunity to get ever closer to that dream surveillance state

 

Yep, definitely, they really do reach into their inner Stalin at times

[Demitri_C]

Quote

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin with Tony Blair during his visit to 10 Downing Street in April 2000

By Sanchia Berg

BBC News

Tony Blair argued Vladimir Putin should be given a seat at the world's "top table" despite misgivings from officials, newly released files reveal.

Papers released by the National Archives show in early 2001, the then-prime minister believed it was important to encourage the new Russian president to adopt Western values.

But officials questioned if the ex-KGB spy could be trusted.

Files also show Mr Putin offered to build a gas pipeline to the the UK.

Swindon move for Millennium Dome proposed

In early 2001, Mr Blair explained his approach to the Russian President telling new American Vice-President Dick Cheney that it would encourage him to "reach for" Western attitudes and the West's economic model.

He said Mr Putin was a Russian patriot, sensitive to Russia's "loss of respect" in the world, and had a similar "mindset" to French President Charles de Gaulle, though the two were not directly comparable.

Vladimir Putin with Tony Blair during his visit to 10 Downing Street in April 2000

The Russian President was the first world leader to be given a pair of silver No 10 cufflinks, as a birthday gift in October 2001.

Behind the scenes, Downing Street officials were more sceptical. A few months earlier, a paper on "Putin's Progress" was prepared for John Sawers, then defence adviser to the prime minister and later head of MI6.

The anonymous writer pointed out that the Russian President's "constructive" comments to Mr Blair were sometimes "belied" by Russian actions.

The long list of examples included the Kursk tragedy, when 118 Russian sailors had drowned. Mr Putin had said he was grateful for the offers of British help. Yet Russian officials had obstructed assistance. They had also repeated unfounded rumours that a collision with a British submarine caused the disaster.

When it came to Nato, Mr Putin had told Mr Blair that he would not try to slow down the process of the bloc's enlargement. At the same time his Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev had told his Nato counterparts it would a be "major political error" and Russia would "take appropriate steps".

Mr Putin spoke warmly of the "closeness" between the UK and Russia. He had even offered to to build a pipeline across the Baltic Sea to supply gas to the UK.

IMAGE SOURCE,PA MEDIA

Image caption,

Mr Blair wanted to build links quickly with the newly-elected President Bush, files show

He told Mr Blair it would "ensure stable supplies for decades to come". The proposal was raised at a meeting between the two leaders in Moscow in 2002, but that particular pipeline was never built.

Meanwhile, the Russian intelligence presence remained at Cold War levels and "they continue to try to post active and hostile officers to work against British interests worldwide".

'Clinton wanted revenge'

By 2001 the Blair administration had a new US President to deal with too.

The files show it reacted quickly once George Bush's victory was confirmed by the Supreme Court in December 2000. Mr Blair had been close to President Bill Clinton, and wanted to build links quickly with his successor.

Mr Blair was the first foreign leader to call to congratulate the president-elect, in an eight minute phone conversation. The British prime minister asked if they could be on first name terms. The president agreed, but continued to call the prime minister "sir".

Before the president's inauguration, defence adviser John Sawers and Mr Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell went to Washington to meet officials and likely members of President Bush's team.

Mr Powell wrote they were welcomed: "They all said they wanted to keep the relationship special. It will not however be as cosy as with the Clinton administration. Unlike Clinton they will not do political favours for us."

Meanwhile, Mr Clinton himself wanted to maintain his friendship with the prime minister, and to attack his successor.

He "wanted revenge" wrote Mr Powell at the end of March 2001.

"We don't really want to be associated with Clinton," he wrote to the prime minister. But the former president's adviser Sidney Blumenthal had "hinted" that Mr Clinton was disappointed Mr Blair had not called saying "you do not want to look like you are walking away from your former friend".

In a scrawled note Blair added: "Why don't I call him soon?"

Other files include then-cabinet minister Mo Mowlam's support for the legalisation of cannabis, and the Blair government's frustration with what one adviser called the "juvenile media".

 

Interesting

 

Can you image if this happened now? 

[Mark Albrighton]

Truss’ plotting on the graph is quite magnificent.

 

[Genie]

Interesting results from the latest yougov poll. I get them regularly via email and do them when I can.

To summarise the results over the past couple of years.

Tories: An absolute shit show where a very large proportion of people want them out. They are pretty much destroying everything they touch and cannot be trusted.

Labour: Better than the Tories but is that because the Tories are so disastrously untrusted? 

Only 9% said it’s clear what SKS’s policies were. Only 25% said that a Labour government gives them a lot of hope for the future. Only 6% say they have a lot of confidence they can prevent small boats crossing the channel. 50% oppose the plan to use more private companies to cut NHS wait times. Only 30% say Labour will make huge improvements to the NHS overall. 

They should walk the next GE on the basis that the Tories are drunk and asleep at the wheel… but there also doesn’t seem to be a strong confidence they’ll do a brilliant job.

 

[markavfc40]

23 minutes ago, Genie said:

Interesting results from the latest yougov poll. I get them regularly via email and do them when I can.

To summarise the results over the past couple of years.

Tories: An absolute shit show where a very large proportion of people want them out. They are pretty much destroying everything they touch and cannot be trusted.

Labour: Better than the Tories but is that because the Tories are so disastrously untrusted? 

Only 9% said it’s clear what SKS’s policies were. Only 25% said that a Labour government gives them a lot of hope for the future. Only 6% say they have a lot of confidence they can prevent small boats crossing the channel. 50% oppose the plan to use more private companies to cut NHS wait times. Only 30% say Labour will make huge improvements to the NHS overall. 

They should walk the next GE on the basis that the Tories are drunk and asleep at the wheel… but there also doesn’t seem to be a strong confidence they’ll do a brilliant job.

 

I think the trouble is they are trying not to scare the horses and are letting the Tories destroy themselves, and unfortunately the country at the same time, and they'll get in on the fact that people no longer want the Tories and not that they are desperate for the hope a Labour government brings.

I find it all a little sad and frustrating to be honest. They should be offering up real hope and it shouldn't take a lot given all the despair. They are going to inherit a mess but they didn't inherit a great hand in 1997 but steam rollered that election and there was a feeling of real hope and optimism. Whatever happens between now and the next election, and by whatever margin they win it as they surely will win it, I just don't see them doing so off the back of a wave of people really believing in them and believing in a much better future.

[bickster]

1 minute ago, Genie said:

Interesting results from the latest yougov poll. I get them regularly via email and do them when I can.

To summarise the results over the past couple of years.

Tories: An absolute shit show where a very large proportion of people want them out. They are pretty much destroying everything they touch and cannot be trusted.

Labour: Better than the Tories but is that because the Tories are so disastrously untrusted? 

Only 9% said it’s clear what SKS’s policies were. Only 25% said that a Labour government gives them a lot of hope for the future. Only 6% say they have a lot of confidence they can prevent small boats crossing the channel. 50% oppose the plan to use more private companies to cut NHS wait times. Only 30% say Labour will make huge improvements to the NHS overall. 

They should walk the next GE on the basis that the Tories are drunk and asleep at the wheel… but there also doesn’t seem to be a strong confidence they’ll do a brilliant job.

 

Thats down to Labour when in power to prove the doubters wrong

Also worth thinking about, if the polls are currently correct, the Tory Party will be so short of MPs they won't really be an effective opposition and a good number of their current "big Guns" will have disappeared from view. What will remain of the Tory Party will be a lot of the safe seat for life nonentities that the Tory Party is full to the brim with and a few names. The well known names casualty list will be huge

Go to https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html 

Quote

User-defined Prediction

and put in your desired figures for each party, then select, display seats that have changed hands and just go down the list of MPs that will be predicted to lose, some absolutely huge names in there from the front and back benches

I get my poll figures from Mark Packs poll tracker -> https://www.markpack.org.uk/155623/voting-intention-opinion-poll-scorecard/

Quote

Welcome to my summary of the latest national voting intention poll from each pollster currently operating in Britain.

I used the figures from the latest poll (Techne) which has the following prediction 25/46/9/5/8 (Con/Lab/Lib/Grn/Ref) and put those figures in the above. You get the result in seats of 115/441/18/1/0 plus the Regional/Indies A Labour majority of 230 with almost 4 times the seats of the Tories

Just a selection box of the casualties when you put those figures in:

Andrew Bowie

Graham Brady

Boris Johnson

Kwasi Kwarteng

Theresa Coffey

Penny Mordaunt

Mad Nad

JRM

Andrew Bridgen

Andrew Mitchell

Anne-Marie Trevelyan

George Eustice

IDS

Alister Jack

CHris Grayling

Ben Bradley

Liam Fox

Shaun Bailey

Grant Shapps

Esther McVey

 

And that really is just a selection I picked out on a quick glance 

The scale of the Tory defeat may well be absolutely unprecedented

[Genie]

I agree with you both @bickster and @markavfc40. 
The Tories will get battered, and Labour will do it without needing to make any bold statements which could divide the voters.

Theres good and bad in that. 

[OutByEaster?]

It's a good job this Tory party is as bad as it is, because Starmer is incredibly difficult to support.

In saying that, I'm not saying I'd like a more palatable version of the Tory party, but I also don't want a more palatable version of the Tory party.

 

[icouldtelltheworld]

3 hours ago, Genie said:

Interesting results from the latest yougov poll. I get them regularly via email and do them when I can.

To summarise the results over the past couple of years.

Tories: An absolute shit show where a very large proportion of people want them out. They are pretty much destroying everything they touch and cannot be trusted.

Labour: Better than the Tories but is that because the Tories are so disastrously untrusted? 

Only 9% said it’s clear what SKS’s policies were. Only 25% said that a Labour government gives them a lot of hope for the future. Only 6% say they have a lot of confidence they can prevent small boats crossing the channel. 50% oppose the plan to use more private companies to cut NHS wait times. Only 30% say Labour will make huge improvements to the NHS overall. 

They should walk the next GE on the basis that the Tories are drunk and asleep at the wheel… but there also doesn’t seem to be a strong confidence they’ll do a brilliant job.

 

I take part in these daily polls as well and find them interesting, but I'm not sure that we can deduce all that much from them tbh. There's a fairly clear left wing bias amongst those of us who take part - I've just done the one about Sunak's speech and around 60% of respondents have said its wrong to make the stopping of small boat Channel crossings a political priority. That simply doesn't reflect the majority view within the country at large

[bickster]

16 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

It's a good job this Tory party is as bad as it is, because Starmer is incredibly difficult to support.

In saying that, I'm not saying I'd like a more palatable version of the Tory party, but I also don't want a more palatable version of the Tory party.

Labour is just attempting to become the same Labour Party that got elected and changed the country for the better between 1997-2010. I used to criticise that Labour Party a lot but hindsight tells you how much better everyone was under that Labour Govt

Having said all that, I still won't be voting Labour because on my two personal key issues, Brexit and Electoral Reform we really don't align. And as I'm of the opinion that those two issues need sorting out as a priority to prevent the country slipping back into this extreme Tory f***wittery ever again I find myself being unable to vote for them. I'm also of the opinion that we can't regain a correctly growing economy until we have some sort of EU Economic Alignment, which obviously in my book would be completely rejoining, so I don't see how Starmer will do it without that.

Sorry, I'm off on a tangent there but Labour isn't trying to be Tory, it's trying to be succesful Labour. The Labour = Tory lite line is just wrong.

[bickster]

11 minutes ago, icouldtelltheworld said:

I take part in these daily polls as well and find them interesting, but I'm not sure that we can deduce all that much from them tbh. There's a fairly clear left wing bias amongst those of us who take part - I've just done the one about Sunak's speech and around 60% of respondents have said its wrong to make the stopping of small boat Channel crossings a political priority. That simply doesn't reflect the majority view within the country at large

I suspect you are seeing raw data and not adjusted modelled data. The data will get weighted to the demographics of those talking part and previous polling data/real world results to produce a much better picture

[icouldtelltheworld]

5 minutes ago, bickster said:

I suspect you are seeing raw data and not adjusted modelled data. The data will get weighted to the demographics of those talking part and previous polling data/real world results to produce a much better picture

Yeah that's exactly it - they make the point that none of it is weighted etc.

I might be wrong but I'm fairly certain that the daily email polls are separate from their actual polling tbh

[bickster]

8 minutes ago, icouldtelltheworld said:

Yeah that's exactly it - they make the point that none of it is weighted etc.

I might be wrong but I'm fairly certain that the daily email polls are separate from their actual polling tbh

They are but that data will feed into the main polls they conduct for their clients and act as part of the modelling. They'll extrapolate trends from that data for example and that will allow them to spot flaws in the data sampling they do for the bigger polls

[Genie]

19 minutes ago, bickster said:

Having said all that, I still won't be voting Labour because on my two personal key issues, Brexit and Electoral Reform we really don't align

This is the problem I’m wrestling with. Obviously I won’t be voting Conservative, but the BIG, BIG issue for me is repairing the damage caused by Brexit. I understand how divisive it is, and that it can’t be fixed overnight… but the little noises that Starmer has said in the subject have been along the lines of doing almost nothing about it. 

Even Liz Truss was doing the ground work to get back working with Europe.

[bickster]

21 minutes ago, Genie said:

but the little noises that Starmer has said in the subject have been along the lines of doing almost nothing about it. 

Considering his very voiciferous opposition to Brexit at the time, he really doesn't appear to be reading the country very well on the issue. A very considerable shift of opinion has appeared, much bigger than that caused by demographic changes alone and he just doesn't seem to have grasped that

[LondonLax]

3 hours ago, bickster said:

Considering his very voiciferous opposition to Brexit at the time, he really doesn't appear to be reading the country very well on the issue. A very considerable shift of opinion has appeared, much bigger than that caused by demographic changes alone and he just doesn't seem to have grasped that

He’s on track for a landslide. He knows what he’s doing. 

[bickster]

6 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

He’s on track for a landslide. He knows what he’s doing. 

He's on track for a landslide, right now. My concern is that he won't have an electoral mandate come winning to do what is needed to be done. That in itself is a problem as if he does decide to change tack he won't be able to rely on the Salisbury Convention and the House of Lords will block the necesary legislation.

The way I see it, is that it is much better to be upfront about such issues, especially with such a commanding poll lead. Trying to introduce them mid-term or as a second term manifesto commitment is a hell of a gamble.

I also think he's on for a landslide whether he knows what he's doing or not