UK Politics Omnishambles: Page 151 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One more in the Tolly

UK Politics Omnishambles

Mirth

Burnwinter ha! that's funny because I was going to say in my previous post is that your approach of trying to expose this kid as a person of ridicule is something that's already been tried. In 2016.

By all means, stand up to populism and challenge them - but do it on your terms and don't fall into their traps/soundbites. You think you're going into to call out their racist conspiracies but what you'll end up debating is Imperial Preference and the virtues of a war fought nearly 100 years ago. At that point, you've made your point but lost the debate.

Meanwhile, in 2025, Reform led councils are struggling to lead and improve their local communities because a) they have no experience b) their talent pool is inch thick and a mile wide. This would legitimately concern a big part of the local Reform voter base but so far no other party has been able craft it into an attack that sticks.

Burnwinter

Mirth By all means, stand up to populism and challenge them - but do it on your terms and don't fall into their traps/soundbites.

Yeah, good point, I shouldn't have been advocating moronically falling into their traps, mistake on my part. 🙄😆

Let's look at the claim anti-migrant rhetoric was ridiculed in 2016. Cameron the sitting PM went into the Brexit referendum off the back of an impossible 2015 election pledge to cut immigration. Ed Miliband's piss-poor 2015 campaign famously ran its "controls on immigration" coffee mugs. By 2016 UK electoral politics had spent years implicitly endorsing "legitimate concerns", not least by granting the referendum in the first place.

During the period mentioned I can't recall either Labour or Tories doing a sustained job arguing migration is not the main macroeconomic issue. Happy to be corrected. Corbyn at his best was woeful on Europe. Nightmare issue for someone with his anti-NATO politics. Johnson thrived on Brexit chauvinism, and Starmer has no solid convictions at all.

Mirth Meanwhile, in 2025, Reform led councils are struggling to lead and improve their local communities because a) they have no experience b) their talent pool is inch thick and a mile wide. This would legitimately concern a big part of the local Reform voter base but so far no other party has been able craft it into an attack that sticks.

If Reform UK is going to surge forward until someone calls it as fucking stupid as it is, maybe it's time to call it. But that call must include their hollow or false ideas as much as their competence.

Dom

The UK - which has no steel industry, boasts three floating rust buckets masquerading as carriers and gets its wallet inspected by the American military industrial complex - should conquer half the world again. Ok Tarquin.

We'd probably settle for a ceasefire against a Denmark or Saint Lucia within a week.

Burnwinter

Dom We'd probably settle for a ceasefire against a Denmark or Saint Lucia within a week.

Honestly, given Australia's supposedly building nuclear submarines slated to get delivered in 2055 or some nonsense, if any of those floating rust buckets made it round our way we'd be in trouble.

Mirth

Burnwinter Let's look at the claim anti-migrant rhetoric was ridiculed in 2016.

Not what I'm claiming. I'm not discussing migration specifically here at all.

My point is don't give these weirdos a chance to get name recognition through whatever outlandish claim they use to wedge through. Last week it was about ugly windmills, the week before was about flag waving over council buildings and next week it's about abortion. If you're proposing that the right response is tackling each of those arguments with nuance and deliberation then you've fallen into the trap already. Reform are unlikely to form a government when the time comes but they are a pressure valve for the public.

On migration specifically, it's a Europe wide issue - I don't think any government has taken it out of the public devate aside from Denmark. I've yet to see the approach you're advocating actually work.

Dom

Burnwinter

Don't worry, there's not a chance the HMS Queen Elizabeth could reach Australia by 2055.

Burnwinter

Dom It's gonna be bleakly funny if there's an actual war and the boondoggle caretakers that call themselves military down here just get their eyeballs dissolved by nano-drones or what have you, and probably while fighting on the wrong side of history.

JazzG

Fair play to her, why pay more tax then you need to? Getting some solid tax advice if you ask me 😉

However the problem is another socialist looking after their own pennies while preaching fairness and telling everyone else they need to pay their fair chair. Plenty of examples of Rayner going after others for seemingly not paying their fair share but different rules when it comes to them! Anyway her position is untenable and if I was a betting man I'd say this leak came from within, she was Starmer's biggest threat when he's eventually booted.

Talking of incompetent leaders Kemi Badenoch again showing again she cannot think on her feet, should have been hammering them on this today but too busy regurgitating her pre-rehearsed lines. God we have some utterly useless politicians in this country!

Burnwinter

JazzG However the problem is another socialist looking after their own pennies while preaching fairness and telling everyone else they need to pay their fair chair.

What's the argument here? That it's best if no one in a nation of millions listens to any prosocial advice from politicians, because in quite a few cases the person giving it is an antisocial hypocrite?

Or that it's fine when Tories engage in blatant impropriety (take for example Johnson's Cabinet at the onset of the pandemic), because at least they're all honest about being self-serving parasites with no less perverse reason to be in public life?

awooga83

JazzG I mean it's a very bad look I don't know how valid the bad advice aspect is, if honest then it's pretty unfortunate but the question would be at which point did she clock a problem and what did she actually do to rectify it. I think it's hard to see her being able to remain in role. Ironically coming out like this even belatedly is better then most of the previous incumbents in terms of being accountable. You only have to look at people like trump and Farage to see documented liars but that never seems to make their position untenable?

As for where it's come from the right wing press have been gunning for her for a long time I recall an article from when she was in opposition patronising how could she take PMQs against Johnson an alumni of the Oxford debating society as if that guy wasn't thick as anything.

It's going to be hard to resist staying in post but this is such a difficult thing for the opponents of Trump and Farage etc they lie and never own it and it has no impact so it seems that lying is your right wing is fine.

I presume Jazz your outrage is on all instances of lies by politicians and equally towards Farage and Trump on these types of matters is people in it for themselves ?

JazzG

Burnwinter The argument is hypocritical politicians who have gone on record to accuse opposition politicians of dodging tax because they are taking away from the tax payer happy to do the same when it comes to them. Same politician who prides herself on being a socialist quite happy to take free gifts from millionaire donors and not the first time her tax affairs haven't been clear cut. Remember some controversy about her selling a council house a while back

awooga83 I wouldn't say I'm outraged, I don't see anything wrong with dodging tax legally. The problem is Rayner is the Labour's main attack dog when it comes to fairness and calling out opposition politicians when their tax affairs aren't clean cut yet when it comes to her probably didn't mind the £40k in her pocket. You can try to deflect and make it about right wing press or Farage, she clearly has tried to evade tax or taken some very dodgy advice and got caught. Her own solicitors today have distanced themselves from her tax advice today as well. She upholds others to the highest standards but has more flexibility when it comes to her own affairs. That is why she will need to resign and why the media are going in hard. When this story first broke supposedly her allies were going after journalists saying she had done nothing and now her story is unravelling.

Big Willie Champ The football regulator will be here soon, they will I'm sure be looking to put an end to that...

awooga83 Someone just got arrested for making a joke about trans people, 5 armed guard showed up at the airport. This country is not a police state but the direction of travel is towards that rather than free speech.

Kel Varnsen

Things are not looking very well here at all. The Labour government after hammering us with taxes last year are gonna be back again soon with more. Some on this forum tried to argue the merits of the tax rises last year but quite clear has completely tanked the economy. They have simply no idea how to get out of this mess.

They also have no way of cutting spending, despite a historic majority they couldn't get get through £5b worth of cuts earlier in the year, this is why the markets are getting nervous. Spending going up, sticky inflation and no growth at all. The chancellor is on borrowed time as is the PM. Just as bad as the previous lot, probably worse even which is quite the achievement.

Mirth

awooga83 I don't know how valid the bad advice aspect is,

I doubt it. Stamp duty is the simplest tax to work out.

awooga83

Mirth yeah which would be my test, if she asked someone and they gave bad advice then I think fair enough, if they're was more uncertainty in what she did or explained then she will be in more trouble in my view.

Kel Varnsen

UK is finished. No economic growth, ethnic unrest, quickly becoming a police state, both labor and tory unravelling, and a massive housing crisis.

awooga83

Kel Varnsen meanwhile away from Musk's universe in the real world Farage that champion of British freedoms spent the opening day of parliament over in the US talking to Congress rather then participating in the British democracy he values so much. Similar to when he raised how seriously he took women's safety grandstanding about immigrants only to not show up at the debates in parliament on women's safety. Or when his councillors in Nottingham refused to speak to a local paper because they didn't like the reporting.

banduan

Kel Varnsen they're all aspects of the same thing

Big Willie Champ

But we got the Best League in the World™

Kel Varnsen

awooga83

Not sure what Farage has to do with anything. The long and steady decline of UK is just a simple fact:

Burnwinter

Kel Varnsen Wouldn't matter half as much if a large and increasing share of that GDP hadn't been going to capital versus labour over the past fifty years or so.

Addressing that politically might even have the beneficial side effect of fewer parliamentarian property grifters.

It's okay though: at least we can all agree migrants are to blame.

jones

Kel Varnsen that table says nothing, Germany was much better off in 1990 and before than it is today because most of that GDP is concentrated in fewer hands.

awooga83

Kel Varnsen because you parroted Farage's false narrative around UK being a police state and the UK being finished whether you were aware of it you seem to have been subject to his disinformation so that's why I referenced Farage.

Mirth

That table looks misleading. No one living in the UK would agree that there was a 5% improvement in productivity between 1990 to 1996 and equally that there was a 7% decline between 1996 and 2005. Is it because GDP is rebased in USD?

Generally speaking, the period from 1990-2007 was a bubble but the UK was relatively proposerous during this time It's the post 2007 crash where divergence really began to show.

More to the point, that table uses the US economy as the gold standard - which, in terms of economic muscle, it is. But the 'productivity' numbers are juiced by a narrow sector of the economy that's commanded outsized gains due to their global reach but not a proportionate improvement in living standards - just check the average life expectancy, inequality, time off, infant mortality etc between the US and the UK. In other words, if it actually worked you wouldn't see - waves generally in the direction of the US

jones

Mirth Is it because GDP is rebased in USD?

I'd say it's because GDP is a fairly useless metric in assessing something as layered as how well a country is doing. Not like this is me having an extremist opinion again btw it's an orthodox view among econometricians.

Kel Varnsen

Mirth That table looks misleading. No one living in the UK would agree that there was a 5% improvement in productivity between 1990 to 1996 and equally that there was a 7% decline between 1996 and 2005. Is it because GDP is rebased in USD?

No it applies the US as a reference point, and it is PPP-adjusted using ICP's framework.
But I could reference any of a ton of indexes (electricity production or consumption per year, central government debt to gdp ratio, economic inequality - both regional and income brackets, life expectancy etc) all showing the same trend. Some in absolute numbers, some relative to the rest of western europe. The UK is fucked.

Mirth

jones I agree - I'm pretty sure the chap who developed the initial calculation of GDP said something to that effect. It's directionally fine to refer to amongst a collection of metrics but it's not definitive.

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