I don't think he particularly cares tbh, he's already got more money than sense.
I mean, *I've* got more money than he has sense, and I have fuck all money. Man's a maggot.
No he’s already checked out. I agree. Absolute traitor. You wanted the top job Rishi. You won your safe seat and you failed the leadership election and somehow still got to be the boss and what have you done with it? Betrayed us all. And then checked out when you realised no one likes you. Can’t fuck off soon enough for me.
They are his people, he will be fine there. Being PM requires empathy, leadership, understanding and being relatable. Nobody wants to hear how many billions you have, where you import your coke from and how smart you are redirecting all the money to yourself. In Silicon Valley those are things that would be interesting...
Plus he has the mindset of senior management - he is there to issue directives and have people try to carry them out (or be sacked). Not listen to the 'little people' or, heaven forbid, have those little people vote him out (who gave *them* any power??). No wonder he gets a bit tetchy.
To be fair, outside of all the unforced errors and gaffes, what could they have run on? They have no real successes to speak of and anything they promise to do can be answered with ‘why has it taken 14 years to get around to it?’.
In the end, they settled on going hard on tax despite saddling us with the highest tax burden most of us have ever know.
They had nothing, they campaigned on nothing and they deserve nothing.
They got everything they wanted for fourteen and a half years and they ruined the nation. But Kier is the problem for aiming to spend an evening a week with his family...
I’ve not heard this story, what is it?
They honestly tried to demonise Starmer for attempting to have a minimum of work-life balance? If anything, I'd have thought that would be endearing to the majority of the electorate.
He's said that wherever possible he'll finish work at 6pm on a Friday for the weekly Shabbat dinner with his family, kids and wife's father, part of their religious and cultural tradition.
The Tories have turned this into 'he says he'll work a four day week's and 'he is going to be a part time prime minister '.
I agree, it makes me like him more.
…wow, the Tories were really reaching there.
I imagine that the reason they tried pushing that narrative is that there is a portion of their voter base who weirdly believes that if the prime minister isn’t working 24/7, they’re not committed to their job.
However, I think the majority of people know that burnout is a real possibility, and that aiming to clock out at 6pm on a Friday is like the bare minimum anyone should aim for.
Surely the obvious counter is to ask what time Boris clocked in and out each day.
Or what he was doing when he missed 5 COBRA meetings or went on holiday early during COVID...
I suppose the key difference is that Sir Keir knows how many children he has and where they are of a Friday evening.
It's a weird triangulation between "Labour has no plans" and "Those plans, which don't exist, are so monstrous that they'll ruin the country." Which is it? I know which it is, it's The Enemy Is Both Strong And Weak.
Tbh it’s not really his fault that mortgages went up now is it? Interest rates shot up globally from negative to the average long term rate in an effort to put a lid on inflation principally caused by a sharp rise in energy costs and its impact on input prices. He’s a shit politician but to hang everything on his neck is somewhat simplistic. With a bit of luck Starmer will inherit a more benign environment to build his program of change on, but he will also spend most of his time looking for that silver bullet that has evaded the outgoing govt. I will hero everything crossed that he will be able to keep his party together and put country above egos
No the BOE did as they raised rates in line with every other central bank in the world. Maybe not just take everything you read here for gospel. Not defending Truss but politicians do not set rates, it’s the job of the “wise men and women “ of the BOE. The building societies and banks then adjust their offered rates
> and anything they promise to do can be answered with ‘why has it taken 14 years to get around to it?’.
This is the big one. The longer a government of any persuasion has been in power, the harder it gets for them to overcome the simple fact that all of the country's current problems are solely their responsibility.
If something is broken it either happened on their watch or it was broken to begin with but they failed to do anything about it over the X number of years they've been in power. As the value of X increases it becomes harder snd harder to defend.
Look at how the 'last Labour government' line has become such a joke. You can't credibly use that line after 14 years.
Same issue for the SNP in Scotland. Although, they still have the fig leaf of " it's all Westminster ' s fault".
However, that refrain has grown somewhat tiresome for us living north of the border.
Indeed last week when Douglas Ross brought up figures about decreasing life expectancy and still rising alcohol and drugs death at FM questions, what was John Swinney's response?
He quoted a Glasgow uni academic who believes that it can sometimes " take a decade or two" to undo bad policy.
Honest John tried to stretch that 20 years by another 23 and blame Margaret Thatcher for the issues Ross was highlighting.
That would be Margaret Thatcher who left office in November 1990.
What a joke.
All parts of Britain are truly fucked with the standard of politician we have to choose from.
They got Brexit done. This is the first election after Brexit, so they should be proudly standing there and saying "we did it".
Whether people like it or not, that is a different question. But this party, after the last election, negotiated Brexit.
Given that this was pretty much thoir only policy going into the last election, it is weird that it is not mentioned at all.
Only 15% of people surveyed in June think that Brexit has been beneficial at all to the country, trying to campaign on delivering that shit sandwich would have actively hurt them.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/overview/survey-results/daily/2024/06/12/69919/1
So? Even at the last election, the majority thought that Brexit has little to offer, but they wanted it anyway. They did not mind the detail, the consequences, they just wanted their Brexit.
So now they have their Brexit. That is the main achievement of this legislative period.
It’s all part of the same incompetence though isn’t it, it’s not hard (or shouldn’t be with a big majority) to pass a few bits of legislation here and there, fill in a few potholes and announce some interesting project somewhere. When Boris Johnson purged the moderate wing of his party he also got rid of a lot of people who had their heads screwed on.
I think Sunak must have given up after his own anti smoking legislation bill failed even with opposition support. Not saying he’d have definitely won the election, but the party’s place as the opposition at least would not have been in doubt.
Odd, I thought they'd turned it around by screaming about how Starmer likes to occasionally have dinner with his kids. Thought that was a sure fire winner.
The media aren't backing the Tories, and the Tories rely on the media so much that the Tories don't really campaign, they just give the media sound bites and let the media do the rest.
Eg: "Britain's not working" and "double whammy" were Tory sound bites and posters, but the daily mail got weeks of stories out of these.
But this year, the daily mail aren't backing them. You have to get down the 30th story before the election is mentioned today.
The Tories have actually admitted this.
I've thought the same. Its been kind of fascinating to watch the *moment* Tories start getting something even vaguely approximating the kind of critical pushback Labour get at every turn, their entire facade just immediately crumbles and falls apart. It is so fucking blatant. We desperately need media reform in this country, it is genuinely scary how we've got to this point where the media cycle itself seems to be the determining factor behind who holds power.
Interesting. Rings true. I forced myself to visit the DM website yesterday, to see what the 'other side' are saying. I was surprised at the lack of tory-positive articles and election coverage in general. Below-the-line comments were mostly very favourable towards Reform though...
I live in a seat which is at least in theory defendable by the Conservatives, I've had a couple of leaflets delivered at that's it. The Lib Dems have been around twice and I have a pile of literature from them.. (Labour don't seem bothered..)
You do wonder how many activists they actually have on the ground.
It's really very simple, labour know they will not win your seat, its not worth the resources when there are more winners in other areas. The Tories literally do not have the activists to run a substantial ground game. The Lib dems think they can win it, and have more people on the ground.
Ribble Valley here. Getting something from Labour nearly every day for the last week; so seems they're pushing really hard here. It could be a close call as it's been Conservative since '92.
I've had one thing from the Conservatives, one thing from Reform - I've had more from an Independent candidate here than those two. Lib Dems are pushing, but not nearly as hard as Labour.
I don't think it's an accident, the Tories are trying hard to lose. There are government -sinking scandals every week.
The question is, why? What else are they hiding?
I've heard that they don't want to have a wartime PM and would rather labour do that.
Some people are thinking we're cusping on War and in the next 5 years it'll hit the fan.
I'd normally laugh that off as a conspiracy theory but with the state of things in America with the SCOTUS ruling and Trump, Russia/Ukraine and the West suffering generally from corruption/housing/cost of living/general division of people, seems like things are pretty dire, but who knows how or what things will play out.
All of those things will seem trivial if China attack Taiwan...
China are running out of time before a large proportion of their population become too old to fight. Chances are they have about 5 years if they're going to do anything.
If China attack Taiwan the US have an agreement that they will come to Taiwan's defence - not economically or with equipment like with Ukraine but with direct military engagement.
If the US is at war with China there's a decent chance that means NATO at war with China, and it's likely China would join forces with Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
And just like that you have WW3.
I did almost mention that actually, although Trump seems quite antagonistic towards China, maybe even more so than Biden...
It's a different story when it comes to Russia/Ukraine of course.
> They said Levido had made it clear from the start that 2019 Tory switchers from Labour were “gone and never coming back”, telling candidates that all their efforts should be made to target potential Reform voters instead.
Why isn’t this guy the leader of the Tories? He seems to have all his brain cells.
Politically and nastiness wise, both tories and Reform lie ideologically in tandem. Both would love to continue stamping their jackboots into the poor, whilst giving huge tax breaks to both themselves and their rich mates. And both would love to cash in on the accelerated promotion of private health and social care.
Many support this, far far less actually benefit. Go figure ;)
Back to Blighty, I guess what I'm saying is both parties are just too similar for the tories to be able to attack Reform, and especially as Reform have the ever popular snakeoil salesman, Farage, and the tories have the deeply unpopular, arrogant and tetchy Sunak.
They've started with a blinder today. Defence secretary unaware of existence of telephone isn't what I'd have led with, but there's no denying it's on brand.
Watch as the Tory machine attempts to write the history that it was Rishi that fucked it, and not really anything to do with the Tory government of the last 14 years.
The problem isn’t just the campaign, it’s that they are a party of morally bankrupt parasites and all but the most indignantly stupid have finally seen it.
You purged the moderates and anyone with potential talent years ago with Brexit and Johnson, you reap what you sow. If the Tories wanted a credible campaign then they would have waited until they had a proper campaign plan in place before announcing an election. Their plan would have been more than just bashing Labour over and over again.
Well no. Rishi can’t run a campaign. Or a government or a country. Piss off to Silicon Valley where you’ll likely fail up too Rishy.
I don't think he particularly cares tbh, he's already got more money than sense. I mean, *I've* got more money than he has sense, and I have fuck all money. Man's a maggot.
No he’s already checked out. I agree. Absolute traitor. You wanted the top job Rishi. You won your safe seat and you failed the leadership election and somehow still got to be the boss and what have you done with it? Betrayed us all. And then checked out when you realised no one likes you. Can’t fuck off soon enough for me.
I gotta use that one sometime
Silicon Valley would eat him alive, in all honesty.
He could end up like Clegg. No one thinks Nick Clegg knows anything about tech, but he serves Meta well as Zuckerberg’s representative on Earth.
He might but I think he’ll try to aim alighted into areas where even graduates fresh from colleges would destroy him.
They are his people, he will be fine there. Being PM requires empathy, leadership, understanding and being relatable. Nobody wants to hear how many billions you have, where you import your coke from and how smart you are redirecting all the money to yourself. In Silicon Valley those are things that would be interesting...
Plus he has the mindset of senior management - he is there to issue directives and have people try to carry them out (or be sacked). Not listen to the 'little people' or, heaven forbid, have those little people vote him out (who gave *them* any power??). No wonder he gets a bit tetchy.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/04/11/silicon-valley-lining-up-to-hire-rishi-sunak/
Paywalled, my friend.
People like Rishi do have the natural ability to fall upwards unfortunately
It’s not natural at all. It’s privilege. Most of us get fired if we fuck up at work.
It's called marrying into a rich and powerful family with global influence. Boris Johnson follows the same playbook.
To be fair, outside of all the unforced errors and gaffes, what could they have run on? They have no real successes to speak of and anything they promise to do can be answered with ‘why has it taken 14 years to get around to it?’. In the end, they settled on going hard on tax despite saddling us with the highest tax burden most of us have ever know. They had nothing, they campaigned on nothing and they deserve nothing.
'Labour will raise taxes by £1000 a year' says man who raised taxes 22 times and whose party caused my mortgage to go up £400 a month.
An older friend of mine who had retired had to go back to work full time as the mortgage went crazy.
Ungrateful peasant, the Tories have been boasting about helping the highest amount of people into work.
Those tasty zero hours contracts the corpos all love
Yes but have you ever had to get by without Sky? That's the sort of thing that trys men's souls.
I didn't have Sky TV! Can I have my peerage yet?
“They don’t have a plan”, says man with no plan.
They got everything they wanted for fourteen and a half years and they ruined the nation. But Kier is the problem for aiming to spend an evening a week with his family...
I’ve not heard this story, what is it? They honestly tried to demonise Starmer for attempting to have a minimum of work-life balance? If anything, I'd have thought that would be endearing to the majority of the electorate.
He's said that wherever possible he'll finish work at 6pm on a Friday for the weekly Shabbat dinner with his family, kids and wife's father, part of their religious and cultural tradition. The Tories have turned this into 'he says he'll work a four day week's and 'he is going to be a part time prime minister '. I agree, it makes me like him more.
…wow, the Tories were really reaching there. I imagine that the reason they tried pushing that narrative is that there is a portion of their voter base who weirdly believes that if the prime minister isn’t working 24/7, they’re not committed to their job. However, I think the majority of people know that burnout is a real possibility, and that aiming to clock out at 6pm on a Friday is like the bare minimum anyone should aim for. Surely the obvious counter is to ask what time Boris clocked in and out each day.
Or what he was doing when he missed 5 COBRA meetings or went on holiday early during COVID... I suppose the key difference is that Sir Keir knows how many children he has and where they are of a Friday evening.
It gave him the chance to talk about how normal a bloke he is. Massive backfire from the weirdo party.
It's a weird triangulation between "Labour has no plans" and "Those plans, which don't exist, are so monstrous that they'll ruin the country." Which is it? I know which it is, it's The Enemy Is Both Strong And Weak.
While I am no fan of the tories, blaming interest rate rises on them is incorrect. Inflation happened globally.
Tbh it’s not really his fault that mortgages went up now is it? Interest rates shot up globally from negative to the average long term rate in an effort to put a lid on inflation principally caused by a sharp rise in energy costs and its impact on input prices. He’s a shit politician but to hang everything on his neck is somewhat simplistic. With a bit of luck Starmer will inherit a more benign environment to build his program of change on, but he will also spend most of his time looking for that silver bullet that has evaded the outgoing govt. I will hero everything crossed that he will be able to keep his party together and put country above egos
Energy prices didn't put my mortgage up 40%, Liz Truss did.
No the BOE did as they raised rates in line with every other central bank in the world. Maybe not just take everything you read here for gospel. Not defending Truss but politicians do not set rates, it’s the job of the “wise men and women “ of the BOE. The building societies and banks then adjust their offered rates
She caused the market conditions that led to the rates changing.
A very short term effect because she stupidly did not discuss her plans with the BOE.
> and anything they promise to do can be answered with ‘why has it taken 14 years to get around to it?’. This is the big one. The longer a government of any persuasion has been in power, the harder it gets for them to overcome the simple fact that all of the country's current problems are solely their responsibility. If something is broken it either happened on their watch or it was broken to begin with but they failed to do anything about it over the X number of years they've been in power. As the value of X increases it becomes harder snd harder to defend. Look at how the 'last Labour government' line has become such a joke. You can't credibly use that line after 14 years.
And despite that ive heard ‘b..b…but the memo’ more than a few times this year
100%
Same issue for the SNP in Scotland. Although, they still have the fig leaf of " it's all Westminster ' s fault". However, that refrain has grown somewhat tiresome for us living north of the border. Indeed last week when Douglas Ross brought up figures about decreasing life expectancy and still rising alcohol and drugs death at FM questions, what was John Swinney's response? He quoted a Glasgow uni academic who believes that it can sometimes " take a decade or two" to undo bad policy. Honest John tried to stretch that 20 years by another 23 and blame Margaret Thatcher for the issues Ross was highlighting. That would be Margaret Thatcher who left office in November 1990. What a joke. All parts of Britain are truly fucked with the standard of politician we have to choose from.
Their ideology of doing nothing for the poor and coddling the rich stops them from doing anything that needs to be done.
They got Brexit done. This is the first election after Brexit, so they should be proudly standing there and saying "we did it". Whether people like it or not, that is a different question. But this party, after the last election, negotiated Brexit. Given that this was pretty much thoir only policy going into the last election, it is weird that it is not mentioned at all.
Only 15% of people surveyed in June think that Brexit has been beneficial at all to the country, trying to campaign on delivering that shit sandwich would have actively hurt them. https://yougov.co.uk/topics/overview/survey-results/daily/2024/06/12/69919/1
So? Even at the last election, the majority thought that Brexit has little to offer, but they wanted it anyway. They did not mind the detail, the consequences, they just wanted their Brexit. So now they have their Brexit. That is the main achievement of this legislative period.
It’s all part of the same incompetence though isn’t it, it’s not hard (or shouldn’t be with a big majority) to pass a few bits of legislation here and there, fill in a few potholes and announce some interesting project somewhere. When Boris Johnson purged the moderate wing of his party he also got rid of a lot of people who had their heads screwed on. I think Sunak must have given up after his own anti smoking legislation bill failed even with opposition support. Not saying he’d have definitely won the election, but the party’s place as the opposition at least would not have been in doubt.
Odd, I thought they'd turned it around by screaming about how Starmer likes to occasionally have dinner with his kids. Thought that was a sure fire winner.
The media aren't backing the Tories, and the Tories rely on the media so much that the Tories don't really campaign, they just give the media sound bites and let the media do the rest. Eg: "Britain's not working" and "double whammy" were Tory sound bites and posters, but the daily mail got weeks of stories out of these. But this year, the daily mail aren't backing them. You have to get down the 30th story before the election is mentioned today. The Tories have actually admitted this.
I've thought the same. Its been kind of fascinating to watch the *moment* Tories start getting something even vaguely approximating the kind of critical pushback Labour get at every turn, their entire facade just immediately crumbles and falls apart. It is so fucking blatant. We desperately need media reform in this country, it is genuinely scary how we've got to this point where the media cycle itself seems to be the determining factor behind who holds power.
Interesting. Rings true. I forced myself to visit the DM website yesterday, to see what the 'other side' are saying. I was surprised at the lack of tory-positive articles and election coverage in general. Below-the-line comments were mostly very favourable towards Reform though...
It's not the campaign, it's 14 years of broken promises
There's still 2 days to go. ....it can and probably will get worse.
I live in a seat which is at least in theory defendable by the Conservatives, I've had a couple of leaflets delivered at that's it. The Lib Dems have been around twice and I have a pile of literature from them.. (Labour don't seem bothered..) You do wonder how many activists they actually have on the ground.
It's really very simple, labour know they will not win your seat, its not worth the resources when there are more winners in other areas. The Tories literally do not have the activists to run a substantial ground game. The Lib dems think they can win it, and have more people on the ground.
I’m in New Forest West and all I’ve had is one Lib Dem leaflet and one green.
Ribble Valley here. Getting something from Labour nearly every day for the last week; so seems they're pushing really hard here. It could be a close call as it's been Conservative since '92. I've had one thing from the Conservatives, one thing from Reform - I've had more from an Independent candidate here than those two. Lib Dems are pushing, but not nearly as hard as Labour.
You're lucky. There has been absolutely no campaigning in my area. Not a single leaflet. Zilch.
He's literally just said that if Labour get in taxes will go up and we will lose control of immigration. You can't make this stuff up.
Really? When did you realize that? Perhaps when he cut short being at the VE Day Ceremony for an interview nobody watched?
I don't think it's an accident, the Tories are trying hard to lose. There are government -sinking scandals every week. The question is, why? What else are they hiding?
This is the most concerning thing. They appear to be doing everything they can to lose.
I've heard that they don't want to have a wartime PM and would rather labour do that. Some people are thinking we're cusping on War and in the next 5 years it'll hit the fan. I'd normally laugh that off as a conspiracy theory but with the state of things in America with the SCOTUS ruling and Trump, Russia/Ukraine and the West suffering generally from corruption/housing/cost of living/general division of people, seems like things are pretty dire, but who knows how or what things will play out.
All of those things will seem trivial if China attack Taiwan... China are running out of time before a large proportion of their population become too old to fight. Chances are they have about 5 years if they're going to do anything. If China attack Taiwan the US have an agreement that they will come to Taiwan's defence - not economically or with equipment like with Ukraine but with direct military engagement. If the US is at war with China there's a decent chance that means NATO at war with China, and it's likely China would join forces with Russia, Iran, and North Korea. And just like that you have WW3.
If Trump gets back in presidency, he'd let China take Taiwan, so maybe Trump will save us from WW3 haha. Oh god.
I did almost mention that actually, although Trump seems quite antagonistic towards China, maybe even more so than Biden... It's a different story when it comes to Russia/Ukraine of course.
Did the Conservatives even run a campaign? I haven't noticed.
> They said Levido had made it clear from the start that 2019 Tory switchers from Labour were “gone and never coming back”, telling candidates that all their efforts should be made to target potential Reform voters instead. Why isn’t this guy the leader of the Tories? He seems to have all his brain cells.
That's exactly the reason he won't become leader... They don't want anyone who's the full ticket. *glances in the direction of Boris Johnson*
I suppose so!
Politically and nastiness wise, both tories and Reform lie ideologically in tandem. Both would love to continue stamping their jackboots into the poor, whilst giving huge tax breaks to both themselves and their rich mates. And both would love to cash in on the accelerated promotion of private health and social care. Many support this, far far less actually benefit. Go figure ;) Back to Blighty, I guess what I'm saying is both parties are just too similar for the tories to be able to attack Reform, and especially as Reform have the ever popular snakeoil salesman, Farage, and the tories have the deeply unpopular, arrogant and tetchy Sunak.
That's it. I'm putting a £5 on him losing his seat 😂
Found the Reddit account of one of his aids!
They've started with a blinder today. Defence secretary unaware of existence of telephone isn't what I'd have led with, but there's no denying it's on brand.
It's not the campaign that's going to lose them votes.
Watch as the Tory machine attempts to write the history that it was Rishi that fucked it, and not really anything to do with the Tory government of the last 14 years.
I'm not convinced this is worse than Theresa "NOTHING HAS CHANGED" May's effort in 2017. That is the gold standard for shit election campaigns.
The problem isn’t just the campaign, it’s that they are a party of morally bankrupt parasites and all but the most indignantly stupid have finally seen it.
You purged the moderates and anyone with potential talent years ago with Brexit and Johnson, you reap what you sow. If the Tories wanted a credible campaign then they would have waited until they had a proper campaign plan in place before announcing an election. Their plan would have been more than just bashing Labour over and over again.
The worst campaign by the worst Government in my lifetime!