General Election July 2024
Discussion
Abbott said:
So if Sunak has visited the King and put in place the dissolution of government. What happens if the s
t hits the fan in Ukraine and some political decisions need to be implemented to resolve the issue?
Government hasn't be dissolved, parliament has. Government still has to function day to day in the meantime.t hits the fan in Ukraine and some political decisions need to be implemented to resolve the issue?There was some confusion a out whether parliament will be dissolved tomorrow (23rd) or whether there'll be time to force Rishi to resign and delay an election further...
MC Bodge said:
JNW1 said:
MC Bodge said:
S600BSB said:
cliffords said:
As a life long Tory voter , I agree all these points and it is illogical and actually imoral to vote Tory this time . I do have a massive worry now though, with all these clear failures of the current government, why have Labour not set out a well thought out clear plan to make some of this better . They have been in opposition as long as the government have been in power. Why can they just not set out a good plan to deal with some of the mess. Thet just say it's bad , we can all agree, but seem to have no plan to make it better.
Imoral to vote Tory? Bit harsh. What would Labour need to do, allow the UK to be annexed by Russia?
ChocolateFrog said:
Killboy said:
I wonder how people's predictions from this morning are going to shape up? 
Best news in like forever!
6 weeks left of Sunak and chums. Best news in like forever!
It's great news.
Starmer and Sunak are pretty similar - its not like the Thatcher / Kinnock days when leaders & parties were poles apart.
Not much will change when Labour get in, might be some initial red meat thrown to core Labour supporters such as VAT on private school fees, then a few years with plenty of talk but no major action.
I hope they prove me wrong, but I won't hold my breath.
Mr Penguin said:
Not Rayner (it is always someone with experience of a great office of state or LOTO), but I don't think we'll see a full term PM for another couple of decades because there is far too much fragmentation and social media turning every event into a minefield.
Very true. Starmer will get a few months grace and then the pitchforks will start to come out - I fully expect the attack to come from within his own party.
WestyCarl said:
Blue62 said:
Hugo Stiglitz said:
Why have they called a snap election? They are going to get slaughtered.
Utter madness. Labour must be laughing.
Strong rumours that a VONC was on the cards, with key policies like small boats and Rwanda likely to fail over the summer. I think his hand was forced, otherwise he’d have gone in May if he wanted an early election. Utter madness. Labour must be laughing.
- Better weather for pensioners to come out and vote
- NHS will be in better shape than the traditional winter crisis
- They are confident the 1st Rwanda flight will leave before July
- Interest rate cut next month due to low inflation
- People generally feel more positive in the summer
I guess ultimately it was the best, worst option.
Mr Penguin said:
Tankrizzo said:
I have a hunch, and I don't really know why, that Starmer won't see out the full term for some reason. And we will have Prime Minister Rayner.
Not Rayner (it is always someone with experience of a great office of state or LOTO), but I don't think we'll see a full term PM for another couple of decades because there is far too much fragmentation and social media turning every event into a minefield.RichB said:
Good grief, I would leave the country if that detestable woman got any further... and that is the worry with Labour, momentum is always lurking in the dark waiting to depose Starmer and take over where Corbyn failed.
There is, of course, the possibility that extremist nutters can take over either of our two main parties whilst they are in power and cause absolute mayhem.This *may* happen the next Labour government.
It *has* happened with the current Conservative government.
272BHP said:
Mr Penguin said:
Not Rayner (it is always someone with experience of a great office of state or LOTO), but I don't think we'll see a full term PM for another couple of decades because there is far too much fragmentation and social media turning every event into a minefield.
Very true. Starmer will get a few months grace and then the pitchforks will start to come out - I fully expect the attack to come from within his own party.
Don't think it will be too long after Labour gain power they'll find their voice again and attempt to oust SKS & replace with their preferred choice.
OzzyR1 said:
ChocolateFrog said:
Killboy said:
I wonder how people's predictions from this morning are going to shape up?
Best news in like forever!
6 weeks left of Sunak and chums. Best news in like forever!
It's great news.
Starmer and Sunak are pretty similar - its not like the Thatcher / Kinnock days when leaders & parties were poles apart.
Not much will change when Labour get in, might be some initial red meat thrown to core Labour supporters such as VAT on private school fees, then a few years with plenty of talk but no major action.
I hope they prove me wrong, but I won't hold my breath.
s off to some cushy non-exec director roles away from public life. It'll be a night of immense personal satisfaction despite the fact that Starmer is broadly a facsimile of the same.
Edited by ChocolateFrog on Wednesday 22 May 23:25
Baroque attacks said:
Bloody overshadowing Vennels 
This^^^^ and the disgraceful NHS blood scandal - the General Election call will see that all the 'important' news now disappears from the front pages for the next month, probably two months. It'll work too, as people's memories are woefully short.Anyone who thinks any new incoming government will change anything hasn't lived long enough. Mind you, whoever it is, couldn't be any worse than the current shower of crap...
then again!
I've lived through all of 'em since Atlee - here's something to bear this in mind: when I was a kid I always recall my dad saying 'Macmillan was right.' Both my parents were staunch Labour supporters. I'd asked my dad what he meant? He told me that 'Supermac (as Macmillan was known back then) had said that the British people had never had it so good.' Dad agreed with the assessment, despite being a Labour voter.
I later found out what 'Supermac' had actually said:
"Go around the country, go to the industrial towns, go to the farms and you will see a state of prosperity such as we have never had in my lifetime - nor indeed in the history of this country.
Indeed let us be frank about it – most of our people have never had it so good."
This was in 1957 and he was correct, but by 1962 he'd received a new nickname courtesy of the public: 'Mac the Knife' after he sacked 7 members of his cabinet in what the press called 'Night of the Long Knives'. He was finally hounded out of office with the Profumo scandal.
You don't have to think too hard to realise why Tony Blair got his nickname 'Bliar' do you?
I've voted both blue and red, never green, def never yellow. Just once for Bliar - a big error on my part, but we all make mistakes.
This time I was hoping to vote 'None of the Above' but the petition to have this on ballot papers got only a measly 6,000+ people to want it added. So it's obvious to me what to do this time, for the first time ever in my life I will 'spoil my ballot paper'.
Why? Because they get counted.
Vote red or blue, you'll just get more of the same - 'yellow' is in charge round here, god help us all! Don't say you weren't told.
Oh, just to add to the Macmillan story.
For many years I still thought of him as one of our best PMs... until I discovered something little known.
I spent a good number of yrs in academia in the late 70s and 80s, and while working was quietly planning my future in book publishing. As such I was able to visit and meet others at some of the established Uni's and colleges across Oxford. Talking to one senior lecturer one day she told me a tale about something I'd never heard in spite of being an Oxfordshire resident. She suggested I chat with this 'would be author' who was looking for someone to publish his proposed little book on ‘government’, both local and national. The author in question was a Reader (that’s a tad higher than a Senior Lecturer for the uninitiated) at Oxford Poly – he’d been unsuccessful in trying to find anyone to publish his work (book publishing to the uninitiated at this point in time still seemed to many as some kind of 'black art'). I'd been quietly publishing books on a completely different subject matter, but hey ho, publicity sells most things! As intimated I was still working full time (I needed to know if I eventually decided to go it alone whether I could survive, so anything I undertook away from the comfort zone of the topics I knew about, would require something to make potential reviewers ‘sit up’ or at least to attract attention, in order to sell said product).
His tale told a long-running story about a proposed 'road' to be built across the very famous Christ Church Meadow in Oxford. It had actually been dubbed 'the most controversial of all planning disputes in the UK.'
I asked him to tell me why I should take it on? He explained the gist of the story, and then something that made me sit up.
A little-known fact about the involvement of five, (that’s 5) of the then Tory Cabinet, including no less than the Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden, Macmillan, and other high-ups. The common denominator was that all of them were Christ Church men. He showed me a 1956 Cabinet meeting agenda that had been leaked but even up to this point in time in the 1980s was not well-known, if at all.
That Tory Cabinet meeting 'Order of Priority’ read:
Item 1 - Christ Church Meadow Road.
Item 2 - Seizure of Suez Canal (if time permits).
It seemed almost laughable. I immediately told him: ‘I’ll publish it!’
His little book not only got him widespread publicity, interviews on radio etc, the local Oxford Times (then a large broadsheet newspaper in the late 80s) gave the book, him and his story a full double page spread!
He was pleased as punch, as was I.
Priorities of Governments the PM and his/her Ministers, or more importantly those out of sight but pulling all the strings, eh?
Does it go on today? You can bet your bottom dollar that 'Yes Minister' was not really far off the truth.
OzzyR1 said:
272BHP said:
Mr Penguin said:
Not Rayner (it is always someone with experience of a great office of state or LOTO), but I don't think we'll see a full term PM for another couple of decades because there is far too much fragmentation and social media turning every event into a minefield.
Very true. Starmer will get a few months grace and then the pitchforks will start to come out - I fully expect the attack to come from within his own party.
Don't think it will be too long after Labour gain power they'll find their voice again and attempt to oust SKS & replace with their preferred choice.
If the loony part of the left get any meaningful hold on the party then they'll get 1 term like they usually do.
After what we've had this term I'm just struggling to be particularly scared by the prospect.
Tankrizzo said:
I have a hunch, and I don't really know why, that Starmer won't see out the full term for some reason. And we will have Prime Minister Rayner.
I think this is quite probable.Regardless of where one sits on the political spectrum, the lack of breadth and depth in intellect and ability of the two main parties is concerning. Both the Major and Blair governments had a lot of bright people with gravitas and ability (even if I sometimes staunchly opposed them). Heck, even the Brown and Cameron years involved significant depth and breadth of talent.
That has looked lean on both sides since the end of the Coallition years. May couldn't lead a weak government; Boris couldn't lead a strong one and Truss' main achievement was to make millions of home owners poorer for decades by messing up interest rates. Sunak's main achievements are "Not being Liz Truss" and "Avoiding the Conservative Party Imploding, At Least For Now".
Ed Milliband and Jeremy Corbyn were not much better. John McDonnell waving Mao's little red book? Ed Balls writing his own name on Twitter? Diane Abbott unable to grasp basic mathematics? Yes, Scottish politics didn't help their cause but the previous version of Labour didn't generate much optimism.
This version of Labour... Not awful but not inspiring. They feel like a Blair Years tribute act, and not a very good one. New Labour was a slick operation, and if that could be likened to a slickly produced pop record (such as a D:Reem one, perhaps?
) then the current crew feel like they're metaphorically doing a drunken karaoke interpretation of a D:Reem track: all the bombast and none of the skill or talent.SKS is no Blair. Reeves is no Brown. Once you get beyond Rayner, there are no heavyweights like Jack Straw, Margaret Beckett, Mo Mowlam, David Blunkett, even John Prescott... You may not have liked them but they were a flipping talented crew (and I'd say the same of the early Major years).
They're not awful though, which is why I'll likely vote Labour this time. But we need a truly talented government to help us out of our current hole, and I'm not convinced this Labour government will deliver that. They're billed as the heroes we have, but they're not the heroes we want.
The Conservatives seem doomed to veer off to the right. The Labour Party are quite centrist (perhaps even right of Blair now?) but without imagination to get the country on track again. I think we'll end up like the 1970s for a while until another reforming character with enough clout takes the stage... but (as someone who wasn't a fan of Thatcher) it remains to be seen whether that's a good or a bad thing.
If there are shifts in political parties, we might yet see a Macron-like figure emerge, perhaps?
Rivenink said:
If we're still asking on 3rd July, I will worry.
It should be patently obvious why an Opposition Party has not laid out detailed plans of what they intend to do before the election campaign starts. Anything that is recieved well by the public is simply implemented by the Party in Government, which then takes all the credit for it.
Now is the time for Starmer and Labour to tell us their plan.
Get ready to have a lie down in a dark room.It should be patently obvious why an Opposition Party has not laid out detailed plans of what they intend to do before the election campaign starts. Anything that is recieved well by the public is simply implemented by the Party in Government, which then takes all the credit for it.
Now is the time for Starmer and Labour to tell us their plan.
They have no plan. They have flip-flopped left, right and centre and on the bigger ticket items they seem to be suggesting they will do the same as the current govt, only we should trust them more.
If it weren't for the muppets in the US, I'd say we have the s
ttiest choice of any Western democracy in living memory!RichB said:
RacerMike said:
paulw123 said:
chrispmartha said:
Id just cut it short if I were him, he looks like a right pillock
The pillock is the person playing loud music at an official statement that's part of the democratic process. Show some basic respect. k-faced foghorn of ignorance.MC Bodge said:
Even. Worse.
What would Labour need to do, allow the UK to be annexed by Russia?
I'm looking at our deficit figures and wondering where that might end up.What would Labour need to do, allow the UK to be annexed by Russia?
Though if they just do the same as the current govt, maybe that will be fine
(And yes I am aware of what Rishi presided over as Chancellor. He's a f
k nugget too).ChocolateFrog said:
Not disputing most of that. I just can't wait for them to get their marching orders. Can't wait to see their glum slapped arse faces all over our TVs. Can't wait for them to ps off to some cushing non-exec director roles away from public life.
It'll be a night of immense personal satisfaction despite the fact that Starmer is broadly a facsimile of the same.
Appreciate what you say, a pretty hollow victory though.s off to some cushing non-exec director roles away from public life. It'll be a night of immense personal satisfaction despite the fact that Starmer is broadly a facsimile of the same.
I'm disillusioned with both main parties and UK politics in general tbh.
Can already hear Labour in two years time blaming lack of progress on their manifesto policies "due to the financial situation left by the Tories". Probably for the rest of their term too.
Blaming the previous government is what the Tories have been doing for the last 10+ years & expect Labour will do exactly the same.
Excellent news. I am looking forward to seeing Labour's manifesto of what they are going to differently, when they are going to do it, and seeing how they are planning to fund it.
I have been told on these forums that it's absolutely not the case that Labour's only policy is "we're not the Tories" (although it does seem that that is enough for many people) and the only reason that their manifesto had not been published was because there was no point as an election had not been called and the Tories would only steal their ideas if they published them.
So now that the excuses are out of the way, let's see what they have got and how it will improve things. They have had plenty of time to prepare it, so it will be ready to go, right? I'm looking forward to the bright future that Keir's government will bring.
I have been told on these forums that it's absolutely not the case that Labour's only policy is "we're not the Tories" (although it does seem that that is enough for many people) and the only reason that their manifesto had not been published was because there was no point as an election had not been called and the Tories would only steal their ideas if they published them.
So now that the excuses are out of the way, let's see what they have got and how it will improve things. They have had plenty of time to prepare it, so it will be ready to go, right? I'm looking forward to the bright future that Keir's government will bring.
Murph7355 said:
Get ready to have a lie down in a dark room.
They have no plan. They have flip-flopped left, right and centre and on the bigger ticket items they seem to be suggesting they will do the same as the current govt, only we should trust them more.
If it weren't for the muppets in the US, I'd say we have the sttiest choice of any Western democracy in living memory!
Do you really think that Sunak vs Starmer vs Davey is worse than Boris vs Corbyn vs Swinson? They have no plan. They have flip-flopped left, right and centre and on the bigger ticket items they seem to be suggesting they will do the same as the current govt, only we should trust them more.
If it weren't for the muppets in the US, I'd say we have the s
ttiest choice of any Western democracy in living memory!OzzyR1 said:
ChocolateFrog said:
Not disputing most of that. I just can't wait for them to get their marching orders. Can't wait to see their glum slapped arse faces all over our TVs. Can't wait for them to ps off to some cushing non-exec director roles away from public life.
It'll be a night of immense personal satisfaction despite the fact that Starmer is broadly a facsimile of the same.
Appreciate what you say, a pretty hollow victory though.s off to some cushing non-exec director roles away from public life. It'll be a night of immense personal satisfaction despite the fact that Starmer is broadly a facsimile of the same.
I'm disillusioned with both main parties and UK politics in general tbh.
Can already hear Labour in two years time blaming lack of progress on their manifesto policies "due to the financial situation left by the Tories". Probably for the rest of their term too.
Blaming the previous government is what the Tories have been doing for the last 10+ years & expect Labour will do exactly the same.
For the first time it's really hit home how the Tories are a party for themselves and the rich. The rest of us mean nothing to them.
I note the MP who lost his hands and feet to sepsis with a hint of scorn.
Only because we begged for our 8 week old to be seen because we suspected sepsis, our concerns were largely dismissed. It took 3 days and 2 separate admissions before they started on the intravenous antibiotics and that delay no doubt led to the kidney damage he now has. I don't blame the doctors, I blame those MPs who made their jobs so much more difficult and stressful.
I hate them with a passion. It makes me feel quite sick that I voted for them.
f
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