And as long as the Labour party don’t understand it, the Conservatives will stay in power.
Being called scum by inference is a GREAT way to make me vote Labour. I was almost tempted too, shame.
Would you care to explain it to me? I’m genuinely interested.
Again, all I see is the Labour Party being held to standards that the Conservative Party fail to meet on a daily basis.
What you find deeply unpalatable in Labour, you turn a blind eye to in the Conservatives, like millions of people. It feels like hypnosis on a national scale.
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I’m wondering how much of it is due to a status quo bias. Better the devil you know and that sort of thing.
Was just listening to Tobias Elwood on the radio and he was being quite critical of the government and Whitehall over several issues. Quite refreshing from a Conservative MP.
Labour has a big problem right now though. If Starmer is seen as being unable to run his own party he’s not going to be trusted to run the country.
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My current concerns with Labour are that Corbynites are still to close to the strings of power and that there isn’t a well articulated and disseminated manifesto. Whether this is a fault of the their media engine or an actual lack of said manifesto is unclear to me.
I do not forensically go into party publications but instead rely on easily accessible/digestible media entrées. One could argue that this ignorance is my fault, and they would be right, but my type if ignorance is likely representative of the vast majority of voters.
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But Johnson couldn’t run a tea party, let alone a country. He’s just fumbled his way from one crisis to another. Why does he get a pass?
I doubt @Klopptimist would actually ever vote Labour. Everything I’ve read from them from their fixation on supposed welfare cheats, to simplistic ideas about how free markets work suggest that they are more than adequately represented by the Conservatives.
In general, I think most people do not make voting decisions based on rational reasoning, but rather on gut feelings. The evidence from psychological experiments thus far seem to suggest that these gut feelings can be very much influenced by media, to the point where even if we know objectively that something is a lie, once it gets repeated often enough, we subconsciously take it to be true. The same goes for subjective things, like opinions. I would in fact go so far as to argue that most of the supposed red wall voters “lending” their votes to the Tories will in fact stick with them.
In most cases I find that the whole rigmarole about what Labour have done to be a distraction, and a post-hoc justification of their pre-existing position that they want to vote Conservative, but like the “shy Tory” effect, they do in fact view that association with themselves negatively, whether it may be because their family traditionally voted Labour (and therefore it is a part of their personal identity), or perhaps because they don’t want to be seen as selfish, given that society traditionally frowns upon such a trait.
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I see, but why would that necessarily be a bad thing?
To be honest, I’m not aware if there is indeed one either. Just goes to show what a shambles the conference has been.
I would agree entirely with you that such tendency is typical of the vast majority of voters. I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone (in person, so anecdotal) who’s read the manifestos of the major parties, let alone all of them.
But I’m not sure how that answers @Mascot’s question in this scenario. Does this mean your default vote would be for the Conservatives?
Johnson gets a pass because he is a member of the ruling “elite” that the British public accept is the natural order of things.
The British do not want to be ruled by their equals - they want to be ruled by people that are exceptional - not your average “man in the street”. Which is why still in the 21st Century there is a Royal Family and an unelected House of Lords.
It is only when an exceptional politician comes along (Blair) or the government is seen as too corrupt to continue (Major) or in times of extreme uncertainty or required rebuilding (Atlee) - that an opposition to the Conservatives will take power.
Britain will never vote for a far left candidate like Corbyn or Foot - it goes against the ingrained sensibilities. Starmer should be lightning years ahead in the polls - unfortunately he is totally unexceptional and as yet the corruption of the Johnson government is not yet transparent enough.
Of course this could all change if a different and representative form of Democracy was implemented…
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I’ll get my head in gear later and give it a thorough go. Poker last night……
I don’t think he does get a pass, does he? The problem is he’s in office, almost certainly for another 3 years at least. His party is, relatively, together - mostly because they can recognise that a leadership challenge would be bound to fail and only hurt the party. Conservative MPs, generally, are much better at ensuring any factionalism does not hurt the party than is often the case in Labour.
There are so many fundamental schisms within Labour that it only takes some minor crack for these to be exposed. This is particularly the case when Labour is struggling to connect with the public or make inroads as an opposition party. It’s inevitable that people will look to the policies/leadership etc as the reason for this with the internal divisions becoming more apparent. Unfortunately, some of the different visions within Labour are less easy to reconcile than the ideological differences you may find within the Conservatives. Labour is a far broader church from that point of view and, unfortunately, does not always properly represent or reflect the views of its traditional core supporter base - particularly when trying to reach out and appeal to what has often been termed the metropolitan demographic.
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I liked most of your post, but this is what sticks out to me, and I think goes back to what @Mascot said, which is what I believe that @Bekloppt was referring to. The Conservatives are somehow still ahead in opinion polling, despite the absolute shitshow we’ve had in governance for the last couple of years.
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Seems like forever!
Why right now? 
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I think that’s less to do with Johnson and more to do with what the public often do in a “crisis”. They/we hunker down. We place our trust in the government to do the right thing because what other choice do we have? I often think we convince ourselves that we have confidence in those running the show so as to provide ourselves with some artificial comfort that everything’s going to work out. It’s almost a pscyhological defense mechanism to try and help us cope. You know, the government are doing all they can in difficult circumstances, we’re going to get through this…is a much more comforting mindset than…the government are going from fuck up to fuck up, people are dying and it’s going to be my family next.
It may also be why the corruption issues haven’t gained much traction as well. Partly people may see them as petty political point scoring when the government is trying to save lives (as they see it). Partly they think that in the grand scheme of things these are minor issues. In the last 7 years the country has gone through fairly seismic change. The Indyref, the Euro Ref, the several challenges to government, 3 general elections, ideological division in Labour (and scandal), Brexit dividing society and creating an adversarial environment with the EU, exiting austerity, squeeze on wages, funding crises, Covid, lockdowns, vaccine roll-outs, Northern Ireland…in any normal political times, Hancock shagging his hired help would be the most memorable thing that happened in a 12 month period, now it’s barely a footnote. It’s almost a relief that something finally led to him leaving office! He was caught snogging his advisor? Phew!
I think, when it all settles down and we’re approaching the next general election - providing Labour are presenting a united approach and a clear vision for what they represent, we’ll see how the public truly judge this government.
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@tesh could you outline the Tories policies at this moment? 
I do agree that’s a key point, especially with the supposed “vaccine boost” in polling that was present not just in England but also in Wales and Scotland with regards to the incumbent party in those locations.
I would hope that you are right, but I’m not sure I’m as confident about that. I’m more of the view that as long as COVID is in the rearview mirror by then, or at least some semblance of normality is reached, then people will have a far rosier view of this shambles in power than has actually been the case.
This is more down to many thinking that corruption isn’t part of the UK fabrique, it’s a thing that happens in other countries that are generally much poorer. People just want to think ‘their’ country is just, fair and better than others so they don’t accept it as corruption. You get this with any discussion about corruption in many if not all developed ‘western’ countries.
Even that wasn’t just a case of a Tory nobbing the secretary. Installing his mistress in an advisory role so he could continue their affair while the rest of the country was in Lockdown was such a fuck headed morality vacuum that it should have been fatally damaging to the government.
But it wasn’t, because as you say, I think the public are just reeling from shock after shock. That might be intentional, and I’m sure there is an essay there about late-period capitalism. Maybe Keita Starmer wants to write it? He likes an essay.
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Is there any good reason for voting in Labour, just for them to bankrupt the country and have the Tories back in again in a further five years?
There has to be a better alternative to the Conservatives, but Labour aren’t showing it’s them.