I don’t disagree with your take on Corbyn, but where you hear a RP accent and seem ready to doff your cap to the obvious authority, I assume arrogant incompetence until proven otherwise. Generally speaking, it hasn’t been.
Cameron is an obvious case in point. In terms of negotiating a trade deal, I’d take Starmer over Cameron any time, regardless of what he wears to the football on Saturday. Starmer will have read and engaged with the briefing, Cameron will have left that tedious detail to underlings ignoring the fact that the briefings are not the tedious detail. The fact that he is a tall poppy in the current government doesn’t make him a redwood.
When Mrs Mascot worked in the civil service there were two things that really pissed her off about working with the Tories when they got in.
They would not read their briefs. They simply couldn’t be arsed. They thought they could bluff their way through high level meetings with a mix of public school arrogance and boys club testosterone. She reckoned post 2010 half her job became mopping up the confusion caused by a minister saying something ill advised in a meeting.
They had absolutely no concept of proper procurement procedures. This was all pre pandemic, but they would get incredibly frustrated that they couldn’t just get their mate Tim, who is really good with computers, to develop that multi million pound online web portal. It baffled them.
It often isn’t just confusion. That bullshit public school act doesn’t fool very many people these days, and most of us don’t have the same deference to inbred twats that you English do. That lack of preparation is generally perceived as a lack of respect.
I am having flashbacks to being taught how to ‘canoe properly’ by some marble-mouthed 12 year old at the Boating Lake in Regent’s Park when I was nine. He was absolutely appalled that I was trying to paddle on only one side of the canoe.
I understand she is standing down at the election, Labour have a local candidate in place and this is a short term thing to run to the next election.
She’ll take the Labour Whip in whatever parliamentary times is left, but I don’t there is much to the arrangement beyond that. She and Labour both get to leave one on the Tories.
Mind you, if I were Keir Starmer I would have still told her to go fuck herself.
James O’Brian totally loving this on LBC. Brilliant politics in his opinion. Weakening the opposition for somebody who’s not standing at the next election anyway. Conveniently ignoring the elephant in the room.
