IR80 I note you do not deny that Johnson lied and are happy for him to continue to do so. I look forward to the good times he promises for all and the end to food banks.

Boris won, get over it.
Food banks are just for scroungers and the worthless workshy.

And there we have the voice of the right.

Unmarried mothers are the worst.
Prefer fags and booze to feeding their kids then expect a food bank to bail them out.

Brilliant, how badly informed can someone actually be

I think you have missed WIZEB being ironic, he doesn't believe that anymore than most people do. A minority of people lay the blame for the ills of society at the door of people who genuinely need help, a single mother with 1 or two kids is one thing, a single mother with 8 kids by 6 different blokes is another (but the kids should NOT suffer because of it), what always frustrates me is the total lack of villification of absent parents (male or female), these are not party political issues, they are societal, like driving 4x4 and thinking you own the road, parking on the chevrons near the school gate, not holding the door open, generally not respecting the people around you. (not, YOU but you, as in a general term)

We have seen, in my lifetime, a general collapse of our expectations of each other, when I first started dating a young lady would never have a pint, now most of the women under 40 that I know can drink as much as any man, and happily do so (and pay for their own)

The world has changed, progress has two definitions, "change brought on by the passage of time' or "advancements and developments due to a better understanding of the subject matter, and the advantages possible by maintaining that development"

the 20's are going to be interesting, just like the 1920's saw the dawn of change.

Quote ="IR80"what always frustrates me is the total lack of villification of absent parents (male or female), these are not party political issues, they are societal, '" here's an example of this kind of moral rectitude so we can have some vilification: https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics ... fer-Acruri

Quote ="IR80"what always frustrates me is the total lack of villification of absent parents (male or female), these are not party political issues, they are societal, '" here's an example of this kind of moral rectitude so we can have some vilification: https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics ... fer-Acruri

Quote ="sally cinnamon"here's an example of this kind of moral rectitude so we can have some vilification: https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics ... fer-Acruri'" an opinion piece in the Express, excuse me whilst I buy a copy to not even wipe my bottom on. The worst ofit is, sally cinnamon is a brilliant song, you degrade it usingit as a username.

Quote ="sally cinnamon"here's an example of this kind of moral rectitude so we can have some vilification: https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics ... fer-Acruri'" an opinion piece in the Express, excuse me whilst I buy a copy to not even wipe my bottom on. The worst ofit is, sally cinnamon is a brilliant song, you degrade it usingit as a username.

Interesting comments - I agree with some but not others

Boris is at least a leader with conviction and will not stand for those - no matter how high up they are - who will not support the agreed position - I bet Hammond didn't think he wouldn't be in the government let alone not an MP 12 months ago, same goes for Gaulke and Grieve. Part of Corbyn's problem was he couldn't lead his party round a position on Brexit and it cost. I think he does care and I do think the less well off will do well under him. Corbyn saw government as a vanity project to keep the likes of Jon Lansman on board. Can a large state owned economy truly prosper - if it doesn't it doesn't matter at least we know. As for his personal flaws we all have them - even you - does it stop him doing a good job not at all. Compared to Clinton or Trump he is a saint.

One thing is certain he will get a better deal out of the EU than Corbyn ever could - he is committed to leaving something neither May nor Labour were ever going to achieve. He has shown some resilience - those early days must have been tough - losing every vote. He out manoevered Corbyn both before and during the election - time will tell how good he is but the increase in the living wage is a very good start.

On wealth - how do you stop great business people being great business people - just by being better they accumulate huge wealth. It isn't money that drives them its progress, its setting new challenges, its doing deals you will never stop the cutting edge accumulating huge wealth whether its Bezos, Rockafeller, Arnault, Gates, Getty its has happened since the day dot. I don't agree with you inherited wealth - look at the 100 richest people for 20 years ago and see how many are still in the 100 - not many. The really rich have made their fortunes in recent times.

I agree a better spread of wealth would be great but that shouldn't be achieved by dragging the top down it needs to be by dragging the bottom up.

Difficult to compare different regimes - Boris has only been in charge a few months and he has inherited the financial issues that Cameron/Osborne inherited. May was a disaster in every role she has ever had so Boris has to be an improvement on that - Hammond was mean for the sake of being mean and he is best gone - good riddance.

Boris isn't some genius negotiator. The only reason he got a deal with the EU is because he went back to them and conceded one of Theresa May's red lines on putting a border down the Irish Sea. That was the EU's original idea but May had said no British PM could find it acceptable to put a customs/regulator border inside it's own sovereign territory, a point which Boris also pledged to the DUP conference. That dealt with the backstop issue in the way the EU wanted it to be dealt with, effectively carving off NI in to the EU's regulatory control.

Now over time this is going to be a real problem, if Boris' government wants the UK to diverge regulations from the EU, because one part of the UK is going to have to follow EU regulations (what Boris would call 'vassalage') and the rest of the UK follow a different set which means increasingly complex border checks on trade between mainland GB and NI, the more regulations diverge.

If Theresa May had brought back that deal, a lot of Boris' cheerleaders in Cabinet and the media would have been spitting feathers about the outrage of dividing the UK like that, Boris just did it because he knows his allies will just parrot his lines to take about it being a 'great deal for NI' (vassalage, that is...)

Corbyn would have found it similarly easy to 'get a deal' from the EU because he would have also conceded things to them (that he agrees with): alignment on social, environmental, consumer rights, free movement of people and so on. He would have moaned about state aid, but given his super tight time scale there wouldn't have been time for a two-way negotiation and most likely when his civil servants explained to him that the EU state aid rules actually constrain governments from giving tax breaks to vested interests he would have probably conceded. He would have put a deal to a referendum which would be similar to a Norway style arrangement.

As for the deal Johnson will get....here's my prediction for 2020. If Boris wants an extension he actually has to ask for it by July, which he won't, so the EU will have the 31 December baked in. Because Boris wants a 'bespoke' deal which allows the UK a lot of room for divergence that makes the detail more complex - you have to negotiate bespoke agreements on every issue, and those are the 6-7 year style negotiated trade deals not the 'off the shelf' ones. There won't be time to go in to that. So Boris will have to decide between whether he really wants to go 'no deal' (for which his government will have to accept the consequences, including what it means for the north and midlands where all his new MPs with small majorities are), or accept a very limited deal which the EU and all 27 member states are willing to sign up for.

Because most of the big EU states are mainly goods/manufacturing-oriented, and the UK is services-oriented, the kind of deal the EU will offer will reflect that. They will want to remove tariffs but not regulatory checks and controls (ie non tariff barriers, Rules of Origin checks), safe in the knowledge that the UK is likely to be more liberal in terms of what standards it accepts, so the barriers for EU exporters going in to the UK will be minimal whereas they will be much tougher for UK exporters proving that their goods meet EU standards.

They will also agree limited agreements on transport/aviation to allow planes to fly, but ones which don't extend the benefits of the Single Aviation Act to the UK, which will cause problems for airlines ownership and incentivise them to relocate to the EU.

Boris will accept this kind of deal, because he will be able to sell 'tariff-free' as 'free-trade'. There may be some posturing over the year but as the EU runs the clock down to December he will be forced to take what he can. The media won't scrutinise it much so he can sell it internally and the EU will have what they want.

If I not wrong wasn't the major difference between May and Boris's deal the ability to set our own rules on labour/climate/trade?

My view is it will be no deal and everything that goes with that - this only impacts about 45% of all exported product so 55% of all exported will not be impacted. As we are not a mass manufacturer - cars apart - will even 10% stop you from buying more whisky or a Morgan car unlikely. I know economists will say its all going to be doom and gloom but time will tell. A deal will be done on motor vehicles which will make them tariff free only 55% of all our car manufacturing ends up in the EU - we import 85% of all imported car in the UL come from the EU. If the worst happens the UK will be able to subsidise car manufacturing in the short term

The last thing the EU want is an agile economy the size of the UK as a direct competitor - it is in the interest of the EU to do deal rather than risk no deal Boris can run it to the wire - he knows he has no deal as a last resort and the likes of Grieve/Gaulke/Letwin/Bercow are gone. An economy our size that can make its own rules and can compete for business outside of the EU on favourable terms in markets its is already established - suggest this is a prospect that doesn't sit well with the EU - we are not Norway.

Time will tell.

Probably a semantic distinction, but I think you’re confusing ambition and ruthlessness with conviction. Lad doesn’t give a poop, which can be a useful trait. leading us to...



Indeed - ultimately Corbyn’s ‘new politics’ was an attempt to avoid politics, so he could hold on to his precious principles. Integrity doesn’t win a fight, and nor does pretending you’re not in one because you wish you weren’t. In fairness, for all that he played it badly, fate dealt him a poop hand in some ways. On the other hand it gave him Theresa May and Boris Johnson, as well.



Everybody has flaws, but a lot of people have redeeming features too. What are Johnson’s positive qualities? The best I can come up with is ‘charm’, but even then it is the charm of a charlatan, so it is more of a mask than true virtue or even a talent.




If it isn’t the money that drives them, then they’ll be cool with paying a little more tax to support the society that provided the basis on which they could build their success, yeah? A better educated, healthier society with better infrastructure will no doubt support them and their successors in contributing to further progress. Within sensible parameters (such as Labour’s plan to tax earnings over £80k at 45p rather than 40p) I think the UK could benefit from some rebalancing.



So I read that as not being a case for immediate redistribution of existing wealth. Are you saying then that new wealth generated by our economy should benefit poorer people first?



You saw his efforts as Foreign Secretary?



My expectations are so low (ranging from clown car comedy disaster to death camp dystopia), that he’ll struggle to fail to meet or exceed them. Nice to know i’m unlikely to be disappointed!

This is petty, but... the whole ‘Boris’ thing, I find this national faux-familiarity a bit weird, bordering on the sinister. 1. It’s not like you’re his mate. 2. If you were you’d be calling him Al.

People who didn’t go to one of the major public schools and Oxbridge aren’t really people at all to Johnson (or Cameron before him). Even if you made it to Oxford, you’d be a ‘tug’ (minor public school) or ‘stain’ (state school). It is a very English type of class deference that keeps them in power, and makes ‘ordinary’ people think they have shared values and interests. But then, I don’t even think the Queen Mother’s smile was unusually lovely, Gawd rest her!

Sorry I have never managed to make quotes work to answer your points so I will have to respond below.

I disagree - a leader has to have total conviction - this might be a Machiavellian trait but he still has to be convinced he can take his people with him - something no Tory PM has managed since Thatcher. He settled the EU issue that has undone every Tory leader since and including Thatcher.

Not sure what poop hand Corbyn got - he was simply the polar-opposite of a leader a man without any spine a puppet.

Johnson is a very bright bloke, certainly Labour underestimated him, significantly brighter than the likes of Milne. A good delegator and spotter of talent. You may despise Cummins but you cannot but admire his strategic brilliance. Boris engaged the British public he showed a human side or was that coming up against Corbyn anybody could have looked more human and caring?

I suggest the rich pay plenty of tax - the top 1% pay 28% of the total take - add to that CT on their profits, NI on their staff, Business rates on their premises - how much more do you expect them to pay. Perhaps you would agree their contribution more adequately covers the development cost of the people they employ - that's before you consider the investment they make in further educating their employees. The point was the accumulation of wealth is output of their work not the reason for it. Increasing tax for the top 1% will not increase the tax take - nobody believed Corbyn on that maybe you did?

What I am saying is the government needs to encourage the bottom up not the top down - the new living wage is a good example.

Time will tell if Boris does as he says but the Tories do seem a changed lot since the election - they have the confidence of a big majority but they do seem to want to make things happen. Brexit could throw a big spanner in their works though. I don't agree with you point about Cambridge/Oxford it smacks of envy on your part.

There's an irony about Corbyn and principles in that pretty much the only issue on which he changed/compromised his lifelong views was on Brexit, seemingly between the time he gained the Labour leadership in September 2015, and the referendum in June 2016.

If he hadn't become Labour leader, I reckon he'd have been out with Kate Hoey and Gisela Stuart as part of Labour Leave, bringing up a lot of quotes from his old friend Tony Benn who was a long-time campaigner against the UK being a member of the EU. You could really see this by his reaction to the referendum result, when all the other big figures in Labour were saying it was a disaster, he came out the next morning to tell David Cameron he should trigger Article 50 straight away and start the process. Seems like JC found it easy to get over that defeat!

The big irony then is that Corbyn's great unique selling point was his authenticity. You knew he took political positions because he sincerely believed them not because he was compromising to chase power. But he did compromise with the Labour party on coming out (reluctantly) for Remain. And now he is told that he lost because Labour lost the trust of leave voters through vacillating for so long and then seemingly sliding towards Remain.

It was the sole issue on which Corbyn compromised his real views and as a result his position on Brexit was always incoherent because he is useless at 'playing politics' or taking positions for strategic benefit. He isn't a tactician and never was, his background was as a campaigner. He is quite an effective speaker about issues he cares about because he believes them so strongly, so his peaks were in the two Labour leadership elections that he fought, and the 2017 election. Once he was put onto this sitting on the fence on Brexit he was nonplussed.

I bet Corbyn wishes now, that he had campaigned for Leave in 2016. He could have been an effective campaigner there for the form of leave that he would have wanted, a kind of 'socalism in one country' version of coming out of the EU to pursue a domestic industrial policy, some aspects of which Johnson is now leaning towards. He would have loved having an argument about the [iform[/i of Brexit, with the Tories, if he had the authentic guarantee of having been a leave campaigner from the start (which he had been since he joined Parliament in 1983).

In practice though, if he'd have declared himself for Leave before the referendum, he would have torn the Labour party apart and immediately lost a large chunk of his youth support base. There would probably have been a leadership challenge in early 2016 when he was having all those problems with his shadow Cabinet before the referendum, and he might have been susceptible to being toppled by say Yvette Cooper or Clive Lewis back then.

I don’t despise Cummings. I think he has some interesting ideas, though maybe a tendency to run too far with them.

My point wasn’t about Oxford or Cambridge broadly - I know many fine people who have studied and taught there, and I have hung out and dined at Colleges at both (including ‘properly’ at Cameron’s old College, Brasenose - the others were just conferences and the like) - but a specific subset of its student body, who are spoilt, conceited, obnoxious and good at winning elections.

Yes, I think this was why he was a bit unlucky. Politics was dominated for much of his tenure by something he was ambivalent about but just couldn’t escape.

Another irony that occurs to me - Corbyn has been Labour leader since September 2015. One could make a strong case that, in that time, Johnson has done a lot more to thwart the ambitions of Conservative Prime Ministers than Corbyn.

Yes Johnson basically did for both Cameron and May.

But also Corbyn must have a private chuckle at the way the terms of debate have shifted since he's been Labour leader.

Just think back in 2015 when Corbyn came in if you could have a crystal ball and said this is what the government will be doing in 2020:

- Raising the minimum wage by 6.2% despite business groups condemning it as a crazy rise in the current unstable economic climate

- Promising to use taxpayers' money to subsidise ailing manufacturing industries

- Talking about a huge swathe of public investment to reinvigorate the north

- Stripping Northern Rail of their franchise and putting the government on standby to take the line back into public ownership

- Using price-capping in energy markets

....what would the Tories have been saying? They would have seen this as the kind of apocalyptic vision of what a Corbyn-led government would inflict on the UK and destroy the economy.

Now I bet Sal Paradise will be able to make a good argument in favour of each one of those. In 2015....not so sure. He'll have been on an ideological journey like the rest of the Tories and ended up in some spaces that Corbyn has occupied for a long time.

What's really been killed off dramatically in a short space of time, by both Johnson and Corbyn, is the 'Cameron agenda' of small-state, free-market austerity-focused economics mixed with Blairite social liberalism. Given Cameron wasn't going to run again in 2020, I think 2019 was supposed to be the year he handed over to his heir Osborne to carry the torch in to the 2020s.

I disagree I think it is simply of the mind is mightier than the sword - a contributory reason as to why these people are so successful is their intelligence being out thought by a faster more precise mind is the one thing that is difficult to counter. They are very good at networking but first and foremost it is the mental agility that gives these people an edge. This comes across as arrogant because most simply cannot keep up - I see it even on this board. They are the SAS of young talent in this country - they are not the only source of talent - my son went to Durham and there are some clever people there but there is a distinct gap between Oxbridge and the rest.

Cummins' views on the civil service make a lot of sense - too many generalists - too wishy/washy - very too arrogant. Kerslake was on Today this morning - his it can change but it takes decades is the root of the problem its jobs for the boys!!

Corbyn/McDonald - were so far off the mark intellectually and it showed - McDonald invited John Cauldwell to discuss Labour's policies and he was so far off the mark it was embarrassing - Caudwell was three steps ahead of him all the time. McDonald spent all his time thinking about what he could and couldn't say he sounded ponderous and incoherent most of the time - simply not joined up.

Some really good points - I agree I would not have envisaged such a move to the left for the Tories. I would not have expected Hammond to be as mean as he was for as long as he did - this has forced the Tories in to catch up mode.

I never thought we would get a vote on Brexit never mind an actual leave majority - Brexit has strangled parliament for years - another reason for this catch up

Osborne was talking about increased investment in the north in 2014 - so this move is nothing new and something that is much needed - there are some big cities outside of London and the Tories know London is Labour territory and if they want to stay in power then they need to hold on to seats they won. Not even you would have predicted in 2015 what has happened to the Labour heartlands in 2019.

Boris knows something has to be done about wealth re-distribution so I expected that and I expect the same for the next two years - warming people up for the next election 2023. Its painful for business - £100k approx. annual impact - on my business. Its not the people on living wage its the domino effect on everyone else. I have two choices - pass it on or swallow it - the latter is most likely so the question for the government is does the reduction in welfare benefits offset the reduction in CT?

Chill out brother.


I detest the mindset of grubs like IR80 and Sal more than you could ever imagine.

Must be on the right track if my thoughts are the polar opposite of yours

Just out of curiosity, are you suggesting that I (for example) find Boris Johnson (for example) arrogant because I can’t keep up with the agility and precision of his thinking? This could be a rich seam of trolling for you.



Does your intellectual-SAS metaphor apply to all Oxbridge graduates or just the Bullingdon-types? If the former, I have some friends who I think will rather enjoy it on a couple of levels. Or maybe more than a couple, as they’re no doubt thinking in more dimensions than me.

No and also wouldn't have predicted in 2010 what would have happened in Scotland from 2015 onwards. In both cases there was a game changer in terms of a referendum.

But also when you look at politics over time, you see how unpredictable it is and how foolish many of the prevailing political predictions are:

1992 - "If Labour can't win now they can NEVER win"

Major wins against the odds after the Tories had already been in power 13 years, coming off the debacle of the Poll Tax, a recession and with many of the 1980s homebuyers stuck in negative equity. The general take was that Labour couldn't win in those conditions, their only hope was an alliance with the Lib Dems to try and get a coalition in 1997 and establish proportional representation.

Result: Within 3 years it became clear that Labour were on course for an enormous landslide.

2003 - "The Conservative party is dead"

Everyone talks about how bad this Labour defeat in 2019 was - 202 seats, lowest since before the war, worse than 1983. The Conservatives went sub-200 seats for three consecutive elections, 1997, 2001 and 2005!

Blair at this time - before the lies of Iraq had really sunk in - was unusually successful as a PM, at least in political terms. Even Thatcher went through periods of deep unpopularity between her election wins. Blair had sky high satisfaction ratings, Labour had huge leads in the polls for basically 10 straight years from when he took over as leader. The business community was pro-Blair, the tabloids were pro-Blair, the Tories really had nowhere to go. This was the time when we had Ian Duncan Smith saying "the quiet man is turning up the volume" and all that crap. He got deposed as leader and out of desperation the party went to Michael Howard - who epitomised the 'nasty Tory' image the 'modernisers' said they had to shed, but at least seemed like he could be credible across the despatch box against Blair. But at this point it looked like the Tories' demise was terminal.

Result: 2004 was when it started to turn against Blair. Trouble over tuition fees and the exposure of the reality of Iraq took away his golden sheen with the public, and he was weakened in his party by the growing rise of Brown and the factionalism and briefing against him from Brownite Ministers. The Conservatives went through their 'rebrand' under Cameron but when Brown took over it seemed like he'd rejuvenated Labour for a while like Major did for the Tories and there were some rumours of discontent with Cameron, until the financial crisis hit and finished Brown.


2010 - "Cleggmania - end of the two-party monopoly"

After the first ever leaders' debate, the Lib Dems shot to the top of the polls for the first time since the brief SDP-Liberal Alliance lead in the early 80s. But this was about 2 weeks out from an election! Although the Clegg bounce had dipped a bit before polling day, there was talk of the Lib Dems pushing 100 seats and rewriting the two-party system

Result: The Lib Dems actually lost seats compared to 2005, they propped up the Tories in an unhappy coalition and got butchered in 2010 and have never really recovered.

2017 - "Theresa May's coronation":

When the Conservatives swept the board in the local elections (during the 2017 General Election campaign) people were forecasting a 200 seat majority for Theresa May.

Result: The Conservatives lost their majority and had to get the DUP to prop them up, which later checkmated her over the Ireland issue in Brexit. If she'd got her big majority, she'd have been completely in her element - running government in a dominant, authoritarian fashion through her Spads Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill. Up to 2017 people were making comparisons with the 'Iron Lady' and I think those would have carried on if she'd had her expected majority. The result meant you needed someone with skills as a compromiser, which she was unsuited to - but then Thatcher would have also been unsuited to that role as well.
Although the general narrative is that May had a disastrous manifesto and fought a terrible campaign, she boosted the Tories' share of the vote by nearly 6 percentage points compared to Cameron, and got a similar share to what Johnson did in 2019. What really did for May was an unexpected surge for Corbyn's Labour.

later in 2017 - "Jeremy Corbyn will be the next Prime Minister":

With May weakened, JC enjoyed a golden period, being hailed at Glastonbury, huge crowds turning out to see him and chanting Oh Jeremy Corbyn. His internal dissenters in Labour went quiet for a while, stunned by the 2017 result. Labour were ahead in the polls and it looked like Brexit would scupper the Conservatives and open the door to JC in 2022.

Result: Two things really screwed Corbyn. His inability to deal with antisemitism, and his prevarication on Brexit. The first exposed a lot of nasty things within the Labour party, and made him toxic to a lot of the liberal-minded centre left, who decided they couldn't vote Labour again while he was leader. The second separated him from his big youth base, who switched towards campaigning for a second referendum instead of turning up to his Oh Jeremy Corbyn rallies. In the end, Corbyn led Labour to the kind of defeat in 2019, that most people predicted would happen in 2020, when Corbyn first took over the leadership in 2015!

I think the confidence that some Oxbridge graduates have is seen by some as arrogance - Boris is anything but arrogant - arrogant to me are people like Ash Sakar/Grace Blakely/Tony Blair/Alistair Campbell who think they know better than the rest of us. It is a problem with the educated left - they have non-jobs and they try and ram down your throat their superiority. Boris is nothing like that. There is something about these young Oxbridge types that riles you - only you know what that is?

The SAS metaphor applies to Oxbridge graduates i.e. they are the elite of the elite - these two universities are seen by many as amongst the finest educational institutions in the world - they attract the very best. We might mock but the truth is they turn out a high percentage of well educated, well rounded and very talented individuals with a confidence that goes with it.

The world is an ever changing place - anyone who thinks the Tories will be in for 10 is not looking at past history. Boris has to deliver if he doesn't he wont last - as you have shown in the above.