You know what I mean its an excuse players often use.
It is mad how Tory voters people think they have more in common with people like Jacob Rees-Mogg than people like Keir Starmer (<-- I'm not big Starmer fan, but he's far more of a regular human being than a lot of the Tory MPs who wouldn't spit on a commoner if they were on fire)
If we want an end to this government then we need a Blair type character who is happy to do what he needs to get into power as that's the only way you can actually make a difference.
Did I mention identity politics? No
New Labour (although I was pretty young so don't remember it fully) was a pretty damn good marketing campaign it was "young, hip and cool" but also they managed convince people they weren't the Labour of the 70's either. And I'll be honest living under Blair in retrospect was pretty damn good, if he hadn't introduced tuition fees on me I may have actually voted for him.
Labour hadn't completely lost Scotland under Blair, though. That's a decent chunk of seats right there that Blair had as standard that Starmer (or any other Labour leader) are never getting back.
Well I do remember new Labour and even voted for it, it came after nearly a decade and half of very difficult but also quite fun times and in retrospect John Major was a pretty good PM by todays low standards but the country was desperate for a change and it got one and it wasn't that bad. Yes taxes went up but then so did public spending, borrowing wasn't anywhere near the last 10 years and we were a big player on the world stage.
I like you in this thread.
Blair didn't actually need those Scottish seats in 1995, 2001 he would of need them in 2005 where he would of been 10 seats short of a majority. That's how ridiculous his majorities were.
Yeah it had some massive blunders there also the economic crisis which pretty much killed Brown despite now if you look at the numbers he was doing a pretty good job navigating it. But it was just another death knell in people wanting change.
The 16% swing number assumes those people went from voting Lab to Con. Its not really helpful under FPTP when there are more than one party involved. The 10% of votes lost is more worrying but those likely went IDP rather than Con.
How is it? All western European countries apart from the UK initially put limits on open border immigration. The UK didn't and it didn't try and justify it. The only people who would talk about immigration were UKIP and BNP which fed already deep suspicions around immigration and the EU.
Too be honest the Western world has been going wrong since 9/11. Massive amounts of money have been poured into several wars that were never winnable and the focus switched off China and Russia who are now in a position where they can undermind our democracies and economies.
www.google.co.uk
