Scroll back three years. The person sitting opposite me is yet to take their place at the top of Keir Starmer’s government. Instead, they are a star of the Labour opposition, for whom power advances or recedes with every poll and front page. They have just done a spot of electoral marketing, a photo op at a supermarket 100 or so miles from Westminster, and what they’ve brought home is the politics of the staff.
“They’d all voted for Boris.”
In this parliamentary office of dull green carpet and brown furniture my interviewee wears a mask of disbelief. Workers – backing an Etonian! “One said, ‘He’s a laugh, innee?’ They all laughed.” Fancy giving your vote away so cheaply!
As far as I’m aware lost time Boris stood was 2019.
We’re still doing timelines are we? If you actually read it Tim, it does make some sense. The testing the water with the supermarket staff is post Covid. It’s that they were actually listening to the electorate I find improbable. They haven’t done that since Bliar. Focus groups have all been recruited in Islington.
There was always a tension within the Labour Party between the working class and, for want of a better phrase, middle-class lefties with their luxury beliefs, up until around the mid-80s.
Up to that point, there was a feedback mechanism for the working class through shop stewards and working men’s clubs. If middle-class lefties proposed stupid ideas, they would soon learn a few home truths. The end of mass industrial workforces put an end to that feedback mechanism.
Blair’s reliance on focus groups worked because there was still a lot of members and MPs from the earlier era; look how much he relied on John Prescott?
Now they just believe what they’re told by focus groups, and when they do venture out, they go to Potemkin Village situations. It’s like the Queen/King thinking the whole world smells of fresh paint.
I’m sure at the Graun you get a black mark if you let a fact slip into any piece you’ve written…
“and laying out the stats that show the average British worker is taxed less than counterparts in most of western Europe”
Ah yes, Europe where the boxheads are busy removing all the industry that powered their economy. Also disenfranchising millions of AfD supporters. We should definitely copy their way of doing things.
But perhaps Aditya means follow the example of Poland and Hungary that are flourishing without the burden of third world shitholistan enrichement? Mind you he is pretty specific on the Western part of Europe.
“lost time Boris” is not a bad nickname.
“If middle-class lefties proposed stupid ideas, they would soon learn a few home truths.”
Oh come on, as if trade unions didn’t cherish heaps of rotten idea themselves.
In less than a month, the government will unveil a budget that will be huge in scope, and hugely painful. The public is likely to pick up a tab for £20-30bn in tax rises and spending cuts.
Remember the story used to be, immigrants are fanatical net taxpayers? It wasn’t just a Labour lie, Tories also used to explode in posh outrage when the oiks questioned the wisdom of the infinity brown immigration plan – they’re paying the Treasury £20Bn a year, oiks.
That was a good one. Haven’t heard it in a while though.
Anyway, the country is in dangerous levels of debt, but they still have plenty of money to bring illiterate criminals from Africa and Asia here and put them on a lifetime of benefits. Shows you what the priority is, white man.