UK Politics

This is a very good point. Many people voted for David Cameron back in 2010 and 2015 because he presented himself as a nice, normal, middle-class dad - essentially Tony Blair Mk.2 - but the mad fringes of the Conservatives dragged him into Brexit, then took over the government. This simply couldn't have happened under Labour. Even if Blair Mk.1 had been as weak as Cameron and allowed himself to be pushed around, we wouldn't have had anything of the enormity of Brexit or the Rwanda scheme.

The centrism is a side effect of First Past the Post surprisingly. Look at countries with proportional representation. Compare the far right seats in European countries to seats here held by the Brexit / Reform party. If I recall correctly, the 2015 election results are one of the worst, with the Brexit party getting close to 13% of the vote and only 1 seat.

FPtP tends to force parties to compromise before election to gather support. Successful PR governments require the compromising after the results to form a consensus.

The results from this paperare quite interesting at comparing voters to how MPs vote. Essentially the average CON voter is actually more socially conservative than how CON MPs vote. Similarly the average LAB voter is also more socially conservative than how LAB MPs vote. Essentially if you make the populace pick, they’ll prioritise social conservative policies first even if they wanted more financially left policies.

When you're traveling in the wrong direction you need to move the steering wheel and correct course.

If labour comes in and just tweak things it won't really make a lot of difference. The direction of travel in the country is the wrong way and maintaining the course that the Tories set isn't a solution. Labour need to steer in the other direction and work to undo a lot of the things the Tories have done.

• Reverse the slow creep of NHS privatisation.
• Reverse the immigration shit show.
• Reverse the enablement of corruption.
• Reverse the loss of public trust in regulators, and stop letting them be funded by industry.
• ...and the one that they really don't want to get a grip of, reverse the damage to our relationship with the EU.

After 14 years of Tory messing with stuff, there should be a stack of action items on day 1 to halt the damage. A bonfire of legislation. The fact that they don't have a plan like this worries me immensely.

Yeah, it's strange how much that overtones window has shifted during my life time. It makes me hanker for the quiet times if John Major's stint... And I say that as a socialist.

I think that the business of parliament got hijacked by the business of the city during the 90s. Thus has left us with career politicians.

The difference being what sort of business benefits the city. The Tories have been great for boom and bust. An absolute bonanza for hedging and shorting, but less so for long term stability. I think that's where labour come in. The sane business but with a calmer plan.