That's the end of a strange policy. I'm surprised they proposed the idea in the first place and to then defend it for a week before dropping it is just bizarre.
How the F is Corbyn not taking them to task over this in PMQs? Literally an incredible open goal for him!
It's fairly simple. He's not very good at PMQs and not very good at thinking on his feet. The u turn was pretty obviously announced only a few minutes beforehand so his already prepared questions were scuppered and there wasn't time for him to prepare new ones.
I don't know quite what to think of Jeremy Corbyn. I think that behind all that politician front, he's a nice bloke. I think his heart is in the right place. I don't think he's particularly ambitious for himself, relative to other politicians. But he has one problem, in that he leads a party that he may or may not believe can be a socialist government. I don't think he quite believes it, but his principles mean that he won't shift in order to make them electable. Which they are not, in the UK. Nowhere near it. Not in the 1980's and not now. That also means that they are a very weak opposition. So, by his well meaning principles, he lets a very nationalistic, ukip prodded, tory government allow the general quality of life for the majority of people in the UK to fall, whilst maintaining and broadening the gulf between the haves and have-nots. And the Liberals have to take their share of the responsibility too.
I've said since he got elected that he was principled and had strong beliefs. My thoughts on his principles have taken a battering because of his determination not to do the right thing for his party and stand down. He has never progressed from being able to address a student rally to being a leader of a major political party. He still wants to just do the rallies. A leader he is not. He is an activist. Until he finally sees the light and stands down we have no decent opposition who can hold the Government to account which is not good for democracy. He is obviously popular with the Labour membership but he needs to win some of us neutrals over if Labour are ever going to challenge the Tories, and he is just not up to the task.
This may be sensationalist, but one thing that has worried me with Corbyn is although he started off by saying he he would work with the opposition in his party, but he has started to dictate more and more and just ignored anyone who doesn't agree with him because he believe what he is doing is right. As good as his intentions are, I believe it's that kind of thinking that turns somebody into a true dictator, and i worry what he would do with real power. Luckily we won't ever have to deal with that.
One of two things could possibly have been true the other week. 1. Upping NI made sense. Up the NI rate and be prepared to defend it through hell and high water because it makes sense. 2. Upping NI didn't make sense. Leave it as it is; no need to defend it. Making that kind of choice is what politicians are paid for. Doing things this way (up the NI rate but don't be prepared to defend it) just makes them look utterly vulnerable to public opinion. With a huge majority. And a leader of the opposition who might as well not be there. Pathetic. Vin
You're in dreamland for most of that. The Lib Dems are not "resurgent." They are merely recovering some of the vote they lost because they have been punished. They may well re-take Winchester but then that is a marginal swing seat anyway. Corbyn will be there or another Corbynite will be in 2020. And Theresa May was not seen as a "strong Home Secretary" in fact she was seen as a pretty poor one by most that are supporting her now. She was seen to be weak on Sharia courts in the UK, weak on the immigration figures she kept announcing as well. What she does have in her favour now is that since Cameron went and the shackles were off she has recovered her euroscepticism and natural Tory line. You are wearing some strange glasses if you think Sturgeon is anywhere near being a Thatcher. Sturgeon is starting to lose support already. She lost her majority in Hollyrood relying on Scottish Greens to bridge the gap and in 2021 she will lose more ground that the Scottish greens will not be able to bridge for a majority. I don;t know how you think she would do well if she started putting up candidates south of the border. People do not seem to look at all the detail. 10 can be made by adding 5 and 5 together but more often than not it will be made up of many different numbers and fractions added together. For every vote she gained south of the border Labour or the Lib Dems would lose one and thus the Tories would get even more seats as their opposition split between more candidates. I don;t think you realise just how well the Tories have played this. UKIP are no danger to Tories anymore and the Lib Dem "resurgence" will only come at the expense of Greens or Labour. People didn;t punish the Lib Dems for going into coalition with the Tories by............voting Tory instead. So you have UKIP, Labour, Lib Dems, Greens all fighting for the same votes and you want to dilute that vote further by adding SNP! You also don't seem to notice that the Tories are also stealing Labour votes. The opposite isn't and won't happen in a generation due to Blair's legacy and most definitely not with Corbyn or a Corbynite replacement. The reality is the remain voter will not just vote for the single issue Lib Dem Party because they are the most pro-remain. Those voters are spread out and a lot vote Tory anyway. People are over-egging the remain/leave influence on voting intention. There will be some where the EU means more than everything else but for most people that horse has now bolted.
I think you're overestimating single issue students there. A lot of them will have voted lib Dems purely as the student party. (Me included, my first election and I wasn't particularly political back then) Those who lean right (not me) will have happily turned con after the libs betrayed them. I don't see them going back though!
He was trying to even things up after all when those NI differences were created it was because self employed didn't get the benefits that employed people do/ Self employed people do get a lot of those benefits now. Self employed (I am self employed) already get tax benefits as well as NIC benefits which vastly outweigh what Hammond was proposing. Rules on the state pension have been changed in recent years as has parental leave and access to free childcare. He was also trying to address the practice of some CEOs being paid through shell companies in which they are then self-employed and thus pay less tax and NI. However it wasn't in the manifesto (quite the opposite) and if you take anything away from people they will take the headline without seeing behind it. I think it should have been thought out much better and aimed at higher income self employed rather then all of them. I don't think many self-employed actually realise that they now get the same state pension contributions paid in as their employed counterparts. They will hold off this now until after 2020 and then address it without a manifesto promise holding them back. Would help if media didn't just push a headline of "will be £240 worse off" without detailing how much better off self employed are compared to how they were when these tax rules were initiated.
That was what I was insinuating with the "single issue" thing. I'm not sure most students would vote for the Tories though. I would put a large chunk of the Lib Dem's losses as the reason Milliband "stopped the rot" and increased Labour's vote count and thus mask Labour's slide. The Lib Dems were in trouble pre the 2010 campaign starting and came up with their "scrap tuition fees" policy which saw them only lose 5 seats. People seem to remember this huge Nick Clegg effect and seem to not realise that the Lib Dems actually lost seats. They will have a "recovery" but they won't be hitting Clegg levels let alone Charles Kennedy levels and how Ian thinks that they will take votes off the Tories is beyond me. If it were as simple as the media want to paint things and remain/leave orientated then we would be looking at the Tories/UKIP on 52% and then Labour/Lib Dems/Greens/SNP on 48% And even in that scenario knowing that the UKIP would only feasibly win 3 or 4 seats max the 48% split could still see the Tories steam through into first in many seats without even increasing their voteshare in those constituencies. Politics and voting intentions just don't work so simply and the Lib Dems are using the "100% euro" angle to try and get back to 25-30 seats.
Nobody ever seems to mention that Self Employed class 2 contributions are being abolished from 2018. You would think that would get a good reaction somewhere.
I know plenty English folk (and numerous other nationalities) - friends and colleagues - who live in Scotland by choice. If there is another referendum, then it may well be them who swing the vote, as happened last time.
