Off Topic OLOF's political thread

Still waiting on a reply to mine of 2.46pm

 

Westwinds, let me explain, OLOF is a bit shy of expressing his true opinions. He’s trying to tell you he is not a big fan of Starmer and Labour. You have to read between the lines.

 

It’s on my to-do list

 

Top man

 

would love to see Windy waffle his way out of this 3.5 min video
Nobody in Wales has heard of him or cares about him. Like the rest of the play parliament it's another job-for-the-boys situation.Blame Blair, Devolution was his expensive and failed vanity project.

 

I didn't say Labour were a Commie party. I said that the ones who vote for them include idealist commies. That's very different.
Your reasoning for why Labour lost the red wall is precisely why you will (I'm assuming you're a Labour supporter) not get it back.
To think that your core voters are ****s and they could only have not voted for Labour because of Brexit is extremely dismissive. Their vote is worth the same as yours and I'm sure most of them felt sick voting for Boris but the other choice was Corbyn which wasn't a choice for a rational voter.
I'm sure you voted Corbyn though.

 

Their vote is probably worth more. I’m in a safe blue seat. My vote is/was quite worthless in reality.

I totally get thinking Johnson is ****e but not quite as ****e as Corbyn. We all have to choose between two pretty poor options at most elections. I don’t get those who continue to back him despite he and his party’s performance either since 2019 or before. If a normal bloke just struggling to get by each month, kids in school, relies on the NHS etc. relates more to Johnson and the Tories than Starmer/Labour then that’s his choice. Personally I think that’s mental.

Yes, people who are far left will hopefully vote for Starmer’s Labour who need all the help they can get just as the far right will likely vote Tory unless Farage creates yet another attention-seeking grift. So what? Tory supporters, to their credit, tend to just suck it up when the leader isn’t their ideal one.

 

Your vote is only worthless because you don't agree with the majority.
I'm annoyed because only a tiny percentage of voters voted for the Green Party but Boris is the new Al Gore! I think the policies around Covid have been nonsensical. I think he is dragging his feet over getting us fully out of the EU, but there is still no alternative!
Sell Starmer to me. I don't mean as an alternative to Boris, what would make me choose him?
The far right is a tiny percentage of extremists. I'd guess that 90% of the people you consider to be far right aren't anywhere near far right. What makes someone far right?
Farage isn't far right just because he wanted to leave the EU and thinks we need to control immigration. I agree with both of those and I'm not far right. I'd vote Labour if they did what they are supposed to.
You're annoyed at the voters for not voting Labour but Labour don't appeal to ordinary voters any more.

 

https://blacklivesmatter.com/statem...B3FyIoKy2giUfUlfvlM8-1639042063-0-gaNycGzNCWU

This is a statement from BLM about the Jussie Smollett trial.
In case you haven't followed it, he paid 2 guys to attack him in the middle of the night in Chicago. He was interviewed afterwards and said that his attackers were wearing MAGA hats and shouting homophobic and racial abuse at him. They caught the guys, 2 brothers who are both also black. They have video footage of a practice run the night before, they have texts from Jussie S to them and they have tracked the payment made.
Jussie S is claiming he's innocent so went to trial.
The jury is considering the case now.

BLM will never believe the Police or a white supremacist court over Jussie S.

I recommend looking it up because it's a waste of court time and if he doesn't go to jail it would be a crime.

 

What’s an ordinary voter? I’m sure plenty of what you and I would consider oddballs vote for both major parties and others but most people are pretty ordinary in my opinion.

My vote would be just as worthless if my preferred candidate got in in my seat. That’s just life in a FPTP democracy unfortunately. I’m unlikely to be any better represented if my Tory MP wins with a reduced margin next time.

Starmer’s biggest asset admittedly is that he’s by default the other option but he’s undoubtedly hardworking, principled and self-made. I expect he’s got more in common with “ordinary” voters and their upbringings than most MPs even if he’s done very well for himself outside of politics.

 

An ordinary voter is someone without an agenda. They look at what is best for them and their community. I'm sure you couldn't stomach voting against the Labour Party even though they were unelectable.
In the last election the Greens, the Lib Dems and, I believe, Labour had a mutual "let's get rid of the Tories" agenda. As you said previously, we should vote for the candidate to get rid of the Tory.
Biden didn't win the election because he was a better candidate than Trump, he won it because there was a huge campaign to get rid of Trump which just about succeeded.
The Yanks now have a bumbling puppet President who is ruining the economy with high prices, uncontrolled immigration and lawless cities.
Voting against something isn't productive, give me something to vote for. Starmer hasn't.
Maybe by the next election Starmer will offer something for people to vote for but recent Labour Governments haven't done too well. I remember Blair dragging us into the Iraq war on Bush's coat tails, and then there was the Financial Crisis.
I don't miss Labour

 

The silence is deafening on that so far

 

principled........... pity he didn't use those principles when he was head of the cps

 

You should know by now when you ask a direct question it falls on deaf ears

 

Is Keir Starmer any good? Don’t ask Londoners

Writing in the New Statesman, the political philosopher John Gray claimed that the Labour leader epitomises the contemporary party’sfundamental weaknessesand characterised Starmer as a cosmopolitan liberal lawyer out of touch with the sentiments of non-metropolitan England. This is underlined by his previous support for a second referendum on European Union (EU) membership.

Meanwhile, many on the party’s left insist that Starmer is jettisoning the very economic policies that allowed Labour to project a renewed radicalism, coming close to winning the 2017 general election. There also appears to be a frustration at Labour’s apparent inability to provide a more potent challenge to the ruling Conservative party. And that is perhaps inevitably being directed at Starmer himself.

A survey carried out for the Mile End Institute at Queen Mary University of London sought to examine perceptions of Labour and Starmer amongLondoners. The capital is viewed as a key barometer in UK politics as it is now widely regarded as Labour’s English heartland. Much of the party’s electoral support is concentrated there rather than in the north of England.

Even so, according to our survey, almost half of Londoners believe that Labour is a divided party. Other widely held views are that the party is incompetent (27%) and old-fashioned (18%). Only 3% of voters in the capital think that Labour is “united” and likely to “keep its promises” in government.

The polling indicates that Starmer is viewed by the London electorate as honest (18%), socially liberal (15%) and a leader who “sticks to what he believes” (14%). Yet relatively few in the capital believe Starmer is “comfortable with Britain’s past” (7%), charismatic (7%) or patriotic (4%).

Almost a third of respondents (31%) said they did not know what his qualities were. This indicates that the pandemic has hindered Starmer’s ability to project himself effectively to the British public.

When asked about his main weakness, almost a quarter of Londoners believe he is unable to stand up effectively to Boris Johnson (23%). In handling the pandemic, 34% of London voters believe Starmer has done well, yet 39% think he has performed badly.

The Labour leader has faced an inescapable dilemma since March 2020. He has been required to support the government at a time of national emergency, while making cogent criticisms of the Johnson administration’s perceived mis-steps during the public health crisis.

For some voters, Starmer has spent too much time carping from the side-lines. For others, he has failed to hold the government to account adequately given the disproportionately high death rate the UK has endured.

Is London just different?
More generally, voters perceive Starmer to be closest to the middle-class, London and the EU, while he is viewed as distant from working-class Britons and their institutions, notably the trade unions. With Starmer as leader, the image of the party as “extreme” and “left-wing” has less salience than it did under his predecessor. However, our survey indicates that criticisms of the Labour party as failing to relate effectively to “red wall”, Brexit-leaning voters in northern England have resonance, even with London voters.

 

The problem we have with the Labour Party, Lib Dems and that fat Tw from Scotland is that they spend their time making personal attacks on the PM
Instead of attacking the gov on things that really matter to the vast majority of ordinary people, in other words they are funking useless and the MSM is just as bad

 

All of the above

 

Where's the house of lord's?

 

An 83-year-old gent arrived in Paris by plane. As he fumbled in his bag for his passport an obnoxious French immigration officer asked if he had been to France before, he admitted that he had indeed been previously. The officer somewhat typically and sarcastically said that he should have known that he should have his passport ready for presentation at immigration. The gent said “but I didn’t have to show it the last time!” Impossible, replied the French immigration officer, you British have always had to show your passports to enter France. The old man replied "well when I came across the beach on 'D Day‘ in 1944 I couldn’t find any ****ing Frenchmen to show it to!"