I find the perpetual need to rubbish whatever politicians do these days depressing beyond belief. Especially in relation to a man whoās been 5 minutes in the job.
A PM stays hiding in No 10, making decisions based on his own view of what the world needs and he is āout of touchā.
A PM sets forth to find out what the issues are in the country and what people need and what their suggestions are for what needs to be done and heās just ālooking goodā, ālacks directionā, and is āno leaderā.
Canāt win!
Personally, Iām all for the man who is prepared to listen. There is nothing worse than the person who believes they know whatās right for you.
Agree 100%, heās right in wanting to speak to the voters rather than people that think they know best. I live in the UK and itās the first time, since Iāve been back here, I think thereās hope.
I think heās got the extreme far right, on the run. They will always have their hard core voters, but those who felt like there was no alternative, are now beginning to see Burnham as the alternative. I hope he gets the chance to make a difference.
Andy Burnham could discover a cure for cancer, end global famines and write the next winning Eurovision song, but Badenoch and Farage would still find something to criticise him about. Theyāre both examples of party before country (and personal gain before party).
Itās becoming very common, even on SF. Politics is becoming like football all about whoās up this week and whoās down. Rarely about the actual policies
Increasingly, it seems to be the case that, like football, players on the other team can never be recognised for doing a good thing and must be vilified at every turn.
The day the Tories give me something to admire I will be delighted. Iām not tribal at all. I am not socialist/Labour. My natural home was SDP. But Iām beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel with Burnham.
Much as it pains me to say anything positive about Johnson (regardless of the colour of his banner) he stepped up to the plate on Ukraine. Iāll admit that Iām struggling to find anything else over the last 20 years or so. I donāt think May was wrong with her view that the Conservatives were seen as the nasty party and it was all downhill from there.
This is something James OāBrien has been banging on about for a few yearsā¦ the āfootballificationā of politics, as he describes it. Itās especially funny to notice when people incorrectly assume that a policy was drawn up by their opposing team not realising who was initially responsible for it.
I think it perhaps started with Brexit. People were very combative, both online and in the real worldā¦ āremoanersā vs āBrexiteersā. Although, certain parts of the press (notably the Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express and, to an extent, on the other side the Mirror) have been doing it for even longer. Prior to Brexit people, on the whole, disagreed agreeably.
Good point. He was perhaps the loudest voice and the one most faithfully for the people of Ukraine.
To be fair, the other team will tend to do things that you and I disapprove of, and vice versa.
There used to be a consensus over the general destination of politics; it was the route to be taken, the means of transport, and who should contribute what, that differed.
There also used to be a consensus about how politicians should behave, which was āless emotionally and more statesmanlike than I doā, I think. And that they shoukld adhere to their principles, and should resign when caught in wrongdoing.
Somewhere along the way, I think weāve lost that.
Iād say heās one of the worst examples of that. Almost every discussion is nowadays (I used to quite like him, but heās become a caricature of himself) is reduced to how rubbish Brexit was, as if any of his listeners didnāt know and as if we could do anything about it at the moment anyway, and how right he was.
It might be self-delusion but I like to think that I can acknowledge another party doing a good thing but those good things do feel a bit thin on the ground.
It doubtless started well before that but probably came to the fore most prominently for the first time during that campaign as it was the first time we had seen use of social media to reinforce views and keep people in an isolated bubble where contradictory thought are bannd and the message is always how the opposition are to be vilified.
It is, perhaps, all too easy to reference 1984 but Orwell was prescient in this matter with his description of the āTwo Minutes Hateā.
The concept that MPs are there to represent the best interests of the electorate in their area seems to have been lost, and it now appears via the media that they are all playing for their team instead, willing to do whatever it takes to make the other side lose. This may be inaccurate, but itās a little hard to know exactly.
Weāve been seeing this as a gradual shift in politics for a long time, and the left were inclined to be far more vitriolic than the right (Tory scum is a phrase I recall from long ago) but both sides now seem similarly poor, although each in their own fashion. Burnham appeared to be trying to work cross-party, but itās going to take far more than a couple of hastily arranged meetings, inviting leaders of the serious parties to talk together, to unpick the game. I hope that he CAN be successful in this, but it may be hard to change the natural inclination of his party, let alone that of others.
