I had a feeling the latest low inflation news might prompt Rishi to call a general election, and Boom! He's gone ahead and done it....
Personally I think this is a relief, the last four and a half years have just been total bullshit and the British public deserves a chance to go the polls.
And looked at in the longer term, what carnage the Torys have done to the UK since they came to power in 2010, that's 14 years of damage.
Actually most of the harm is through the slow burn cuts you don't see every day.... especially to early years and post-16 education and then there's the more recent freezing of the tax thresholds, meaning more and more of us are sucked into those 20% and then 40% tax bands, paying more tax when our wages are not keeping up with the cost of living.
And little in the way of long-term thinking either: more money for the old and less for the young, when the former have to pay for the later, and clamping down on immigration when it's the only thing keeping the dependency ratio up. Not that we shouldn't give older people decent pensions, but there's not been any addressing of the ageing population and how to address this going forwards.
Then there was Brexit, more pain, that's ultimately what's allowed our rivers and coastline to be more polluted, because we're no longer constrained by EU water quality standards, and the guy who put us in for that then slopped off, somehow he's now been made a Lord and Foreign Secretary, it shows you how little talent there is in the Tory party.
And then FOUR prime ministers since the last election, what a joke!
will voting change anything...?
Labour is your only real option to get the Torys out, that's the obvious sentiment. I mean look at this polling data...
It's just a Labour-Tory switch out. The only exception being Reform UK taking up more of the mostly Tory share in the last few months, that's probably a reaction to the continued high immigration levels.
I'm personally not sure what Labour stand for thats' that different to the Tories....? I guess we'll have to wait for their manifesto, most likely out at some point in the next fortnight, and hopefully there will be something RADICAL in there?
At the very least voting gives one an excuse to stretch one's legs en route to the polling station! And probably some mildly entertaining debates over June!
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I don't think a small change in inflation will save him. The damage was done over many years. They have shown incompetence throughout. This is the party that gave us Johnson and Truss, two of the worst PMs ever. Plus we didn't get a say in Sunak. He's been trying to keep his own party under control and making concessions to the extremists.
Labour have the own issues, but I doubt they can be worse. They have watered down a lot of policies to win votes. Maybe they will get more radical once they are in. The have a lot to undo. As well as Rwanda they need to reverse attacks on freedom to demonstrate etc.
I wonder how many more Tories will stand down rather than lose. They will be looking for new jobs and this may clash with whatever plans they had for the summer. I really wonder if we will see a new centre party as they may be unhappy with where theirs has gone.
That just about says it all!
I'd just like to see more long term thinking, but not much chance of that with 5 year terms unfortunately!
I'm sure some of them do think long-term, but getting action through the system is hard. We need big fixes for the climate, but in the short term they have to make the economy work.
The only thing of significance I can see between the two parties is that the voter base for labour will be substantially younger, which is an important difference:
The older boomers have far more assets they want to make sure keep appreciating in value. They are all NIMBYs and benefit most of all from The Decline. The youth are gonna want the opposite - at the cost of the hoards of wealth among the elderly. Hopefully there'll be a larger drive to reduce prices in various ways.
Then again, labour will be having more immigration which will only drive the prices up so there's an inherent contradiction there.
I remain skeptical that any difference will be noticed one way or the other...
I think we'll find there'll be no difference, Labour have no big ideas!
I saw this tonight myself, the footage. You reckon an umbrella might have worked for him?
Anyway, politics isn't my thing, but it seems an odd move to call a general election so quickly and when his ratings are so low, maybe he knows something we do not. Well, at least he's lasted longer that the last one...49 days on office? Not a good look on her CV.
I guess there must be some semiotics around using umbrellas!
Lol, bad for ratings huh? Well, maybe a red hat and blue coat (Paddington bear style) might have rated better?
It was actually a pretty smart move (I mean, in context of everything being terrible):
Surprises Labour and Reform before they have their manifestos ready, rush jobs necessary
Summer time less youths will be voting, most will be going on holiday and enjoying the sun. The elderly tory voters more likely to still vote.
July will be before we get certain ONS Data released which will be abominable for the tory party, as well as the conclusion to their rwanda plan. If they had a later election, they'd have to contend with those two shitstorms.
Things are actually, in a brief snapshot of time, faring better than they were before, and better than they will be in short order. With the lower inflation rate among some other things.
With the last point in mind, he doesn't want to leave it too long before people start discussing other campaign issues outside of economy, their main schtick. If people start discussing more things like the corruption, the decaying military, the broken police force, and everything else, they'd be in even more trouble.
Illegal immigration tends to be highest in the summer time due to better boating weather. Best to be re-elected before people start seeing those numbers.
A handful of other reasons
Better to get in power again quickly
It's all exceptionally snide and shrewd, and has no basis whatsoever in any attempt or even desire to make the country a better place. It's all just calculating a manipulation of the people to maximize chances of success.
Feels real dirty.
Calculating manipulation; isn't that the dictionary definition for the word government?
Spot on haha
For real man The breakdown of the key issues and what’s at stake in just 47 days is crucial. Thanks for keeping us updated bruv. Looking forward to your next blog bruv
This election is going to be very special and we're going to see a lot of things impacting the crypto market because of that and there's a lot of chances for prices to go up the way Trump did yesterday. He made his statement because he wants crypto to be used by everyone.