“Are we the baddies?”
“Are we the baddies?”
Until we understand just why the electorate is so sick of us, the chances of the Conservatives recovering any time soon are miniscule, however awful the election result.
Yes, Tories are the baddies
One thing I like about Lemmy is how interesting articles that I want to read all the way through are recommended pretty often. And often from sources I would never usually read. That seems to be missing on Reddit.
It's fascinating how the writer of this piece sees the situation, as he doesn't believe Tories are 'baddies', just corrupt and incompetent. There's been almost no discussion this election about the damage the 'competently evil' wing of the Tories has done to the country through austerity. They are so much more dangerous than the incompetent ones.
Yeah you can already see how they're trying to rewrite the last 14 years. Everything was going fine until Johnson and Truss ruined everything. Never mind that austerity stripped our public services to the bone so we were unprepared for anything, let alone a global pandemic.
Don't forget the excess deaths caused by austerity even before the pandemic
I particularly like the ‘quiet part out loud’ moment where this Tory grandiser admits that they are all self-serving bastards who have been getting away with it, because they had the mask of competence.
Sadly the mask has slipped to reveal the baddie, like a dystopian Scooby Doo episode.
Indeed:
We have a traditional compact with voters. They might suspect that we are self-promoting posh boys and money-grabbing wotsits, in politics for no good reasons. But if we are bstards, at least we have been competent bstards, ritually elected to clean up after Labour’s habitually profligate compassion. The last few years have ruined that. Without competency, we are just b*stards.
Quite an amazing thing to see coming from a Tory. It's like arguing "at least the trains ran on time", except the Tories can't manage that.
And "Labour’s habitually profligate compassion"? Things like reducing hospital waiting times? I suppose they did work hard to reverse that.
That line about competent bastards is running right through the Tory party at the moment.
Saatchi - former party chairman and the guy who came up with "labour isn't working" has been saying the same thing.
It's interesting that their response to this is always "we should be more competent" and never "we should stop being bastards".
Just a note for people who don't know:
Not only did the Italian Fascists not make the trains run on time, the German Autobahn was created and planned out by the Weimar Republic, and the Spanish Miracle was the liberal nations investing in Spain to fix all the damage caused by the civil war the fascists started and invented several war crimes in (a bribery scheme so Franco would stop still doing war crimes after he was forced to admit autarky is a moronic idea).
So whenever someone drops that "trains running on time" argument seriously and not to mock conservative idiots, feel free to hit them in the head with a brick.
We have a traditional compact with voters. They might suspect that we are self-promoting posh boys and money-grabbing wotsits, in politics for no good reasons. But if we are bstards, at least we have been competent bstards, ritually elected to clean up after Labour’s habitually profligate compassion. The last few years have ruined that. Without competency, we are just b*stards.
This quote right here shows that what voters suspect, is in fact true.
As for "Labour’s habitually profligate compassion", oh no! Not compassion!
What more do you expect from people who think that culture war nonsense is a good way to practice government?
Might work in the US but in the UK all it's done is piss everyone off. Mostly because the only people who actually subscribe to that kind of theory already voted for them anyway. They gained no one by doing this.
Takes a while before he gets to his actual suggestions, which are as stupid as you'd expect:
We know what a coherent right-wing agenda would look like: Net Zero immigration, energy sanity, a massive programme of planning reform, and housebuilding. We also know how to get there: identify, train, and promote talented people, primarily from the private sector, and smash the barriers to governing.
- 'Net zero immigration' - dystopian, unworkable, self-destructive
- 'Energy sanity' - meaningless, nobody thinks of themselves as proposing energy insanity, do they? I assume what he means is 'Keep exploiting fossil fuels even though revenues are falling, prices are rising, there are obvious alternatives and climate change is accelerating', which doesn't strike me as 'sane'. In any case, Labour's plans are sane: accelerate the transition to the cheapest, cleanest forms of energy and keep using fossil fuels to keep the lights on while we're managing the transition
- 'massive programme of planning reform, and housebuilding' - exactly what the Tories have failed to deliver and what Labour are proposing, which he assumes they'll fail at for no discernible reason
And his plans for how to get there are just as asinine:
- 'identify, train, and promote talented people' - again, meaningless. Who could oppose this?
- 'primarily from the private sector' - why? Because. Sunak is 'from the private sector'. So was Boris Johnson. How's that worked out? And notice the weaselly 'primarily', too. Is that most? Some? All?
- 'smash the barriers to governing' - again, just meaningless waffle, something the Tories have continuously promised and found themselves unable to deliver. Brexit was meant to do this. It didn't. Is this because, perhaps, the main 'barriers to governing' are that the Tories are totally detached from reality?
‘Net zero immigration’ - dystopian, unworkable, self-destructive
And repurposing the term "net zero" to drain it of meaning.
I don't even understand how net zero immigration would even work. If you are of the mindset and you wish to deport someone you deport them right away, you don't wait until someone else comes in.
In fairness. "net zero" has a precise but pimited meaning. If anything using "net zero" as shorthand for "zero net increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide" is deficient in the first place. It's snappy and (reasonably) clear but very easy to twist or repurpose or reframe.
After all that he still thinks the party has a divine right to rule.
We have been accused of being the most right-wing government in history whilst hiking taxation to Clement Attlee levels, promoting insane levels of immigration, and building a gerontocracy. We have failed to turn the clock back a single second. We have made Baxter Basics look like a model of probity. Scandal has followed scandal: sexual misconduct, lobbying, money, and cake.
Sir, do you think right-wing just means the things you claim to want?
I'm sure that people only share the articles that are worth reading from conservative home but I've read a couple this year that are quite good like this one.