This picture captures one thing that's gone wrong with British politics so well. The three people on the right were PM for a total of 20 years. The five people on the left cover just ten years. I think we should have taken chaos with Ed Milliband.
Labour leader slips over on a beach: can’t vote for him!
Labour leader looks weird eating a bacon sandwich in a still clearly taken from a burst shot by an arsehole: can’t vote for him!
Tory does just about anything: OOH, DO TELL ME MORE
Although, Johnson aside, a lot of the third of those is also enabled entirely by FPTP, and if Labour had the strength to kick that into the sea, things could be an awful lot different. But Labour won’t. Zero chance of it happening.
@marcpalmer Much as obviously he's a Tory and therefore awful, I have quite a bit of retrospective respect for Major for the way he faced down the right wing of his own party – he called them "the bastards", resigned as leader, stood again, and dared them to stand against him. That takes some strength. If only Sunak had the courage to do the same.
@marcpalmer@ianbetteridge I remember a while back listening to a podcast. And it again reminded me why people might vote Tory. I mean, it’s not for me, but he was sensible and pragmatic. (See also: people like Dominic Grieve and Charles Tannock.)
There is a place for that. But now there’s just a void. God knows what happens next.
@craiggrannell@ianbetteridge Absolutely! At least in the past there was some kind of narrative you could formulate that a thinking person might use to justify voting for the "nasty party". You could at least say some of those old guard had knowledge and expertise in some things.
@marcpalmer@ianbetteridge Same locally. We had a Tory councillor who actually gave a shit. Knocked on our door every election. Knew I wasn’t Tory but still wanted to engage. Sorted a vital bridge across a piece of dead land to stop kids having to cycle through a car park to get to the local pond.
@craiggrannell@marcpalmer@ianbetteridge your old local councillor sounds like my current one. He’s incredibly proactive, a real pillar of community. We had water outages recently because of the floods and he was out every day helping deliver bottled water to people. Then he helped round up spare bottles for local charities. I’ve never been so impressed by a local councillor.
But he’s Conservative.
I voted for him earlier in the year, but felt so bad. I absolutely do not support the party.
@rowan_johnson@marcpalmer@ianbetteridge I mean, every vote is in context. Locally, I couldn’t vote Tory, because they all wave the flag for national govt and our MP while simultaneously claiming to be independent thinkers and yelling at people when they dare avoid voting Tory because of the govt(!). Also, our council could flip back to Con quite easily. But… I get it, and especially if someone genuinely is a good and independent-minded councillor who (somehow) just happens to be Con.
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