Will Hay but funny, to put it in your terms
I’m guessing some of that was shyness/not wanting to look uncool. Just as well I didn’t dust off my Blackadder jokes
@thehistorygirl1.bsky.social I asked 43 2nd year UGs this morning how many had ever seen any of the Downton Abbey TV series or movies. Hands up = zero.
Very fair point. Budget is v important
bond markets are no more or less right-wing than they ever were. If they’re punishing politicians’ ideas it’s because the ideas have got worse. I don’t know what I want btw, I just know that: if you have growth, debt stops being a problem; and if you don’t, no amount of austerity will help
Money would have been better spent improving local transport in Midlands and North. 15 mins faster to the wrong station in Birmingham does nobody any good and the extra capacity (if we ever get it) is not needed. (Plus the project management has been a disgrace, but that’s almost incidental)
I hope you are right (not about HS2) although I don’t seem to have seen the same commitments being made in public that you have.
They won a lot of elections first. And the scale of their defeat suggests they’d be foolish to take that as comfort. The track record for ‘winning the battle of ideas’ is in s wasn’t case a poor one: ask Jeremy Corbyn. (Or rather: don’t. But you get my point)
Q: how did the post-2008 Right managed to shift terms of debate so far that even Labour subscribes to Austerity? Even Thatcher didn’t manage that: both Major & Blair tried to soften the rough edges she left. LAB otoh seem determined to pursue the fiscal orthodoxy that did Sunak and Osborne no good.