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Let your next career move come to you.

Does it feel weird out there to you?

A creepy vibe? 

The defiant christmassiness feels all gone, replaced by anger and radginess.

Thought that yesterday Clergs. Very weird vibe. I remember post Blair win in 1997 there was a very positive vibe. I don’t think it’s merely I was unhappy with BJ winning so imposed by own feelings on surroundings. For the record I was in a large Northern City yesterday. Didn’t help it was pissing with cold and dark. 

I do wonder if it's a northern/Scottish thing. Lots more aggression in the streets. Got aggressively panhandled this morning by a guy who wouldn't let me past - never happened before. And loads of shoving and the police breaking up some huge incident on London road.

As somebody said about that protest yesterday Nr Parliament “if you’re wearing balaclavas then perhaps you should realise you just might not be the good guys”

Antifa and the edl are two cheeks of the same arse no question but it seems to have seeped into ordinary people.

True re domestic violence but there's just something... Nasty going on.

It would interesting though on this age split whether in the middle people are voting Tory as they age. Because the Tory vote is not dying off. The old Churchill quote. If you are not a liberal when young you don’t have a heart, if you don’t vote Tory when older you don’t have a brain.

I’m one of those younguns who is discontented. I can’t afford a house when I really should have one for my age and salary. I voted Labour. But in 5 years I will almost certainly be on the property ladder, after 15 years of saving for it. Will I vote conservative then to protect what I’ve got? Possibly. But so many of the people from this generation who are not on track to ever own property, because they’re already in constant debt with no savings, I can see them staying Labour as they age. Those 70+ Tories are going to start dying faster than millennials start voting Tory. I strongly suspect that there will be a Labour government in 5 years time, but they really need to get the right leader. That means sacking the first leader if they aren’t leading Boris in opinion polls within one year. That was the mistake with Corbyn. He just flung on when there was no prospect of him ever been elected. That is what has allowed Boris to “happen”. Boris is so unpopular it really shouldn’t be that hard to find someone who can appeal to the old Labour supporters again.

Could this thread be any more 2019? Christ.

Some people in work had a moan on Friday because they never thought they would have a Tory MP.

But has the basic fibre of society tangibly changed, to the extent that the ‘streets feel different’? Of course not. 

OD - except Boris isn’t “so unpopular”. Quite the opposite actually. 

He is hugely unpopular with staunch Labour and Lib Dem fans. Most other people aren’t too bothered that he is a bit of a bumbling idiot and not particularly trustworthy. 

They do feel different. I doubt it's a straightforward reaction - I don't think the junkie guy even knew there was an election. It's an undercurrent. Mass consciousness.

nb12314 Dec 19 19:21

OD - except Boris isn’t “so unpopular”. Quite the opposite actually. 

He is hugely unpopular with staunch Labour and Lib Dem fans. Most other people aren’t too bothered that he is a bit of a bumbling idiot and not particularly trustworthy. 

Wrong. I am not staunch Labour or Lib Dem. I've probably voted conservative slightly more times than not. I think Boris is a vile evil turd.  

I couldn't bring myself to vote for him, but I know others who did who were both more usually Labour or Conservative who did so purely because they were frightened of a hung Parliament or hated Corbyn.

Anyone who interprets the result as a popular vote for Boris needs to get out of their echo chamber.

Orwell if Boris was “so unpopular” they wouldn’t have won a huge majority. Particularly not against a backdrop of 3 successive governments and a complete shitshow since 2015 by anybody’s measure.

He is a divisive figure but that doesn’t equate to widespread unpopularity. The left didn’t hate May anywhere near as passionately but she was almost universally unpopular. By contrast, Boris is given more latitude in public opinion than any other Tory in a long time.

Boris isn’t popular hes just less unpopular than the rest of dross at the top of politics at the moment.

You should learn lessons in victory as well as defeat.

 

NB123, you don't really understand how voting works if you think that the Conservatives winning a large majority means Boris is popular.  Even if you decided that the "popular vote" was the same as being actually popular, the figures don't stack up to that claim.

Boris appears to know this even if you don't.

Orwell the post I’m responding to is that Boris is “so unpopular”.

He is not as unpopular as is being made out - not by a long chalk. Voters wouldn’t so quickly have been duped by him as being somebody capable of representing their interests if he was as unpopular as OP suggests - particularly given the uninspired campaign and blatant avoidance of any scrutiny.

I’m certainly not suggesting that he is a people’s champion or a national treasure - but it’s about time to realise that not everybody buys into the “Tory scum” narrative as readily as you.

If you'd paid attention to a word I said, NB, you would have realised I'm not a "Tory scum" type. Far from it - that kind of shit annoys the hell out of me.  But the fact that you are imputing that to me despite what I've said on this thread alone proves your own prejudice is blinding you to reason.

What Orwell said. Boris's leadership approval ratings were in the 30s just before the election. He is not a popular leader. He is very fortunate to be just a bit less unpopular than Corbyn. There were clearly lots of people like me who voted Conservative despite Boris not because of him.  

That Boris - ‘ee’s a useless w**kah, innit?

But his oppo was even more useless.  

Hence Boris is now PM with large majority but he knows and we all know that he’s not particularly popular.  

Johnson’s personal star has undoubtedly fallen in the public eye. He used to be seen as a great communicator and a refreshingly uninhibited and irreverent voice. As he’s become a more serious politician, his freedom to pursue that style has been curtailed, and he’s become a garbled communicator whom a fair proportion of the populace consider to be an absolute duck head.

There is little evidence that the British working class has taken him to its heart, despite what the more excitable bedwetters on here claim. However, in certain quarters, ie hard core brexiteers, he is seen as speaking up for what they care about and defending it against entrenched interests, which helped him at this election. He’s also not Jeremy Corbyn which was a bigger advantage. 

It’s also true that opposition to him within the party will be largely quelled. for a time, by the election victory. But this is going to be tempered by the knowledge that he is and remains an ideologically vapid opportunist who’d probably join the Labour Party if he thought it was good for his political career. So he’s not going to inspire the kind of loyalty Thatcher did.

Johnson is not Thatcher. He is not Disraeli, Gladstone or even Blair, either. He is probably more like Macmillan, who also won a handsome majority as incumbent in his one and only general election, but wasn’t as popular as he thought he was and had shat it well within five years.

Unlike Macmillan, though, Johnson doesn’t have the advantage of being personally liked by the electorate. Orpington man may well find his voice again sooner than Johnson expects.

London voted for him in 2008 and 2012 but having experienced two terms of him as mayor didn't vote for him in 2019.

As ever, London is ahead of the country.

 

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