top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 63 points 4 months ago (7 children)

Good riddance.

Let's hope something worse doesn't show up.

  • source
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • load more comments (3 replies)
    [–] 44 points 4 months ago (38 children)

    Fookin hell mate, I leave for a few days and all hell gets loose?

    Let's hope the next PM is less of an undercooked potato than Starmer was.

  • source
  • hideshow 38 child comments
  • [–] 41 points 4 months ago (31 children)

    When was the last time there was a good one? In my lifetime there's been Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak and Starmer. Name one good one amongst that rogues gallery. I will not hold my breath.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 31 child comments
  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (21 children)

    God, choosing a least bad one is even hard. David Cameron or Gordon Brown? I don’t know if I was just less informed about British politics during their tenures or if they were actually better.

    Edit: oof, I forgot about how Cameron handled brexit, not him.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 21 child comments
  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Probably Gordon Brown or John Major.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Brown sold off the gold reserve when gold was at a record low. He tried to increase pre-charge detention to 42 days and to introduce lie detectors into benefits claims.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago

    Never claimed he was perfect. You can find fault with literally every PM that has ever existed. But him and Major seemed to be relatively scandal free compared to many who have come before and after them.

  • source
  • parent
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Cameron brought us get the unemployed to work unpaid for private corporations to keep their unemployment benefits.

    If you want to argue that is technically paid work you can buy then it was paid at £1.60/hour, far below minimum wage and the tax payer was paying it rather than the corporation benefiting from it.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • load more comments (3 replies)
  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    Brown probably, but he didn't have much time to screw anything up.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    Brown is frequently cited by economists as the person who did most to repair the world economy after 2008 and prevent the collapse from being catastrophic.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (7 children)

    I was in Finance in Britain at the time.

    He was the one who saved banks with unconditionally given public money, then turned around and put them in a special "hands-off" management structure where basically the bankers managed themselves.

    Royal Bank Of Scotland did not restructure their Investment Banking operations for almost a decade and kept losing billions of pounds every year. I actually worked there for a bit during that period and they were spectacularly inefficient and chaotic compared to other Investment Banks I worked in and under no pressure at all to improve.

    Oh and Zero Interest Rate Policy in the UK - that started under Gordon Brown too.

    The 2008 Crash recovery was one of the slowest recoveries from a Financial Crash in History.

    All this crap then led to Austerity (by then under the Tories), which in turn fed the mix of discontent and scapegoating of the EU that led to Brexit, which in turn put the UK in the sorry state it is today.

    Gordon Brown did not repair even the British Economy, much less the World's.

    I remember those claims back then already and they were complete total bollocks fed by a handful of opinion makers in British newspapers and New Labour politicians - as far as I know, not a single international Economist endorsed that idea that Gordon Brown saved the World's Economy: the whole thing was just one big circle jerk of New Labour politicians and supporters.

    I think you've been watching too much BBC and reading too much The Guarding - they're the ones who invariably spin "Briton saves the world" stories out of British politicians swiping British problems under the carpet and leaving them for others to solve later.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • load more comments (7 replies)
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • load more comments (7 replies)
  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago* (4 children)

    I would like to believe that this is causal not correlative. You leaving caused this to happen. You are too powerful.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 26 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    Can't wait for the media to work their magic on Burnham until he too is universally reviled. It already seems to have started.

  • source
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • load more comments (5 replies)
    [–] 15 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    You okay Britain? You've been going through PMs like DiCaprio goes through 20 year olds.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Fucking finally.

    Now lets see how much worse the next one is...

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 12 points 4 months ago (31 children)

    Maybe I've not been playing close enough attention to politics, but I'm not entirely sure what he's done so wrong to warrant this. He's very middle of the road, hardly wowing everyone, but hardly very scandalous either (well, apart from appointing Mandelson I guess). Is this now just going to become the norm, changing PM's every year?

  • source
  • hideshow 31 child comments
  • [–] 52 points 4 months ago* (19 children)

    Under his tenure:

    • terrorism laws have been exploited to criminalise property damage and the holding of signs by pensioners
    • the nation's medical records have been sold off to the known foreign fascist controlled private company Palantir
    • our freedoms on the internet have been curtailed
    • he appointed a known friend of a paedophile and twice previously disgraced minister as US ambassador despite vetting saying not to
    • austerity has continued
    • the broken workfare (not welfare) system has continued
    • the UK has continued to supply weapons and intelligence to a genocidal state
    • trial by jury is looking likely to be abolished
    • private water is still a fucking disgrace with little done to remedy it

    He's a wet blanket who's incapable of commanding a cabinet, and spends more time making stupid TikToks like he's on the campaign trail than doing anything of substance. His actions, cabinet, and command of that cabinet, contradict everything he says he stands for.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 19 child comments
  • load more comments (19 replies)
  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Absolutely nothing. He's not been amazing by any stretch, but his net approval rating is -46, beating Liz Truss at the height of her unpopularity by a mere 1 percentage point. Liz Truss crashed the economy and the entire country knew it, while Starmer has... U-turned on a few things. Generally been a bit milquetoast. Speaks with a nasal voice?

    image

    His unpopularity is deeper than Boris Johnson, who was swilling wine with his mates while the rest of us were enjoying the delights of yet another quiz on Zoom, who illegally prorogued parliament to deliberately impede the democratic operation of parliament, ever reached.

    And the same will happen to Burnham, and in two years we'll be going into another general election with the least popular PM ever and the Labour party will again be tearing itself to shreds, and hand the country over to Reform or whatever even more nakedly racist self-consciously obnoxious bile has emerged out of the right wing.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • load more comments (4 replies)
  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago

    The majority of the public is desperate for change, and running out of patience with a political system that doesn't deliver.

    Starmer ran on a vague platform of change and competence, but since taking office Starmer has shown have little political vision or political acumen to move the country forward. The Labour government has been less beset by personal scandal, but the bar for that was already incredibly low.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago

    There hasn't been any specific event which has cost him his position (at least, not known to the general public). His problem is that there's basically nobody who likes him, and the only reason he got selected in the first place is that nobody particularly hated him either. Now new parties have sprung up to fill the void left by what were traditionally the majority parties, so "he's not the other guy" isn't going to swing it any more.

  • source
  • parent
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 10 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    How many Truss's did Starmer last?

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 10 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    Well I respect that he's had the grace to not make it messy

  • source
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • load more comments (6 replies)
    [–] 9 points 4 months ago

    Comes in, shits on table, leaves

  • source
  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    After burning down the UK, he gets to enjoy his golden parachute how lovely!

  • source
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 6 points 4 months ago*

    The long-running London production of "The Government" is about to announce its new lead. Don't worry, everything about the show is the same and you'll still be able to buy refreshments during the interval - though the Cost of Living Crisis means prices for beers, wine and choc-ices have to be increased by 50%. "The Government" became a hit when it promised change to the usual Westminster shows but, over the last 50 years has declined in popularity.

    "Pure knockabout theatre," is how one critic has described the show while Muddy Wokenfield of The Guardian called it "Vaudeville and Pantomime at it's British best!"

  • source
  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago* (4 children)

    Was he saying he's a leftist but acting like a rightist, or a rightist who was always going to be so?

    There's only really those two types left in Labour globally.

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    Cannot wait for trump to take credit for this.

  • source
  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    Epstein pedophile handing contracts to pedo Peter Thiel’s palantir

  • source
  • load more comments
    view more: next ›