like the queen this thread will never die: in which we ALL resign (ourselves to disgusting miseries to post-boris politics 2022)

I think selling off council houses dirt cheap and then stopping councils from replacing the housing stock has a something to do with it.

A deliberate policy to turn people into Tory voters.

I think selling off council houses dirt cheap and then stopping councils from replacing the housing stock has a something to do with it.

I think there is a follow-up question in this case, which is why didn't the first Blair administration not reverse the 2nd part of this? I can see how cancelling the policy completely would have been damaging for them, but...

Be interested to see what the situation is for Ireland. Maybe some Irish contributors to the thread would like to comment? I know there was a glut of house building during the Celtic Tiger years, but as to what abundance of supply did to house prices and mortgage rates I don't know.

This queue is not for flight boarding or grant. The picture shows how bad is the housing crisis in #Ireland. Rooms, apartments, and student accommodations are outrageous and expensive. Immigrants say finding accommodation is mental trauma. #mentalillness #Dublin #rent #helpless pic.twitter.com/oXBVAdYLuc

— Mission Climate Sustainability (@climate_mission) August 18, 2022

A queue to view an apartment to rent in Dublin today @MurphyEoghan #dublinrentalcrisis #Dublin pic.twitter.com/KAxHUeCbU9

— Martin O'Donoghue (@mtodonoghue12) February 2, 2019

The Blair administration didn't reverse anything because they were Thatcherite scum

OTM

yes but Grandpoint Genie's suggestion wasn't that it would have made sense for them to do it because they are ideologically sound, it's that it would have made sense for them to do it because not doing so creates tory voters

nu Labour's appeal was deliberately toward former Tory voters, you could argue it would have made sense for them to pursue PR which wouldn't have conflicted with their neolib economics but they didn't choose to do that either. my answer might have seemed glib but i could finesse it and arrive at the same point - they were/are ideologically opposed to any economics of mass public investment

strictly speaking increasing home ownership doesn't necessarily create Tories but it tends to move people into economic conservatism

which is hair splitting, i know

Yes, but creating Tory voters was definitely one of main the reasons they did it.

Was it Cameron or Osborne who said council housing was a petri dish for growing Labour voters?

Osborne

thatch: the plan was to create tory voters via home ownership (but by definition it left many behind)
nu-lab: the belief was that said voters were eminently re-turnable via (non-housing) policies that the tories were unlikely to offer -- and tbf this tactic not initially unsuccessful, tho of course it sees voters as consumers more than an extended cohort of social solidarity (i feel the codeword here was "middle england")
osborne: let's deploy policies that eliminate what remains of the cohort of social solidarity

the left-behind have been a bit of a wild card in terms of voting patterns and numbers: mainly massively alienated and struggling too much even to pay attention to politics that aren't aimed them, but also intermittently mobilisable, tho in the absence of follow-up policy never for long (some turned out for brexit, some turned out for corbz in 2017)

adding: the "red wall" is a bad quasi-sociological category that carelessly fuses (or deliberately obfuscates) these two blocs, which don't really share interests: post sell-off house-owners and the "left behind"

(the osborne plan eliminates the solidarity more than the cohort = it strips away their ability to enter politics)

Good piece on the Tory conf:

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/10/a-dispatch-from-the-tory-conference-fever-dream

"The huge lobbying at Tory conference also continues, with polluting corporations hosting supposedly ‘green’ meetings, banks paying for exclusive ‘lounges’ for MPs, lobbying giant Edelman hosting all international visitors, and so on. But that caravan can easily move on to a compliant Labour conference, which Starmer is keen to host."

"The lesser of two evils"

I must stress this every time Lee Anderson comes up; he was in the Labour party until 2018. These people still exist in the party. Arguably they're now running it. https://t.co/DuDDQBaZGV

— Marl Karx with a Vengeance (@BareLefter) October 5, 2022

Mark S:

>>> the "red wall" is a bad quasi-sociological category that carelessly fuses (or deliberately obfuscates) these two blocs, which don't really share interests: post sell-off house-owners and the "left behind"

Good statement!

It is a depressing fact that this term was invented by hacks in about December 2019 and has since then been treated as if it is a long-standing term of sociological and psephological analyis going back to Engels and Durkheim.

Genie: I'm surprised by your Spain stat - my perception is that most Spaniards live in flats - but maybe they own them rather than rent them?

it derives from US analysis of why clinton was set to win but then lost in 2016 -- tho bcz of the weird vagaries of political terminology that was all about the "blue wall" = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_wall_(U.S._politics)

it's seen as a solid fact st least partly bcz of the pitiful cargo-cult nature of brit pol commentary wrt US pol commentary

was about to say, it's almost as if parliamentary politics and its analysts is a dumb simulacrum of actual politics based on imaginary sim people

https://www.statista.com/statistics/246355/home-ownership-rate-in-europe/

I think the stats I saw were from a few years ago. Appears in a lot of Eastern European countries the ownership figures are still higher! Spain is still higher than the UK though. PF's comment about flats probably correct.

NY times to boil more Brit journo piss.

New woke slander on the nation just dropped. https://t.co/ANFmbSUzO7

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) October 6, 2022

So it seems she's over in Europe begging European leaders to help prevent an energy crisis in the UK this winter.

tbf she is a Remainer though

Brexit seems completely drained of any political capital for now. I think Truss was just as much a Remainer as Kieth was, as in ready to change almost any position at the drop of a hat.

I think selling off council houses dirt cheap and then stopping councils from replacing the housing stock has a something to do with it.

― Fronted by a bearded Phil Collins (Tom D.), Thursday, October 6, 2022 9:52 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

A deliberate policy to turn people into Tory voters.

― Fronted by a bearded Phil Collins (Tom D.), Thursday, October 6, 2022 9:52 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

it didn't turn me into a tory. but it does mean i can be relatively unworried about the fact i do a minimum wage job cos i still get to live somewhere nice without risk of eviction. doubt someone on even twice what i'm earning could afford to live round here now.

I got a bit a fright a few months back when I got a letter from housing informing me I'm 3 months behind in rent arrears. It was just a system glitch and the problem was easily sorted out. But if I was living in the private rental sector I'd have been getting eviction notices after a few weeks.

Is home ownership where people of limited means should sink their life savings? Is this a good practice overall? On the surface it seems to make sense.

What life savings?

Or go to debtor's prison ...

a lot of things will go up a couple of percent - benefits, NHS funding - far behind inflation, and because of the way math works the tories will tout it as “the largest ever increase in benefits spending, helping you get through these tough times”

If this is true in a non-socialist economy, should it be taken as bitter medicine?

I think home ownership could be socially valuable for hosting family or friends or for storage or as the accepted means of investing any savings, but the way homes are built seems wasteful.

i’m not sure what you mean about bitter medicine youn. i don’t think increasing benefits or NHS funding by less than the rest of inflation should be accepted.

What I mean is the way increasing benefits or NHS funding seems to give license to inflation, assuming price controls are not acceptable. It's not fair and bitter because those increases will be spent disproportionately on essentials, but there seems to be no way out. There seems to be something fundamentally wrong with existing economic models.

my understanding is that other economic models are available but they don't suit the interests of the wealthy

What a racket.

BREAKING: Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Prince Harry, Sir Elton John and David Furnish, Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost are all suing Associated Newspapers #DailyMail #MailonSunday #Mailonline accusing them of "abhorrent criminal activity and gross breaches of privacy"

— Rebecca Barry (@BeccaBarry) October 6, 2022

bun dem

I appreciate the wider implications of this but still don't care about what privacy breaches rich people suffer at the hands of right-wing rags. It's one for the things you just don't care about column for me.

Doreen Lawrence getting some justice would be nice.

I went on the first Stephen Lawrence march in '91 going past the Nazi book shop in Welling and seeing all sorts of scenes.

1993, surely?

no deffo not '93 - erm possibly '91 then? lol can't remember

He was killed in ‘93 - I remember being in Rough Trade talking to one of the staff, who lived in South East London and had flyers for the march.

there was a 2nd march this was the first one. I remember ringing my step-dad on the way back and asking if it had made the news and he was giving me all this "lefty-fucking rent-a-mob" aggro. Yeah it was '93. I struggle with getting years right these days.

oh to be 20 years old again

yeah but not in 2022 cheers

When I look back at periods of unemployment when you'd turn up 2 hours late with a hangover to sign on and be very rude and flippant when they'd suggest you apply for some £3.86 ph packing job. Didn't realise I was living in a golden era for welfare state protection!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FeaEdpkWAAklFzS?format=jpg&name=900x900

the man in the high castle

Again, 'greener' is a strange word for this image.

So pretty much everyone in this thread hates Starmer as far as I can tell. But surely you lot would rather see him as PM than any of the current crop of senior Tories?