Can't believe anyone else is being talked about when Pfeffel is taking the whole country for fools
I don't think it's all that relevant.
Mrs Thatcher is perhaps the prime example of a straight-talking conviction politician, and even she served on Edward Heath's shadow cabinet and cabinet, and she obviously didn't agree with him on much as she ended up mounting a leadership challenge against him.
The far left of the Labour party doesn't account for the majority of the party, or its voters (despite being deluded enough to think they do), so it's quite natural that a Corbyn cabinet should have included some moderate representation - nothing unusual about that IMO, that's just how politics works.
C’mon Jackal you must even know yourself that’s desperate stuff. Trying the old ‘they’re all the same’ line, because the current Labour leader happened to be from a different wing of the party than the previous one? Brown hated Blair, but he was still his chancellor for 10 years and no one, not even a Tory said Brown lacked integrity when he took over.
Starmer is in no way comparable to a man whose entire career has been built on lies and self interest.
You’ve said it yourself: when Mrs Thatcher reached the point where she felt Heath was leading the Conservatives in completely the wrong direction, she challenged and beat him. As a conviction politician you could do that, or resign in principle, but both courses of action show more integrity than pretending you continue to broadly support the leader when you know in your heart that you don’t.
I acknowledge that we all tend to look back at the past through rose-tinted spectacles and I may be guilty of it here, but I think there were far more conviction politicians a few decades ago than there are today. I think there were more people who entered the fray because they primarily wanted to change the country and the world, rather than seek money and power for themselves. People more likely stick consistently to a core set of beliefs even if it carried an element of risk to their careers as well as the possibility of reward. Today there is often talk of ‘career politicians’, but I don’t recall that phrase even being used 30 or 40 years ago.
I think there are very few of the modern crop of senior politicians who can genuinely claim the moral high ground on integrity and principle. Neither Keir Starmer nor Boris Johnson come remotely close, and nor do their senior colleagues. Starmer may be more adept at downplaying the opportunism and contradictions in his career than Boris, who has reached a level of cynicism where he doesn't even try, but certainly none of them has the right to lord it over each other.
BFP you’re pretty dismissive of any opinion that (even gently) contradicts your own view of the world, but I’ll give you your due, you’re as rigidly true to your beliefs as any poster on this board, which is exactly the kind of conviction I’m saying we’re missing from our politicians, so I can’t knock you for that!
Brown grew to hate Blair on a personal level, but politically they were both pretty consistent around the ‘New Labour’ project for as long as it was popular with the public. Brown’s socialist instincts were stronger than Blair’s and I think that tension, combined with the personal acrimony, became more evident during the last couple of years of Blair’s premiership, but there’s no way I would liken their political differences to the ideological chasm that exists between Corbyn and Starmer’s visions for the Labour Party.
As I’ve said in my reply to Driller, Starmer may well be more adept at hiding or downplaying the lies and self-interest in his career than Boris, who has reached a level of cynicism where he barely makes a credible attempt to conceal it, but that doesn’t mean Starmer has any right to claim for himself the principles of ‘selflessness’ and ‘integrity’. I doubt if any of the top table politicians can.
[shambolic] clowns to the left of me, [corrupt] jokers to the right
stuck in the middle with Sir Ed?