let’s look, first, a little closer at the Conservative Party under Cameron – “would you like to impale a straw man” (sung to the melody from Frozen)
ethnocentric, not particularly well-educated, intensely patriotic voters – citizens who become dumb racists when they stop voting Labour
commit…to net zero – Assure the public that we’ll make it a lot more expensive for the working poor to heat their homes and drive their cars without the climate ever noticing the difference.
draconian policies – stuff that a slogan can dismantle before a paragraph can defend.
austerity – whenever the annual increase in spending drops below 10%
A wonderfully precise pin inserted into Prof Bale’s inflated ego. Bale is a Remainer who still will not accept Democracy even when repeated from the 2016 Brexit Referendum until the 2019 General Election. How sad life must be for the luvvies of London.
Ian Barton
2 years ago
Amazing how many people the author managed to insult (for their opinions) in just one short article.
I get an inkling that he doesn’t vote Tory – and did vote Remain.
I hadn’t realised that in David Cameron we had our own Eric Zemmour . Draconian policies on immigration accompanied by Draconian rhetoric ! Wow we must have been machine gunning illegals on the beaches
Is ‘ethnocentric’ the new code word on the left for racist ? He says part of the Tory coalition is ‘sometimes ethnocentric , not particularly well educated Intensely patriotic voters living in small towns ‘
He’s longing to say ‘thick white racist bigots who need to have their nativist enclaves made more diverse and vibrant ‘
I agree – and almost feel embarrassed for Prof Bale. Someone whose worldview has been so fundamentally deposed that he needs to find new outlets to try to reestablish it. The Brexit boil has been lanced and he can’t bear it.
Prashant Kotak
2 years ago
“…Cameron’s Conservatives also spent a great deal of time and effort … badmouthing the European Union — all of which helped fuel the rise of UKIP…”
So what you are saying is, the Red Wall lifetime Labour voters all listened to Tory narratives, the party they hated, simultaneously ignoring the narratives of the party they had supported all their lives, and then as a result decided to vote for UKIP, a third party altogether. Either you are trying to signal those voters are a bit dumb, and you know, manipulatable, (without explicitly saying so), or there is something seriously askew with your analysis, which is it then? And yes, this is a ‘when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife’ type question, so don’t feel obliged to answer.
Cameron was a Remainer, as was the official position of the Tory govt in the referendum. The ONLY Pro Brexit party was UKIP who never had any clout in parliament. It was people power that brought us Brexit. People watching from the coalface and watching the EU take a gleeful delight in humiliating our elected PM when asking for common sense things like stopping the sending of UK size benefits to kids who DON’T EVEN LIVE HERE and are not even British citizens.
J P
2 years ago
I think the author confuses “nationalism” with patriotism. An error often made by the liberal elite, particularly those who are anti-Tory, anti-Brexit, and largely anti-common sense.
If does seem though that accusations of nationalism and ethnocentrism are largely one way. It’s Black History Month ffs. The slogan is ‘proud to be black’ and in my company there are diversity and inclusion policies to celebrate immigrant homeland ‘independence days’ (i.e from the bad old British Empire, which incidentally enabled many of them to live here and be ‘oppressed’). Not to mention whole swathes of some towns flying the flags of foreign countries. Apparently other nationalisms and ethnocentrities are perfectly acceptable.
Dan Gleeballs
2 years ago
Not exactly new, but it’s a long time since we had a PM who believes the state should be a servant and not the master – with low funding and low taxes to match.
Austerity was reining in government spending and a national debt that was increasing by 10 billion pounds a month.
As I recall, there were no tax cuts to speak of. The holiday from stamp duty came with Covid and is now over.
Income tax is higher now than the eighties; VAT is the highest ever, pension contributions at their most limited.
None of this would be a deal breaker in a crisis or even crises, but there’s no sense of a temporary big state. The government has lost sight of the philosophy that underpins a small state – that it is more efficient and less wasteful, sure, but also less likely to ride roughshod over individual freedoms.
As I recall, the last PM to actually reduce the tax burden and the national debt was Margaret Thatcher – over thirty years ago.
To quote Mikey Mike in the comments above: austerity – whenever the annual increase in spending drops below 10%
Robert Richardson
2 years ago
Seems a long way of saying the budget is inoffensive to most voters and is encroaching on the oppositions territory. It forces Starmer to say “the government hasn’t gone far enough!” he cant seem to differentiate from the governments direction of travel. We will be doomed to low quality national conversation until Her majesty’s opposition oppose something (not culture war related please).
AC Harper
2 years ago
Why should Conservatives acting as they usually do be a surprise? Especially when Labour act for a social group but then drop them and switch to a more politically interesting social group as the search for power takes them?
The “Tories” have been acting like the Socialists since 1990. Anyone who’s “surprised” by that must be a Professor of Politics.
Matthew Powell
2 years ago
Really disappointing article. Draws on conspiratorial views of the Conservatives more commonly found in the heads of 13 year old Labour activists, which apparently qualifies you as a professor these days. Despite this sites remit, some opinion are best left unheard.
Karl Francis
2 years ago
Sour, inaccurate, condescending propaganda.
hugh bennett
2 years ago
Waste of print, silly regurgitated rubbish by a silly professor. Am i the only one who s noticed that as the worlds predicted end, in a swirling hell of that vital gaseous life giver CO2, creeps closer there seems to a massive growth in the number of professors floating around, obviously there is a causal link !
Last edited 2 years ago by hugh bennett
Brendan O'Leary
2 years ago
“austerity”
Really?
Cheryl Jones
2 years ago
1. Austerity was an EU policy. If the Tories hadn’t done it themselves the EU would have pushed it anyway
2. Adaptation is an evolutionary benefit. The fact the Tories are capable of it is impressive, not the opposite.
3. Patriotism and ethnocentrism. Apparently something that’s brilliant and celebrated everywhere except Britain. Multiculturalism is pushed as a good thing (which means bringing your nationalism with you and implanting and sustaining it in another country) – I see NO benefit to this whatsoever as this has apparently resulted, according to the left, in the most racist, bigoted, disgusting society in the history of the world where poor BAME people choose to come here and be oppressed by all that awful Britishness.
Matt B
2 years ago
Take away the forced-breezy style, re-hashed opinion (headlined) and coy ‘are you with me?’ nudges’ and there is but the party-predictable, ‘voters are stupid’, long baleful march down a Million Mile End road. Nothing new here under the sun, either. And why do people quote Ecclesiastes with such faux-religious winks to add moral purpose to rudeness and divisiveness? Hearts and Minds? Not.
Last edited 2 years ago by Matt B
John Riordan
2 years ago
Good article. Yes, there are no tax cuts, but frankly I was expecting to get shafted with a raft of higher taxes, so it still feels like a tax-cutting budget.
Zorro Tomorrow
2 years ago
Let’s face it, we’ve run out of spare governments and this is the only one left. Budgets never really give or take much money away to/from the man in the street. Jokes are rife – we have to drink 200 pints to get a free one. Prof Bale hardly knows what he’s talking about or to whom and Sunak has basically said nothing anyone will remember in a month’s time or six months when he has to U turn..
Barbara Williams
2 years ago
Of course with imminent climate and ecological collapse unravelling maybe, just maybe the general public might want to keep a little bit of the planet as habitable. That is of course only applicable when they wake up to reality. https://www.joboneforhumanity.org/what_most_people_do_not_understand
Well Bystroff is predicting population collapse this decade, Seibert & Bill Rees don’t put a date but they agree that it is imminent if we continue with growth economics, Herrington (KPMG) predicts financial collapse. Ehrlich et. al. forecast a ghastly future with any attempt to continue with business-as-usual. All these papers referenced in one little Wikipedia article. Ecological overshoot – Wikipedia
Ecological overshoot has was supposed to have happened 40 years ago according to the Population Bomb. I will take my chances with the scientific consensus, however imperfect, to cherry picked outliers, mostly produced and funded by ideological zealots.
The Devil’s Dictionary [a translator]
economic rationality – policy solutions that everyone except economists agree with.
let’s look, first, a little closer at the Conservative Party under Cameron – “would you like to impale a straw man” (sung to the melody from Frozen)
ethnocentric, not particularly well-educated, intensely patriotic voters – citizens who become dumb racists when they stop voting Labour
commit…to net zero – Assure the public that we’ll make it a lot more expensive for the working poor to heat their homes and drive their cars without the climate ever noticing the difference.
draconian policies – stuff that a slogan can dismantle before a paragraph can defend.
austerity – whenever the annual increase in spending drops below 10%
NHS – A wonderful system for treating the healthy
This is the perfect analysis of the above article 😀
With just a little tinge of sour grapes overlaying it all.
I prefer to think of my sour grapes undergirding.
great translation job
A wonderfully precise pin inserted into Prof Bale’s inflated ego. Bale is a Remainer who still will not accept Democracy even when repeated from the 2016 Brexit Referendum until the 2019 General Election. How sad life must be for the luvvies of London.
Amazing how many people the author managed to insult (for their opinions) in just one short article.
I get an inkling that he doesn’t vote Tory – and did vote Remain.
Are you impugning biases to the author? Shame on you. He’s a professor!
I hadn’t realised that in David Cameron we had our own Eric Zemmour . Draconian policies on immigration accompanied by Draconian rhetoric ! Wow we must have been machine gunning illegals on the beaches
Is ‘ethnocentric’ the new code word on the left for racist ? He says part of the Tory coalition is ‘sometimes ethnocentric , not particularly well educated Intensely patriotic voters living in small towns ‘
He’s longing to say ‘thick white racist bigots who need to have their nativist enclaves made more diverse and vibrant ‘
Yet David Cameron was a Remainer…..
Possibly the most patronising article I have read this year – must be a ‘professor of politics’
I agree – and almost feel embarrassed for Prof Bale. Someone whose worldview has been so fundamentally deposed that he needs to find new outlets to try to reestablish it. The Brexit boil has been lanced and he can’t bear it.
“…Cameron’s Conservatives also spent a great deal of time and effort … badmouthing the European Union — all of which helped fuel the rise of UKIP…”
So what you are saying is, the Red Wall lifetime Labour voters all listened to Tory narratives, the party they hated, simultaneously ignoring the narratives of the party they had supported all their lives, and then as a result decided to vote for UKIP, a third party altogether. Either you are trying to signal those voters are a bit dumb, and you know, manipulatable, (without explicitly saying so), or there is something seriously askew with your analysis, which is it then? And yes, this is a ‘when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife’ type question, so don’t feel obliged to answer.
Cameron was a Remainer, as was the official position of the Tory govt in the referendum. The ONLY Pro Brexit party was UKIP who never had any clout in parliament. It was people power that brought us Brexit. People watching from the coalface and watching the EU take a gleeful delight in humiliating our elected PM when asking for common sense things like stopping the sending of UK size benefits to kids who DON’T EVEN LIVE HERE and are not even British citizens.
I think the author confuses “nationalism” with patriotism. An error often made by the liberal elite, particularly those who are anti-Tory, anti-Brexit, and largely anti-common sense.
If does seem though that accusations of nationalism and ethnocentrism are largely one way. It’s Black History Month ffs. The slogan is ‘proud to be black’ and in my company there are diversity and inclusion policies to celebrate immigrant homeland ‘independence days’ (i.e from the bad old British Empire, which incidentally enabled many of them to live here and be ‘oppressed’). Not to mention whole swathes of some towns flying the flags of foreign countries. Apparently other nationalisms and ethnocentrities are perfectly acceptable.
Not exactly new, but it’s a long time since we had a PM who believes the state should be a servant and not the master – with low funding and low taxes to match.
Isn’t that what austerity was? If the Tories had carried on down that path they certainly wouldn’t be enjoying an 80 seat majority
Austerity was reining in government spending and a national debt that was increasing by 10 billion pounds a month.
As I recall, there were no tax cuts to speak of. The holiday from stamp duty came with Covid and is now over.
Income tax is higher now than the eighties; VAT is the highest ever, pension contributions at their most limited.
None of this would be a deal breaker in a crisis or even crises, but there’s no sense of a temporary big state. The government has lost sight of the philosophy that underpins a small state – that it is more efficient and less wasteful, sure, but also less likely to ride roughshod over individual freedoms.
As I recall, the last PM to actually reduce the tax burden and the national debt was Margaret Thatcher – over thirty years ago.
To quote Mikey Mike in the comments above:
austerity – whenever the annual increase in spending drops below 10%
Seems a long way of saying the budget is inoffensive to most voters and is encroaching on the oppositions territory. It forces Starmer to say “the government hasn’t gone far enough!” he cant seem to differentiate from the governments direction of travel. We will be doomed to low quality national conversation until Her majesty’s opposition oppose something (not culture war related please).
Why should Conservatives acting as they usually do be a surprise? Especially when Labour act for a social group but then drop them and switch to a more politically interesting social group as the search for power takes them?
The “Tories” have been acting like the Socialists since 1990. Anyone who’s “surprised” by that must be a Professor of Politics.
Really disappointing article. Draws on conspiratorial views of the Conservatives more commonly found in the heads of 13 year old Labour activists, which apparently qualifies you as a professor these days. Despite this sites remit, some opinion are best left unheard.
Sour, inaccurate, condescending propaganda.
Waste of print, silly regurgitated rubbish by a silly professor. Am i the only one who
s noticed that as the worlds predicted end, in a swirling hell of that vital gaseous life giver CO2, creeps closer there seems to a massive growth in the number of professors floating around, obviously there is a causal link !“austerity”
Really?
1. Austerity was an EU policy. If the Tories hadn’t done it themselves the EU would have pushed it anyway
2. Adaptation is an evolutionary benefit. The fact the Tories are capable of it is impressive, not the opposite.
3. Patriotism and ethnocentrism. Apparently something that’s brilliant and celebrated everywhere except Britain. Multiculturalism is pushed as a good thing (which means bringing your nationalism with you and implanting and sustaining it in another country) – I see NO benefit to this whatsoever as this has apparently resulted, according to the left, in the most racist, bigoted, disgusting society in the history of the world where poor BAME people choose to come here and be oppressed by all that awful Britishness.
Take away the forced-breezy style, re-hashed opinion (headlined) and coy ‘are you with me?’ nudges’ and there is but the party-predictable, ‘voters are stupid’, long baleful march down a Million Mile End road. Nothing new here under the sun, either. And why do people quote Ecclesiastes with such faux-religious winks to add moral purpose to rudeness and divisiveness? Hearts and Minds? Not.
Good article. Yes, there are no tax cuts, but frankly I was expecting to get shafted with a raft of higher taxes, so it still feels like a tax-cutting budget.
Let’s face it, we’ve run out of spare governments and this is the only one left. Budgets never really give or take much money away to/from the man in the street. Jokes are rife – we have to drink 200 pints to get a free one. Prof Bale hardly knows what he’s talking about or to whom and Sunak has basically said nothing anyone will remember in a month’s time or six months when he has to U turn..
Of course with imminent climate and ecological collapse unravelling maybe, just maybe the general public might want to keep a little bit of the planet as habitable. That is of course only applicable when they wake up to reality. https://www.joboneforhumanity.org/what_most_people_do_not_understand
Deranged pseudo-science. No better than the total denialists.
Well Bystroff is predicting population collapse this decade, Seibert & Bill Rees don’t put a date but they agree that it is imminent if we continue with growth economics, Herrington (KPMG) predicts financial collapse. Ehrlich et. al. forecast a ghastly future with any attempt to continue with business-as-usual. All these papers referenced in one little Wikipedia article. Ecological overshoot – Wikipedia
gee whizz just go for a long walk and feel the wind in your face and enjoy what life you have and stop worrying about everything for everyone.
Ecological overshoot has was supposed to have happened 40 years ago according to the Population Bomb. I will take my chances with the scientific consensus, however imperfect, to cherry picked outliers, mostly produced and funded by ideological zealots.
Nothing could convince me to double down on long-term investment like Ehrlich predicting a ghastly future.
For how long do these things have to be “imminent” before people cotton on that they’re not actually going to happen?
There will be no collapse. The earth will be fine, it’s the future if humans that isn’t and that could be for a myriad of different reasons.