Watch from 12.20 here.
'Car crash' is being kind to this interview.
The big ideas are, it seems, Brexit, and 'the winter NHS crisis'.
And that's it.
The former Tory No 10 policy unit head who said 'Whitehall has been mainly frozen for the last eighteen months' was right.
This is a government that is nowhere near governing, and nowhere near any big idea.
Apart from Brexit that is, and that's a bad idea. And I know that because Philip Hammond and David Davis are now saying so.
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Politics is filled with deeply unimpressive characters, no doubt about that. What state do you think the Labour Party are in at the moment? You have had some insight, do you think they genuinely organised enough and have the depth of talent to take office?
Not entirely, no
But they have many more ideas
Indeed, almost all Tory ideas now seem to come from them
And then get messed up
Surely the big idea is still ticking away in the background. Punishing the ‘undeserving’ poor remains a major goal as today’s offering on openDemocracy shows all too clearly.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/not-together-distributional-impact-austerity/
The Conservative Party is split. There is a reasonable probability that under the leadership of the current dysfunctional neo-Jacobite crew, it would actually disintegrate; if it was not constantly being handed an unqualified lifeline (no strings attached) – by the equally dysfunctional neo-nobody-knows-what Labour Party.
The only feature that never changes is the catatonic inertia of the British public.
Jaw dropping in her vacuity.
I suspect the big idea is getting the Henry the Eighth powers passed and the establishment of a permanent fascist dictatorship. This is clearly a government in a holding pattern, and I can’t think of anything else they might be holding on for.
You wonder who she has offended to be given a hospital pass like that to demonstrate how out of her depth she is.
Any organisation that chooses to employ someone like Matthew Hancock (the new Culture Secretary) cannot be taken seriously in my view.
An odious fellow if ever there was one.
‘This is a government that is nowhere near governing, and nowhere near any big idea.’
But that has been the case for at least 35 years. That great neo-liberal Healey proclaimed that Governments were hostage to the money markets and global capital.
And longer Simon. Healey was a bright guy , but like many bright people he looked at how money was made and couldn’t figure it out . Why ? Because it was too simple for him. Money is made by having the knack to see an opportunity to buy for ‘x’ and sell for ‘y’ . That’s it . I know I’ve done it. The problem only becomes a problem when the knack becomes really, really successful and you have far more money than you know what to do with it . So you start to meddle e.g. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates et al using your money to influence people who have positions, but are susceptible to being influenced by the rich aka the Conservative Party elite Johnson, Gove etc. The tide will, is, turning against all this, but it takes time and whatever form an alternative is to take there will be some sort of turmoil before it becomes a reality . If there hadn’t been a Second World War preceeded by the Great Depression would there have been a Welfare State ?
That is not how money is made in the sense being talked about here
Not allowed to watch i player now.
Time the BBC was funded directly by the conservative party.
Time you got a copy of Kodi, Andy. Also, time’s getting short for the NHS as I hear the privatisation model is to be trialled in Devon later this year.
Aye, well nobody would want to buy Cornwall because it’s got a gurt hole in the middle of it (like Cumbria) so Devon is about as far as they can get their experiment away from Westminster without getting their feet wet.
It’ll be libdem territory aswell, is it? So not jeopardising too many Tory seats.
Never heard of Kodi. I’ll have to be having a look see.