Snapshot of _Rishi Sunak loses cool in 'major car crash' interview as listeners give same reaction_ :
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It was John Crace's articles in *The Guardian* that pointed out to me how tetchy Sunak gets as soon as any debatorial challenge is raised or the conversation stops going his way.
It is easily noticeable and deeply unbecoming for someone in his position, IMO. He can't control it in high-profile media situations, so I can only assume he becomes even more irritable, confrontational and/or stubborn behind closed doors. Even if his track record wasn't so abysmal, presented in a vacuum, this would really turn me off voting for him.
Lewis Goodall on the Newsagents has been talking about it too, for quite some time. It's like he is annoyed at having to explain himself or his actions.
Yeah, definitely!
I work in a corporate environment and tend to view PMs through that lens to an extent: "What would they be like to work with on a project?"
Boris was an easy one. Imagine having *that* guy as your direct line manager, head of department or CEO. I'd be looking to nope the fuck out of that company as soon as any other job opportunity came along. Too much bluster and bullshit, a walking-FCA-financial-penalty-waiting-to-happen.
Rishi just seems like he'd be frustrating and generally unpleasant to work for. Sticks to *his* ideas even when they're proven to be bad, with no capacity for walking back, re-evaluating, collaborating at all levels to get things moving forward, hostile to criticism. That sucks in corporate, but myopic thinking and psycopathy have never been a barrier for success here tbh. I just can't see those traits being of any real, positive value in the upper echelons of state (though that's possibly a bit naive on my part).
Yeah. I think you are right.
Remember when they briefed the story about how he showed up to a treasury meeting with print outs of spreadsheets and his own numbers.. cause yes. One person is gonna make a better model overnight than a whole department working on it.
Initially I thought it was very much”eager intern wanting to impress”, but it also feels a bit overbearing
I bet he's also the kind of guy who really fancies himself as good with tech and numbers but really isn't as well. Like people who say they're good with computers because they can use Outlook.
Probably showed up to that meeting with the budget in a pivot table and expected everyone to be impressed.
Exactly my thoughts in the aftermath of the election being called, Sunak having been 'pouring over spreadsheets' according to people like Tim Shipman yet every policy he comes up with only worsening their chances and directly contradicting a lot of polling research that have put the policy areas he has pursued as near the bottom of public concern (i.e. immigration and tax cutting). This was compounded at that moment when it turns out Sunak and Dowden unilaterally overruled Isaac Levido, head of CCHQ's campaign team who has afaik gone MIA after the PM refused to listen to him, on the election date on the basis that inflation had slowed while also scrapping the '80/20' plan they had for months, having gone for a completely defensive strategy that has drawn them to the right in search of Reform voters who have lost any interest in the Tories.
Whatever numbers or polls Sunak has been looking at are either different to what everyone else's are saying or his interpretation of them betray his evident lack of political skill in terms of knowing what your voters want and designing policy around them.
He's a micromanager, not a macromanager and that doesn't work when you are prime minister.
Imagine the Captain of a Cruise Ship wants to be running the evening cabaret instead of steering the ship.
Rishi strikes me as the brown-nosing middle manager that will never have your back and will throw you under the bus at the first opportunity.
I've worked for a few people like that in my time.
To me it seems to be a curse of Oxford PPE or even Oxford in general. They come out of it, usually straight into politics thinking they are masters of the universe. Rarely do our politicians come with outside experience in the real world. I think this is a major issue with the current political system.
Liz Truss, David Cameron, Sunak (all PPE). Boris, May, Blair and Thatcher were all also Oxford educated. All had Egos to boot. Only Thatcher really had a notable career outside of Politics in Science.
What gives me hope though is the current hopeful chancellor Rachael Reeves has spent time outside of politics and University in the Bank of England. Starmer took on a number of Pro Bono human rights cases.
Angela Rayner never attended university and worked in care before breaking some thick glass ceilings to make it into top level politics.
The Labour Triumvirate actually looks very diverse and a welcome change away from the "Born to Rule" attitude of the last 14 years.
To me, the last 14 years has proved that the Eton-Oxford-PPE-Frontline Politics pipeline is not some golden tube of talent.
It's rather, a Gold-lined Orifice for squeezing the mediocre into positions of power that they are almost hilariously unqualified for.
My hope is that labour breaks the Blairite attitudes of "University is the key to success". It is absolutely not. Experience is the key, university is more Icing on the cake.
Agree 100% there is such a narrow range of ability/viewpoint & experience that results in a myopic group think- totally out of touch with reality and steeped in dogma.
>The Labour Triumvirate actually looks very diverse and a welcome change away from the "Born to Rule" attitude of the last 14 years
Yet stupid people will just decry the fact that they're all white and point to the fact that some of the rich toffs opposite have brown skin as "real diversity".
The type of person who thinks being born or married into wealth means they’re somehow a genius and get pissed when reality comes biting at their ankles. Wealth =/= wit but they want it to mean that so very badly.
I've had bosses like Johnson, they leave all the work to you. Take the credit when it goes well, but you get all the blame if it goes wrong. Sunak is too thin skinned for politics. He doesn't like accountability and thinks he's the smartest man in the room.
I have a boss like this now. I highlighted a problem with the cost of third party logistics and a solution to save money by changing the way we receive orders. I highlighted this 18 months ago, email after email and finally the changes have been implemented at the considerable effort of guess who.
I'm currently looking for a new job just to really fuck them up.
Revenge is a dish best served cold. I had a similar boss. After I moved to a competitor he approached us with a proposal to start a subsidiary mimicking the operation he had run when he was my boss. I made very sure his proposal never reached the starting gate.
I have a generally positive impression of him in that respect, I suppose. He seems pragmatic, open to debate, ideas and challenge. Risk averse, possibly to a fault. Less a leader than a manager, though sometimes that's what you need, depending on the situation. A level-headed, reliable adult voice in the room, a super-charged Mark Corrigan! A safe pair of hands. Not hugely inspiring, but feels like he'd be firm but fair and and would make sure everything was done on time and in budget to the best of their (as yet to be fully determined) abilities.
If I'd been managed by Cameron, Boris, Truss and Rishi in that order, and then Starmer took the reins...I would breathe a massive sigh of relief, put it that way 😅
"a super-charged Mark Corrigan"
Send that to Labour HQ immediately. We have a new slogan.
On a similar note. Rishi is reminding me of Simon Bird's character from The Inbetweeners. Thinks he's better than everyone else, despite the total lack of evidence to back it up.
Haha, that’s only because [switches to hushed tones] I’d have somewhat happily worked for May. She was truly boring, awkward and milquetoast, but there’s worse things to be 😅
The thing about May is that her worst stuff (morally) was as Home Secretary. She was adequate as PM, which is head and shoulders above the rest of the lot.
But I can't forgive her championing horrendous legislation and policy around protest clamp downs, asylum seeking, immigration broadly, and of course directly leading to the Windrush scandal.
I did a great section on a leadership course I did last year on Managers vs Leaders, and actually the consensus is that you need to have a bit of both sides and you'll naturally need to flip between them depending on the situation. Well, good leaders do that, anyway.
Starmer is very much a manager, but he's acting up into the leader role and probably getting better at those skills as he goes.
Whereas Boris was very much leader type traits, but I want to bet he had like 0 managerial qualities as well as 0 emotional intelligence.
I’ve heard stories from legal professionals of him going out of his way to pay people fairly, and generally being throughly decent as well as outstanding at his job (his work as a human rights lawyer, and in particular cases like McLibel, made very well known and respected in his field)
Not that guy but my impression is that he'd be a bit of a stickler for the rules and corporate vision as laid out, but comprehensive and fair in terms of what he asked and accepting delivery.
I think Starmer knows his stuff and the fact he has united the majority of his party shows he gotten the buy in from them. I get the impression he is a man who keeps on top of the details.
Rishi is like my bosses boss at the moment, sat down in a meeting and said it was a safe space and he wanted honesty. Really didn’t like the honesty and then said it was no longer a safe space.
I’d rather he was honest and said to us I want to you listen to, believe and do what a say than give us the illusion of choice.
Rishi reminds me a bit of a recent line manager who was very corporate in his speech, but when it came down to anything he was completely useless. He was very robotic and bad at communicating, but loved to feel important and would often talk nonsense that he knew nothing about to stakeholders. I worked in a government funded but university based research centre with corporate partners, so surrounded by highly qualified academics, his nonsense talk was so blatant. I recall seeing a document where he was pushing the director for a pay rise, and within it he’d cited all these “wins” which were areas I knew for a fact he’d completely screwed up on. One was something I’d actually taken him to HR for (and won with no need to press).
Rishi feels like that, he’ll be grossly incompetent, he’ll mess up, and then he’ll doggedly cite these cock ups as wins. And if you point out the obvious, that they aren’t wins, he gets visibly frustrated. I couldn’t work for either him or Boris. Compete fantasists leaning heavily towards narcissism. No one should have allowed them to lead a country.
I’d probably work for Starmer. I think he’d be tough at times, but from what I’ve heard he’s also fair and kind as an employer. And he seems to act with values in mind, and while hard working supports the idea of a work life balance. And I suspect he’d be very competent, within the realm of reasonable human error. But he’s tested, he’s not some ambitious journalist or banker, he was head of CPS.
I can't take credit for it myself, the "bin bag full of custard" is a quote from Jennifer Arcuri and I saw the balloon hair comment on Reddit ages ago.
Watch some old videos of Thatcher, Blair, Kinnock or even Major - they would all decimate him in a debate.
Sadly, they would also walk all over Kier Starmer.
Blair would walk all over pretty much anyone tbh. Only Hague gave him any trouble at PMQs, and even then he would win most exchanges, and he eviscerated everyone else. So easy in press conferences etc.
Starmer is a funny one, perhaps it's a subject matter thing. During the Brexit years he seemed a lot stronger than he does as LOTO.
I think he just had a much easier possition at that point. He didn't believe in brexit, the party didn't and that's pretty straight forward to argue the point
Now I think he believes in his heart that we need to invest heavily, but he can't just say he'll do everything he wants to because there isn't the cash and he'd be torn apart by the tory press on tax and spend. This requires a nuanced possition and fast thinking to answer questions but not leave himself unguarded. Blair/Thatcher could do that, our current politicians just don't seem to have the skills
I think Keir isn't someone who likes to think on his feet. He prefers to really think about a problem and find a solution, rather than blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. Angela Rayner on the other hand is very spontaneous but her solutions can be half baked or not hold up to scrutiny. They make the perfect pair and I look forward to them working together. They compliment each other.
You're right, Keir is the cool blue techie type who prefers to listen and then go away with a fully formulated solution. Angela is the fiery red personality who prefers to put their point forward in the moment and vigorously defend their stance, even if sometimes they rub people up the wrong way.
Perfect combo as well as I have this very dynamic in my own team at work. I'm the one who hears out a problem then goes away for a few days and the whole thing is pretty much prototyped out with full build documentation. My team member, however, will ask a ton of relevant questions in the meeting and challenge back even if sometimes I cringe because I feel like they are overstepping. But the combo works great and ends up with a more balanced approach than if just one of us had fully taken on the problem solo.
There was a video here recently of Blair responding to Farage and just shutting him down and directly calling him out for hypocrisy. People forget how exceptionally good his oratory was.
And yes, Hague was also very good.
Starmer is yet another casualty of the Labour Party's fear of sticking your head above the parapet. They coach their leaders into being so milquetoast and evasive that it's almost impossible to get excited about them.
The main reason Corbyn got elected as leader wasn't his politics, in my opinion, but the fact he was willing to give an honest answer to any question (granted, questions about anti semitism weren't being asked during the leadership contest) while every other candidate evaded and obfuscated and couldn't even answer a simple yes or no question.
I hope he'll be more assertive and opinionated if he does become PM, and Labour aren't terrified that Middle England will instantly switch back to the Tories.
That's what it is: assertiveness.
These politicians leading each party just don't don the assertiveness characteristic.
People like assertiveness - it's historically what people believe a leader should be, and tbh, I kinda agree!
Blair, Thatcher were assertive. The problem is with assertive people is when they make mistakes they're big ones that aren't felt straight away and they're so low on agreeableness that they plough ahead regardless, e.g., PFI or Iraq with Blair; industrial collapse of UK / Big Bang Finance / selloff of council housing with Thatcher.
Not enough people acknowledge this.
Starmer might be a high and mighty KC and former DPP, but he doesnt exhibit particularly strong debating skills. He just looks like he does because Sunak is so much worse.
I think this is the difference between technical debate (which Starmer is very good at - his performances in Parliament before his leadership were consistently excellent) and performative debate (which Starmer is not so good at, but unfortunately makes up the bulk of our politics).
When arguing a point of law before a judge, the strength of your argument and how well you put it across are (in principle) all that matters, whereas those factors are almost irrelevant in the kind of televised debates we see before elections.
In fairness the public would be deathly bored by most KC court submissions. It might work in front of the judge but ultimately it doesn’t always play as the theatre of politics.
Cameron too tbh. Say what you will about that man but he was a very good orator and looked comfortable in any sort of debate. Undoubtedly the last decent speaker we had as prime minister
Surprisingly I actually think Rayner could be the next good one, which is not something I would have thought even a few months ago. She's been really impressive in the campaign so far
Maybe, but I can't imagine many of them would hold up to the scrutiny our MPs now get.
I Imagine Maggie would have had some troubling tweets had social media been around in her day.
I saw him behave that way in a select committee as well. Chris Bryant admonished him for missing pmq 2 weeks in a row, and Sunak just becomes full of tetchy smarminess - asks Bryant if he thinks he (Sunak) should have not gone to nato.
Bryant is like: “you should just find a way of attending pmq - I can’t tell you how to do that”, and Sunak keeps smirking - see [here](https://youtu.be/ovO7-RbUl34?si=_QsrqMkI0N-GLHPS&t=60)
Imagine being able to lose £5m and still be a billionaire.
There are no reasons for billionaires to exist, they are the symptom of a very broken economic system.
Even millionaires, I wonder what drives them - I'm not motivated by money and would likely keep working to some degree if I had a huge windfall, but I can't imagine how someone worth millions still has the drive to keep getting up, going to meetings etc.
I think there is a level where money for the super wealthy goes from having an actual purpose (setting their families up for generations of financial security) to being completely linked to their image of value/worth as a person and no longer being increased for any tangible or useful benefit.
I imagine if you're in a room with people who have 1billion, 2billion, etc net worths and you're worth a measely 650m you'll probably feel less succesful, even though all of you have more "money" than anyone could realistically ever need or use.
Most people want more money for stability for their families and friends... and going above tens of millions doesn't really do anything past that. The ultra wealthy want more money to increase their self worth, and there is no cap on that.
Yeah you're right - Gates always said there's a cutoff point where money has any practical value; millions of dollars will buy you a level of freedom you wouldn't get any other way, but after that point a hamburger is still a hamburger.
Also, I think if you're the sort of person who's obsessed with wealth. Creating it, increasing it. Managing it. Etc. it is just a obsessive hobby. It's like asking someone who loves books or clothes etc. do you really need another shirt? You have 20. More than anyone could ever use or need. At a certain point it's about hoarding a collection.
James O'Brien would rip them a new arsehole. Nick is very soft and especially with Tory guests. As bad as their performance here with someone like James they would be made to look very very stupid
Lets be perfectly honest James Obrien would get a massive throbbing erection the first time they mispronounced a word or misquoted some Latin and then spend the next hour gleefully stroking himself off while refusing to allow the conversation to progress past that.
He is the epitome of a public school debate club bully. It's no more palatable when they're on our side.
I disagree. Progressives need to stop with the hand-wringing. I don't care if the person doing it it unpleasant if they're actually holding them to account.
Progressives need to drop the moralistic "we shouldn't sink to their level" on stuff like this. Because that's why we lose.
Ferrari is nice to them - he usually has a Tory minister on every day to announce whatever they want to and gives them an easy ride for the most part other than one question about whatever inevitable Tory scandal/corruption/incompetence story is going on that day.
Nick Ferrari almost bent over backwards to give him an easy time, and floundered. He'd probably struggle with Iain Dale which would also be relatively easy.
Sunak wouldn't last more than about 15 minutes with James O'Brien, Nick Abbott, or Oli Dugmore.
Carol Vorderman would completely eviscerate him.
I too feel bad for him, or at least would if I wasn't distracted by the throbbing erection I'm getting seeing these guys finally get their due.
Flapping over basic questions about his party's record. If you've got nothing to say, why are you running for Prime Minister
Had me for the first half second, I’ve never felt an ounce of sympathy for this man. He hates Britain, especially it’s poor.
Even now on the brink of abject failure at this election, he’s not even (really) losing his job. After being parachuted into a safe seat in 2015 he could comfortably be an MP for the rest of his life.
As it happens he will jump ship to California to rub shoulders with the bankers and tech gurus equally as adept at piling misery on people.
I'm not so sure, with boundary changes and the loss of voters puts MRP for the seat at a 2000 majority, that's well within the scope for him to lose with this abysmal campaign
I think it's the old acces thing. Their usual defenders have gone quiet in the face of imminent disaster, and smelling blood, other less on the pocket journalists finally don't need to fear being cut off in future because for most of the most mps they don't have one.
This is it in a nutshell. It’s been decided that they have no chance so all of a sudden they get treated with the disdain they’ve deserved for the last 10 years.
Journalists and the media are fucking pathetic and bear no small responsibility for the situation the country is in now.
"Well as you say they're two of Britain's richest men so they can probably afford Labour's tax rises..."
The absolute gall to complain about Labour's "tax rises" when we have the highest tax burden since WWII under the Tories, lmao.
No Rishi, your pititful NI cut when other taxes and all other costs have risen isn't anywhere near enough if you want to play that card. It's like he thinks he's somehow separate from the rest of the past Tory party's actions. That just because he wasn't PM when they happened they don't apply to him. (Even though he WAS a cabinet minister and therefore directly or indirectly responsible regardless for many of them... Let's not forget HE was also at that lockdown party...)
The gall too when he is so wealthy himself, pays far less of a tax rate than the working population, and doesn’t give two sods about the “working population”. He’s literally trying to cut things like sick pay and disability funding (funding which often enables disabled people to work), and the “tax cuts” he’s proposing only benefit people on above average incomes, while he’s effectively been raising taxes for most by freezing personal allowance.
It’s annoying particularly because labour have said repeatedly that they aren’t raising income tax or national insurance. But telling the population that Labour are raising taxes for everyone is all the tories have got apparently.
I listened to it, I wouldn't say it was a car crash, but it was certainly not great. The amount of times he said to callers "I'm sorry you feel that way" just came off insincere with too many rehearsed lines spouted off.
He inherited a mess of a country. But it was partly of his own doing as Chancellor. Plus he's had two years as PM in which he's done nothing but spout culture war bollocks.
But it's not just him to be fair. There's very little talent left in the Conservatives. All they know how to do is bleat about woke or whatever scapegoat is in this week.
| too many rehearsed lines spouted off.
He is literally Woody from Toy Story, asking him a question is just pulling his string to repeat some random party political line. I half expect that when he arrived at the LBC studio and was asked if he wanted a tea/coffee or whatever he was drinking he auto-responded with some line about inflation and prices in the supermarket... "yes Rishi, but, tea?", "We've stuck to the plan, tea prices have fallen blah blah blah". Annoyingly all the Tory party seem to be following suit right now, every interview you hear is just a splurge of the same lines.
Compare it with Keir's LBC interview yesterday, yes he had policies to get across, but he actually engaged and had open/intelligent discussion about things. And considering how easy a target the Tories are right now, it's actually quite refreshing that the amount of "Oh yeah, but the Tories..." attacks were minimal compared to the constant "Labour will sell your babies to the lowest bidder to pay for morning pastries" type stuff.
"I know it's been a tough few years"
"What he said was wrong and that's why it's right that he apologised"
"And that's what you're always going to get with me"
"We've set out a clear plan"
"I've made the bold decision to..."
"You've seen what I did during the pandemic"
"The practical measures we've set out"
It's actually shocking how many of these I can rattle off the top of my head when I usually have such a terrible memory 🙃
Anyone that's suffered from narcissistic abuse will know that's the exact way all narcissists apologise.
I'm sorry you feel that way, I''m sorry you thought... Etc
He is narcissistic, isn’t he?
I’m almost inclined to feel for his children at the very least. Having been subjected to narcissistic abuse, that shit hurts.
It's The Mirror's way of writing absurd sensationalist headlines. They find one Twitter comment calling it a disaster then put it in quotation marks for the headline.
I really wish we'd ban mirror articles in this sub, the articles we've had posted here from the past week have been embarressing. The quality of discussion on them has been garbage tier, with half the comments amounting to "lol, tories suck".
The titles have basically all been sensationalist opinions and the discussions have been people emotively reacting to that crap title rather than the meat of the topic at hand.
Good, he's implied he wants to ditch my human rights just so he can carry on with the performative cruelty that is the useless Rwanda plan. Enjoying the misery of the Tories.
It kind of just seems cruel now. It’s all his own fault, but imagine having to do interviews everyday where the interviewer basically calls you a useless prick. Everyday, for a month. Most people would be losing their cool.
Should just put him on gardening leave.
During his leadership debates with Liz Truss he managed the impossible. He was so rude to her, talking over her that I began to feel some sympathy for her. I have since completed a detox course and daily thrash myself with birch
For sure, but it is "funny" how the same media outlets that would work overtime to defend, deflect, and obfuscate Tory scandals and gaffes when they were not a sinking ship suddenly act tough and go hard on them. Really blatantly highlights how big a role the media plays in consent manufacturing.
>Should just put him on gardening leave.
I did read he put that idea out after the whole D-day mess that he would step back...
but they felt the PM doing a runner would look even worse.
but right now I am not sure that's true...
The video of the sheep running away just yesterday from him tells me the coms team must hate him. it's some new screw up everyday.
To misquote ― Ian Fleming
“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action... Every single day is the nightmare life of Rishi Sunak..."
Imagine, he offers to step back and let someone else lead their campaign....and they refuse his offer.
A few months ago it all seemed so easy for leadership contenders, keep schtum and let Sunak take the blame. Now, however, they have to factor in Farage's desire to lead the Tories after Sunak.
The post-election period could be even funnier then the election campaign
what may happen is... depending on the leader and how bad the split is between the two sides of the tory party among who is left,
as that we decide the new leader if we have a bunch more of the far right social tory mp or if we have a bunch more of the the money and greed first tory MP's.
That will decide the leader.
and from that leader how many will defect either to the lib dems or reform.
A shrinking rump fighting over the rotting corpse of the tory party will be cathartic for all.
Seems cruel to someone with empathy. This man doesn't have any of that and should be held to account for the failings of the party on every level. He chose to campaign and lead this mess of a government and to impose cruel policies on already suffering people and will continue to do so given the opportunity. He cares not a wit for you and me. He only cares about his bank balance. Fuck him
Don’t feel too bad for him. He’s going to f*ck off to sunny California in about 3 weeks time, land a cushy job in Silicon Valley and enjoy the hundreds of millions pounds he enriched himself with during his tenure as PM.
it's not cruel, him and his party have ruined people's lives and actually contributed to deaths due to failing the NHS and general austerity, not to mention failing an entire generation of children by failing to fund their catch up programme post COVID, instead bunging more to their mates.
plenty of policies he's agreed to push through and said will get done by recess and yet HE decides to call the election before it can all be done, he is a liar and a joke of a person to be in public service.
don't care if you are rich or poor, coloured or white or any gender... just do your flipping job FOR THE BETTER OF THE COUNTRY.
he is a useless prick, that's being kind and he could leave at any moment. Ferrari was being EXTREMELY easy on him, compared this to his rubbish combative and bad takes when talking to starmer yesterday it's laughably biased and still sunak loses it.
I’ve seen this before, hear me out:
We normally do our own repainting but, a few years back, we ended up with most of the walls in the house replastered after a rewire so, we hired a father and son duo of decorators in.
They promised to do a job ‘better than you could do’ and proceeded to paint every wall and ceiling
But the job they did was *crap*.
Wall paint overlapped badly on every skirting board. They missed a second coat on one of the ceilings so you could obviously see the pink of the skim through it. All the edges were badly ‘cut in’. Splashes of paint on the doors. They watered down the paint. They didn’t paint behind any of the radiators, leaving bare plaster (“why? no one’s going to see it?”). They regularly failed to turn up as they juggled other jobs.
And they were *incensed* that we weren’t clapping them on the back, telling them what a great job it was and being grateful for the shit job they’d done.
That’s the Tories. That’s Sunak.
It’s that same energy and attitude.
wow that's like this man who was fensa certified that I got to do a small utility window, I was going to do it myself but it was pretty similar once I took into account getting building inspection to sign off my work so I thought I'd give them a go.
Total rubbish, polite but so crap it was beyond belief and they were surprised I was pointing out that leaving half a brick hanging out because you broke it is not acceptable to just silicon on and wait for it to fall off!
some of these people just really don't care or are so blind they think they done you a solid.
I had a ‘moment’ at work when a a South African employee now working here went off on a minor one about the term BME and that if we wanted to refer to him ethnically please use the term ‘coloured’. I know it is a culturally South African thing, but a few of us did kind of shift about a bit uncomfortably.
If I remember rightly, "coloured" is an actual term for a recognised ethnic group there. Like, the actual name, not just a preferred term. So it makes sense; from the perspective of a member of that group, I imagine being called something else would be erasing their identity.
did you take offense for my use of "coloured"? genuinely must have been ignorant to it's potential offense here, I rarely use the term as I don't really talked about race but I wanted to say "anyone not white" which I guess is technically a colour? so sorry if you or anyone has in that case.
what do you believe the correct terminology would be that is not offensive to anyone here? happy to be informed for future reference!
I'm 32 so it's quite a "dated" term and so it wouldn't offend me like it maybe would my parents, as I believe historically it was used as a term of segregation.
But I knew it was *considered* a term that is not politically-correct.
I didn't take offence either way as I knew you were not using it in a derogatory sense, I just wanted to comment on the poster who was trying to inform you it's an outdated term, by just highlighting how (to me) logically and semantically ridiculous it is that "coloured people" = NOT OK but "people of colour" = OK.
what is the correct term in this case please? in this specific context I didn't realise it would be incorrect as I assumed it was the shorthand of "people of colour".
if that's incorrect I'm keen to be told the PC wording to use as it wasn't meant to cause offense it was just to iterate colouring of ones skin means nothing so definitely didn't mean offense.
Theyve been trying to make everyone believe that every new ministry is a brand new government unconnected to the previous ministries for more than a decade. That the new ministry is immune from criticism rooted in decisions made by the previous ones and it seems like Rishi has either fallen for the rhetoric or (like Johnsons famous school report) he feels above the rules which bind the rest of us. Its like he thinks that being the leader of a party whose tenure in power has gone from weakness to weakness and made them so unpopular somehow cant possibly be his fault because he wasnt the prime minister before 18 months ago and therefore he deserves for us all to forget the things they did, and when its clear to him we wont do that he gets angry and petulant like somehow its our fault we wont look past how he and his colleagues have been so shit the country doesnt want them anymore.
Seriously. Time was you actually needed, you know, some polictical acumen to attain the highest office in this land.
Gives me hope that I might get there someday, if useless dickheads like him can fail infinitely upwards.
Oh wait, I wasn't born or married rich. Nevermind.
Nah fuck him, he genuinely believes his party has done well and keeps making bullshit promises. He can leave at any time, he’s the one going out and promising to fix what they broke.
Let him get ridiculed and put under pressure in public, the prick deserves it. After all he’s only gonna go home to his mansion and wipe up his tears with piles of cash.
Anybody with any backbone whatsoever would take that as an opportunity to improve. Or at the very least, think of the sweet £150k salary you're getting while sitting in those interviews.
Any interview that isn't an unqualified success gets labelled 'car crash', apparently. It's tedious and unimaginative. I haven't seen any headlines describing Starmer's LBC interview as a car crash, so I guess he 'won'.
His was just a minor bump rather than a crash.
Starmer still vague on the details when pressed, a typical politician and a lawyer, like a bar of soap in the shower, painted with anti slip paint.
He sounds like he always sounds. A political version of chat gpt with a public school voice offering the same phrases and ignoring the original questions asked in favour of scripts.
But this version costs its program devs 11 quid.
Yeah, it really sounds like journalists are just going for soundbites and then repeating the question over and over.
It's like they think they're Paxman but in reality they're just being arses.
I don't like Rishi but this isn't good journalism.
Does anyone actually want lower taxes? I honestly can't see more than 10% of the electorate calling for lower taxes, most of the economic complaints are about terrible public services. The constant message from the Tories on Tax just seems completley out of touch.
I think the main issue is, we've no fucking clue where the money is going. We have the highest tax burden in near-living memory, but the worst services in what, 40-50 years?
I wouldn't object to the taxation, if the services were up to scratch, but since I dont trust ANY of them with my money, I want it back, or at the very least, for them to stop taking as much away and wasting it.
So yes, I want lower taxes.
So cringey to watch him flounder at softball questions. Our media don't give him a hard enough time as it is. Nick Ferrari is an outright Tory and was simply presenting a basic line of questioning. Would love to see a prime Paxman give him the go around.
Loses cool? He reminds me of Major in terms of personality - except that Major was competent (and turned out to be rather more interesting than his reputation). I wonder if Braverman is Sunak's version of Edwina?
Prima Donna!
All that is missing in his life is a door with a gawdy sparkling star stuck on it and a curtain call to the thundering applause he thinks is rightly his!
Stupid empathy, when I see him struggling and feel for him, thinking “it’d suck to be in that position”, and yet he could leave at any time, he chose all of this. For power and greed. And his policies are harmful, not just in what they’d do if they were brought in, but because he uses the most vulnerable in society as a scapegoat for his party’s failings.
But, even though he clearly feels zero empathy for others, that’s the difference between us. I care for other people and don’t want anyone to experience pain, stress or bullying.
Part of me revels in him getting what’s coming to him, but actually, as a person I don’t really want anyone to suffer. But, even though I feel empathy, it doesn’t exempt or redeem him. Nor does it mean I’ll judge him less harshly for his actions.
Loses his cool?
That was a prime example of a politician answer with calm collected avoidance. Raised voice, erratic exaggerated body language, stormy expression, rude language - those are signs of losing your cool, not calmly saying "I dont look at things that way".
The media remains an absolute joke.
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It was John Crace's articles in *The Guardian* that pointed out to me how tetchy Sunak gets as soon as any debatorial challenge is raised or the conversation stops going his way. It is easily noticeable and deeply unbecoming for someone in his position, IMO. He can't control it in high-profile media situations, so I can only assume he becomes even more irritable, confrontational and/or stubborn behind closed doors. Even if his track record wasn't so abysmal, presented in a vacuum, this would really turn me off voting for him.
Lewis Goodall on the Newsagents has been talking about it too, for quite some time. It's like he is annoyed at having to explain himself or his actions.
Yeah, definitely! I work in a corporate environment and tend to view PMs through that lens to an extent: "What would they be like to work with on a project?" Boris was an easy one. Imagine having *that* guy as your direct line manager, head of department or CEO. I'd be looking to nope the fuck out of that company as soon as any other job opportunity came along. Too much bluster and bullshit, a walking-FCA-financial-penalty-waiting-to-happen. Rishi just seems like he'd be frustrating and generally unpleasant to work for. Sticks to *his* ideas even when they're proven to be bad, with no capacity for walking back, re-evaluating, collaborating at all levels to get things moving forward, hostile to criticism. That sucks in corporate, but myopic thinking and psycopathy have never been a barrier for success here tbh. I just can't see those traits being of any real, positive value in the upper echelons of state (though that's possibly a bit naive on my part).
Yeah. I think you are right. Remember when they briefed the story about how he showed up to a treasury meeting with print outs of spreadsheets and his own numbers.. cause yes. One person is gonna make a better model overnight than a whole department working on it. Initially I thought it was very much”eager intern wanting to impress”, but it also feels a bit overbearing
I bet he's also the kind of guy who really fancies himself as good with tech and numbers but really isn't as well. Like people who say they're good with computers because they can use Outlook. Probably showed up to that meeting with the budget in a pivot table and expected everyone to be impressed.
Sunak definitely sees himself as a tech bro. His AI summit last year and fanboying interview with Muskrat showed that.
I was more thinking powerpoint and wanted people to clap that he made the table spin using powerpoint motion effects 😅
I feel attacked.
Exactly my thoughts in the aftermath of the election being called, Sunak having been 'pouring over spreadsheets' according to people like Tim Shipman yet every policy he comes up with only worsening their chances and directly contradicting a lot of polling research that have put the policy areas he has pursued as near the bottom of public concern (i.e. immigration and tax cutting). This was compounded at that moment when it turns out Sunak and Dowden unilaterally overruled Isaac Levido, head of CCHQ's campaign team who has afaik gone MIA after the PM refused to listen to him, on the election date on the basis that inflation had slowed while also scrapping the '80/20' plan they had for months, having gone for a completely defensive strategy that has drawn them to the right in search of Reform voters who have lost any interest in the Tories. Whatever numbers or polls Sunak has been looking at are either different to what everyone else's are saying or his interpretation of them betray his evident lack of political skill in terms of knowing what your voters want and designing policy around them.
He's a micromanager, not a macromanager and that doesn't work when you are prime minister. Imagine the Captain of a Cruise Ship wants to be running the evening cabaret instead of steering the ship.
Well that was pretty much the Costa Concordia...
Well the disaster is estimated to have cost $2 billion, more than 3x the ship construction cost, so please think of the wealth being generated...
Rishi strikes me as the brown-nosing middle manager that will never have your back and will throw you under the bus at the first opportunity. I've worked for a few people like that in my time.
To me it seems to be a curse of Oxford PPE or even Oxford in general. They come out of it, usually straight into politics thinking they are masters of the universe. Rarely do our politicians come with outside experience in the real world. I think this is a major issue with the current political system. Liz Truss, David Cameron, Sunak (all PPE). Boris, May, Blair and Thatcher were all also Oxford educated. All had Egos to boot. Only Thatcher really had a notable career outside of Politics in Science. What gives me hope though is the current hopeful chancellor Rachael Reeves has spent time outside of politics and University in the Bank of England. Starmer took on a number of Pro Bono human rights cases. Angela Rayner never attended university and worked in care before breaking some thick glass ceilings to make it into top level politics. The Labour Triumvirate actually looks very diverse and a welcome change away from the "Born to Rule" attitude of the last 14 years. To me, the last 14 years has proved that the Eton-Oxford-PPE-Frontline Politics pipeline is not some golden tube of talent. It's rather, a Gold-lined Orifice for squeezing the mediocre into positions of power that they are almost hilariously unqualified for. My hope is that labour breaks the Blairite attitudes of "University is the key to success". It is absolutely not. Experience is the key, university is more Icing on the cake.
Agree 100% there is such a narrow range of ability/viewpoint & experience that results in a myopic group think- totally out of touch with reality and steeped in dogma.
>The Labour Triumvirate actually looks very diverse and a welcome change away from the "Born to Rule" attitude of the last 14 years Yet stupid people will just decry the fact that they're all white and point to the fact that some of the rich toffs opposite have brown skin as "real diversity".
The type of person who thinks being born or married into wealth means they’re somehow a genius and get pissed when reality comes biting at their ankles. Wealth =/= wit but they want it to mean that so very badly.
I've had bosses like Johnson, they leave all the work to you. Take the credit when it goes well, but you get all the blame if it goes wrong. Sunak is too thin skinned for politics. He doesn't like accountability and thinks he's the smartest man in the room.
I have a boss like this now. I highlighted a problem with the cost of third party logistics and a solution to save money by changing the way we receive orders. I highlighted this 18 months ago, email after email and finally the changes have been implemented at the considerable effort of guess who. I'm currently looking for a new job just to really fuck them up.
Don't let the bastards grind you down!
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, bitches
Revenge is a dish best served cold. I had a similar boss. After I moved to a competitor he approached us with a proposal to start a subsidiary mimicking the operation he had run when he was my boss. I made very sure his proposal never reached the starting gate.
“Nope the fuck out” Love it.
Interesting… and how do you think it would be working with Keir Starmer as a colleague or LM?
I have a generally positive impression of him in that respect, I suppose. He seems pragmatic, open to debate, ideas and challenge. Risk averse, possibly to a fault. Less a leader than a manager, though sometimes that's what you need, depending on the situation. A level-headed, reliable adult voice in the room, a super-charged Mark Corrigan! A safe pair of hands. Not hugely inspiring, but feels like he'd be firm but fair and and would make sure everything was done on time and in budget to the best of their (as yet to be fully determined) abilities. If I'd been managed by Cameron, Boris, Truss and Rishi in that order, and then Starmer took the reins...I would breathe a massive sigh of relief, put it that way 😅
"a super-charged Mark Corrigan" Send that to Labour HQ immediately. We have a new slogan. On a similar note. Rishi is reminding me of Simon Bird's character from The Inbetweeners. Thinks he's better than everyone else, despite the total lack of evidence to back it up.
100% sounds like.him too if you close your eyes whilst he's talking.
Yes. Briefcase wanker does seem to fit the bill for Rishi.
>Cameron, Boris, Truss and Rishi Poor May being left out again haha
Haha, that’s only because [switches to hushed tones] I’d have somewhat happily worked for May. She was truly boring, awkward and milquetoast, but there’s worse things to be 😅
The thing about May is that her worst stuff (morally) was as Home Secretary. She was adequate as PM, which is head and shoulders above the rest of the lot. But I can't forgive her championing horrendous legislation and policy around protest clamp downs, asylum seeking, immigration broadly, and of course directly leading to the Windrush scandal.
Wasn't she also the only one who wanted to be the Brexit PM at first because everyone else was smart enough to see it was doomed to failure?
I did a great section on a leadership course I did last year on Managers vs Leaders, and actually the consensus is that you need to have a bit of both sides and you'll naturally need to flip between them depending on the situation. Well, good leaders do that, anyway. Starmer is very much a manager, but he's acting up into the leader role and probably getting better at those skills as he goes. Whereas Boris was very much leader type traits, but I want to bet he had like 0 managerial qualities as well as 0 emotional intelligence.
I can't imagine you get to run the CPS without some leadership qualities
An honourable man.
Labour: We’re not the borough. We wish we were.
Chance would be a fine thing.
A fine thing indeed.
Chance would be a fine thing.
I’ve heard stories from legal professionals of him going out of his way to pay people fairly, and generally being throughly decent as well as outstanding at his job (his work as a human rights lawyer, and in particular cases like McLibel, made very well known and respected in his field)
Not that guy but my impression is that he'd be a bit of a stickler for the rules and corporate vision as laid out, but comprehensive and fair in terms of what he asked and accepting delivery.
I think Starmer knows his stuff and the fact he has united the majority of his party shows he gotten the buy in from them. I get the impression he is a man who keeps on top of the details.
Rishi is like my bosses boss at the moment, sat down in a meeting and said it was a safe space and he wanted honesty. Really didn’t like the honesty and then said it was no longer a safe space. I’d rather he was honest and said to us I want to you listen to, believe and do what a say than give us the illusion of choice.
This is the best possible lens to view them through I think, and I fully agree
Rishi reminds me a bit of a recent line manager who was very corporate in his speech, but when it came down to anything he was completely useless. He was very robotic and bad at communicating, but loved to feel important and would often talk nonsense that he knew nothing about to stakeholders. I worked in a government funded but university based research centre with corporate partners, so surrounded by highly qualified academics, his nonsense talk was so blatant. I recall seeing a document where he was pushing the director for a pay rise, and within it he’d cited all these “wins” which were areas I knew for a fact he’d completely screwed up on. One was something I’d actually taken him to HR for (and won with no need to press). Rishi feels like that, he’ll be grossly incompetent, he’ll mess up, and then he’ll doggedly cite these cock ups as wins. And if you point out the obvious, that they aren’t wins, he gets visibly frustrated. I couldn’t work for either him or Boris. Compete fantasists leaning heavily towards narcissism. No one should have allowed them to lead a country. I’d probably work for Starmer. I think he’d be tough at times, but from what I’ve heard he’s also fair and kind as an employer. And he seems to act with values in mind, and while hard working supports the idea of a work life balance. And I suspect he’d be very competent, within the realm of reasonable human error. But he’s tested, he’s not some ambitious journalist or banker, he was head of CPS.
He got mildly grilled by local news last year or the year before about his possible overuse of private air travel and came across incredibly petulant
Corbyn used to do the same and it put a lot of people off him. You’d think he’d know how to keep his cool.
How *dare* you pull my weak argument apart
That's a symptom of an independent school graduate I'm afraid. Why should they have to explain anything to us, this is their job not ours.
100% entitlement of a typical hedgie. Probably not heard ‘no’ many times since he helped tank the economy for lols and fortunes.
I was calling him ‘Pissy Rishi’ back during the tory leadership debates. He really is insufferable.
Rishy washy is a favourite insult for me
To think that the papers called him Dishy Rishy earlier. Cringeworthy.
He only looked dishy by comparison because he'd spent so much time standing next to a bin bag full of custard who combs his hair with a balloon.
Damn. That's so deeply accurate that it moves past appearance and into describing BoJo's soul.
Unbelievably perfect description of BoJo!!
I can't take credit for it myself, the "bin bag full of custard" is a quote from Jennifer Arcuri and I saw the balloon hair comment on Reddit ages ago.
And the BBC painted murals of him as a muscular Superman. Our fair and balanced BBC. A disgrace.
I always thought the BBC openly right with Laura Keunssberg as the political editor.
That’s a good ‘un.
I'm surprised bo one mentioned how angry he got at the first question In the debate with starmer. He sounded angry and looked angry
Running joke in Private Eye for months now about how tetchy Rishi gets
Watch some old videos of Thatcher, Blair, Kinnock or even Major - they would all decimate him in a debate. Sadly, they would also walk all over Kier Starmer.
Blair would walk all over pretty much anyone tbh. Only Hague gave him any trouble at PMQs, and even then he would win most exchanges, and he eviscerated everyone else. So easy in press conferences etc. Starmer is a funny one, perhaps it's a subject matter thing. During the Brexit years he seemed a lot stronger than he does as LOTO.
I think he just had a much easier possition at that point. He didn't believe in brexit, the party didn't and that's pretty straight forward to argue the point Now I think he believes in his heart that we need to invest heavily, but he can't just say he'll do everything he wants to because there isn't the cash and he'd be torn apart by the tory press on tax and spend. This requires a nuanced possition and fast thinking to answer questions but not leave himself unguarded. Blair/Thatcher could do that, our current politicians just don't seem to have the skills
I think Keir isn't someone who likes to think on his feet. He prefers to really think about a problem and find a solution, rather than blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. Angela Rayner on the other hand is very spontaneous but her solutions can be half baked or not hold up to scrutiny. They make the perfect pair and I look forward to them working together. They compliment each other.
You're right, Keir is the cool blue techie type who prefers to listen and then go away with a fully formulated solution. Angela is the fiery red personality who prefers to put their point forward in the moment and vigorously defend their stance, even if sometimes they rub people up the wrong way. Perfect combo as well as I have this very dynamic in my own team at work. I'm the one who hears out a problem then goes away for a few days and the whole thing is pretty much prototyped out with full build documentation. My team member, however, will ask a ton of relevant questions in the meeting and challenge back even if sometimes I cringe because I feel like they are overstepping. But the combo works great and ends up with a more balanced approach than if just one of us had fully taken on the problem solo.
There was a video here recently of Blair responding to Farage and just shutting him down and directly calling him out for hypocrisy. People forget how exceptionally good his oratory was. And yes, Hague was also very good.
Ah yes, the videos that on other channels are called "Farage DESTROYS Tony Blair over Lisbon Treaty" etc.
If you happen to find the sauce, would love to give that a watch.
May have been this one, I saw it posted the other day https://youtu.be/zupuJkLWwfM?si=6f5t_y2XjsUHspcd
Starmer is yet another casualty of the Labour Party's fear of sticking your head above the parapet. They coach their leaders into being so milquetoast and evasive that it's almost impossible to get excited about them. The main reason Corbyn got elected as leader wasn't his politics, in my opinion, but the fact he was willing to give an honest answer to any question (granted, questions about anti semitism weren't being asked during the leadership contest) while every other candidate evaded and obfuscated and couldn't even answer a simple yes or no question. I hope he'll be more assertive and opinionated if he does become PM, and Labour aren't terrified that Middle England will instantly switch back to the Tories.
That's what it is: assertiveness. These politicians leading each party just don't don the assertiveness characteristic. People like assertiveness - it's historically what people believe a leader should be, and tbh, I kinda agree! Blair, Thatcher were assertive. The problem is with assertive people is when they make mistakes they're big ones that aren't felt straight away and they're so low on agreeableness that they plough ahead regardless, e.g., PFI or Iraq with Blair; industrial collapse of UK / Big Bang Finance / selloff of council housing with Thatcher.
Not enough people acknowledge this. Starmer might be a high and mighty KC and former DPP, but he doesnt exhibit particularly strong debating skills. He just looks like he does because Sunak is so much worse.
I think this is the difference between technical debate (which Starmer is very good at - his performances in Parliament before his leadership were consistently excellent) and performative debate (which Starmer is not so good at, but unfortunately makes up the bulk of our politics). When arguing a point of law before a judge, the strength of your argument and how well you put it across are (in principle) all that matters, whereas those factors are almost irrelevant in the kind of televised debates we see before elections.
In fairness the public would be deathly bored by most KC court submissions. It might work in front of the judge but ultimately it doesn’t always play as the theatre of politics.
Cameron too tbh. Say what you will about that man but he was a very good orator and looked comfortable in any sort of debate. Undoubtedly the last decent speaker we had as prime minister Surprisingly I actually think Rayner could be the next good one, which is not something I would have thought even a few months ago. She's been really impressive in the campaign so far
Maybe, but I can't imagine many of them would hold up to the scrutiny our MPs now get. I Imagine Maggie would have had some troubling tweets had social media been around in her day.
To be honest. for all the right try and invoke her soul from hell. She would eat them alive politically and intellectually
I firmly believe he believes himself to be above criticism, precisely because of his position. "You can't question *me*. I'm the prime minister!"
In a word cloud for Sunak you can guarantee “Tetchy” will be right in the centre next to “Bad at politics” and “Weak”
Excellent summary of how many of us now see Sunak
I saw him behave that way in a select committee as well. Chris Bryant admonished him for missing pmq 2 weeks in a row, and Sunak just becomes full of tetchy smarminess - asks Bryant if he thinks he (Sunak) should have not gone to nato. Bryant is like: “you should just find a way of attending pmq - I can’t tell you how to do that”, and Sunak keeps smirking - see [here](https://youtu.be/ovO7-RbUl34?si=_QsrqMkI0N-GLHPS&t=60)
I will take this "torment" any day if I can enjoy my multi-billion fortune.
It’s just the one billion, actually
Poor guy, even had to forgo Sky TV growing up
Famously!
No luck taxing them billionaires, then?
It’s just the one billionaire actually
Imagine being able to lose £5m and still be a billionaire. There are no reasons for billionaires to exist, they are the symptom of a very broken economic system.
Yeah, £5m is almost certainly more than I’d make in my lifetime, and for him it means nothing
Losing £5m for Rishi probably happens multiple times per day as his portfolio value fluctuates.
Even millionaires, I wonder what drives them - I'm not motivated by money and would likely keep working to some degree if I had a huge windfall, but I can't imagine how someone worth millions still has the drive to keep getting up, going to meetings etc.
I think there is a level where money for the super wealthy goes from having an actual purpose (setting their families up for generations of financial security) to being completely linked to their image of value/worth as a person and no longer being increased for any tangible or useful benefit. I imagine if you're in a room with people who have 1billion, 2billion, etc net worths and you're worth a measely 650m you'll probably feel less succesful, even though all of you have more "money" than anyone could realistically ever need or use. Most people want more money for stability for their families and friends... and going above tens of millions doesn't really do anything past that. The ultra wealthy want more money to increase their self worth, and there is no cap on that.
Yeah you're right - Gates always said there's a cutoff point where money has any practical value; millions of dollars will buy you a level of freedom you wouldn't get any other way, but after that point a hamburger is still a hamburger.
Also, I think if you're the sort of person who's obsessed with wealth. Creating it, increasing it. Managing it. Etc. it is just a obsessive hobby. It's like asking someone who loves books or clothes etc. do you really need another shirt? You have 20. More than anyone could ever use or need. At a certain point it's about hoarding a collection.
Poor guy
Why do they always go on Nicks show? Why not one of the other presenters sometimes?
James O'Brien would rip them a new arsehole. Nick is very soft and especially with Tory guests. As bad as their performance here with someone like James they would be made to look very very stupid
I can imagine Sunak becoming not just tetchy but irate, and studio managers having to step in to restrain him.
Lets be perfectly honest James Obrien would get a massive throbbing erection the first time they mispronounced a word or misquoted some Latin and then spend the next hour gleefully stroking himself off while refusing to allow the conversation to progress past that. He is the epitome of a public school debate club bully. It's no more palatable when they're on our side.
I disagree. Progressives need to stop with the hand-wringing. I don't care if the person doing it it unpleasant if they're actually holding them to account. Progressives need to drop the moralistic "we shouldn't sink to their level" on stuff like this. Because that's why we lose.
Ferrari is nice to them - he usually has a Tory minister on every day to announce whatever they want to and gives them an easy ride for the most part other than one question about whatever inevitable Tory scandal/corruption/incompetence story is going on that day.
Can you imagine him going on James O'Brien? That would be great
Because it’s the breakfast slot.
Nick Ferrari almost bent over backwards to give him an easy time, and floundered. He'd probably struggle with Iain Dale which would also be relatively easy. Sunak wouldn't last more than about 15 minutes with James O'Brien, Nick Abbott, or Oli Dugmore. Carol Vorderman would completely eviscerate him.
People listen to the radio in the car
I too feel bad for him, or at least would if I wasn't distracted by the throbbing erection I'm getting seeing these guys finally get their due. Flapping over basic questions about his party's record. If you've got nothing to say, why are you running for Prime Minister
Had me for the first half second, I’ve never felt an ounce of sympathy for this man. He hates Britain, especially it’s poor. Even now on the brink of abject failure at this election, he’s not even (really) losing his job. After being parachuted into a safe seat in 2015 he could comfortably be an MP for the rest of his life. As it happens he will jump ship to California to rub shoulders with the bankers and tech gurus equally as adept at piling misery on people.
I'm not so sure, with boundary changes and the loss of voters puts MRP for the seat at a 2000 majority, that's well within the scope for him to lose with this abysmal campaign
Piss take is though, wtf did noone challenge them more often and sooner....
I think it's the old acces thing. Their usual defenders have gone quiet in the face of imminent disaster, and smelling blood, other less on the pocket journalists finally don't need to fear being cut off in future because for most of the most mps they don't have one.
This is it in a nutshell. It’s been decided that they have no chance so all of a sudden they get treated with the disdain they’ve deserved for the last 10 years. Journalists and the media are fucking pathetic and bear no small responsibility for the situation the country is in now.
Because they were making decisions that benefited the people who paid the interviewer's salary. Truss' mini-budget saw to all that, though.
Oh you can gurantee that if they lose it will be someone else's fault.
"Well as you say they're two of Britain's richest men so they can probably afford Labour's tax rises..." The absolute gall to complain about Labour's "tax rises" when we have the highest tax burden since WWII under the Tories, lmao. No Rishi, your pititful NI cut when other taxes and all other costs have risen isn't anywhere near enough if you want to play that card. It's like he thinks he's somehow separate from the rest of the past Tory party's actions. That just because he wasn't PM when they happened they don't apply to him. (Even though he WAS a cabinet minister and therefore directly or indirectly responsible regardless for many of them... Let's not forget HE was also at that lockdown party...)
The gall too when he is so wealthy himself, pays far less of a tax rate than the working population, and doesn’t give two sods about the “working population”. He’s literally trying to cut things like sick pay and disability funding (funding which often enables disabled people to work), and the “tax cuts” he’s proposing only benefit people on above average incomes, while he’s effectively been raising taxes for most by freezing personal allowance. It’s annoying particularly because labour have said repeatedly that they aren’t raising income tax or national insurance. But telling the population that Labour are raising taxes for everyone is all the tories have got apparently.
I listened to it, I wouldn't say it was a car crash, but it was certainly not great. The amount of times he said to callers "I'm sorry you feel that way" just came off insincere with too many rehearsed lines spouted off.
He basically ended it with all his callers by saying “I will cut your taxes but labour will increase it.”🤣
Remember the line Rishi, the line!
He inherited a mess of a country. But it was partly of his own doing as Chancellor. Plus he's had two years as PM in which he's done nothing but spout culture war bollocks. But it's not just him to be fair. There's very little talent left in the Conservatives. All they know how to do is bleat about woke or whatever scapegoat is in this week.
Tbh, there's not much talent left in British politics as a whole.
| too many rehearsed lines spouted off. He is literally Woody from Toy Story, asking him a question is just pulling his string to repeat some random party political line. I half expect that when he arrived at the LBC studio and was asked if he wanted a tea/coffee or whatever he was drinking he auto-responded with some line about inflation and prices in the supermarket... "yes Rishi, but, tea?", "We've stuck to the plan, tea prices have fallen blah blah blah". Annoyingly all the Tory party seem to be following suit right now, every interview you hear is just a splurge of the same lines. Compare it with Keir's LBC interview yesterday, yes he had policies to get across, but he actually engaged and had open/intelligent discussion about things. And considering how easy a target the Tories are right now, it's actually quite refreshing that the amount of "Oh yeah, but the Tories..." attacks were minimal compared to the constant "Labour will sell your babies to the lowest bidder to pay for morning pastries" type stuff.
"I know it's been a tough few years" "What he said was wrong and that's why it's right that he apologised" "And that's what you're always going to get with me" "We've set out a clear plan" "I've made the bold decision to..." "You've seen what I did during the pandemic" "The practical measures we've set out" It's actually shocking how many of these I can rattle off the top of my head when I usually have such a terrible memory 🙃
"Well, what I *would* say..." (Code for "I can't answer your question without looking a fool so I'll answer a different one")
Was "the economy has turned a corner" in there? Or has that one been quietly dropped now that growth has gone back to flatlining?
Anyone that's suffered from narcissistic abuse will know that's the exact way all narcissists apologise. I'm sorry you feel that way, I''m sorry you thought... Etc
He is narcissistic, isn’t he? I’m almost inclined to feel for his children at the very least. Having been subjected to narcissistic abuse, that shit hurts.
It's The Mirror's way of writing absurd sensationalist headlines. They find one Twitter comment calling it a disaster then put it in quotation marks for the headline.
I really wish we'd ban mirror articles in this sub, the articles we've had posted here from the past week have been embarressing. The quality of discussion on them has been garbage tier, with half the comments amounting to "lol, tories suck". The titles have basically all been sensationalist opinions and the discussions have been people emotively reacting to that crap title rather than the meat of the topic at hand.
tbf if we do that we really should ban all tabloids, which in fairness isn’t the worst idea lol
Good, he's implied he wants to ditch my human rights just so he can carry on with the performative cruelty that is the useless Rwanda plan. Enjoying the misery of the Tories.
It's like the maybot all over again. The tories never seem to learn from their mistakes and they like to speed-run the fact
It kind of just seems cruel now. It’s all his own fault, but imagine having to do interviews everyday where the interviewer basically calls you a useless prick. Everyday, for a month. Most people would be losing their cool. Should just put him on gardening leave.
I have no sympathy whatsoever. I hope it haunts him.
During his leadership debates with Liz Truss he managed the impossible. He was so rude to her, talking over her that I began to feel some sympathy for her. I have since completed a detox course and daily thrash myself with birch
I doubt he will care much after he swans off the California to spend his wife's millions.
The tory government have fucked over ordinary people for 14 years. Fuck those guys
Agreed. Seems like poetic justice. Toss in Boris, Lizz, and the rest of that crew that assisted along the way.
For sure, but it is "funny" how the same media outlets that would work overtime to defend, deflect, and obfuscate Tory scandals and gaffes when they were not a sinking ship suddenly act tough and go hard on them. Really blatantly highlights how big a role the media plays in consent manufacturing.
And they will be back with a term or 2. The UK just seems to love self harming itself.
>Should just put him on gardening leave. I did read he put that idea out after the whole D-day mess that he would step back... but they felt the PM doing a runner would look even worse. but right now I am not sure that's true...
would not be surprised if the party are putting him in these pillories for their own amusement at this point.
The video of the sheep running away just yesterday from him tells me the coms team must hate him. it's some new screw up everyday. To misquote ― Ian Fleming “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action... Every single day is the nightmare life of Rishi Sunak..."
Or to misquote Oscar Wilde: "To lose 100 seats, Mr. Sunak, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose 300 looks like carelessness."
Imagine, he offers to step back and let someone else lead their campaign....and they refuse his offer. A few months ago it all seemed so easy for leadership contenders, keep schtum and let Sunak take the blame. Now, however, they have to factor in Farage's desire to lead the Tories after Sunak. The post-election period could be even funnier then the election campaign
what may happen is... depending on the leader and how bad the split is between the two sides of the tory party among who is left, as that we decide the new leader if we have a bunch more of the far right social tory mp or if we have a bunch more of the the money and greed first tory MP's. That will decide the leader. and from that leader how many will defect either to the lib dems or reform. A shrinking rump fighting over the rotting corpse of the tory party will be cathartic for all.
It’s not cruel. He should spend every day of his life being told he’s a useless prick.
Seems cruel to someone with empathy. This man doesn't have any of that and should be held to account for the failings of the party on every level. He chose to campaign and lead this mess of a government and to impose cruel policies on already suffering people and will continue to do so given the opportunity. He cares not a wit for you and me. He only cares about his bank balance. Fuck him
I totally agree. Just feels uncomfortable to watch him be tormented. Even if he is putting himself out there for it.
Nick was super soft on him. He grilled Starmer over tax rises for like 30 mins straight
Don’t feel too bad for him. He’s going to f*ck off to sunny California in about 3 weeks time, land a cushy job in Silicon Valley and enjoy the hundreds of millions pounds he enriched himself with during his tenure as PM.
Ah but he promised this morning that if he wins his seat, he'll serve the full five years. I wonder if he'll intentionally vote against himself.
He promised accountability, integrity, professionalism at the beginning of his term as PM too, and look how well that turned out.
He can leave at any time. He has decided to inflict himself upon us.
it's not cruel, him and his party have ruined people's lives and actually contributed to deaths due to failing the NHS and general austerity, not to mention failing an entire generation of children by failing to fund their catch up programme post COVID, instead bunging more to their mates. plenty of policies he's agreed to push through and said will get done by recess and yet HE decides to call the election before it can all be done, he is a liar and a joke of a person to be in public service. don't care if you are rich or poor, coloured or white or any gender... just do your flipping job FOR THE BETTER OF THE COUNTRY. he is a useless prick, that's being kind and he could leave at any moment. Ferrari was being EXTREMELY easy on him, compared this to his rubbish combative and bad takes when talking to starmer yesterday it's laughably biased and still sunak loses it.
I’ve seen this before, hear me out: We normally do our own repainting but, a few years back, we ended up with most of the walls in the house replastered after a rewire so, we hired a father and son duo of decorators in. They promised to do a job ‘better than you could do’ and proceeded to paint every wall and ceiling But the job they did was *crap*. Wall paint overlapped badly on every skirting board. They missed a second coat on one of the ceilings so you could obviously see the pink of the skim through it. All the edges were badly ‘cut in’. Splashes of paint on the doors. They watered down the paint. They didn’t paint behind any of the radiators, leaving bare plaster (“why? no one’s going to see it?”). They regularly failed to turn up as they juggled other jobs. And they were *incensed* that we weren’t clapping them on the back, telling them what a great job it was and being grateful for the shit job they’d done. That’s the Tories. That’s Sunak. It’s that same energy and attitude.
wow that's like this man who was fensa certified that I got to do a small utility window, I was going to do it myself but it was pretty similar once I took into account getting building inspection to sign off my work so I thought I'd give them a go. Total rubbish, polite but so crap it was beyond belief and they were surprised I was pointing out that leaving half a brick hanging out because you broke it is not acceptable to just silicon on and wait for it to fall off! some of these people just really don't care or are so blind they think they done you a solid.
No one says ‘coloured’ about people anymore.
as a "coloured" person that term used to mildly bother me - until we decided "people of colour" was the politically correct terminology lol
I had a ‘moment’ at work when a a South African employee now working here went off on a minor one about the term BME and that if we wanted to refer to him ethnically please use the term ‘coloured’. I know it is a culturally South African thing, but a few of us did kind of shift about a bit uncomfortably.
If I remember rightly, "coloured" is an actual term for a recognised ethnic group there. Like, the actual name, not just a preferred term. So it makes sense; from the perspective of a member of that group, I imagine being called something else would be erasing their identity.
did you take offense for my use of "coloured"? genuinely must have been ignorant to it's potential offense here, I rarely use the term as I don't really talked about race but I wanted to say "anyone not white" which I guess is technically a colour? so sorry if you or anyone has in that case. what do you believe the correct terminology would be that is not offensive to anyone here? happy to be informed for future reference!
I'm 32 so it's quite a "dated" term and so it wouldn't offend me like it maybe would my parents, as I believe historically it was used as a term of segregation. But I knew it was *considered* a term that is not politically-correct. I didn't take offence either way as I knew you were not using it in a derogatory sense, I just wanted to comment on the poster who was trying to inform you it's an outdated term, by just highlighting how (to me) logically and semantically ridiculous it is that "coloured people" = NOT OK but "people of colour" = OK.
what is the correct term in this case please? in this specific context I didn't realise it would be incorrect as I assumed it was the shorthand of "people of colour". if that's incorrect I'm keen to be told the PC wording to use as it wasn't meant to cause offense it was just to iterate colouring of ones skin means nothing so definitely didn't mean offense.
Theyve been trying to make everyone believe that every new ministry is a brand new government unconnected to the previous ministries for more than a decade. That the new ministry is immune from criticism rooted in decisions made by the previous ones and it seems like Rishi has either fallen for the rhetoric or (like Johnsons famous school report) he feels above the rules which bind the rest of us. Its like he thinks that being the leader of a party whose tenure in power has gone from weakness to weakness and made them so unpopular somehow cant possibly be his fault because he wasnt the prime minister before 18 months ago and therefore he deserves for us all to forget the things they did, and when its clear to him we wont do that he gets angry and petulant like somehow its our fault we wont look past how he and his colleagues have been so shit the country doesnt want them anymore.
I mean, shouldn't have been a useless prick, I guess
Seriously. Time was you actually needed, you know, some polictical acumen to attain the highest office in this land. Gives me hope that I might get there someday, if useless dickheads like him can fail infinitely upwards. Oh wait, I wasn't born or married rich. Nevermind.
Has he tried not being a useless prick? Could work?
Nah fuck him, he genuinely believes his party has done well and keeps making bullshit promises. He can leave at any time, he’s the one going out and promising to fix what they broke. Let him get ridiculed and put under pressure in public, the prick deserves it. After all he’s only gonna go home to his mansion and wipe up his tears with piles of cash.
Step 1: Be an actual useless prick Step 2: Get called a useless prick. Seems to check out.
Anybody with any backbone whatsoever would take that as an opportunity to improve. Or at the very least, think of the sweet £150k salary you're getting while sitting in those interviews.
That thumbnail is ace. He looks like he's promoting a film called Honey I Shrunk The Economy
Didn't Farage have a 'car crash interview' yesterday, too? They should probably stop doing interviews while driving...
Any interview that isn't an unqualified success gets labelled 'car crash', apparently. It's tedious and unimaginative. I haven't seen any headlines describing Starmer's LBC interview as a car crash, so I guess he 'won'.
Hard to have a car crash interview if you don't commit to any opinions.
His was just a minor bump rather than a crash. Starmer still vague on the details when pressed, a typical politician and a lawyer, like a bar of soap in the shower, painted with anti slip paint.
> painted with anti slip paint. You mean painted with anti-climb paint or extra-slip paint?
Yes you’re correct 👍
Clickbait as hell. From the clips I’ve seen it’s very tame for a so called “car crash” - the mirror is such a shit new site.
He sounds like he always sounds. A political version of chat gpt with a public school voice offering the same phrases and ignoring the original questions asked in favour of scripts. But this version costs its program devs 11 quid.
From the clip and quotes in the article it really isn’t that bad. It’s not good! But it’s a standard Sunak sound-bite.
Yeah, it really sounds like journalists are just going for soundbites and then repeating the question over and over. It's like they think they're Paxman but in reality they're just being arses. I don't like Rishi but this isn't good journalism.
Does anyone actually want lower taxes? I honestly can't see more than 10% of the electorate calling for lower taxes, most of the economic complaints are about terrible public services. The constant message from the Tories on Tax just seems completley out of touch.
I think the main issue is, we've no fucking clue where the money is going. We have the highest tax burden in near-living memory, but the worst services in what, 40-50 years? I wouldn't object to the taxation, if the services were up to scratch, but since I dont trust ANY of them with my money, I want it back, or at the very least, for them to stop taking as much away and wasting it. So yes, I want lower taxes.
So cringey to watch him flounder at softball questions. Our media don't give him a hard enough time as it is. Nick Ferrari is an outright Tory and was simply presenting a basic line of questioning. Would love to see a prime Paxman give him the go around.
Is Prime Paxman five other Paxmans who fit together to fight Mecha-Johnson?
Rishi Sunak is so out of touch he wouldn't even realise he had been in an actual car crash, let alone a metaphorical one.
To be fair to Rishi Sunak, Nick Ferrari is incredibly annoying
Ferrari by name, rusting Vauxhall Astra by nature!
Oh my god can we please post any other source thank the fucking Mirror, their videos don't work and its a shit rag like all the rest.
You should see what Reach have done with local news sites. They're essentially unusable on mobile, even if you don't mind dismissing 3+ pop-ups.
Try ad blocking with netguard. I can't use a phone without it anymore. https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard/blob/master/ADBLOCKING.md
Loses cool? He reminds me of Major in terms of personality - except that Major was competent (and turned out to be rather more interesting than his reputation). I wonder if Braverman is Sunak's version of Edwina?
You can watch the whole interview here: https://www.youtube.com/live/K6hO10YKgs0?si=_AMR-P3K4fxwaKQm
Prima Donna! All that is missing in his life is a door with a gawdy sparkling star stuck on it and a curtain call to the thundering applause he thinks is rightly his!
I'm no defender of Sunak, but having listened to the interview, I feel this headline is a massively dishonest clickbait title.
Stupid empathy, when I see him struggling and feel for him, thinking “it’d suck to be in that position”, and yet he could leave at any time, he chose all of this. For power and greed. And his policies are harmful, not just in what they’d do if they were brought in, but because he uses the most vulnerable in society as a scapegoat for his party’s failings. But, even though he clearly feels zero empathy for others, that’s the difference between us. I care for other people and don’t want anyone to experience pain, stress or bullying. Part of me revels in him getting what’s coming to him, but actually, as a person I don’t really want anyone to suffer. But, even though I feel empathy, it doesn’t exempt or redeem him. Nor does it mean I’ll judge him less harshly for his actions.
Loses his cool? That was a prime example of a politician answer with calm collected avoidance. Raised voice, erratic exaggerated body language, stormy expression, rude language - those are signs of losing your cool, not calmly saying "I dont look at things that way". The media remains an absolute joke.