Quote Originally Posted by Pannonian View Post
Firstly, and I don't think I explained well enough in my previous answer, much of UK politics is box ticking. The Tories by default have some boxes ticked, Labour by default have some other boxes ticked. The Tories have the advantage of having their boxes deemed more important by the voters, and a super majority of the media are also heavily biased towards the Tories. The party that has the most boxes ticked, weighted by importance, will have the advantage with swing voters.

Johnson has the huge advantage of being a shameless liar. Which means he will promise everything to everyone, thus ticking all boxes. Does it matter that he is a liar and repeatedly and concretely proven so? I don't know. I've asked many, many times, why he is not held to account for promises like 350 million per week for the NHS, but you can see for yourself how excuses are made, that other, more nebulous issues that can never be measured are somehow more important. Is this representative of the British voters? I don't know.

Also, I'm told that Rayner's quote was part of a wider interview, that the quote was meant to illustrate how people can't simply be categorised as left or right. I don't know myself, not having listened to or read the entire interview.
I understand the principle of it. What I'm trying to say is, it doesn't make sense to worry about the British voter being susceptible to cheap talk and bluster, obtuse to scandal and corruption, if you're also trying to win them over with cheap talk and bluster - that nevertheless the other side has a provably superior competency in. If one expects the British people to crave bullshit of the sort the Deputy Leader indulged in, Boris Johnson is a vastly-superior bullshitter than Starmer and team has ever been revealed to be. Labour can't out-Brawndo Boris Johnson (though perhaps they could stick him sufficiently unlikeable, but that's a grassroots matter).

Imagine:

John Q Public: "What will the government do about crime?"
Politician: "Let's out the dirty weed-huffing hippies on the village square. For the greater good."
JQP: "I am reassured by this reasoned and well-developed answer to our problems."

If the above is taken as an accurate reflection of the electorate's condition (or an influential segment thereof), one can hardly expect JQP to be in the market for staid, accountable government in other contexts.

You should really be hoping this isn't an accurate picture of boxes to tick, not in this manner. Or you're... whatever the British slang for 'not in a good condition' is.


Quote Originally Posted by Furunculus View Post
tee-hee:

https://youtu.be/0kZ03v019rg?t=353
As the video alerts us, the extra funding (mostly temporary pandemic stimulus AFAIK) is unrelated to Brexit, and is barely keeping pace with growth in demand and population, let alone reversing Cameron/May cuts to the NHS, which has become infamously overburdened. And - I can't help but note that the Blair era, for all the criticisms of its healthcare policy, saw hefty funding increases pushed to the NHS. Leaving this as a promise kept at Johnson's feet is a bit like giving Trump credit for vowing to put less priority on cutting Medicare and Social Security than the Republican establishment did.