Comments by "Cinderball" (@cinderball1135) on "The New Statesman" channel.

@smashingturnips5353 Hot take: I disagree. Someone who was 8 years old when the financial crash happened - too young to really be paying attention to politics - would be 24 years old now. The Brexit referendum happened when they were 16. Now really is the first time that many of them will be taking stock of what was done to them, or what was taken from them. It might be obvious to you or me, but there are thousands of people undergoing their political awakening right now. I think that's awesome, and I hope it means we've got a bright future ahead of us, with a generation that will be voting progressively for decades to come. Let's not spoil it for them. <3
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@luke7708 Labour is promising a publicly owned energy company, university places to train thousands of new doctors and nurses, new anti-corruption laws for Parliamentarians, prosecutions for criminally-awarded public contracts, publicly funded breakfast clubs for every primary school in the land. Please point me to those items in the Tory manifesto, and get back to me.
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Nah, these are YouTube comments, where extremist opinions are rewarded with upvotes. The actually unpopular opinion here is the more sensible one: that Labour can't be an extremist party and expect to win office, and that you're demonstrating a pretty deep level of entitlement if you're expecting a political party to agree with you 100% all the time.
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@luke7708 Apologies, what was intended to be tongue-in-cheek probably came over rather differently. Speaking via text and particularly on a comment section doesn't lend itself very well to being friendly! I think what you've got to keep in mind is that especially leading into the election, Labour needs to talk to the voters about positive policy suggestions. Merely going in and talking about reversing Tory policies will make the conversation be about THEM, and will give the Tories the podium. That's exactly what Labour's trying to avoid, by refocusing its efforts on simple, obvious, affordable things. Do any of the things I listed solve all the country's problems? No. But they help incrementally, and they will come together to make a more significant difference. Meanwhile, I think you can be quite sure that Labour is going to quietly repeal a LOT of Conservative era rubbish.
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The media are broadly supportive of Starmer? You wot? xD
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What a daft comment about Nadine Dorries at 12:00. She hasn't been holding constituency surgeries, quite famously actually.
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@PennyBloater Also, since these are YouTube comments and we're all mean to each other here, I must call you out in a lie: Labour won 32% of the popular vote in 2019, down from 40% in 2017: It was a loss worse than Gordon Brown's in 2010. Going around claiming that 2019 was some kind of success is deeply silly.
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I've been saying this for years now. When Boris Johnson took over the Tory Party, what he did, essentially, was to lobotomise it. He removed anybody smart enough, strong enough or credible enough to challenge his position, through the very useful device of testing their loyalty to Brexit. All the clever Tory MPs were culled, right away - including Rory Stewart. What the Conservative party has left is the dregs, the leftovers, the off-cuts. There's no "moderate" Tory Party there to pivot back to, now that the Brexiteer loons have lost the plot and lost the confidence of the electorate. There are no Rory Stewarts that can be elected PM or who can staff a credible and competent cabinet. Even if this hadn't happened, the Conservative party would likely be facing a very uphill challenge to pull things back and win the upcoming General Election, but without those people around, the only choice left to the Brexiteers is to double down on the culture wars, the divisiveness and the foul play, and hope like hell that the public suffers a collective seizure and reelects them in 2024. And as a leftwinger myself, I can't thank them enough for imploding by themselves, because I'm not persuaded there's anything we could ever have done to them that will ever compare to the sheer destructive capacity of putting Boris Johnson in charge of their party.
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Like many people who were raised Conservative, I've come to the conclusion that leftwing parties are where we all need to be. Decency, honour, public service and integrity are values better embodied by Labour and the Liberal Democrats than by the Conservatives. Modern Tories are obsessed with pointless culture wars like signs on bathroom doors. I'd say they've lost their way, but truly I'm not sure they ever had much of a clue in retrospect.
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@PennyBloater Great British Energy - a publicly owned energy company to undercut the privatised monsters. A windfall tax on energy profits. Training thousands of new doctors and nurses. A refocus on community-based healthcare to prevent hospitalisations. Honesty and accountability brought back into Parliament, backed up by force of law. An end to drilling for fossil fuels in the North Sea. A breakfast club for every primary school in England. I could go on, and if you like, I will.
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@PortilloMoment I think you're mixing up quite a few different things, which makes it difficult to disentangle. Britain has the absolute right to run a publicly owned energy company - France does, you may have heard of it - it's called EDF. And they're the ones who have been cornering the market in the UK by undercutting their competitors. It turns out that publicly-owned utilities outcompete privately owned ones. Who knew? And you'd be amazed at how much tax money is currently being missed-out on because of tax dodges and exemptions for the wealthy. Merely by closing loopholes, Labour could raise tens or even hundreds of billions. How's that for a start?
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@EightiesMusic1984 I have a three step process for you: 1 - Go back and read the comment you wrote your reply to. 2 - No seriously, go back and read the comment you replied to. 3 - I mean it, PLEASE go back and read the comment. ;_;
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@PennyBloater Oh I see the mistake - my bad. 😅 I assumed you were talking about 2019 as being a good year for Labour. You were actually talking about 2017. Which for my money is actually worse, not better: Are we really holding up losing to THERESA MAY as an accomplishment??
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