DannyL

Wild Horses
Found it.That is fairly indefensible and objectively false Would like to see the caveats that no doubt surrounded it in the original interview.
 

boxedjoy

Well-known member
I would be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this and assume there's a context to his response, except he's also spent the past year courting voters who conflate patriotism with nationalism, the type of people who don't see any issue with treating Meghan differently to Kate.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Not sure why people are aghast at Starmer not taking Meghan seriously, the majority of British society is soft Royalist, and Starmer is courting that demographic. Even Corbyn before him was, though some republicans supported him, which they will never do for old long Kesh.

All patriotism in the UK on a mass level is inherently royalist and nationalistic. All other phenomena (and yes, they do exist) are minor deviations. There will not be a voluntary mass republican awakening in this country, fr'instance. The Brits will have to be brought kicking and screaming into the 19th Century when Betty kicks the bucket. They are a very pompous people as a whole, despite being so civilised that they eat bacon and not barbaric enough to chomp down a good sheeps head soup.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The thing is, the UK is far from being the only country in the world that still has a monarchy. There's another eight or so just in Western Europe. Do they all constantly lurch from one controversy or crisis to the next? Maybe we just don't hear about it, but they mostly seem to have a bit less of all that going on. (With some exceptions - that missing Dubai princess, the Thai king's notorious drug-fuelled debauchery...)
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
The thing is, the UK is far from being the only country in the world that still has a monarchy. There's another eight or so just in Western Europe. Do they all constantly lurch from one controversy or crisis to the next? Maybe we just don't hear about it, but they mostly seem to have a bit less of all that going on. (With some exceptions - that missing Dubai princess, the Thai king's notorious drug-fuelled debauchery...)

The british monarchy has global cultural dominance though. Americans feel the same way about their celebrities as we feel about our royals.
 

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
Anyway, just to say...

I hate Keir Starmer. I hate the Labour right. I hate centrists. I hate liberals. I hate the Guardian. Every complacent privileged arsewipe who dedicated four whole years to thwarting a moderate socialist government, regarding that as worse than enabling the corrupt, useless, borderline fascist gobshites we have instead.

Yes, I will vote Labour in any upcoming election because getting rid of the Tories is more important than anything. Even though Labour is now again led by contemptible shitstains who think the direct opposite.

But please, give me proportional representation so I can vote for someone else, because I hate the whole fucking lot of you.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Would that be the same Guardian in which Owen Jones has sung Corbyn's praises on a weekly basis since about 3000 BC?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I feel that any chance of PR died with the referendum on changing the system in 2011 or whatever... that was the second part of the Lib Dem betrayal and, I reckon, the moment that put us on the path to where we are now.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
The outcome and implications of a serious and successful republican movement in the U.K. would be civil war. This is not something this lot ever talk about or face up to, which is why they aren't serious, and the lack of seriousness possibly also explains their lack of success. The monarchy is not going to abolish itself and there would be people who wouldn't let it anyway.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I feel that any chance of PR died with the referendum on changing the system in 2011 or whatever... that was the second part of the Lib Dem betrayal and, I reckon, the moment that put us on the path to where we are now.
That referendum was about alternative vote, not PR, though - although I guess if it had returned an overall Yes, it may have paved the way for PR some way down the road.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
He is but I don't think even the most rabid Telegraph reader would think that the Guardian, as a whole, was anything other than anti-Corbyn.
OK, absent Jones and the balance of opinion is generally not favourable, granted. But the Guardian is a newspaper, not an in-house publication of the Labour party, and it's under no obligation to support any given Labour leader. It's hardly as if they none of their writers ever had an unkind thing to say about Tony Blair. And while there did seem to be a brief honeymoon period with Starmer, they've carried a number of critical articles about him since the turn of the year, e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/29/keir-starmer-year-labour-poll-ratings

Moreover, Labour's annihilation in 2019 was largely due to older, socially conservative, working-class voters in the Midlands and North switching to the Tories. That's hardly the Guardian's key readership demographic in the first place.
 
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