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• #602
Farage has a meltdown on BBC News and then refused to go on Newsnight
Ben Thompson, "Call it a pressure group, call it a party, you were a candidate to be an MP on a ballot paper"
Nigel Farage, "How many times have you stood?"
BT, "I'm just asking"
NF, "What do you know about it"
BT, "I'm asking you the question:
NF, "There you go"
BT, "People will say you tried it before"
NF, "Ask something intelligent and we'll carry on with the conversation shall we"
BT, "I'm interested in why people should trust you when 7 times previously you didn't manage to become an MP"
NF, "Pass... Pass.. No no no no no.. I think you're very very boring.. And I think your viewers will find you very boring.. And you ought to do rather better as the state broadcaster"
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• #603
He had a nightmare on radio 4 as well.
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• #604
Mishal Hussein asked if his children speak two languages and he lost his shit.
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• #606
There getting better at this sort of thing. One thing they seemed to have learnt from Momentum/Corbyn era etc
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• #607
I wonder how much sleep John Curtice is currently getting
Can't avoid him, hah
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• #608
Rory Stewart sounds like a "reasonable guy". He's not.
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• #609
Jesus imagine if Farage was your dad
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• #610
Why?
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• #611
Seems like when he’s caught the toys go out the pram and that’s it. He’s just another chancer that will ride this for another good few years!
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• #612
I mean the guy speaks 11 languages. Obvs you only need English, but still he's a pretty capable person who's devoted much of his life to public service.
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• #613
Rory Stewart's book about walking across Afghanistan gave me a real insight into the kind of person he is. I think if all Tories were like him, while I'd still never vote for them, I'd have much more understanding of and respect for why people did. He is a legitimate conservative - he wants to conserve things. He has as much in common with the Johnson/Sunak/Truss wing of the party as Luke Akehurst does with Richard Burgeon.
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• #614
He's got a very Tory voting record. Not green. Anti benefits. Etc etc.
I'm sure the wire elite schooling and diplomatic training helped him to seem engaging and likable. -
• #615
Hasn't Farage been banging on about (and been wrong about) Oldham for years?
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• #616
He was only following orders when he did all that voting for bad stuff.
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• #617
Quite. He's still a big C small c tory piece of shit.
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24964/rory_stewart/penrith_and_the_border/votes
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• #618
Idk. I don't see voting record as the be all and end all. It needs to be contextualised in line with the whip. Can't recall many people knocking Abbott's green voting record.
As ReekBlefs points out he's a conservative. His general stance and world view differs from mine. But so do lots of people. That doesn't fundamentally make him bad or unreasonable.
Not to make it too personal, but if you look at what he's done with his life it has generally been in persuit of the wider good Imo. How many people on here politically to the left of Stewart actually devote their time to positively impacting society?
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• #619
i speak 4 and have expertise on direct mount Paul brakes but no podcast deal 🤷
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• #620
It’s happened again. Centrists heard a posh person speaking and immediately decided that person should be prime minister.
....
Stewart voted strongly against public ownership of rail and buses; for tuition fees and against helping young people in training and further education; for harsher immigration policies and mass surveillance; for anti-trade union restrictions; and in favour of war and nuclear weapons.
Interestingly, given his FBPE fanbase, he voted against EU integration and the right for EU citizens to stay in the UK. He virtually always voted against those on benefits, including those who are disabled or suffering from long-term illness.
Stewart resisted an elected upper house, empowering local councils and proportional representation. He opposed laws to increase human rights and equality. And he opposed laws which would prevent climate change and for selling off publicly owned forests.
He will argue he had to vote in this way to get a ministerial position where he could effect change but it didn't really work out did it
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• #621
It’s happened again. Centrists heard a posh person speaking and immediately decided that person should be prime minister.
Lol
He will argue he had to vote in this way to get a ministerial position where he could effect change but it didn't really work out did it
People seems obsessed with this type of argumentation at the moment. Counter-factual politics is the centrist's post truth politics. It's all about assigning intent to historic actions to whitewash the actual things people have done, or making claims for future actions with no evidence to back them up.
Why is Kier a Sir? Not because he wanted to be, or he may be a royalist, or he likes the idea of power, or whatever (all perfectly reasonable things). It was because of the sun. They would have roasted him when he, ultimately, was going to run for PM.
Why did Stewart vote those ways? Not because he's a Tory. It's because he had to in order to do the actually good things he wanted/wants to do.
I guess it may go back to the cognitive dissonance stuff. If you develop opinions based on what people have actually done (or said they will do, only quickly to say they will do something else), you might not actually trust (or even like) them very much.
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• #622
He will argue he had to vote in this way to get a ministerial position where he could effect change but it didn't really work out did it
In that he didn't win the leadership election and ended up leaving the party rather than toeing the line with Johnson and co. No, I guess it didn't work out in that sense, but I still think in a 2 party system with whips etc then it's a sad fact that you do need to go along with the party line on the vast majority of things and when you do decide to step out of line then be prepared that it might be the end of the political aspirations if it doesn't pan out.
I'm in the same boat as @ReekBlefs I think. I don't agree with Stewart's positions, but he does seem to have thought about them before getting there rather than jumped to the lunatic fringe or populist Truss, Johnson style positions.
Rory Stewart sounds like a "reasonable guy". He's not.
He is reasoned though. Which is a significant step up from most of the party.
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• #623
It’s happened again. Centrists heard a posh person speaking and immediately decided that person should be prime minister.
lol
Anyway, the key question of the day is, will Starmer have to be addressed as 'Sir Prime Minister' should Labour win the election?
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• #624
And that in itself is a fuckin outrage.
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• #625
You're not posh enough mate. Sorry.
From actual labour too, not led by donkeys etc