Friday, June 09, 2017

Unorganized thoughts on GE2017 (2)

More:

(5) Tactical errors: the focus on who is the strong leader is not a wrong one. But these are the sort of things that should be done subliminally, not saying out loud. You want people to subconsciously accept the message. Saying it out loud makes people think and then question whether it is right.

(6) More tactical errors: if you think this is about giving you a stronger hand for Brexit, then you should have no new policies. Just stick to most of what is promised in the 2015 manifesto. Instead, she was initially too confident, too greedy, and tried to grab "Labour heartlands" and the working class by those things such as pension lock. Trying to not rely on bribing the elderly for winning the election was a principled thing to do. (The "dementia tax" row is frankly quite ridiculous - who would have thought Labour is the one who want to encourage accumulation of wealth?) She tried moving towards the centre, ended up in the middle of nowhere.

She has broadly good intentions or ideologies (for those on our side), but frankly was very incompetent in carrying them out.

(7) So grammar schools are not going to happen er? Meritocracy has lost. (Well, it has lost a long time ago.)

(8) I never understand this "mood on the doorstep" thing. Surely the young people and those who need to work are not there to answer the door.

And speaking of young people... well this is what happens when they are mobilised into politics. The young voters obviously have not experienced the 1970's when the trade unions brought the country to a grinding halt. (Neither have I.) There are some very good reasons why some left-wing policies are perhaps good for society - for example, I am not actually that against some of those nationalisation policies, e.g. water, since clearly there is no meaningful competition whatsoever - but I very much doubt those 18-year-olds know anything more than the simplistic "liberal" ideologies that was being stuffed into their heads at school.

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