The new prime minister is.....

[BlasterBates]

The polls show that the public want lower taxes and more funding for public services. That seems to be the recipe to win the leadership election.

[vetran]

The polls show that the public want lower taxes and more funding for public services. That seems to be the recipe to win the leadership election.

nice trick if you can manage it it will probably all go on the slate and our children will pay as usual

[SueEllen]

nice trick if you can manage it it will probably all go on the slate and our children will pay as usual

There isn't enough of them. We need some more immigrants with various skill levels as long as we can convince them to go home before they need extensive public services themselves.

[vetran]

There isn't enough of them. We need some more immigrants with various skill levels as long as we can convince them to go home before they need public services themselves.

bah she is trying to use logic! The whole developed world is going to suffer this problem. Most of the migrants won't want to go back to a country they left because their government made it tulip. Others want to turn the UK into the same tuliphole they left. It is possible to makes lots of money without cheap staff. Its possible to automate our way out of it if we get going now.

[mattster]

The polls show that the public want lower taxes and more funding for public services. That seems to be the recipe to win the leadership election.

The "public" is not the demographic that matters now. The demographic that matters is 200,000 of the most reactionary, right-wing people in the country (England). Most of these people are fine with cutting funding for public services, sending people to Rwanda, scrapping climate change goals, war on woke etc. The problem for any would be leader is that all of these are vote losers with the wider public so the strategy will likely be one set of policies for the leadership election and an entirely different set of policies once in office (see also: Boris Johnson).

[malvolio]

The "public" is not the demographic that matters now. The demographic that matters is 200,000 of the most reactionary, right-wing people in the country (England). Most of these people are fine with cutting funding for public services, sending people to Rwanda, scrapping climate change goals, war on woke etc. The problem for any would be leader is that all of these are vote losers with the wider public so the strategy will likely be one set of policies for the leadership election and an entirely different set of policies once in office (see also: Boris Johnson).

Why not send them to Rwanda. The bulk are young men, they have all ignored the legal routes int the country which wouldn't debar genuine cases, they have instead given money to criminals to ship them across here where we don't know who they are, where there is nowhere for them to live, where they will not be adding anything to the UK economy and they can't be shipped back to France (the logical step) because Macron thinks he's God and France is Elysium. To this old reactionary, shipping them off to somewhere safe to try again seem eminently sensible

[WTFH]

Why not send them to Rwanda. ... shipping them off to somewhere safe to try again seem eminently sensible

You think Rwanda is a safe place?

And the whole thing about closing the borders - it's just to appeal to the far right, it's not a serious policy.
If it was a serious policy, they would have implemented it at the start of the first lockdown, but no, let the bodies pile high, keep the borders open wide.

[mattster]

So Zahawi now pledging to cut every govt dept by 20% to fund a tax cut as large as the entire defence budget (not clear who benefits from these tax cuts). That's not a GE winning policy but it might be a Tory party membership winning policy. Let's see. It is, of course, totally impossible to achieve, at least if you want to have any sort of functional public sector at the end of it (some don't, I accept that).

[malvolio]

You think Rwanda is a safe place?

And the whole thing about closing the borders - it's just to appeal to the far right, it's not a serious policy.
If it was a serious policy, they would have implemented it at the start of the first lockdown, but no, let the bodies pile high, keep the borders open wide.

You've been listening to too much Labour propaganda. For one thing our borders aren't closed, they merely leak like a sieve because of Blair's misguided ideas about importing cheap labour destroying any mechanism for tracking who is coming in and out.

For another Rwanda was a nightmare some years ago but it is now fairly stable, even with their ex-terrorist man in charge. And finally, they aren't our problem - if anything they are France's problem; the ones coming here legally with a genuine reason to do so (family, persecution, whatever) are our problem.

If the illegals end up somewhere unfriendly where they have to prove their case, then fine. At least they haven't drowned in the Channel.

[WTFH]

You've been listening to too much Labour propaganda. For one thing our borders aren't closed, they merely leak like a sieve because of Blair's misguided ideas about importing cheap labour destroying any mechanism for tracking who is coming in and out.

For another Rwanda was a nightmare some years ago but it is now fairly stable, even with their ex-terrorist man in charge. And finally, they aren't our problem - if anything they are France's problem; the ones coming here legally with a genuine reason to do so (family, persecution, whatever) are our problem.

If the illegals end up somewhere unfriendly where they have to prove their case, then fine. At least they haven't drowned in the Channel.

You're the one listening to too much Tory propaganda.

You say ship them all to Rwanda, it's only run by an ex-terrorist, and then you say that we should deal with the ones who have a genuine reason to stay

...but who are the genuine ones if we ship them all to Rwanda in the first place?

The problem is that the far right have convinced anyone that a centrist viewpoint is terrible. If we have a shortage of workers, why do we imprison ALL asylum seekers? Why not have some of them doing the jobs that need doing, earning money, and paying more tax than the average Tory MP?