A long time ago part of my job was making posters for a venue & we had a poetry reading - poet sent us a picture of a wistful-looking 20something. Put it on the poster & when he arrived at the event he was in his 50s and had lived a life of indulgence. "Best picture of me they ever took", he said.

I'd be inclined to say that the party(ies) you really don't want to win dynamic was at play in at least 3 of the past 5 elections

anyone vaguely on the left who wants to make bbc news disappear should first have to make a list of the people who would be most pleased about bbc news disappearing

oh he's very much a "you can't say anything these days, political correctness gone mad" weirdo

oh no how will the man who can drive an invisible car and fall hundreds of feet onto a radio telescope and kite-surf a tsunami wave survive this

Also interesting to note that whilst the Renters Rights Act does (as you point out) help many renters, it's remarkably similar to the Renters Reform Bill announced by Theresa May back in 2019, an amended version of which was already going through parliament before the 2024 election.

When I was at uni it was the midst of the Blair/Iraq fiasco & very few people I knew would consider joining Labour youth but I remember blagging into one of their parties at Conference 2008 and it was (by default) more fun than endless relitigation of what someone said about Tony Benn in the 80s

Presumably many of the people raising their eyebrows at this have also been to actual Grown-Up Political Meetings and know what they're like. If your choices are "hang out with some fellow weird Labour kids" or "listen to some middle aged men talk over each other for hours" I know what I'd choose!

"just picked up a lovely autumn cardigan off the novel coronavirus"

(I have no idea what you are actually talking about btw)

There used to be a shop in Watford that had a sign outside saying "Wools and Coarse Yarns" and I always wanted to pop in and ask them to tell me a filthy story but never got round to it.

I wonder if this works the other way round - I suspect the Greens have picked up a fair few former solid Labour voters who might well drift back. But would a trade-union-industrial-strategy-YIMBY Labour person flirt with the Greens?

Ah, the old "everyone but me is the general public" situation.

Sherlock Holmes getting in trouble for identifying the killer by the cigar ash they left at the scene of the crime because what kind of cigars a person smokes should be private information that only they should know about.

Whether or not you think a mansion tax is a good idea, I think people holding political viewpoints that don't directly benefit them is broadly a good thing. Same for someone who's likely to inherit a lot of money at some point making the case for raising inheritance tax. Good for them!

To be fair someone who acknowledges they are doing well financially and thus should pay more tax holds a legitimate political position. It's like in 2015 when Ed Miliband was proposing the mansion tax & someone pointed out he would pay it, & his line was "Yes, & I should!"

to be fair I'm not sure he would have won the leadership on a "we need to appeal to the centre as well" platform but if he had then he would have at least been being honest about what he was going to do when he became leader

Yes 100%, and indeed more broadly this is why Starmer's ten pledges rowback went down so badly among the soft left

It's not as if there's a shortage of disappointing Labour-right ministers who are free and easy with their principles for people to get mad at.