Reminiscent of the incredible extended scene on Liverpool docks in the episode “George’s Last Ride” in Alan Bleasdale’s landmark series Boys From The Blackstuff.

The edited versions are better. You can see why they cut the scenes they did.

David Mamet is a great playwright but his prose is surprisingly poor.

But Farage does "look credible" (sadly). That's partly why his party is soaring. Maybe your biases are clouding your judgement, but your loathing of Polanski seems almost unhinged. Why not channel your energies against those who would make your life worse, not those who want to make it better?

Fair point. Still sceptical though.

People who are going to vote against Labour to keep the Greens out of power (if they even exist) aren’t going to vote Labour anyway.

But who are these people whose main reason for voting would be to “stop the Greens”? Are you sure they exist?

Maybe lay off the Fosters, Shakey, it’s messing with your comprehension.

Just read Michael McFaul’s book about his time as ambassador to Russia and to say he suffers from over-optimism would be understatement of the year - he even admits it (blames it on coming from Montana). Good read though.

This was the manifesto at the last election. Since then they have made some changes: policies are voted on by membership at annual conference. greenparty.org.uk/about/our-ma...

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

Uploading and announcing is not a leak though, is it? My initial comment was response to Tom Roberts’s about the budget leak, and I think I saw the same effect in the 2017 manifesto leak. But I admit two contested examples don’t really make firm data. Interesting though - will watch out for more.

Working as a reporter I walked into a rundown pub in East Manchester wearing a trenchcoat and was greeted with the words, "Effing hell, it's Eliot Ness."

Maybe they're just not that smart? Also it would be a v risky strategy - your opponents might be ready and you look chaotic for having a leak. You certainly couldn't do it all the time. The key in 2017 was that when the public heard Lab's key policies in a neutral space ... they actually liked them.

Whooosh ...

I think you beleive that the leak hurt Labour, John? I don't. It may have been intended but if so it backfired. I can't recall a Labour manifesto being greeted with such a fair(ish) hearing since Blair in 97. As Andrew Gwynne says in the link above: "At least people are talking about our policies."

That may have been the intention (I don’t know) but if so it backfired. The Tories didn’t have their hit squads lined up to monster it and so news outlets were forced to report what was actually in it rather than some hideous pastiche concocted by opponents. They can do it, when they want to.

Interestingly the same thing happened in the 2017 general election when Labour’s manifesto leaked. For a period of 24/48 hrs it actually got objective news coverage and people liked what they heard - followed by surprisingly strong vote for Corbyn www.bbc.com/news/uk-poli...