Has the Conservative Party lost all sense of competence

I think that we are extremely poorly served by those representing us. It seems to me that public service has been replaced by self service and the country is all the poorer for it.

Integrity is a lost concept, as is honesty and courage.

Incompetence in diplomacy?

And the biggie that will remain nameless but is occupying most of their time ATM

The Conservative Party so often tell us that others would be less competent but I think that would be quite difficult. They have never been as competent as their spin made them seem but currently they seem to be hitting rock bottom. Goals are set and not met. People starve and are not cared for, etc., etc.

It really is only the power of the far-right newspaper moguls that persists with the idea that they have ever been particularly competent.

They do seem alarmingly bumbling - it is quite scary.

It will be very hard to follow a government that will leave us in the position they have created.

Ah but once out of office they can snipe from the oposition benches and blame the incoming government for everything - although it will be hard to escape the blame for some of the current disasters.
Previous governments have made mistakes but I can't think of anything on this scale.
Far worse now than omnishambles.

I agree with all the OP and all the comments here. The mistakes and mismanagement of seemingly everything, including Brexit, just get worse on a daily basis.

A big worry for me is that the Labour Party needs to be 10 points ahead currently to have any hope of winning the next election. It wasn't last time I checked (will google). It feels like the 80's again to me. I was a real fan of Michael Foot, believed his manifesto to be good for the country. I was a much younger and less experienced woman then. I've come to believe that any government too far right or left of centre will not win an election in the UK. Canvassing at the last election for a sitting Labour MP what was said on the doorsteps endlessly was along the lines of - I hate the tories and what they're doing to the NHS etc but I can't vote for Jeremy Corby". Luckily, enough of them were convinced to vote for the MP .

iam64 if you look at the sort of policies in the Scandinavian countries and feel they would be good for the U.K., then you can easily vote for Corbyn.

My vote wasn't for Corbyn, it was for our local MP. I'd always believed that Britain would become more like the Scandinavian countries as I got older. I wish it had.
whitewave, why do you believe the LB isn't much further ahead of the Tories who are wrecking our prized NHS and other public services?

Tory and Labour seem to be neck and neck in the latest polls.

I agree this govt is incompetent but whenever I see Corbyn or McDonald I am reminded of Bleasedales GBH and I shudder!

We have seen so many failures of polling it is difficult to know whether the ones we see are true - except for exit polls. I don't think many people except those who are as interested as some of us are even thinking about domestic politics at the moment and that is giving us the polls we have. When the news comes back to the domestic I believe we will be better able to see what people think.

I have to agree about the Scandinavian countries Iam. I thought we would move in that direction too. I don't think the current LP has the exactly the same ideals as the Social Democracy of those countries; I see them as what they call themselves Democratic Socialist. What I don't see them as - which some try to use to 'frighten the children' is Revolutionary Socialists.

I have always been a Social Democrat - I just don't have a home at the moment. While I wait for it to happen I feel the need for a large nudge away from the privatisation, austerity, deregulation, assumed free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society that we have had from the lunge to the right by the CP so I will certainly expect great things from the LP in government but I also know they will be accused of all the usual rubbish while they put the incompetencies of the CP back in some sort of order.

I'm the same as you jevive73
Thanks for the reminder of GBH - still available to watch on Channel 4!

Iam64" tells us "I've come to believe that any government too far right or left of centre will not win an election in the UK. I hope that is true as the Tory and Labour parties have both moved further than ever to extreme positions.

I think that having successive governments which lurch to opposite extremes has been very harmful to this country. The LibDems went into coalition with the Tories in 2010 and managed to prevent some bad Tory policies becoming law and were able to see some progressive policies (such as the rise in personal tax allowance) being enacted. In spite of mistakes which were made I think most people would now see that coalition government as infinitely preferable to the government we have had since 2015.

Now I do know that it is hard for a third party to break through with our undemocratic FPTP electoral system, and that the right wing tabloids have a disproportionate influence on British elections, but what does a moderate centre-left party like the LibDems have to do to win votes? I am genuinely puzzled.

Interesting blog post from Prof. Simon Wren Lewis suggesting that, on the whole, the media leads rather than follows public opinion and that it reflects the wishes of the plutocracy that controls it.

A profound mistake is to see this media as a symptom rather than a cause. As the study I spoke about here clearly demonstrates, the output of Fox news is not designed to maximise its readership, but to maximise the impact of its propaganda on its readership. I think you could say exactly the same about the Sun and the Mail in the UK. Fox and the Sun are owned by the same man.

Even those who manage to cast off the idea that this unregulated media just reflects the attitude of its readers, generally think of this media as supportive of political parties. There is the Conservative and Labour supporting press in the UK, and similarly for the US. In my view that idea is ten or twenty years out of date, and even then it underestimates the independence of the media organisations. (The Sun famously supported Blair in 1997). More and more it is the media that calls the shorts, and the political parties follow.

Brexit would not have happened if it had remained the wish of a minority of Conservative MPs. It happened because of the right wing UK press. Brexit happened because this right wing press recognised a large section of their readership were disaffected from conventional politics, and began grooming them with stories of EU immigrants taking jobs, lowering wages and taking benefits (and sometimes much worse). These stories were not (always) false, but like all good propaganda they elevated a half-truth into a firm belief. Of course this grooming played on age old insecurities, but it magnified them into a political movement. Nationalism does the same. It did not just reflect readers existing views, but rather played on their doubts and fears and hopes and turned this into votes.

I think his conclusion is sensible and that, clearly, the 'ghosts' he refers to are seen by some posters on this forum.

In the UK now the story seems much more elemental: that somehow the left threatens the existence of capitalism and democracy.* In truth there is no way Corbyn could persuade the Labour party to abandon democratic capitalism*, just as there is no way Sanders or Warren could do the same in the US. All we are talking about is rolling back many of the results of neoliberalism. But it is difficult to logically convince someone the ghosts they see do not exist. In contrast to these ghosts on the left, the dynamic of plutocracy that I have described here is very real, and it requires radical change to bring an end to this dynamic.

mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/if-we-treat-plutocracy-as-democracy.html

I too cannot understand the fear about a Labour government. They would never have a vast majority, so their hands would be suitably tied; they would be answerable to the H of C and could never get very left wing policies through.

But what they could do is to start to question our priorities and speak up for those who are disadvantaged. They could inject some new priorities which do not just consist of appeasing the rich (although there needs to be a bit of this to sustain investment) and spotlights the services that we need and hold dear - transport, health, education.

Frankly I do not think they could do any worse than this bumbling, policies-on-the-back-of-an-envelope mob and might start from a basis of moral integrity.

To be honest this government takes the concept of bumbling to new heights. I’m sick and tired of their lack of everything, but in particulate their attitude to those who man our public services.

Teachers, NHS staff, the police are all operating on good will far beyond the call of duty, putting in unpaid overtime. Friends and family who work in these areas are almost on their knees with fatigue and lack of resources and support.

They are neck and neck in the polls at the moment.

Like most people on here I have lived through Labour and Conservative governments and survived; some have been more competent than others.
I find the prospect of a Corbyn-led government truly frightening, and hope that if/when they are elected the real Labour party will emerge from its hiding place and take control. This opinion has been strengthened through reading the beliefs of the Corbyn/ Momentum apologists expressed relentlessly on here.
The Press is not the driving force now in shaping public opinion, but social media, because it is instant and unaccountable.

Forget what you read on here eazybee and get your information from other sources and make up your mind based on that.

I was converted to Corbyn (didn’t have a clue about him before) by actually listening to him and the way he responded, very thoughtfully, and honestly to questions. I find that May just trots out what she wants to say despite what the question was.

But that’s just my opinion.

Very interesting article Maizie. I have long thought that both international business and newspaper owners drive much of our politics and should, in some way, be under the auspices of the Electoral Commission. In Norway they subsidise the press so that Press Barons cannot hold sway in this way.

I agree with the fact that we do not need to fear the LP luckygirl. I even believe we need them to balance the move to the far-right under the CP.

My dream is that many MPs, from both Labour and Tories - walk across to Lib Dems, and that Lib Dems join up with Greens - and present a formidable and effective opposition and alternative. The refusal of Corbyn to oppose hard Brexit has proven that he cannot oppose or propose an effective alternative.

The Lib Dems were not given credit for their curbing of Tory excesses. We certainly need someone to do that and to allow equality, morality and social justice to at least peep in round the edges somewhere.