The Cameron-Osborne years offer an important reminder that it is possible to excel at the theatre of politics - to "look prime ministerial", to dominate the "media narrative", to project "competence" and to communicate a clear political "story" - while being strikingly inept at governing.

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  1. leemurg.bsky.social profile picture

    Completely correct. Atonishing how they are venerated and treated as people worth listening to despite being the architects of so much that has been going wrong with Britain for the last 10 years. History will not judge either well, but the modern media still falls for them.

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  2. The coalition was a fascinating example of a fully effective peacetime coalition government that achieved a large proportion of its policy objectives (and that was largely bad). It demolished many arguments about coalition government - it was effective at being bad.

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  3. I still remember the shock of seeing the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles (who had a public disagreement with the head of the Audit Commission at the time) announcing the scrapping of the institution on Channel 4 News. www.channel4.com/news/article...

    <STRONG>Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles </STRONG>tells <STRONG>Channel 4 News</STRONG> he is "appalled" at how the decision to scrap the Audit Commission was leaked to its staf...

    Pickles scraps council spending watchdog

    <STRONG>Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles </STRONG>tells <STRONG>Channel 4 News</STRONG> he is "appalled" at how the decision to scrap the Audit Commission was leaked to its staf...

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  4. Cameron was the last nail in the coffin for the UK. What started with Thatcher’s job is now done. The country is crumbling. Now they want to control dissent so that people don’t unite in revolt.

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  5. The thing about Cameron is that while he was PM I was convinced that he was actually an actor that the Tory party had hired to look Prime Ministerial. Then came Johnson and Truss and he began to look strangely plausible in retrospect.

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  6. Keir Starmer is absolute confirming proof, especially the "strikingly inept at governing" part". Additionally, after nearly 1K years of not being occupied by foreigners, Britain has succumbed to Israeli occupation and control without a single shot having been fired. MSM support and money did it!.

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  7. Wasn‘t that also because they weren’t held to account by msm who were far more interested in bashing Labour throughout that period. The virulence towards Brown, Miliband and Corbyn particularly by the BBC and the love in of the centre with the right dominated.

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  8. Unfortunately, very true. Conversely, without the 'story', (and media support at the time), doesn't cut much ice until it becomes a historical perspective.

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  9. Dave and George performed government mostly rather well, except they were in Westminster not across the river in the National Theatre 😁

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  10. It’s what they did at Eton and Oxford- elitist, entitled posturing. Just without the consequences. We genuinely need a revolution, it’s the only way.

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  11. Don’t forget; emptying the public purse into private sector profits (in exchange for worse services) is a feature, not a bug.

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  12. Cameron just wasn't very interested in politics. He wanted an impressive-sounding job that made him look important. He had no conception of what he wanted to do as PM, or what could be achieved in that office. So he enabled his friend George to do as he pleased, while thinking as little as possible.

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  13. I think they themselves didn't realise how ideological they were and thought (and projected) these things as common sense. In reality they didn't really understand economics deeply enough.

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