Who should take tony's job?

But the Tories aren't talking about reverting back to thatcherism, this country couldn't survive the 5 million unemployed that thatcher brought with her.

We are no longer in the 80's, we cannot borrow money like America (as we haven't resources to escape such debts), nor can we employ similar monetary tactics to thatcher... instead we must move with the times and David Cameron hasn't shown any sign of doing this.

It was margret thatcher that ended our manufacturing industries?

china and india are in direct competition.

eventually china will take the skilled economies where as India will take less skilled industries (with the exception of IT).

neither threaten the British ecnomy.

unfortunatly I have a meeting, but when I get back I'm going to pull apart your statistics

on the china tip its first hand experience... i have factories out there....

but I'll go into it when I get back

you can so tell that you weren't around to experience the 80's 1st hand Brid, if you think things were worse now than they were then.... and where the fuck do you get your figures from?? 15% inflation, 5m unemployed you're just wrong... you just can't have interest aroudn 5% and inflation at 15%.

even I'll admit we're reaping the benefits now of some of what maggie did, but if you weren't around in the 80's you've got no idea how fucking horrific it was, and I'll tell you it's been a fucking lot better the last 10 years than it was then.

You've got a bad case of rose tinted specs when it comes to Thatcher, even the tories these days have turned away from those crazy monaterist policies. We've got some problems to sort out these days... like 1st time buyers being unable to buy houses, and massive personal debt, but thatcherism isn't gonna sort out.

Here's my prediction, Brown will be next leader, and probably win the next election. Cameron might but only if he can adopt policies to the left of where the labour party is now, and that will schism the tories

before I start googling can you explain to me why you belief disabled people shouldn't be on incapacity benefit?

you're wrong on pretty much all of that.

Cameron's still in his honeymoon while labour have had their worst 12 months for a long time. 4-6% behind mid term is fuck all... your beloved maggie came back from a lot more than that regularly

Brown would have won just as easily in '97 as Blair did, and would probably have been the better prime minister as well, and I don't reckon his lack of charisma is going to be much of a problem given his track record. Take out the last 6 months, which have been extraordinary to say the least, and his aproval ratings have been pretty solid. I can't think of a single senior politician in living memory who's been as well liked as brown and for as long!

All cameron has shown at the minute is charisma, all he's offering is "not labour" but he's being a complete blair clone about it :spangled: I think in the next 2 years brown will easily show him up as a bit of a lightweight, with a fairly light shadow cabinet behind him. brown's got a lot of substance but fuck all style, cameron's the exact opposite, but these days I think ppl will prefer the former.

fact is blair is a massive electoral liability, he only won last time cos the tories and libdems were so shit, take blair out and give brown 2 or 3 years to get over it and he's got a much better chance than most ppl reckon of beating cameron.

All you gotta do is check out how much the right wing media is laying into him... cos they know he's the only one in the labour party who can keep the tories out next time. simple as

I agree with Si about the 80's but Campbell scares me. I can see people falling for it (him)
oppositions don't win they say, governments lose.
Loads of people hate Tony Blair for Iraq and brown hasn't distanced himself from that.
All Cameron has to do is keep mouthing platitudes and let the government keep making mistakes (ID cards) (NHS privatisation) (Afghanistan) and he could get in.
Anyone under 25 is not going to know what the Tories are really about. All they have known is Labour

cos all he's doing is talking the talk at the minute, he's just pushing all the right butons, which is a piece of piss for any half decent politician. When he comes to having to come up with hard policies he could turn into the emporer with no clothes, specially as they'll be policies that the right of his party won't like much, and the tory right has got a lot more bite than the labour left.

example, he was on Today a while ago saying it was crazy we still make cars that do 12mph, which it is, but when he was asked if he'd outlaw it he had nothing to say. I just don't think he's gonna be able to come up with the hard policies to backup all the nice sounding mood music he's been happy to spew for the last 12 months.

On Iraq I've only ever heard brown say once publicly that he supported the war, and though he did support it he's kept as far from it as possible. ID cards have died for at least this parliament, but basically a lot of the fundamentals are still right, specially the economics which brown gets credit for. there still seems to be a lot of prosperity floating around,and we all know people vote with their pockets.

Cameron's doing all the right things now, but opposition's a piece of piss and he's still a long way from No 10 imho

as far as I know Tony still says ID cards are on for this parliament?

well that's not exactly true is it now!

remember neil hamilton, jeffrey archer, and jonathan aitken???

I believe it comes down to governmental structures, the control and advanced nature of Chinese infrastructure allows it to grow at a phenomenal rate... While India is progressing it is not able to compete on the same level as china and wouldn't be able to without radical reforms.

archer: perjury, insider trading, prostition, theft and fraud
hamilton: sleaze and corruption
aitken: perjury and illegal arms dealings

not quite in the same league!