Why on Earth does John Caldwell think the public gives a shiny shit how he’s voting?

[Crediblethreat]

I’m watching open mouthed as to how much airtime the BBC see giving this man. He backed Boris to the tune of £500k, backed Liz Truss and said in 2021 he’d be concerned about a Labour administration (when KS was already leader). To my mind he thinks he’s the UK’s answer to Rupert Murdoch when IMO he’s an absolute spiv with dreadful taste who undoubtedly made a few quid by running a low-salary, high commission business but it was hardly a bastion for HR modelling. One meeting with the war-mongerer Tony Blair and KS in January and apparently he now is a labour voter…. 🤔 KS can’t be this desperate can he?

It was the top headline on radio 4 news for hours so they obviously think people will care. I guess it's a call to Tory voters to say look how well Labour align with us now.

It's a bit of a deterrent for me. I don't want Labour to appeal to someone like him.

Exactly. He was the poster boy/epitome of ‘every man for himself’ - and now we’re supposed to think he’s developed the morality of giving a shit about the environment etc - this is a man who installed a fake river inside one of his houses (classy) flew everywhere by helicopter for years (also classy). In a court case a few years back it emerged a female director had been pressured to agree to ‘not have children’ whilst she worked for him - he then effectively stole her shares for £2.

Getting into bed and accepting the endorsement of this man will come back to haunt KS - a bit like the odious Frank Hester situation with the Tory party.

I'm not really sure what KS can do about it though. It's like your mum announcing that she loves your favourite band. Only 1000x worse.

lol. It’s evident he wanted the endorsement though - why else have dinner with him and TB? That’s the concerning part.

Chris mason being all awestruck about being in his Mayfair house was irritating. And the constant panning round the office, they kept lingering on a leather bound book that had the James Bond logo on the front that he had on his desk. Wasn’t sure whether that was to infer that he was a tacky sort!

If you are really bored….watch another mega-bullshitter in the form of Daniel Daggers on ‘selling London’ on Netflix. He has a tour of the house with JC which was decorated by the <ahem>’ troubled’ ex-Real housewife of Cheshire, Dawn Ward - a woman with a unique skill of taking £millions from a client for her ‘interior design expertise’ and make their houses look like they’d blown the lot in B&M.

The whole thing is so bizarre.

Meh, he wants to be seen to be backing a winner. All he needed was persuading they weren't going to tax him to an unacceptable (to him) degree. Presumably the meeting reassured him on that front.

A lot of stinkin' rich people are not very nice. Not that one can't be rich and nice, but it helps to be utterly ruthless when accumulating vast amounts of money. Isn't it said that an awful lot of top magnates show traits of psychopathy? NAM(illionaires)ALT! But many got rich BY being like that.

It gives a powerful signal that Labour’s pro business and not going to soak the rich. Disappointing for me as I really want to see people as rich as this soaked!

The rich only got richer under Blair and benefited from the vast array of policies introduced by that administration which enabled corporations to get involved in the public sector. And let’s not forget the ‘light touch’ legislation for banking which did not end well for any of us….

Indeed. The rich will hold all the power when Starmer becomes PM for sure. Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool.

And yet Blair left the country in a much better state than he found it. We had functional public services and relatively few children in poverty. If that’s what happens when you get the wealthy on side wtf wouldn’t you do it?

It would’ve my assessment of the situation - but for sure Blair left the Blair family in a better shape than it was before…. But I don’t think leaving schools and hospitals sinking under the reality of PFI repayments - which didn’t affect the govt’s official borrowing figures but cripples schools and hospitals to this day, went to war (twice) on flimsy grounds, signed a very strange one-sides extradition treaty with the US that affect us to this day and allowed tuition fees to rise. There are obviously more examples but these are the first things I think of when looking back.

If KS wanted to show that things might be different under his guidance (and I’m truly trying to find a way that it might be) it is an odd way of going about it. Cheap points in the press are won (like with accepting Natalie Elphick) but at what cost?

JC as pointed out is self-serving so if anyone is looking for the Uber wealthy to pay their way that is proportionate, I think we have our answer. They won’t be.

How else were we to get new hospitals and schools? They had to go on a balance sheet somewhere. And Howard would have gone to war in Iraq, he admitted it after the event. Tuition fees rose under the Coalition, not the Blair government. That’s the trouble when your views are based on make believe, they’re easily debunked.

Not make believe, like many of us, we did actually live through it hence our suspicion when the ‘new new labour’ looks very much like ‘new Labour’.

The details of PFI were extremely opaque at the time as were a lot of things. A bit like when huge corporations announce job cuts only to hire the same people on contract to do the same job. Labour will try and scrap IR35 legislation at some point because it facilitates this being possible.

Labour could’ve abolished tuition fees after their landslide victory and didn’t. The effects of that have been felt ever since. My view is that VAT of private school fees will be the next u turn - after they’ve won.

Why would Labour abolish tuition fees when they were the party that introduced them in 1998 as a means of achieving their ambition of educating 50% of the population to degree level? As you may have gathered I lived through it too but I think my memory might be slightly more reliable.

Tbf, the process of how to fund higher education via fees had started under the Tories and if my memory serves me correctly it was not expected that Labour would run with the idea. Indeed in 1997 before the GE they referred to payback of ‘student maintenance’ from income-related earnings. But that system was already there - student loans were already means tested and in place and also paid back from income. . No mention of tuition fees… Then the magic 50% of all school leavers going to university was introduced as a way of justifying the extra costs.

This. It makes me laugh when people say oh but I actually loved through it, like the rest of us were born yesterday.

Caudwell - has the same amount of political nous and credibility as Charlie Mullins,

I know. Followed by obfuscating and mental gymnasts to attempt to prove their point. It reminds me of Cleverly trying to convince us the Tories founded the NHS.

I watched him on newsnight last night.

….. and thought, you’re just a man with one vote just like the rest of us!

He loves to talk over people. Must have been a nightmare working for him.

Your post would carry more weight if you got his name right. His surname is Caudwell not Caldwell. You should have gone to Spec Savers and/or have your hearing tested.

7 months down the line and it's worth pointing out a single letter spelling mistake on a zombie thread? 😆