When Will It All Go Wrong For The Tories/ Johnson?

[edwin_m]

Brexit damaged co-operation with France, so has made the cross-channel problem worse.

 

[The Ham]

Around 2002 there was a large spike, however either side of that the numbers are fairly stable (a few higher, a few lower but mostly 25,000 to 40,000) from 1990 through to 2020, as such (unless we eased things off a lot around the turn if Millennium) how easy it is to apply hasn't appeared to make a significant difference to overall numbers.



Not really, which is why I said small amounts. Clearly if we attract 1 for every 1 reaching 65 that's going to be a problem. However, so is not attracting anyone given that in current trends that by 2066 the prediction is that 25% of the population will be over 65.

Assuming 10% are under 18 that's about 1/3 of the population inactive economical. That's hardly likely to be sustainable either.

Yes people being attracted now will need support in the future, however with a failing birth rate there isn't the children from the native population to replace them.



Note I'm talking about Asylum seekers, not general immigration. As such those people are leaving anyway and are most likely to those who can afford to pay significant sums to people traffickers.

Also which is likely to be cheaper, providing education to an 18 year old for 7+ years or to an already trained doctor for 2 years to confirm suitable training? Not only can you get doctors faster, but you'll also need to provide them with less training overall. For example in the same time it takes you to train 2 doctors from scratch you could train 15 from overseas.




Then the majority aren't speaking loud enough that they would be happy with SOME more asylum seekers to be accepted in a reversal of the current policy of making it "toxic" for them.

Having done a bit more digging about 98% of those coming the the UK by small boats claim asylum, of which (for the year ending September 2021) 64% are granted asylum.

Of the remainder, something like 90% appeal, of which 48% are then granted asylum.

That means of those who seek asylum about 80% are successful.

Is it really justifiable for the sake of 2/10 (overall) that we should send people to Rwanda?

Now it's possible that those coming by boats are mostly those circa 20% who fail in their application.

However, they are also likely to be fairly highly educated as they are in a position to be able to pay significant amounts of money (sources quote figures of £10,000 or more) to the people traffickers. For comparison the benefit cap for a single adult outside of London is £13,400, so hardly likely to be justifiable to come here to claim benefits.

As such, even if they are economic migrants, chances are they are likely to be those with skills which would add to the economy. As for many around the world £10,000 is a significant amount of money. Even in this country not all that many would find it all that easy to find that sort of money, and the UK has a fairly high level of income compared to the rest of the world.

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An interesting take by Jacob Rees-Mogg:

https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.amp...uk-asylum-seekers-plan-rwanda-jacob-rees-mogg

Rees-Mogg, the minister for Brexit opportunities, said the Church of England’s most senior clergyman “misunderstands” the policy and that it was in fact “almost an Easter story of redemption” for Rwanda. The former Commons leader said the UK was “providing an opportunity to Rwanda” and that the policy therefore “must be a good thing”.

It's he therefore saying:
A) we're going to be paying a significant amount of money to Rwanda
B) most of the people who are likely to be being sent there are going to be of benefit to Rwanda
C) most of the people being sent are likely to be granted asylum

I've already established that C is the case, as I've suggested before B is likely (as those with the ability to pay £10,000 are likely to be fairly well off, so are likely to be highly educated), with A also fairly likely.

Rather than flying people miles to another country, surely we should be looking at speeding up the application process.

As the big cost is fully funding the stay of the asylum seekers, as they can not work here.

Therefore we should look to see if there's any fast track way we could get people claiming asylum to the point that they are a benefit to the economy.

When they arrive they should be assessed to see how they would do on the points system for immigration (obviously with suitable security checks) If they meet a suitable standard (but probably lower than the normal threshold), including having the skills in jobs which we need, then they should be given the ability to seek employment with an 18 months work visa.

If they find suitable employment then they are given the right to work for a period of 5 years and the processing of their asylum is continued, but as a lower priority. In doing so cutting the amount which the UK government needs to pay for them to be here and most likely provide tax income.

Suitable employment would mean, a job in inner of the areas where there's a need and likely of a suitable income (to ensure that they can't be accused of "stealing our jobs" it would have to be a non minimum wage job and be filling a gap, so medical staff, engineers, teachers, etc.).

If you wanted to, have an additional tax during that 5 year period (say they pay 40% on anything over their tax free threshold). This could be justified on whatever ground you like, however it could be sold as paying for the extra resources required to have a faster asylum system. Of course a faster asylum system would provide savings from not having to pay to house and provide for asylum seekers.

In doing so those most likely to provide benefit to the country, would do so faster (and at a lower cost to tax payer) than would otherwise be the case.

Given the likely cost savings, there could be tax incentives for companies to take staff on through such a route (for instance paying a reduced rate of employer NI, like it's the case for some groups of people - due to the higher personal tax, if introduced, this would be covered by the increased personal tax rate with spare to fund additional recourses for the asylum system).

Yes there'd be criticism that those with required skills could fast track the system and some may be willing to claim asylum when all they were after was coming and working here. However a higher tax rate would likely discourage people from doing that. Of course there's still the criticism that the UK would be exploring them by charging them a higher tax code.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Therefore we should look to see if there's any fast track way we could get people claiming asylum to the point that they are a benefit to the economy.

Of course that is working on the assumption that the REAL issue people have with asylum seekers is economic. It may make me unpopular with some people to say so, but of course the actual real reason is simply good old school racism and xenophobia. Nothing at all to do with the economy.

 

[dgl]

Of course that is working on the assumption that the REAL issue people have with asylum seekers is economic. It may make me unpopular with some people to say so, but of course the actual real reason is simply good old school racism and xenophobia. Nothing at all to do with the economy.

Quite, I wonder how many of the people who are against asylum seekers would do the jobs they do?, very few I would guess so it's hardly people coming over here and stealing their jobs.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Of course that is working on the assumption that the REAL issue people have with asylum seekers is economic. It may make me unpopular with some people to say so, but of course the actual real reason is simply good old school racism and xenophobia. Nothing at all to do with the economy.

It's not about whether it's unpopular or not - it's about whether it's correct, and whether it's a legitimate way of arguing a point. I'm probably one of the most vocal people here who's arguing in support of the Government's proposals... would you like to accuse me to my face of being racist and xenophobic? I'm pretty certain I'm not: I'm simply trying to think of what the best (or perhaps, the least bad) way is to try to solve a very complex problem.

What you're doing by saying that is basically going back to the old left-wing tactic of just smearing those who disagree with you with the assumption of underhand motives. Why not instead just try arguing the rational grounds for why you think the Government's proposals are not the best solution and why you think doing something different would be better? You'd be a lot more convincing if you did that.

(Note: I don't doubt that there will be a few people around who are racist and xenophobic: There is always a minority on the fringe like that. But it's a far cry from accepting that to assuming that's the only/main reason why people would disagree with you).

 

[nw1]

Quite, I wonder how many of the people who are against asylum seekers would do the jobs they do?, very few I would guess so it's hardly people coming over here and stealing their jobs.

Also (and I realise this is more to do with immigration in general rather than asylum seekers) that immigration works both ways. The "immigrants stealing our jobs" argument can be countered by the fact that under a freer immigration system, we would be able to emigrate from the UK with less bureaucracy. In all honesty, rather than Brexit and its restrictions, I would have preferred to see an extension on freedom of movement, to include UK<->USA and Canada (both ways) for example. However I doubt we'll get that anytime soon unless the USA for example elects a polar opposite of Trump.

It's funny how so many so-called libertarians on the right, who. sometimes rightly, argue for other libertarian causes (such as against overly-long or overly-harsh lockdowns, for example), are quite happy to have harsh restrictions on immigration.

 

[Typhoon]

Quite, I wonder how many of the people who are against asylum seekers would do the jobs they do?, very few I would guess so it's hardly people coming over here and stealing their jobs.

I suspect the emphasis is moving or has moved from 'stealing our jobs' towards 'stealing our homes' (or children's homes) missing the point that the majority of homes being built, at least round my way, are well out of the reach of asylum seekers and indeed those on minimum wage or slightly above.

If Local Authorities didn't cave in to developers who claim not to be able to make a profit by including affordable housing, the Secretary of State for 'Leveling Up' didn't overturn the objections of those Local Authorities who do have a backbone and stand up the developers and he pushed for more social housing, there would be a great many more homes for those near the bottom of the income scale. Instead, developers build homes that only those on high incomes can afford, not infrequently as second (or third) homes. I read of a local development - homes from £825,000 - only today. Meanwhile, families on low incomes move from one rented property to another as landlords seek to maximise income.

 

[jfollows]

The Guardian today has a long article (https://www.theguardian.com/news/20...is-johnson-michael-gove-theresa-may-rees-mogg) about Boris Johnson and his tribe ascending to power through Oxford University and the Oxford Union; it resonates with me because I was an undergraduate and a member of the Oxford University Conservative Association and the Oxford Union shortly before Boris's time (1980-81 in my case).

Its main thesis is that Boris learned to win by telling jokes rather than facts, and covering up his background. His first real opposition came from an opponent from a grammar school background (like me) and I remember the early 1980s in Oxford as being good for us, we knew about the "public school" types but we didn't have to have much to do with them and let them get on with their confusing pursuits. His failing was rectified subsequently when "it taught him the unassailable truth that no one can truly succeed in politics if he relies entirely on his own cadre". So he reinvented his personality as a centrist, social democrat, and won.

My thesis is that his current undoing is because he's reverted to old ways, he shows that he doesn't believe he has to obey the rules that the rest of us have to, and that's going to kill his party in the polls while he still leads it. I hope so, anyway.

The article also identifies another characteristic: "Johnson's gift turned out to be for winning office, not doing anything with it." How true.

‘A nursery of the Commons’: how the Oxford Union created today’s ruling political class

At the Oxford university debating society in the 80s, a generation of aspiring politicians honed the art of winning using jokes, rather than facts

by Simon Kuper

Tue 19 Apr 2022 06.00 BST

When I arrived at Oxford in 1988 to study history and German, it was still a very British and quite amateurish university, shot through with sexual harassment, dilettantism and sherry. Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and the much less prominent David Cameron had graduated just before I arrived, but from my messy desk at the student newspaper Cherwell, I covered a new generation of future politicians. You couldn’t miss Jacob Rees-Mogg, the only undergraduate who went around in a double-breasted suit, or Dan Hannan who, at the age of 19, founded a popular Eurosceptic movement called the Oxford Campaign for an Independent Britain, which, with hindsight, looks like the intellectual genesis of Brexit. Cherwell was a poor imitation of Private Eye – inaccurate, gnomic and badly written in the trademark Oxford tone of relentless irony, with jokes incomprehensible to outsiders, but it turns out that we weren’t just lampooning inconsequential teenage blowhards. Though we didn’t realise it, we were witnessing British power in the making.

Probably the main reason Oxford has produced so many prime ministers is the Oxford Union debating society. Founded in 1823, based in a courtyard behind the Cornmarket shopping street, the union when I encountered it was a kind of children’s House of Commons. Like its London model, it resembled a gentlemen’s club complete with reading rooms, writing room and bar, and, across the garden, Europe’s largest purpose-built debating chamber.

The union was one of those Oxford institutions that can flatter middle-class teenagers such as William Hague and Theresa May into feeling posh. Union officers wore white tie, speakers black tie, and everyone called one another “honourable member”. The walls were lined with busts of former prime ministers who had been union men. Nineteen-year-olds debated visiting 60-year-old cabinet ministers, and tried to loll on the frontbenches just like them. Christopher Hollis, in his 1965 book on the union, called the place “a parody of the parliament of 1864 rather than that of 1964”.

It hadn’t changed much by the 1980s. I never became a member, but I sometimes got press tickets to debates, and I remember a young Benjamin Netanyahu dispatching hecklers, and, on the 50th anniversary of Dunkirk, former prime minister Ted Heath evoking Oxford in 1940 when German invasion loomed. Heath had been elected union president in November 1938 after accusing Neville Chamberlain of “turning all four cheeks to Hitler at once”.

Another attraction of the union was the bar, which – almost miraculously in 80s Britain – stayed open into the early morning after debates, until the deferential local police finally intervened. By the mid 80s, the union also had a comedy club in its Jazz Cellar, where an undergraduate comedian named Armando Iannucci was learning the art of mocking politicians.

From the beginning, the union chamber had functioned as a self-conscious nursery of the Commons, dominated by Etonians. In 1831, William Gladstone had made such a powerful anti-reform speech at the union that a friend from Eton alerted his father, the Duke of Newcastle, who offered the 22-year-old prodigy one of the parliamentary pocket boroughs in his gift. In 1853, Edward Bradley watched “beardless gentlemen … juggle the same tricks of rhetoric as their fathers were doing in certain other debates in a certain other House”.

The union’s debating rules were modelled on those of the Commons. Opposing speakers sat facing each other in adversarial formation, and there was the same “telling” of ayes and noes. But unlike the Commons, the union had no real power. Almost the only thing the union president could actually do was stage debates. Naturally, then, it encouraged a focus on rhetoric over policy. The institution perfected the articulacy that enabled aspiring politicians, barristers and columnists to argue any case, whether they believed it or not. In the union, a speaker might prepare one side of a debate, and then on the day suddenly have to switch to the other side to replace an opponent who had dropped out. I suspect it was this rhetorical tradition that prompted Louis MacNeice to write, in 1939:



… I hasten to explain

That having once been to the University of Oxford

You can never really again

Believe anything that anyone says and that of course is an asset

In a world like ours



At speakers’ dinners, 20-year-old union “hacks” – the name given to union politicians – mingled with political power brokers up from London. On one of Churchill’s visits to the union, he remarked to a student (who happened to be the future Tory minister Quintin Hogg): “If you can speak in this country, you can do anything.”

The union was a reason for politically inclined students, especially Tory public schoolboys, to choose Oxford over Cambridge. At Oxford, the union’s ceaseless debates and election campaigns kept the university buzzing with politics. The union elected a president, secretary, treasurer and librarian every eight-week term. The anthropologist Fiona Graham, in her 2005 book Playing at Politics: An Ethnography of the Oxford Union, described some students as “virtually professional politicians, complete with support staff and intricate election strategies and meetings”.

Nearly all campaigning for votes was supposedly banned under the union’s own rule 33. There were occasional attempts to enforce the rule, through tribunals featuring London lawyers, but candidates almost always flouted it.

Union politicians – instantly recognisable because they were the only students who wore suits – were forever traipsing around the colleges tapping up ordinary students with the phrase, “May I count on your vote?” Typically, though, only a few hundred people, many of them union insiders, bothered to cast theirs.

Allied candidates organised themselves into “slates”, the union version of parties but with the ideology usually left out. The slates were illegal, semi-secret, mostly hidden from the electorate, and essential to the whole enterprise. Entirely against the rules, candidates would campaign for their slates: “Vote for me as treasurer, for him as secretary and for her as president.” In other words, cheating was built into the system.

A union career was good practice for Westminster. You learned when an ostensible ally was lying to your face, or when you should be lying to his; when it was safe to break a rule, and when it wasn’t. Michael Heseltine, who had occupied the president’s chair – which sat on a raised dais like a throne – called it “the first step to being prime minister”. Once you had ascended the union, Downing Street felt within your grasp.

Like his role model Churchill, Boris Johnson spent years mastering the ancient craft of public speaking. Eton had offered unmatched opportunities to practise. Johnson ran the school’s Debating Society, and by the time he left was so well-versed in traditional speechmaking that he could perform it as parody. His sister Rachel says: “Eton Debating Society, Polsoc [Eton’s Political Society] all those places honed your oratorical abilities at a young age. They were given a huge headstart, these guys. You’d get incredible heavy-hitters going to address PolSoc and talking to the boys. It’s like playing tennis – you can’t pick up a tennis racket and go and walk on Centre Court and expect to beat Roger Federer. So much of all these things are practice. You learn what lands, and you learn what doesn’t.”

Johnson learned at school to defeat opponents whose arguments were better simply by ignoring their arguments. He discovered how to win elections and debates not by boring the audience with detail, but with carefully timed jokes, calculated lowerings of voice, and ad hominem jibes.

He went up to Oxford in 1983 as a vessel of focused ambition. Ironic about everything else, he was serious about himself. Within his peer group of public schoolboys, he felt like a poor man in a hurry. He started university with three aims, writes Sonia Purnell in Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition: to get a first-class degree, to find a wife (his parents met at Oxford), and to become union president. At university he was always “thinking two decades ahead”, says his Oxford friend Lloyd Evans.

Whereas most students arrived in Oxford barely knowing the union existed, Johnson possessed the savvy of his class: his father had arrived at Oxford in 1959 intending to become union president. Stanley Johnson had failed, but his son was a star. Eton encourages boys to develop their individuality, or at least craft an individual brand, and nobody had done this more fully than Boris Johnson. Simon Veksner, who followed him from their house at Eton to the union, recalls: “Boris’s charisma even then was off the charts, you couldn’t measure it: so funny, warm, charming, self-deprecating. You put on a funny act, based on the Beano and PG Wodehouse. It works, and then that is who you are.”

Johnson became the character he played. He turned self-parody into a form of self-promotion. Like many British displays of eccentricity, his shambolic hair and dress were class statements. Much like Sebastian Flyte’s teddy bear in Brideshead Revisited, they said: my privileged status is so secure that I am free to defy norms.

Johnson became an “Oxford character”, one of the few undergraduates known beyond his immediate circle. He already possessed the political asset of being all too easy to write about. His girlfriend (later wife) Allegra Mostyn-Owen introduced him to the journalist Tina Brown, who was visiting Oxford to write about the death from a heroin overdose of the upper-class socialite Olivia Channon. Brown reports being traduced by Johnson, who supposedly ghosted an inaccurate attack on her in the Telegraph, under Mostyn-Owen’s byline. Brown claims to have recorded in her contemporaneous diary: “Boris Johnson is an epic ****. I hope he ends badly.”

Toby Young remembers the first time he saw Johnson speak at the union, in October 1983: “The motion was deadly serious – This House Would Reintroduce Capital Punishment – yet almost everything that came out of his mouth provoked gales of laughter. This was no ordinary undergraduate proposing a motion, but a music hall veteran performing a well-rehearsed comic routine. His lack of preparedness seemed less like evidence of his own shortcomings as a debater and more a way of sending up all the other speakers, as well as the pomposity of the proceedings.”

Young, who had come up to Oxford with his head full of Brideshead Revisited (the TV version), admits, “I was completely swept up by the Boris cult.” One young debating hopeful of the day was Frank Luntz, the future American pollster who has become known as a master of political language. (A self-proclaimed “word guy”, Luntz invented the phrase “climate change” for the George W Bush administration so as to make “global warming” seem innocuous – something he now says he regrets.)

He recalls: “Boris was brilliant. He bumbles through the details, but God does he know the substance. I had never met anyone like him, and I still haven’t. Boris gave a speech on the Middle East – it’s the best Middle East speech to this day I’ve ever heard, because he talked about it in terms of a playground, and kids attacking the little kid on the playground. Boris created a brilliant metaphor and then made the argument around that.”

Johnson also benefited from the quality of debating competition, says Luntz: “I’ve never seen a class of more talented people than that class of 1984–86 at the Oxford Union.” Luntz singles out Nick Robinson, Simon Stevens and Michael Gove. He told me: “Any one of those three, when they rose [in a debate] to intervene, the entire chamber shut up, there wasn’t a sound, because everyone knew that when they were recognised, the [previous speaker] was dead, because they were so incisive. Just bring in the ambulance and take out the body, because the three of them could cut you up and show you your heart before you collapsed.”

Anthony Gardner, another American contemporary of Johnson’s, later US ambassador to the EU, was less impressed: “Boris was an accomplished performer in the Oxford Union where a premium was placed on rapier wit rather than any fidelity to the facts. It was a perfect training ground for those planning to be professional amateurs. I recall how many poor American students were skewered during debates when they rather ploddingly read out statistics; albeit accurate and often relevant in their argumentation, they would be jeered by the crowds with cries of ‘boring’ or ‘facts’!”

The undergraduate Johnson quickly became king of all he surveyed. In 1984, a sixth-former named Damian Furniss came to Johnson’s college, Balliol, for his entrance interview. “I was a rural working-class kid with a stammer from a state school which hadn’t prepared me for the experience,” Furniss would recall in 2019.

“My session with the dons was scheduled for first thing after breakfast, meaning I was staying the night and had an evening to kill in the college bar. Johnson was propping up the bar with his coterie of acolytes whose only apparent role in life was to laugh at his jokes. Three years older than me … you’d have expected him to play the ambassador role, welcoming an aspiring member of his college … Instead, his piss-taking was brutal. In the course of the pint I felt obliged to finish he mocked my speech impediment, my accent, my school, my dress sense, my haircut, my background, my father’s work as farm worker and garage proprietor, and my prospects in the scholarship interview I was there for. His only motivation was to amuse his posh boy mates.”

At around the time of this encounter, Johnson was running for union president against the grammar-schoolboy Neil Sherlock. The election dramatised Oxford’s class struggle: toff versus “stain”. Sherlock, later a partner at KPMG and PwC, and briefly a special adviser to the Lib Dem deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, was the first in his family to attend university.

He recalls: “Boris Mark 1 was a very conventional Tory, clearly on the right, and had what I would term an Old Etonian entitlement view: ‘I should get the top job because I’m standing for the top job.’ He didn’t have a good sense of what he was going to do with it.”

Mostyn-Owens invited Sherlock to tea and asked him not to stand against “my Boris”. Undeterred, Sherlock campaigned on a platform of “meritocrat versus toff, competence versus incompetence”. Johnson mobilised his public-school networks, but even the 150 or so Etonians up at Oxford at the time proved too small a political base in the new mass union.

Johnson’s candidacy suffered from his Toryism. Conservatives may have been the largest faction within the union, but they were a minority in the university as a whole. Most Oxford dons of the time were anti-Thatcher, too. Denying her an honorary degree in 1985 to protest her cuts to education and research was the university’s seminal political statement of the decade. “Why should we feed the hand that bites us?” asked one don.

In the union election, Sherlock beat Johnson, and came away underwhelmed by his opponent: “The rhetoric, the personality, the wit were rather randomly deployed, beyond getting a laugh.” Sherlock expected the Oxford University Conservative Association’s president Nick Robinson to become the political star, and Johnson to become a “rather good journalist”. Instead, Robinson went on to present the BBC’s Today programme (where in October 2021 he told a verbose Johnson, “Prime minister, stop talking)”.

Johnson’s defeat to Sherlock wounded him, and he learned from it. “It was, quite likely, the making of him as a politician,” writes Purnell. “It taught him the unassailable truth that no one can truly succeed in politics if he relies entirely on his own cadre.”

But Etonians tend to get second chances, and a year after his humiliation, he ran for president again. He had absorbed another truth: that personality could trump politics. The second time around, he disguised his Toryism by presenting himself as an unthreatening funny man – “centrist, social democrat, warm and cuddly,” sums up Sherlock. He even managed to forge an alliance with a union hack from Ruskin College, rallying its student body of mostly adult working-class trade unionists behind his slate. Cherwell’s diarist mock-praised “Balliol’s blond bombshell” as “the unstoppable force for socialist [sic] in the Palace of the People debating society (the union to you) … Who can stop our Old Etonian Leninist from stamping his personal hammer and sickle all over the union?” Thrown in among leftists and liberals, Johnson flourished by spoofing himself. “He got away with being a Tory by being funny,” says his sister Rachel. And why not? Since the union president couldn’t make policy even about students’ lives, and Johnson wasn’t very interested in policy anyway, it was all just a power game. Johnson’s second presidential campaign was more competent. Luntz – earning his first ever consulting fee, of £180 – conducted a poll for Johnson in which, as Luntz recalls, almost all the questions were about students’ sexual habits.

He says now: “My mother was so embarrassed because it made the New York Times. She said, ‘How dare you ask people those questions?’” But in fact, the sex was just a cover, says Luntz: “I knew it would be so controversial that no one would think, ‘Actually this was a poll done for a political campaign’.” He slipped in two questions about the union that were intended to identify which candidate Johnson should strike a deal with about trading second-preference votes.

In this second campaign, Johnson also worked his charm beyond his base. Gove, a fresher in 1985, told Johnson’s biographer Andrew Gimson: “The first time I saw him was in the union bar … He seemed like a kindly, Oxford character, but he was really there like a great basking shark waiting for freshers to swim towards him.” Gove, who campaigned for him, admits: “I was Boris’s stooge.” And then, using almost the same phrase as Toby Young: “I became a votary of the Boris cult.”

With the votaries assuming their natural places around him, Johnson won the presidency. His defeated opponent Mark Carnegie later reflected with the much-quoted: “Sure he’s engaging, but this guy is an absolute ****ing killer.”

Johnson’s gift turned out to be for winning office, not doing anything with it. He didn’t make much of his presidency, recalls Tim Hames, a union politician of the time: “The thing was a shambles. He couldn’t organise a term card to save his life. He didn’t have the sort of support mechanism that he realised in later life that he required.”

Once elected, Johnson also dropped his centrist disguise. When Balliol’s Master Anthony Kenny was contacted by a Social Democratic party MP who needed an intern, Kenny replied: “I’ve just the man for you. Bright and witty and with suitable political views. He’s just finished being president of the union, and his name is Boris Johnson.” But when Kenny told Johnson about the job, he laughed: “Master, don’t you know I am a dyed-in-the-wool Tory?”

After graduation, Johnson wrote a telling essay on Oxford politics for his sister’s book The Oxford Myth. He starts, characteristically, by stating the case against the union: “Nothing but a massage-parlour for the egos of the assorted twits, twerps, toffs and misfits that inhabit it … To many undergraduates, the union niffs of the purest, most naked politics, stripped of all issues except personality and ambition … Ordinary punters are frequently discouraged from voting by this thought: are they doing anything else but fattening the CVs of those who get elected?”

His essay tackles the great question: how to set about becoming the next prime minister? Johnson advises student politicians to assemble “a disciplined and deluded collection of stooges” to get out the vote. “Lonely girls from the women’s colleges, very often scientists” were particularly useful. Johnson added: “The tragedy of the stooge is that … he wants so much to believe that his relationship with the candidate is special that he shuts out the truth. The terrible art of the candidate is to coddle the self-deception of the stooge.”

Johnson would display that art throughout his political career, much of which would be accompanied by stooges he picked up at Oxford – or by his Eton-and-Oxford Union successor Rees-Mogg. Scanning Cherwell’s diary of 15 November 1985, you find much of Britain’s right wing of the 2020s already in place. Beside the story about the “Old Etonian Leninist” Johnson, another item, headed Who Thinks They’re Who, mocks Johnson’s girlfriend Mostyn-Owen and Young, “Oxford’s answer to the gutter press”. Young has gone on to become a leading voice on the Tory right, most recently campaigning against lockdowns. And the same page introduces readers to an 18-year-old Aberdonian politico named Michael Gove, already gaining fame at Oxford barely a month after his arrival. “Michael conceals his rabidly reactionary political views under a Jane Austen cleric-like exterior,” writes the diarist, who then swerves into uncharacteristic generosity: “The worst thing about this precocious pin-up is that he is, in fact, disgustingly unambitious and talented: watch this space for stories of eventual corruption …”

Gove grew into a recognisable Oxford character in outsized glasses, speaking with an exaggerated oratorical air even in daily life. When the future Guardian journalist Luke Harding arrived at Oxford in 1987, Gove led his freshers’ tour of the union. “He was basically the same [as in 2021],” recalls Harding. “He had this preternatural self-confidence, this faux-courtly manner. He seemed somewhat parodic, someone who wasn’t going to flourish in the real world.” Yet he has gone on to become the Jeeves to Johnson’s Wooster.

Rees-Mogg wasn’t ancestrally posh. Instead, he “adopted the persona of the institutions he attended”, diagnoses his contemporary Owen Matthews, who believes that this began as a defence mechanism for a thin, bookish child. Arriving at Oxford in 1988, he instantly became an unmissable sight, a rail-thin teenager promenading along Broad Street dressed like a Victorian vicar, in a double-breasted suit with an umbrella. In that time and place, it was about the most unconventional outfit imaginable.

Three-plus decades later, Rees-Mogg is unchanged. Like Johnson and Gove, he has even kept the hairstyle of his Oxford days. When I asked him about his student suit, he said: “Funnily enough, I’m probably wearing exactly the same sort of suit sitting here talking to you now.”

The Tory public schoolboys arrived at Oxford almost fully formed. School had given them the confidence, articulacy and knowhow to bestride the university. They had already constructed cartoon personal brands for themselves, which gave them instant recognition at Oxford.

They didn’t spend university trying on new accents and personas; they already knew what they wanted to be when they grew up. They were climbing the greasy pole before most students had even located it.

This is an edited extract from Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK by Simon Kuper, published by Profile on 28 April.

 

[jon0844]

Quite, I wonder how many of the people who are against asylum seekers would do the jobs they do?, very few I would guess so it's hardly people coming over here and stealing their jobs.

This is the crazy thing. As a once fairly prosperous nation, I think we all accepted that there were low-paid jobs that people didn't want to do, and we encouraged people to come here to do them (like from eastern Europe*). Naturally, some people got upset about them 'taking our jobs' which it now appears wasn't the case and we're a lot worse off having the jobs left vacant.

I am of course quite certain that there's also a difference in having a white person from Poland doing the job, and previously having the legal right to come here to live and work, than those brown people from goodness-knows-where who are somehow going to take our jobs, take all our benefits, try and kill us and be part of the 'great replacement theory' that saw me having to block some former Facebook friends who are convinced there's a plot to have foreigners take over and make white people the minority (oh, and it's mostly Muslims who want to put us under Sharia Law, but black people aren't let off the hook either).

Let's see how well the Rwanda idea pays off at the local elections to see if we're that far gone, or if there's some hope for society yet.

* It's not like rich people didn't like having cleaners and nannies, or getting work done cheaply by hiring Polish or Romanian workers etc.

 

[Bletchleyite]

This is the crazy thing. As a once fairly prosperous nation, I think we all accepted that there were low-paid jobs that people didn't want to do, and we encouraged people to come here to do them (like from eastern Europe*). Naturally, some people got upset about them 'taking our jobs' which it now appears wasn't the case and we're a lot worse off having the jobs left vacant.

We aren't, however, willing to do the one thing that will get people to do them - better pay and conditions (paid for by the product/service costing a more realistic price).

What we basically had was slave labour, or close to it (particularly when it came to working in fields picking stuff, but also people working in hotels and the likes). And all employers and customers are doing is whining about it and not solving the problem in the way that is within their power.

The answer lies here - how did we get these jobs done before the EU (and the likes of Windrush) was a thing?

 

[GusB]

The answer lies here - how did we get these jobs done before the EU (and the likes of Windrush) was a thing?

There were still immigrants, many of whom make up the Irish branches of my family tree. While technically Ireland was part of the UK at the time, they also faced discrimination when they arrived here.

The other way those jobs done was by making children work at an early age; a situation some of the out of touch tories wouldn't object to, given the chance.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The other way those jobs done was by making children work at an early age; a situation some of the out if touch tories wouldn't object to, given the chance.

Very obviously, noone in their right mind on any reasonable part of the political spectrum would think it's OK to make young children work, and I'm not aware of any politician in living memory having seriously suggested it.

I appreciate you may have made that remark in part as a joke, but it really is worrying the way people think it's OK to totally misrepresent those on the right in this kind of way. I wonder how people in Labour and the LibDems would react if their views got routinely so absurdly misrepresented.

 

[jfollows]

A complete change of tactics from Boris Johnson today; last time he was grilled in the House of Commons he made a poor apology and then decided his best tactic was offense, including the ridiculous smear about Jimmy Savile on Keir Starmer. This time he is much more contrite and keeps repeating that he apologises, it's getting really boring now. Interesting that a former Tory chief whip (Mark Harper) has come out against him after having danced round the edges for ages also.

 

[Typhoon]

Interesting that a former Tory chief whip (Mark Harper) has come out against him after having danced round the edges for ages also.

I've thought Harper was one of the more independent members of the government back benches of late, not being afraid to criticise. He did call Johnson out over Paterson and the retreat from Afghanistan.

I know his record isn't perfect (Minister for Immigration) but there are a lot who are a damn sight worse.

 

[DarloRich]

Johnson hasn't quit and he wont, although he should. He is a coward, a criminal and a liar but he stays on as PM dragging our country further into the mire.

This country is finished. We used to be a decent country where the right thing mattered and where there was a standard of behaviour we could expect from both ourselves and those in power. We used to be a country where ignorance and stupidity were shaming and the moral basis of our standing in the international community and being the home of the mother of all parliaments were things to be proud of. We were a country that for good or ill exported freedom and our style of democracy around the globe. That's all gone now. We have a law breaker as our chief law maker. A man so stupid that he, apparently, didn't understand his own simple rules even though we all did. It is preposterous.

Today, in this country, the truth means nothing. Laws mean nothing. Morality means nothing. Decency means nothing. Ethics mean nothing. Ignorance and stupidity are virtues. The country is run by idiots for idiots and I am sick of it. Why anyone would associate with, apologise for, or advocate on behalf of this gang is beyond my understanding.

 

[edwin_m]

Very obviously, noone in their right mind on any reasonable part of the political spectrum would think it's OK to make young children work, and I'm not aware of any politician in living memory having seriously suggested it.

I appreciate you may have made that remark in part as a joke, but it really is worrying the way people think it's OK to totally misrepresent those on the right in this kind of way. I wonder how people in Labour and the LibDems would react if their views got routinely so absurdly misrepresented.

Pretty much what the Daily Mail and its ilk do all the time.

Sending refugees to a near-totalitarian country isn't the same as making children work, but it is a policy that nobody would even have considered suggesting until recent years. That indicates how far the discourse is shifting to the right and also how this government is trying to retain its core support by actively provoking those with other views. I have to say that your pleading that we should all try to understand the right comes across as pretty rich.

 

[jfollows]

Bill Cash was almost the funniest to speak; he completely missed the point (nothing unusual here for Bill) that Boris was desperately trying to grovel and be sorry. Bill went on along the lines of paid fixed penalty notices not being a criminal offence or somesuch, and you could sense Boris groaning internally - you don't get it, Bill, I'm trying to apologise! The Guardian says that Cash "seriously misjudged the mood of the house" - nothing new there!

Sir William Cash
(Stone) (Con)

I have heard the remarks of both my right hon. Friend and the Leader of the Opposition, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend appreciates that it is crystal clear that a fixed penalty notice, such as was applied in his case, is a civil penalty fine, which, if paid within 28 days, eliminates the possibility of future prosecution in the criminal courts and, furthermore, can be paid without any admission of guilt. The judgment in a recent criminal appeal case said that if the payment is made within 28 days, a fixed penalty notice is held not to be a conviction, as the defendant is

“not admitting any offence, not admitting any criminality, and would not have any stain imputed to his character.”

That is the perspective on this case.
The Prime Minister
I make it absolutely clear that in no way do I minimise the importance of this fine. I am heartily sorry for my mistake, and I accept completely the decision of the police.

 

[GusB]

Very obviously, noone in their right mind on any reasonable part of the political spectrum would think it's OK to make young children work, and I'm not aware of any politician in living memory having seriously suggested it.

I appreciate you may have made that remark in part as a joke, but it really is worrying the way people think it's OK to totally misrepresent those on the right in this kind of way. I wonder how people in Labour and the LibDems would react if their views got routinely so absurdly misrepresented.

I'm not sure why you worry that I'm misrepresenting the right. There are several nasty individuals in the Tory party who openly espouse Victorian values and couldn't give two hoots about those who are less well off.

One such individual is Edwina Currie, who I heard on a radio programme some years ago, talking up Ian Duncan Smith's benefit 'reforms'. She trotted out the usual nonsense about people poor people having big tellies and smartphones and that they didn't deserve to have nice things. I can't remember exactly what she said, but that was the general gist of it.

Sorry, you aren't poor enough to please Ms Currie | Barbara Ellen

Barbara Ellen: Haley Sanderson was reduced to tears by Edwina Currie on 5 live who quizzed the young mother on her spending habits

www.theguardian.com

The last time I looked, Edwina Currie had still not apologised for her disgraceful treatment of young, struggling Derbyshire mother Haley Sanderson during a phone-in discussion on 5 live.

Ms Sanderson eloquently told her tale of redundancy and maternity leave, claiming no benefits, with both her and her partner doing part-time work, but still with a daunting backlog of utility bills, frequently forgoing proper meals in order to feed their young children. It made no difference. Sanderson was driven to tears by Currie's "questions" (in truth, insinuations) about the "real" reasons for their financial plight.


Did they have satellite TV? No. Did they use catalogues? No, nor credit cards. Did they own a pet? Yes, a dog. Did they feed it every day? Let me take this one, Haley. No, Edwina, they're systematically starving this dog (which, going by your tone, they're too poor to deserve) so that they can buy ciggies and scratch cards. Is this what you wanted to hear?

Not that Currie was listening – just pontificating about how some people lived "the good life… life to the full", with no thought of the future. By now, Sanderson had broken down and there was a very unsettling atmosphere. It was almost as if a time portal had opened up, 5 live falling away to be replaced by a scene from Victorian Britain, with Currie and other notables sitting imperiously at a table, judging the poor: deciding who was deserving of alms and who belonged in the workhouse, or even to be sent out on to the streets, with their brats and their dogs, to perish for their feckless ways.

That's just one example from one individual. Here's another from the same vile creature (and I feel slightly soiled after visiting this particular website):

Edwina Currie ordered off Twitter by her husband

The 67-year-old former MP said food banks were not a long term solution and questioned whether they were really needed in the UK.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Former Tory MP Edwina Currie was ordered off Twitter this morning by her husband after she was rounded on by people slating her for saying people who use food banks spend their cash on tattoos and dog food.

Speaking on a BBC Radio Stoke last week, the 67-year-old former MP said food banks were not a long term solution and questioned whether they were really needed in the UK.

She said many people using food banks across UK spent any spare cash they had - not on food - but on tattoos and food for their pets.

She said: 'I get very, very troubled at the number of people who are using food banks who think that it's fine to pay to feed their dog, their dog is in good nick and beautiful, but they never learn to cook, they never learn to manage and the moment they've got a bit of spare cash they're off getting another tattoo.

From the Daily Mail, no less!

I probably don't need to clarify this for those who are in touch with the real world, but ownership of a smartphone is a necessity these days. In order to manage a benefit claim, you have to have access to the internet. The DWP communicate with you by sending you an email or text message and ask you to log on to their portal to read it. Failure to check this portal on a regular basis may result in sanctions being applied. That is the reality of the situation for many; a reality that the despicable Currie & Co. are vastly out of touch with.

There will be many more of her ilk who hold the same beliefs. The introduction of the minimum wage had a fair bit of opposition from those on the right. No doubt the laws relating to child labour faced similar opposition back in the day. I don't think I'm misrepresenting those people at all.

 

[nw1]

Bill Cash was almost the funniest to speak; he completely missed the point (nothing unusual here for Bill) that Boris was desperately trying to grovel and be sorry. Bill went on along the lines of paid fixed penalty notices not being a criminal offence or somesuch, and you could sense Boris groaning internally - you don't get it, Bill, I'm trying to apologise! The Guardian says that Cash "seriously misjudged the mood of the house" - nothing new there!

Ah, Cashosaurus brexitophilus, well known for inhabiting the House of Commons continuously for what seems an eternity, while later species have come and gone in the meantime.

 

[jfollows]

Although there will be an interesting distraction on Thursday, when the House of Commons votes against doing anything because of the large Conservative majority, I get the sense that the next stage in the saga of things going wrong has to be the local elections on 5 May. I don't vote myself this time, but I'm fastidious about voting "locally" in these anyway, but of course others will vote "nationally" and the results will reflect on Boris in part. I guess it's about descrambling the results along with exit polls to work out how much effect he has had. A lot was said by the opposition about him "taking the public for fools" today, and if this feeds through as much as it could then it will be bad news for them. Personally, perhaps, it might be enough to convince me not to vote Conservative if (a) I had a vote in the first place and (b) I was thinking of voting Conservative anyway.

But if the results are viewed as especially bad it might provoke enough of the cowardly Tory back-benchers to act finally and ditch Boris. Equally until May 6th. they're not going to act.

 

[birchesgreen]

Interesting re: local elections, my Mum is a life long Tory but loathes the current party especially the likes of Priti Awful, she's only voting for the Tory candidate because she likes the candidate, if it was a vote just for the party she wouldn't vote anymore for them.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I'm not sure why you worry that I'm misrepresenting the right.

Because you directly stated that 'some of the out of touch Tories' would not object to 'making children work at an early age'. Unless you can find some evidence that there are reasonable numbers of Tories who support making children work at an early age, then your accusation is directly not true.

In your defence, you've quoted two articles, both about alleged bad remarks by Edwina Currie - who stopped being an MP 12 years ago and who appears to have largely retired from National Politics since then, other than popping up a few times in the media to make her views known. Although both articles suggest she's said some things that we'd probably both disagree with and which do seem somewhat unpleasant, I don't see any indication in either article that she has called for young children to be made to work. So if that's the best evidence you can come up with, it looks even more certain that your accusation is a direct falsehood.

Also, the Daily Mail article seems to be reporting very publicly verifiable facts so I would imagine it's broadly correct. The Guardian article is from 10 years ago. It suggests that Edwina Currie behaved somewhat nastily way in a radio interview/phone-in, but the article is written in the kind of opinionated way that must raise questions about how accurate it it: It's very obviously an opinion piece rather than a factual report, so I certainly wouldn't rely on it as a good account of what was said in the interview in question.

 

[DarloRich]

both about alleged bad remarks by Edwina Currie

we don't have to go back 10 or 12 years to find Currie being idiotic. Just 5 or 6 days will do. She managed to make a silly tweet to someone pointing our how awful their parents funeral under lockdown while your man Johnson partied with his chums was AND manage to have a row with luminously bright teethed TV personality (?) Rylan.

EDIT: I note that the Dickensian villain par excellence and top flight Christian who seems to have missed the message of the bible Rees- Mogg managed to go on the radio TODAY and suggested that Andrew Marr “get a sense of perspective” after he opened up about his dad’s death while Boris Johnson partied.

I honestly don't know how or why you make common cause with these balloons. I really don't.

Note: that might be an opinion piece rather than a factual report, so you certainly shouldn't rely on it as a good account of what was said.

 

[birchesgreen]

Talking of Rees Mogg do you know if you criticise him then Britain First have threatened to find out where you live and unleash their "cannons" against you?

Do the Tories really want this kind of thing happening?

 

[DarloRich]

Do the Tories really want this kind of thing happening?

The Johnson gang aren't Tories. We have to stop calling them that. They are a Vote Leave/UKIP/English Nationalist/Britain First mush who have slithered into a Tory skin suit. The Conservative Party and all that it stood for is dead.

 

[The Ham]

EDIT: I note that the Dickensian villain par excellence and top flight Christian who seems to have missed the message of the bible Rees- Mogg managed to go on the radio TODAY and suggested that Andrew Marr “get a sense of perspective” after he opened up about his dad’s death while Boris Johnson partied.

I honestly don't know how or why you make common cause with these balloons. I really don't.

Note: that might be an opinion piece rather than a factual report, so you certainly shouldn't rely on it as a good account of what was said.

Clearly missed the story of the good Samaritan (saying that Samaritans and Jews didn't get in with one another is a bit of an understatement), the love your neighbour as yourself, you can't love God who you've not seen if you can't love your brother who you have seen, speak up for those with no voice, care for the widow and orphan as well as the alien (i.e. those not of your tribe), etc.

Now whilst Christians believe that they are forgiven of their wrong doing, they should at least be trying to stop doing the things that they've done wrong in the past. As a Christian I can confirm that we don't always do very well at it.

However when a church leader (say) the Archbishop of Canterbury has been on the record for several years (the last few at least have all said it) taking about the issue of modern slavery (including people smugglers) you're likely to be on a sticky wicket when you try and argue that you hold the moral high ground and the current Archbishop effectively supports people smuggling by opposing the Rwanda policy and maybe it's time to re-evaluate your morals to see if you really are doing the right thing.

To claim asylum you have to be in Britain, you can't get to Britain without a visa, you can't get a visa very easily, as such how are people likely to be able to claim asylum here.

Therefore to stop people using people smugglers to get here, as that's often the only option to get to the UK to claim asylum, there needs to be a mechanism to allow them to do so.

One final point which is worth noting:

There is nothing in international law to say that refugees must claim asylum in the first country they reach.

The truth about asylum - Refugee Council

Looking for the facts about asylum? You can rely on the facts and figures in this article to give you the true picture about asylum.

www.refugeecouncil.org.uk

 

[GusB]

Because you directly stated that 'some of the out of touch Tories' would not object to 'making children work at an early age'. Unless you can find some evidence that there are reasonable numbers of Tories who support making children work at an early age, then your accusation is directly not true.

In your defence, you've quoted two articles, both about alleged bad remarks by Edwina Currie - who stopped being an MP 12 years ago and who appears to have largely retired from National Politics since then, other than popping up a few times in the media to make her views known. Although both articles suggest she's said some things that we'd probably both disagree with and which do seem somewhat unpleasant, I don't see any indication in either article that she has called for young children to be made to work. So if that's the best evidence you can come up with, it looks even more certain that your accusation is a direct falsehood.

Also, the Daily Mail article seems to be reporting very publicly verifiable facts so I would imagine it's broadly correct. The Guardian article is from 10 years ago. It suggests that Edwina Currie behaved somewhat nastily way in a radio interview/phone-in, but the article is written in the kind of opinionated way that must raise questions about how accurate it it: It's very obviously an opinion piece rather than a factual report, so I certainly wouldn't rely on it as a good account of what was said in the interview in question.

Oh, for goodness' sake! I wasn't claiming that any of them actually said they were going to make children work. My point is that some of these cretins are so backward-looking that I wouldn't put it past them. Do you really have to take what I said so literally?

The article from the Guardian was an opinion article, but I can vouch for the accuracy as I heard Currie on the radio with my own ears around the same time. It may even have been that very programme. I don't recall every single detail, but I do remember how furious I was at the time. Are you going to accuse me of lying about that too?

 

[Gloster]

After Rees-Mogg tweeted, ‘Christ is risen, Alleluia. He is risen indeed, Alleluia, Alleluia.‘ a couple of days ago Jack Monroe replied with Titus 1:16. (‘They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.’ (It is in her tweet: I didn’t even know there was a book of Titus.))

 

[Shrop]

Johnson hasn't quit and he wont, although he should. He is a coward, a criminal and a liar but he stays on as PM dragging our country further into the mire.

This country is finished. We used to be a decent country where the right thing mattered and where there was a standard of behaviour we could expect from both ourselves and those in power. We used to be a country where ignorance and stupidity were shaming and the moral basis of our standing in the international community and being the home of the mother of all parliaments were things to be proud of. We were a country that for good or ill exported freedom and our style of democracy around the globe. That's all gone now. We have a law breaker as our chief law maker. A man so stupid that he, apparently, didn't understand his own simple rules even though we all did. It is preposterous.

Today, in this country, the truth means nothing. Laws mean nothing. Morality means nothing. Decency means nothing. Ethics mean nothing. Ignorance and stupidity are virtues. The country is run by idiots for idiots and I am sick of it. Why anyone would associate with, apologise for, or advocate on behalf of this gang is beyond my understanding.

we don't have to go back 10 or 12 years to find Currie being idiotic. Just 5 or 6 days will do. She managed to make a silly tweet to someone pointing our how awful their parents funeral under lockdown while your man Johnson partied with his chums was AND manage to have a row with luminously bright teethed TV personality (?) Rylan.

EDIT: I note that the Dickensian villain par excellence and top flight Christian who seems to have missed the message of the bible Rees- Mogg managed to go on the radio TODAY and suggested that Andrew Marr “get a sense of perspective” after he opened up about his dad’s death while Boris Johnson partied.

I honestly don't know how or why you make common cause with these balloons. I really don't.

Note: that might be an opinion piece rather than a factual report, so you certainly shouldn't rely on it as a good account of what was said.

The Johnson gang aren't Tories. We have to stop calling them that. They are a Vote Leave/UKIP/English Nationalist/Britain First mush who have slithered into a Tory skin suit. The Conservative Party and all that it stood for is dead.

Just catching up with this thread before sleep. Thank you #DarloRich for these comments, which made me chuckle and sad at the same time. Very hard to disagree, and thus indeed very sad that our country has got itself into such a state. Sadly I don't have much hope for any other political party either, because they all tend to be run by politicians. And about the only breed worse than politicians is mouthy journalists. Actually there is an even worse breed, and that's gullible, stupid people who believe the lies of both politicians and journalists, and yet have a vote. Such a sad situation for those who do actually possess rare sense (which used to be called "common sense", before most of it disappeared). Ah well, there's always hope ...

 

[jon0844]

Politics has been gamified and people are willing to accept the problems as long as they're getting one over the opposition somehow. Brexit is a good example of potentially suffering from loads of issues, but accepting them because you 'really showed it to the remoaners'.

Likewise, it's okay to tolerate Boris taking the country down the toilet because, well, at least it keeps Labour out. Rather than own up to the issues with your leader, and how it may destroy your party and make you unelectable for decades, just attack, attack, attack.

The USA has arguably got it worse, but we're certainly trying hard to catch up.