Yeah, again, I know, my point isn't 'I don't understand what they thought', it's, 'I don't understand *why* they thought it'. In private, they would say things like 'the voters understand that we would like to fix this, so they will give us credit for trying even tho we're failing' and it's like... - ThreadSky

stephenkb.bsky.social • 185 days ago

Yeah, again, I know, my point isn't 'I don't understand what they thought', it's, 'I don't understand *why* they thought it'. In private, they would say things like 'the voters understand that we would like to fix this, so they will give us credit for trying even tho we're failing' and it's like...

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stephenkb.bsky.social•185 days ago

...why would you believe that? What possible encounter with *any human being not utterly committed to the Tory party*, what focus group, what poll, what election would make you think 'yep, in the end, we will get credit for Raising The Issue'.

joxley.jmoxley.co.uk•185 days ago

But that's at the heart of so many of the issues, the analysis was clouded by being utterly partisan.

joxley.jmoxley.co.uk•185 days ago

All sort of resembled one of those episodes of The Apprentice where they settle on something obviously terrible, and the person who dares to point that out is seen as dangerously negative.

aremay.bsky.social•185 days ago

It remains a work of inverse genius, one of the most incredible decisions taken by a political party. Their whole track record on immigration in the last Parliament is transfixingly bad in so many ways.

disappoptimism.bsky.social•185 days ago

Somewhere in this mess of motivation are a few headlines and a summary of a focus group that all happened to be on the same table at the same time at some point

teaandsleep.bsky.social•185 days ago

Is it not a bit chicken egg though? If they’d not fully leaned into the issue would the BBC have dedicated the resources to continuously checking if they are actually delivering on their central commitment?

redneeraj.bsky.social•185 days ago

Sometimes, the BBC gets confused as to when it's a public broadcaster and when it's the state broadcaster.

teaandsleep.bsky.social•185 days ago

I wouldn’t say “look the government is royally failing on one of the big commitments” falls into the state broadcaster bracket

redneeraj.bsky.social•185 days ago

Collecting statistics for it, though...

stephenkb.bsky.social•185 days ago

...*the Home Office* collects the statistics, that's a big part of why the boats reporting was IMO a poor use of their strained resources.

redneeraj.bsky.social•185 days ago

And that poor lady on the daytime BBC2 politics show had it as part of AOB every day for two years.

timblue.bsky.social•185 days ago

I suspect your question contains the seeds of the answer.

You assume they ever interacted with "any human being not utterly committed to the Tory party".

gungurran.bsky.social•185 days ago

I'd suggest asking the "why" of JJ who certainly believed it enough to state it in pretty much exactly your words above on a Spectator column but AIUI that pretty much involved a block for whoever asked

po8crg.gadsden.online•185 days ago

They believed the issue of immigration was worse for Labour and therefore raising the salience would help them.

There are far too many British politicians who don't think in a multi-party environment, so beliefs like "it doesn't matter how bad we are at this, as long as they are worse" can persist.

richarddwyer.bsky.social•185 days ago

Maybe Sunak thought that numbers would go down naturally and hoped to get credit for it? Like the pledge on reducing inflation?

anthonyjwells.bsky.social•185 days ago

I wouldn't say it surprises me (too long in the tooth for that), but it does at least disappoint me that there are people in my industry who spent months championing the popularity of the policy and the wisdom of pursuing it who have yet to publicly question that position (or disappear in disgrace)

tpgroberts.bsky.social•185 days ago

Apologies, I mean, I think at this point we drift into Elledges's rule that the slavish attention of the right wing press had distracted them

cnbsg.bsky.social•185 days ago

they were so convinced the election was lost that they started doing Opposition stuff while in government. Rwanda, small boats, HS2. All just bad LOTO style stunts.

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