Starmer

[IvanV]

Starmer was probably on a hiding to nothing in trying to devise a policy on Gaza which would avoid divisive arguments.

The ferocious row in their letters column over the recent Private Eye cover, suggests that it is more or less impossible to state any position on Gaza without a lot of people being very angry over it. I thought the cover was a reasonably balanced thing to say, hard to complain about. Boy, was I wrong. A lot of the complaints focused on the wording "killing everyone", as a completely unfair characterisation of Israel's policy, taking those words literally. I think it is obvious that they were not meant literally, but it was not an unreasonable shorthand for action that put almost every civilian in Gaza at risk of sudden death, and seemed to have little regard for the extent of such deaths. We cannot expect a complete, careful and accurate description in a such a brief wording. But I think, from the wording of their complaints, that even a careful and accurate description wouldn't have avoided the ire of many of the complainants.

Special kudos to the correspondent who sent in a complaint that he didn't get his free bed bug.

Private Eye cover.jpg (181.66 KiB) Viewed 936 times

[Martin_B]

Mid Bedfordshire was held by the Tories continuously for 92 years. I don’t know what the record is there but I doubt there could have been many more safer seats.

Not sure if it's the record holder, but my parent's constituency can beat Mid Bedfordshire for longevity:

Created in 1918 as Farnham (not sure what it was before that, possibly just part of the Guildford Hundreds.

1918 - 1937: Sir Arthur Samuel - Conservative. Became Baron Mancroft in 1937, so a by-election was required.
1937 - 1966: Sir Godfrey Nicholson - Conservative. Was made a baronet and retired in 1966.
1966 - 1984: Maurice Macmillan - Conservative. Harold Macmillan's son, Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden died in office, a year after the constituency was reformed as South West Surrey for the 1983 elections.
1984 - 2005: Virginia Bottomley - Conservative. Became Baroness when stepping down in 2005.
2005 - Current: Jeremy Hunt - Conservative. Considering he's been Secretary of State for the Olympics, Health, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor, he'll probably get a significant peerage when he steps down, too.

So that's 105 years of continuous conservative representation. Although they voted against Brexit!