For part of my working life (during the latter half of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s) I was a salaried (PAYE) sales representative complete with company car (a Ford).
One of the requirements of such an employee is to attend sales training courses which for the relevant company that employed me took place at the weekends – which meant that instead of having the weekend off we were booked into a commercial hotel for two nights going home on the Sunday. All paid for by the company. Friday evenings consisted of an evening meal and drinks (alcoholic). This meant that when we retired to our respective rooms many of us were more than a little tipsy which for those who had not been able to sober up by Saturday morning was a slight problem. The sales training seminar took place Saturday and was supposed to start at 9AM but generally started at around 9:30AM. It was supposed to end at 5PM but more often that was 5:30PM. There was an hour for lunch.
Invariably the man (and it was always a man) doing the sales training was not a company employee but invariably was an American (a US Citizen) who had been brought over from the other side of the pond.
This explains the use of the image above. You see, Americans are very “big” on “motivational posters.” The seminars were full of generalisations. Furthermore the seminars were aimed at salesmen (and it was aimed at salesmen not saleswomen) who sold to the general public and not me and my colleagues who sold to the engineering industry. One of the things we were told was that, “People act like sheep. It is the herd mentality.”
This is in fact true. We will of course experience a classic example of this when a Labour government is elected by a landslide later this year.
You see, it is not that the vast majority of ordinary voters are wokeists or social justice warriors. They will just follow the crowd and send Slippery Starmer to #10 and eject Soapy Sunak. There will be no real enthusiasm apart from the PC Islington set and their fellow travellers in the mainstream media. Talking of the mainstream media, there will be sighs of relief at the Brussels Brainwashing Commissariat for they will look forward to a new progressive funding model in place of the poll tax which is the licence fee.
I remember another meeting at a hotel on Saturday morning. This was in the early “noughties” and was a UKIP conference. The Kippers were talking about political issues and getting rather vexed. I stood up and said this:
“It is a sunny Saturday afternoon. Look out of the window. You see beautiful Calderdale. What do you think most people are doing? Sitting in a room arguing about politics? No. They are out walking or doing something else outdoors. We have to realise that a lot of what we tend to obsess about is ignored by the vast majority of voters.”
Inevitably, the Tories will hold their own internal inquest into the catastrophe that overwhelmed them.
Well, I can save them the time and effort! I can list the reason here!
COVID-19.
You see, it was Boris Johnson’s Bad Luck that COVID-19 struck when he was Prime Minster. The FACTS are that the Tories acted more of less the same way as Labour would have done. The one difference being that Labour would have placed the responsibility for the PPE procurement with the local authorities and not farmed the contracts out to their mates! That is not to say that the local authorities would all have been models of efficient procurement! Some would have excelled and some would have well, you know!
There has been a lot of talk (using the benefit of hindsight) about vaccines and lock-downs. Comparisons have been made with Sweden.
The FACT is that the UK is one of the most urbanised and densely populated countries in the world. Furthermore a significant section of the population (the South Asians) live in many cases in multi-generational households. FACT: COVID-19 attacked people differently. For the most part it affected children the least and generally the older and frailer you were the worse the disease was.
Had the children been kept at school, had there been no lockdowns, had there been no vaccines, had there been no face mask wearing, this is what would have happened:
Children would have been the principal vector spreading COVID-19 with their coughs. The vast majority would not have been severely affected. This would not have been the case with their parents and grandparents however. The younger and fitter their parents the less severe the infection. The older and frailer their grandparents the more severe the infection.
Had no preventative measures been put in place hundreds of thousands could have died. Most of them the elderly. The NHS would have been unable to cope. Crucially, in a woke obsessed political culture it would have been noted that the ethnic minorities – especially the South Asians – and especially the Muslims where there is often a problem with cousin marriages – would have been far more badly affected than the so-called “White British”.
To the leftist woke mob this would have been the ultimate example of “White Privilege”.
Had Boris Johnson followed this path (which was being advocated by certain members of other parties to the right), the Tories would not have survived. There would have been widespread civil disorder. A state of emergency would have been called and possibly her late Majesty (if she had survived) could have sacked the government and summoned a government of national unity.
As it is, the Labour Party and Slippery Starmer are showing themselves to be Opportunists of the First Order!
Of course were their positions revered, the Tories would be doing likewise!
As for the economy; it would have been little different under Labour. The vast amount of money the Tories borrowed would have been borrowed by Labour.
What will happen to the Tories is that they will pay the price for the COVID-19 pandemic and Labour will reap the reward – of not being in office at the time!
Napoleon Bonaparte had it right when he said that the most important quality a General must have is Good Luck!