{"id":1245,"date":"2006-05-09T12:21:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-09T12:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/05\/09\/114717411443582935\/"},"modified":"2006-11-28T14:04:21","modified_gmt":"2006-11-28T14:04:21","slug":"blair-as-bad-as-thatcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/05\/blair-as-bad-as-thatcher\/","title":{"rendered":"Blair as bad as Thatcher"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/article\/0,,2-2171574,00.html\">an opinion poll<\/a> shows Blair&#8217;s Labour party to be as unpopular as Thatcher&#8217;s Tories in late 1981 (following mass unemployment and tax rises during a recession, giving Thatcher personal approval ratings of just 23%, 11 points lower than even Blair&#8217;s currently stand), <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk_politics\/4753129.stm\">Gordon ups the ante<\/a>, announcing that Blair will hold talks about a handover. Has Blair actually agreed to this, or is Brown using the same tactics that Charles Clarke tried, following the advice of <em>Yes, Minister<\/em>? In politics, if you announce something to the press, it becomes true&#8230;Where else but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ukpollingreport.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/208\">UK Polling Report<\/a> for more? (Actually, <a href=\"http:\/\/politicalbetting.com\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/05\/08\/populus-puts-the-tories-eight-points-ahead\/\">Political Betting<\/a>, now you come to mention it &#8211; and <a href=\"http:\/\/politicalbetting.com\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/05\/09\/why-does-brown-poll-worse-than-his-party-against-cameron\/\">again<\/a> on the bad news for Gordon from the poll.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As an opinion poll shows Blair&#8217;s Labour party to be as unpopular as Thatcher&#8217;s Tories in late 1981 (following mass unemployment and tax rises during a recession, giving Thatcher personal approval ratings of just 23%, 11 points lower than even &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/05\/blair-as-bad-as-thatcher\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blair","category-brown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}