Returning to my comment

The quote I heard yesterday (Friday) morning on NPR was from Hugo Gurdon of The Washington Post: Here it is from NPR's web site:

"CORNISH: Boris Johnson and the Tories win big. Labour had its worst defeat since 1935. Hugo, how did he do it?

GURDON: He did it with a very simple message - get Brexit done. But I think that this election was about more than Brexit. Boris Johnson is a very charismatic fellow. I worked with him every day for about a year at The Daily Telegraph when we were journalists together. He's got a lot of charm. He's not always honest, but he's nevertheless attractive. He was opposing a terrible leader, Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party, who's essentially an unreconstructed Marxist who's dragged the party so far to the left that he would - that he's made it unpalatable to Labour voters, not just those Labour voters - and there are lots of them who - in the north who are Brexit voters, but also people who are just not going along with the left wing project that he wants."

This is me, robo, again: Whether or not Mr. Corbyn fits the technical bill as a "unreconstructed Marxist" is not the point. The point is perception. And the perception of Mr. Corbyn has not been good in many quarters and individual stories that have made it into Mudcat. I'm going to compare it to the perception of Hilary Clinton in the States. Whether accurate or not, stories have accumulated and the remains of those stories have left perceptions, like a bad taste, in various memories. May be fair, probably isn't.

Anyhow, that's where the quote came from. As I wrote above, I don't have the long history required for a personal judgment on my own experience. But it is clear that there are those in this thread who DO have long personal experience. And they are not united. They are on both sides of that quote.

I am learning from both sides and I am enjoying this thread because it is so far pretty partisan but not too personal.

I believe in Democracy with all my heart. But it ain't pretty. It ain't supposed to be pretty. Pretty is actually a warning sign that someone's got too much control over the covering paint!