UK General Discussion:The Rt. Hon Alex Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Populist Hero

[parochial boy]

Oh ho. Welcome to the permanent state of negotiation that is "Bilateral agreements". Glad to have you here with us 

[parochial boy]

No. You are wrong. The member nations did not hold votes on the Union as it exists today. They joined a common market that has since grown unchecked into a political union. EU elections see abysmal turnout and many of the major positions in the bureaucracy are unelected. To say that the people in the member nations "chose to join" this Union is frankly asinine and a complete misrepresentation of how the EU has expanded its power since its inception. And if the EU does become a United States of Europe (as it is slowly gravitating towards), I'd bet good money that the legitimate qualms of EU citizens will once again go ignored.

So reform the EU to make it more democratic, which is entirely possible, and is slowly happening - and fwiw, EU membership has solid majority support in evey member state. And after all, what is the nation state if not just another form of collectivism? I don't see why the nation-state level should be any more or less legitimate a supranational one.

I'm a little bit suprised that a libertarian would be so enthusiastic about "national sovereignty". After all, leaving the EU is something that has a pretty big impact on people's individual freedoms. The right to travel and work around the bloc; to participate in other member's "markets", be it through access to healthcare, buy property, access to buy goods and services and to bring them home; the ability of companies to trade without friction across the bloc... These are all much more concrete things that affect people much more directly, in a way that they notice, far more than an abstract concept like which particular institution holds what "sovereignty".

The US has been a far better ally to the UK than the EU ever has so UK will benefit from a trade deal with the US.

Also Europe adopting US style nationalism(not the Trump style, the pre Trump style more like)>>> the EU easily

So abandon being able to influence and participate in setting EU law, as the UK was regularly at the forefront of - eg in supporting expansion or rejecting the Financial Transactions Tax versus subjecting itself to a trade deal on terms dictated by the US and the US's standards.

That's a funny concept of sovereignty you have there.

[parochial boy]

Interesting that some teenagers with a Twitter account is apparently a bigger disqualifying factor than the unravelling tragedy caused by the governing party in Britain having the most incompetent political response to Coronavirus out of every country in Europe. Just saaaaayin.

[parochial boy]

Speaking of which, might it not be the time to maybe consider the fact that having such a hierarchical system of « elite » and « non-elite » universities could, in fact, actually be a very bad and unhealthy thing?

[parochial boy]

Speaking of which why is it that transphobia seems to be such an issue specifically on the left in Britain?

Like, in most of the world it tends to fit fairly neatly into the "usual" left-right divide. Yet in the UK, it seems to be the Labour party that is tearing itself apart over trans rights; it is often nominally left-wing or feminist people making a fuss about their opposition to trans rihts; and it was Theresa May of all people's government that tried to bring in the new gender recognition act.

[parochial boy]

A Prime Minister with absolutely no personal ambition sounds ideal, to be perfectly honest.

[parochial boy]

PM's personal mouthpiece the Borisograph now briefing that he wants to scrap all human rights laws.

Doubling down on the culture wars in an attempt to cloak the otherwise glaring deficiencies of his government's performance.

[parochial boy]

Funny, I wasn't aware that that's what I was doing? It just seems like a pretty big problem for Labour when most of those Red Wall voters are socially conservative in their outlook & Labour looks like it has nothing to offer them because it's more focused on the vocal but diminutive-in-number metropolitan membership that has mainly been focused on social justice issues (which those Red Wall voters probably consider to be trivial) & internal squabbles.

It is perhaps also a good idea to note that seats and votes are not the same thing. All reliable evidence points towards this fact: that what did the greatest damage to Labour in 2019 was not direct defections to the Tories,* but that a large chunk of its usual base vote decided not vote at all, and that a smaller section of it voted for a scattering of minor parties. I noticed this in my own family, which is very much one shaped by long-dead extractive industries and the subcultures those created: a remarkable number of people who always or usually vote Labour either did not or only did so extremely reluctantly. On top of this we add the strange impact of 2019 being an Issue Election and the simple fact that a lot of people who normally move their votes around were quite genuinely afraid of Corbyn. Which is where all this 'Red Wall' nonsense falls apart: you're actually dealing with a quite complex series of processes.

While turnout was down in 2019, the decrease was minimal though? 2019 doesn't seem to me like a low turnout UK election unlike say, 2001?

For turnout to stay stagnant while (some) Labour voters stayed home; that would imply there was also another group of non-voters came out to vote in 2019 but not 2017; presumably for the Conservatives.

Or Labour voters went elsewhere. Or turnout drops in some areas (old Labour seats) were compensated by jumps elsewhere (Putney). The interesting thing is to dive in and look at the raw vote counts in some of the so called "red wall" seats. As a poignant example, you have somewhere like Don Valley, where the Conservative vote increases by about 500, but Labour's vote collapses by a full 9'000.

That said, from my vantage point, it does often seem that the Conservative party are engaging in a very deliberate and conscious effort to try and import US culture war politics (to a degree the online left too, but that can probably mostly be chalked up to "twitter is not the real world" and subsequently ignored). See for instance Liz Truss's, er, interesting comments about education in Leeds in the 1980s, or the scrapping of the gender recognition act, or the fights about the proms, or statues, or whatever Priti Patel has to say about black people or irish travellers or whatever.

It may be irrelevant to most people, but I do get some sense that a large chunk of the British right would quite like to turn the UK's political culture into a poor parody of the US's.

[parochial boy]

It does seem like the UK has somewhat put itself on the Swiss route of ad hoc and single issue based agreements with the EU as it stumbles towards an eventual relation. In which case, don't kid yourselves that it is going to be anything other than a top of the agenda issue for the next 30 years. At least.

But in that respect, who said what exactly in 1992 has long since ceased to be relevant - and I suspect the eventual relevance of who voted which way on this deal will be the same. The future fights about financial services, free movement or matching future EU corporation tax rules are going to be fights by themselves. Not fights in reference to whether or not Labour voted in favour of the deal or not.

Also, I really don't get the idea of an honours list? Like, the same applies to the presidential medal of honor or the Légion d'honneur, but still

[parochial boy]

Replace "Tory majority" and "Tory power" with "(Little) English Nationalism" In Cassius's typical blue-goggled #Analysis and you have the crux of the problem that Gordon Brown was hinting at the other day.

English nationalism is not whatever you don't like.

The paradox of English nationalism as ever, so much to be proud of, yet the expression of it never seems to get anywhere beyond the resentment of all things foreign.

Anyway, I would stick to what I have said before - the problems with devolution is just the same as the problem that already exists with UK local government; namely that quick fixes and badly thought through, vaguely populist-ish reforms have created an incomprehensible mess of different and uneven forms of subnational administration. Like, does anyone really know or care quite what the difference between a metropolitan region, local council, county council, unitary authority all is? At least in other pointlessely centralised western European nations, most people can identify what a commune, a department and a region all actually are.

[parochial boy]

Oh, there's another similar article in the Torygraph:
Tory voters want return to fiscal discipline, says defeated Chesham candidate

As has been rather archly commented in response, one thing the LibDem leaflets there *didn't* do is bang on and on about "the deficit" (remember when that was THE "beltway" obsession??)

Because it was economically illiterate enough in 2010 already, let alone the act of complete self-mutilation it would be in 2021.

Far be it from me to say anything positive about the current administration, but it is lucky that Johnson's, er, ideological "flexibility" means he doesn't blindly sign up to the sort of plutocratic economic self-harm fantasised about by people who's main preoccupation is that they want to pay less tax.

[parochial boy]

Someone needs to explain that Mary Poppins is not actually an accurate portrayal of 21st century England.

And also do something about the way he is making this thread ridiculous

[parochial boy]

I mean, in terms of « race » or at least the US understanding of it - there is probably a case to make that the UK is the least racist country in the world

Which reflects quite badly in the world, but that is hardly news.

[parochial boy]

And « encouraged to stay in Rwanda » even if their claims are accepted? Despite the fact that the UK takes a miniscule number of refugees relative to continental Europe as it is?

Sorry but this is morally disgusting, probably breaking international law and absolutely shameful. It’s the sort of trick a trump or organ would pull, not a party that tries to claim it is somehow respectable.

[parochial boy]

Another depressing day of discussions about food poverty after a stupid comment by a Tory backbencher. The interested thing is how many people defend them every time.

I’d be fascinated to know why a certain generation or type seems to fetish the idea that ‘hard work’ ‘going without’ or avoiding ‘big TVs and mobile phones’ can solve all of this.

As much as anything, I can’t help but come to the conclusion that holding the mindset that people should be poorer is basically just a tacit admission that your ideology has failed

[parochial boy]

It's great though. Even if Boris goes, he'll get replaced whoever and they'll get the whole "fresh new start" treatment and wind up 10 points ahead in the polls. Because people still aren't willing to recognise that the fundamental problem is a Conservative party that has been in charge for twleve years. And that has spent the entire time repeatedly demonstrating that it isn't actually capable of doing so.