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

[beesley]

I will post it in the Scottish Parliament Election thread as well, but this article is a good summary of today's groundbreaking events in Scottish politics and what preceded them:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-56259056

TLDR: The claims against Nicola Sturgeon by Alex Salmond have been corroborated by witnesses, who has been shown to have misled the Scottish Parliament and repeatedly broken the Ministerial Code. There are calls for Sturgeon to resign and a no confidence vote has been tabled by the opposition Tories.

She is undeniably in the wrong, in my view. I didn't think Salmond would make it stick.

[beesley]

I’m sure Treasury officials will be absolutely delighted about potentially moving from London to Darlington.

Randomly moving officials to the North will make no difference if the government has no real interest in its people.

[beesley]

Leeds made much more sense... the types of people working at senior levels would be more likely to live in the city or surrounding area.

I suppose the thinking was that Leeds is too large of a city with a fairly vibrant economy.

Leeds itself doesn't have marginal Tory seats, more importantly (unless you count Pudsey). You can never be too cynical about Boris Johnson. What is often attributed to poor judgment or incompetence should actually be attributed to malice.

[beesley]

I can't work out how much of this is Labour having a very bad month, the Lib Dems continuing to be a non-entity or just the Government doing well as a result of the vaccination, the unlocking road-map & the Budget.

Probably the latter, the government have also had fewer scandals/stupid moments recently. I hope this dispels the stupid argument that 'Keir Starmer will win all Labour voters back just for being more moderate'. You have to have, you know, an actual presence and stuff to win voters back.

[beesley]

Yeah, that sounds about right. I wouldn't count too heavily on disaffected lefties voting Labour any time soon though, at least not without a major course correction from Starmer. There's a genuine sense of Starmer, or at any rate the people around him, are so preternaturally (and irredeemably) New Labour that there's no point trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. The embarrassment of the corporation tax debate is case in point.

My reason for not supporting him is that he isn't a visionary making any effort to oppose the government in the public sphere, and for supporting the government because it's easier in his view.  Starmer doesn't try to make anything stick and someone is obviously advising him not to adopt positions of any kind. This will not necessarily alienate all people on the Corbynite left and many will vote for him, but they will be alienated by image problems ('Keir Starmer is a Tory'). Whilst Corbyn's policies were not perfect and would need amendment or some moderation if he took office they were not the reason why he lost. Starmer doesn't deserve my vote, in short.

[beesley]

If I still lived in London I think I’d give Fox a vote even if he is a prick, out of respect for his role in Lewis. Tough choice though given the true smorgasbord of high quality minor-party and independent candidates standing for the post.

I remember thinking in 2016 that there was a weird selection of candidates (especially the bizarre Ankit Love and his One Love Party) but they've outdone themselves this time. The mayoralty has a tendency to attract people running on policies that are completely beyond the jurisdiction of the office, presumably because they think it gives them a personal platform to the whole city.

[beesley]

Yeah, I think now that Johnson’s survived the Winter of Our Discontent he should be fine, barring some major catastrophe/scandal emerging in the next three years. I still think that there’s every possibility that he decides to call it quits at some point in the lifetime of this parliament and goes back to writing columns and having books ghostwritten for him, since I don’t think he really has any aims in politics besides being an election winning Prime Minister (which he’s now achieved). If he stood down, say, at the end of the year or some time in 2022, he’d have presided over Brexit and a successful roll out of the COVID vaccine, in addition to, hopefully, the country returning to some sort of economic normality. He could easily say he was standing down to ‘spend more time with the family after three hard years’ and if he did so he’d probably be remembered (by conservative Britain at least) as the best Conservative PM since Thatcher. Not a bad prospect for him really.

I got the sense that he never really recovered after getting COVID and the whole thing has dampened his desire for the job (which was limited since he has no real long-term policy goals). Better for him to bow out gracefully.

If he's the best conservative PM since Thatcher, it's because the competition was incredibly weak.

[beesley]

I’m inclined to be sceptical of the after effects of COVID being a reason for him wanting to quit though. It’s certainly a good excuse for quitting, but I feel like he’s much more likely to quit because being PM is a hard and (mostly) thankless job where his capacity to ‘be himself’ (whatever that means) is considerably curtailed. He’ll have a lot more freedom and will be able to make a lot more money once he leaves office, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he quit now that he’s ticked being PM, winning a big election victory and notching up a few achievements in office off of the bucket list. Getting out early and thus avoiding being widely despised would be a bonus on top of these.

I was referring in part to the psychological effects of getting COVID - not in a medical sense, but it 'affected' him that way and reinforced the reasons you made.

[beesley]

I can assure you that those pre-Christmas pieces planted in the right wing press about how BoJo finds the job of PM "limiting" and is unhappy it doesn't pay him more, didn't appear by accident.

Please Mr Johnson, feel free to change jobs some time soon.

[beesley]

In other news (to be clear I'm not trying to make light of the wider situation):

https://twitter.com/GreenJennyJones/status/1369781660401758209?s=20

[beesley]

He is both dim and quite staggeringly unfunny.

One of the very worst amongst a notably dismal current crop of lobby journalists.

The problem with lobby journalists, including Chorley, is that it's all a club to them. They're in competition with each other to ask the 'best questions' and enjoy nice dinners. Because of this, they have a tendency to report on things badly - see the Dominic Cummings scandal and the subsequent Rose Garden interview.

Whilst I agree Labour shouldn't solely focus on big national issues during a local election you can hardly expect Keir Starmer to be launching his campaign on road works - local parties should however do so very fervently in my view. Perhaps he should focus more on regeneration, high streets and small businesses, or social care and local bus services more generally, but it's the first time he's actually campaigned and fought hard over an issue since he became leader so it's somehow an improvement, and it's not as if he can make promises on behalf of local councillors.

[beesley]

It would require them to articulate a systemic critique of the Tories, which they don't want to do for fear of seeming too redolent of the Corbyn era.

Which is why they will never get my vote, because they obviously don't care about the British people. I don't think my point necessarily disagreed with that.

[beesley]

I also hate the word red wall and this seat shows why- the Lib Dem’s almost won the by-election in 2004!

By the way - are Tory MPs who were able to kick out Labour from constituencies considered as Red Wall ones somehow different in terms of political views and used narratives compared to the rest of Conservatives?

Most are not particularly (or at all) local to their constituencies at all either.

Indeed. I know you will know this, but just for others, it's worth pointing out that a lot of Tory candidates tend to apply for a whole bunch of seats and move themselves around a lot. Typically it used to be defeated MPs who would carpetbag to safer seats (e.g. Michael Fallon was MP for Darlington, lost in 1992, then became the MP for Sevenoaks on the other side of the country, Malcolm Rifkind moved from Edinburgh to Kensington. Sometimes it's more local - Richard Fuller lost in Bedford in 2017 and is now the MP for North East Bedfordshire, succeeding Alastair Burt who before being the MP for that seat was MP for Bury North etc etc)

Two perhaps more striking (and disappointing, in my view) examples were in 2019: In Broadland, in Norfolk, the selection went to a radio host whom I forget the name of, but he was removed for comments he made, so the plan was to replace him with the second placed candidate, but she (Alicia Kearns) is now the MP for Rutland and Melton over 100 miles away having been already selected as the candidate days after. Therefore the third placed candidate in the selection won.

Another example was in Stoke on Trent Central, where a local candidate did seek the selection, but was told that they needed a candidate who 'had fought a marginal seat before and therefore would be better'. The local candidate instead became the candidate in Warley and the candidate, and now MP, in Stoke on Trent Central was the 2017 candidate in Great Grimsby (an unusual move of moving to a harder seat for the Tories, not that that is particularly relevant).

As such very few of the new Tory MPs actually have connections to their seats. In the North East there are a few more than the rest of the country but not enough for their constituents to notice the difference, since they all fall into line anyway and are generally poor representatives regardless.

[beesley]

-snip-

I'm sure you're aware, but there is a Vice Chair, usually an MP, in CCHQ responsible for running the candidate selection process, to the point of timetabling selection meetings in constituencies.

There used to, and there may still be an unconscious tradition of 'rewarding' Conservative candidates who had stood in unwinnable seats or narrowly missed out on marginals previously over new candidates even when the latter are more local. I get the sense many candidates know this and therefore do so. Part of this is due to new openings and presumably long-time candidates snapping them up. A few examples might illustrate this:

-Theresa May, elected MP for Maidenhead in 1997, stood in North West Durham against Tim Farron (neither are from the area) in 1992.
-Jacob Rees-Mogg, elected MP for North East Somerset in 2010, stood in The Wrekin (it was Labour then) in 2001 and Central Fife or whatever the seat was called then in 1997. NE Somerset is his home seat.
-Bim Afolami, elected MP for Hitchin and Harpenden in 2017, stood in Lewisham Deptford in 2015.
-Paul Bristow, elected MP for Peterborough in 2019, stood in Middlesbrough South in 2010 - though in this case Peterborough is his home seat.
-Jonathan Gullis, elected MP for Stoke on Trent North in 2019, stood in Washington and Sunderland West in 2017.

Of course this happens in the other parties too (e.g. Ian Blackford is from Edinburgh and stood in Ayr previously) but far more prominently in the Tories. For all the furore that (justifiably) ensued when Paul Nuttall bought a flat in Stoke last minute during the by-election and slept on a mattress in it once or whatever, nobody makes a big deal when the Tories do it.

[beesley]

https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1374037808017506308?s=20

[beesley]

It's Bristol, so a lot of those trustafarian dicks will be local anyway.

Doubtful. I lived in Bristol for a number of years and over that time it became obvious that Bristol's 'radical' reputation is caused primarily by non-native-Bristolians of a left-wing disposition moving to the city. The 'homegrown' population is far, far less left wing.

They still live in Bristol though, which is a bit more relevant. Same goes for Brighton and Hove. I agree that it's not the same as Liverpool though.

[beesley]

My favourite Alan Duncan moment was when he asked John Bercow for a debate and vote to 'consider the merits' of Johnson's becoming Prime Minister and it was rejected.

[beesley]

https://twitter.com/BalancePowerUK/status/1384475502270836737?s=20

The (potential) resignation appears to be about the prosecution of British Army veterans in Northern Ireland, which Mercer opposes.

[beesley]

Johnson lost his rag today at PMQs, it really wasn't a pretty sight.

People complain about Corbyn twitter but the sight of Boris/Tory twitter defending him today and calling him a 'national hero' was gut-wrenching.

[beesley]

Didn't see anyone point it out but only MLAs and MPs actually have a vote in the leadership election. Another rule which could potentially change states that the leader must be an MLA.

[beesley]

Didn't see anyone point it out but only MLAs and MPs actually have a vote in the leadership election. Another rule which could potentially change states that the leader must be an MLA.

They would surely want an MLA as leader because the First Minister would need to be there.  The co-option system means it's easy enough to get someone into the Assembly, but double jobbing is banned, so anyone who's current an MP would have to resign their Westminster seat at the same time.

As well as Poots, Robinson and Donaldson, the Guardian mentions Sammy Wilson, MP for East Antrim, as a possible candidate.  I have an image of him as a bit of a backwoodsman...

Well you would think so, but there was somewhat credible speculation as to a rules change, hence why I stated as such.

[beesley]

Often a disproportionately high amount of politically engaged, reasonably young, educated, middle-class people sign up to YouGov and then wonder why they don't get polled so much. As someone who falls into that bracket I can say that most of the questions I was asked were about things like television viewing habits - unlike some of the other pollsters they frequently survey broader things like that for whoever might want to find that out.

[beesley]

The Daily Express seems to be the mouthpiece of Boris Johnson. I have not seen a single critical headline from them. By contrast, the Daily Mail is quite anti-lockdown.

They were also the mouthpiece of Theresa May (to a lesser degree, mind). The Daily Express website is one of the most awful news websites you could find, unless you like reading about yesterday's episode of The Chase, in which case you are exactly its core readership.

[beesley]

Re the Greens I think that could definitely happen in the distant future. It looks as if they might be the (joint) largest party on Bristol City Council, excluding the mayor. ​Shame about the mayoralty (nothing against Marvin Rees, but the Bristol mayoralty is a stupid position). Bristol is obviously one of their stronger areas but it's still an impressive result.

Obviously they would be considered to have a fairly low ceiling but I think many of their problems are structural/basic problems with recognition just as much as the challenge of appealing to voters. I was impressed at how many candidates they put up this time round.

[beesley]

I see Guido Fawkes are finally getting the treatment they deserve for their 'journalism'. They need to pick what they want to be: a serious journalism outfit with a right-wing perspective but still being seen as reputable or a professional trolling organisation. Not just based on today's incident.