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

[Blair]

I mean I always assumed that 'herd immunity' is about the pace of it; if the virus doesn't mutate & if you remain immune to it forever (two things that are very unlikely) then eventually under any approach the population would as I understand slowly become immune.

The problem with it is that it would rip through your ICU capacity so quickly; I assumed the reason we had such a high number of deaths was because A.) We took too long to lockdown B.) There was a lack of PPE for keyworkers in high risk settings C.) Too slow to take action on BAME impact D.) No testing for care homes patients or staff.

[Blair]

I would add that everyone should watch This House . I saw it live when it was on & it's the best piece of drama I've seen about politics.

E) We have a highly unfit population that is very vulnerable to this sort of thing.

It is fun seeing the people smoking on my street during the clap for carers...

[Blair]

Well PMQs was hilarous today.

[Blair]

The real canary in the coal mine is the personal ratings of both Starmer & Johnson; Starmer is seen as more competent than Johnson & I can't remember what the specific one personal rating where Starmer was the first Labour Leader for 13 years to be ahead.

I've generally always thought that the personal ratings of the leaders are an equal if not better metric of an election; of course this has just convinced me that they'll ditch Bojo either this year or the next & bring in Rishi (someone who was this time last year a parliamentary under-secretary of state for local government)

[Blair]

The real canary in the coal mine is the personal ratings of both Starmer & Johnson; Starmer is seen as more competent than Johnson & I can't remember what the specific one personal rating where Starmer was the first Labour Leader for 13 years to be ahead.

I've generally always thought that the personal ratings of the leaders are an equal if not better metric of an election; of course this has just convinced me that they'll ditch Bojo either this year or the next & bring in Rishi (someone who was this time last year a parliamentary under-secretary of state for local government)

Do you really think they'll ditch Boris?

Yes 100%.

Boris doesn't have a loyal followling in the Commons; he was able to get so many MPs to support him in 2019 because a lot of important people in the party saw him as the best vehicle to hitch their wagon to & people backed him while explicity saying he was unfit to be PM- 'he's a sh**t but he's going to win' was I believe the quote from a now cabinet minister.

When you add in the cummings saga which really cut through to Tory MPs, the failure at PMQs & the upcoming economic hit you have a perfect storm- the moment that Tory MPs see this translate into a defeat at the polls they will cut him lose- especialy when Brexit is 'done' after this year.

Governments rarely get more popular in their own party as they go on; MPs miss out on promotion, they see others getting promoted, cabinet members get sacked- it's why by 2005/2006 Tony Blair had a huge group of rebels who weren't actually ideologically against him- they just resented him. We're already seeing that in some of the rebels...

I don't think it will happen via a vote of no-confidence (these were infamously botched under May & he has enough support in the pretty large 2019 intake) but I'd be surprised if he fights the next election.

[Blair]

While in government the Conservative Party is about as ruthless as it gets when it comes to retaining office by any means, and that absolutely means ditching (the brutality and willingness of it varies) any Prime Minister that is eventually percieved to be an electoral liability, regardless of how successful the PM in question has been, and certainly regardless of whether they won a landslide or not.

They did it to Thatcher after three victories when she became a liability, missed doing the same to Major by three votes (plus the alternatives were likely to do worse, not better), would have done it to Cameron had he not resigned (no matter how much some pretended to lament his resignation), and they only failed to do it to May much earlier out of a combination of A. plotter incompetence; B. May being so incredibly stubborn; C. a number of "lucky" coincidences preventing May from being ejected right after 2017.

Long story short, the moment Boris is percieved to be a permanent electoral liability - and he seems to be doing an excellent work in that area - they'll ditch him about three seconds with no remorse and no regret whatsoever. Whether they get away with it this time is probably going to depend on whether the Tory brand becomes tainted "Black Wednesday" style by the pandemic response, since from the looks of it they won't have an incompetent opposition to work with.

The interesting thing is that the Tories success comes not from the ability to ditch leaders (which as Lumine rightly says is remarkably brutal compared to Labour) but from the ability to pick the next leader & remodel the party correctly- the transition from Cameron, to May and then to Boris saw each leader jettison parts of the previous leader that was seen as harmful to winning an election.

May ditched Camerons more liberal approach to immigration & Johnson ditched May's emotional attachment to police cuts; both moves allowled them to move to a voter coalition that was much more suited to winning a majority. I take the view that May had the ability to win a Bojo shaped landslide in 2017 if the election had been both shorter & more effectively ran.

The challenge will be the next leadership race when people like Raab, Gove, Hunt and Javid see it as the last chance to get the crown... but I'm letting my mind wonder!

[Blair]

I always feel that Scottish Labour's biggest problem is that people like me within Labour (born in London & visited Scotland a grand total of 9-10 times on holiday) naturally now feel the need to defer politically in how the operation is ran up there to people in Scottish Labour- yet the only people left in Scottish Labour are the die-hard fanatics who didn't quit out of frustration/ideological anger/insanity.

I say this as someone who voted for Ian Murray!

Actually thinking about Labour's approach up there feels much like how it does thinking about the Liberal Democrats approach to politics; the events are out of your control, there's a much bigger & more powerful party on your territory, your brand is ruined over a generational event, you have absolutely no bench or talent and you lack any actual importance in the political debate.

[Blair]

I can't help but feel that Priti Patel & her team enjoyed that letter coming in... leadership pitch.

[Blair]

I know it's verging on galaxy brain territory but it is hilarous how absolutely useless they are compared to other European countires.

[Blair]

We still as a country haven't even approached the terrifying fact that the far right movement came close to taking off last year; it reached a peak when Yaxley-Lennon was jailed and seemed to go off the radar but we've had credible threats to MPs from far right groups, several of them have been charged under terrorist legislation & I still have the feeling that it it actually was organised it would present a much graver threat to our politics than people pulling down a statue.

[Blair]

In nerd news DFID (The international aid department for non-UK posters) is getting merged with the Foreign Office.  This has long been a pet project of Tory MPs who like to picture themselves being sat in tents or on the back of camels and are annoyed that the Foreign Office doesn't have any power sanymore.

It's a disaster in my view- DFID was made seperate in 1997 & was seen as one of Labour's best achievements in foreign affairs. It's always been remarkably well ran, even under the Tories it's been given to Ministers who actually care about it & have avoided turning it into a political sham (with one priti clear exception)

Of course it comes at an awful time to reshuffle departments & was planned for a while as DFID Ministers are also FCO ministers (if someone knows how this works please tell me!) so at least it ends the charade.

On a final point the people advocating this are right that the Foreign Office is useless; but the logical step was always (for me) to bring Trade back to the FCO rather than aid- I'd much rather that our trade is used as political tool rather than our aid budget.

And one of them literally murdered a Labour MP four years ago. They're a joke, but a dangerous one.

The fact that I forgot to mention that in itself a sign of how swept under the radar it is- is 3 years ago today tht it happened too.

[Blair]

Some on the "left" trying to pretend Starmer/Labour said nothing about it, not cool really.

They're clearly not Labour members as they would have received an email asking them to contact their MP about the issue on the weekend- and the email came from RLB!

The funny thing is that a lot of these people think they're playing the same role that the Labour right played after 2015, but they're actually replicating the even more inept & hilarous campaign that the ultra right played against Ed Miliband after 2010.

They're attacking their image of the Leader, rather than the actual leader in front of them.

[Blair]

Oh god I opened pandora's box; it seems to be the same old accounts just screaming that Keir doesn't understand political strategy and that he left it to a footballer.... when it's so obviously clear that Labour left it to Rashford because he get top billing on radio 4/the BBC & gave the issue huge coverage with an audience who would ignore any sort of politician.

Besides the campaign won; that's the whole point of it. It's baffling that 1 million kids get free school meals & your first thought is to go on twitter.com to dunk on Keir Starmer

[Blair]

I do think that the Labour Right & Tom Watson deserve credit for not launching a challenge against Corbyn in 2018 or 2019; which would have failed or led to Long-Bailey/Pidcock winning in a landslide.

It became clear for me at least that Keir was going to run for Leader since early 2019 & it was about waiting through gritted teeth & 18 months of sh**ttyness for that to happen

To a significant extent that is because 'The Labour Right' does not exist as a coherent faction or even group of factions, and hasn't since the early 1980s. And that the same is true for the moderate Left. So what you had was a lot of smaller groupings and tendencies, most of which did not get on, operating according to their own logic and agendas and basically failing to cohere. Of course, perhaps they could have done if there was better leadership, but the only figure around who could have taken that role at the time was Watson, a man who, despite considerable tactical acumen, has never shown any capacity for strategic thought.

To add to this I think that like all political factions within Labour it's all about gravity; the 2020 leadership race demonstrated this perfectly. Keir was the clear & overwhelming frontrunner to beat Long-Bailey, reform the internal party structures and clean up the party brand. These were the three aims of the Labour right & it became clear that if you wanted to fix Labour the best show in town was Keir.

Lots of unconnected parts of the organised right backed Keir very early on; USDAW, Labour First and those PLP members who had served in the last Government- Angela Eagle, Nick Brown, Yvette Cooper, Ben Bradshaw & Hillary Benn to name a few. Of course it's made more complex as for a long time there was no difference between the corbynspectics & the Labour right; the best exampe being Sadiq Khan who was firmly against Corbyn- yet he is firmly from the soft-left of the Party. (City Hall was dubbed Noahs Ark as Labour staffers escaped there after getting kicked out of HQ!)

And Al's point about it being unconnected is explained by the hilarous decision by some of the Progress Right to send Jess Phillips over the top, or I assume she ran over the top & they followled before realising that being Leader of the Opposition is hard.

And in addition you had what I might rudely call the 'legitimate concerns' rump of the right who backed Nandy because they assumed she shared their views on immigrants & buses.

Of course it all depends on what you actually consider the Labour Right; the most interesting trend for me at least is that within the PLP the future of the Labour Right has morped from being ex-bag carriers in the last Labour Government (Austin, Woodcock, Dugher & Ashworth being the four horsemen) into being people who are on the whole much more so to the left.

I think finally the one thing to come out of the last 4 years is that in the party (or at least the part I associate with) people are happy not to be shouting, screaming, plotting, stiching up or feuding with each other over rule changes- I really hope that the last four years will stay as a teaching moment for the mainstream elements in the Labour Party. (and that includes as far to the left as UNITE!)

[Blair]

The issue is that if Labour need SNP votes in the commons it is coming at the price of an indepedence referedum now; there's a world where a 2017 Corbyn Government survives a 18 months without an explicit commitment to one but that requires using Brexit as a distraction.

In a world where we haven't yet had indy-ref 2 & where we have a minority Labour Government you can guess what the price is; this is when it gets difficult for the party.

The party needs a clear public message on this & a clear private strategy to how it would treat any campaign

[Blair]

I didn't like the review; I read about 70% of it and gave up.

I'm going to sound extremely smug/obnoxious but it was very entry level- 25% of it was stuff I heard at university lectures about politics (historic decline in Labour communities etc etc) & the other 75% is stuff I've been hearing for years from people both professionally involved in politics & those with a passing interest.

I hope & very much trust that there is a clear qualitative piece of work on the 2019 election; I'm talking what seats were given extra funds, doors knocked, strong & weak social media+print messages etc etc

I'm not sure if I'm making sense but every election has the historic long term factors (harder to message & easier to argue over) & the short term mangement- this for me includes both the parliamentary term (17-19) & the campaign.

There needs to be a report into what wrong with Labour during the last Parliament & then what went wrong during the campaign; and this needs to be done internally as this is where the data is. It's fascinating as much like 2015 all the major people in the defeat have left the party and don't appear to want to publicly discuss what was clearly a poorly ran & internaly miserable campaign.

On top of that we need a comprehensive report into Labours brand; I don't think people realise that the Labour Party is an extremely distrusted & broken brand (there was actually a relatively large group of people who liked Corbyn a lot more than Labour) which requires a complete redo.

but to finish I was shocked (yes I actually was) to see Ian Lavery & Jon Trickett blaming Tony Blair again today for the election defeat & claiming it was because the last Labour Government didn't do anything that we lost seats that had given Blair a 20K majority, which I suppose renders the above pointless and just proves reviews are pointless when to quote Emily Thornberry you can just make up s**t

[Blair]

Yep I have always been sceptical of the idea that there was a huge mass of straight Labour-Tory defectors in these seats; I'm being lazy but to use Yvette Coopers seat as an example you had the Liberal Democrat vote increase by 5%, the UKIP/Brexit vote more than double in raw term and yet there was still a gap between the all of that, the Tory increase & the number of raw votes lost since 2017.. which is a long way of saying that Al is right about churn.

There certainly is an active tendency in political parties to ignore it; because it's hard to measure & goes against the natural instincts of political obsessives (you mean you weren't watching Meaningful vote No.11 on Parliament TV?)

I'm thinking aloud but there it's interesting how Boris Johnson managed to send out a bat signal to these two million voters while Theresa May appeared to have it in grasp in April 2017 but completly lost it; I do wonder how much the letterbox comments played into that.

[Blair]

Robert Jenrick, the Housing & Communities Minister, has released documents about his decision to overrule officals and award planning permission to a property developer who was a Tory party donor.

I would be shocked if he wasn't sacked in the next reshuffle & not too surprised if he doesn't quit by the end of the week.

This comes after Labour used an oppositon day debate in Parliament to raise the issue & were going to a humble address motion to get all the documents; as obesssive brexit followers will remember this was the parliamentary tool to require the Government to turn over documents that Keir rediscovered after it fell out of use since the 1800s.

This was an example of good opposition politics; it followled a UQ & lots and lots of work with the broadsheets on this. Steve Reed, the Shadow Secretary of State, has been going at this relentlessly & is clearly not on the christmas card.

The debate in Parliament was a joy to watch; it mainly consisted of Tory MPs ranting about A.) How corrupt Tower Hamlets is B.) How Labour hate to build houses C.) How great the Tory Housing record is D.) How this is all a waste of time.

If it's such a waste of time god knows why you'd speak in the debate?

[Blair]

https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1276155642944815104

Rebecca Long-Bailey sacked from the Shadow Cabinet for sharing an interview from Maxine Peak, which claimed that the murder of George Floyd was because the Israeli Secret Services had trained the US police.

A new front in the forever war is open.

[Blair]

I deleted my post because frankly this is the type of thing you either agree with or don't; but if you serve on the Frontbench you do as as a represenative of the Leader & the Party. This is an issue of competence & judgement- she lacked both.

But there is no evidence that RLB endorsed such theories - indeed, she has been attacked by some on the Labour left in recent years for being too "accommodating" towards Jewish organisations.

Many people will see it as basically unfair - she deserved censure perhaps, but not sacking.

I will still support Starmer personally, but on a rather more conditional basis than before.

FWIW I say this as a subtle nudge there was the very badly handled incident at the hustings where she didn't stop the person who was going on a rant about anti-semitism smears; my own judgement is that like a lot of people in Labour she's been sloppy at dealing with the issue.

[Blair]

My last point: the article criticised Keir Starmer, her leader.

You don't generally share articles that criticise your own leader & expect to remain part of the Leadership team. Yes it's petty, yes this stuff went on under Corbyn & yes it's not the reason why she was sacked but this is a competence issue in part.

[Blair]

Well we shall see what transpires. I still think this will get Starmer a lot of grief for little benefit.

The words on our membership card should be lots of grief for little benefit.

[Blair]

The key word is secret services.

There is no evidence that the restraint method used has any link to Israeli Secret Services training.

[Blair]

I foolishly said I'd do my last post about three posts ago....

We've now got several of the Socialist Campaign Group on resignation watch; including a few who serve as PPS. I'd be surprised to see more than one resign; as the anti-corbyn lot learnt the moment you walk the party tilts even greater towards the leader.

[Blair]

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/keir-starmer-rebecca-long-bailey_uk_5ef50f91c5b6acab283efcb2?iuw