UK General Discussion: 2017 and onwards, Mayhem

[Blair]

Jeremy Corbyn is not a communist ffs

He can call himself whatever he likes, it doesn't change the fact he surrounds himself with people who are. Murray officially is, Milne is in all but name, and until recently McDonnell was far more outspoken about his communist sympathies and miraculously finds himself at rallies in front of soviet flags. The list goes on.

That and there doesn't appear to be a communist dictator he doesn't like.  It is just a usual tactic of the extreme to brand oneself as more centrist than they actually are.  Hence the “He cares more about social issues” bollocks.

Well yes McDonell spoke at a May Day rally because he’s John McDonnell.

I just don’t understand why you ranting about a lack of public understanding of JCs view on Europe when you then went out to make a riddious ideological statement- Corbyn isn’t a communist, he isn’t even a Bennite but that’s all ideological semantics.

[Blair]

Lol, neither McVey, Leadsom or Mordant have anywhere near enough clout to actually be important- other than being another vote against the deal.

Very troubling to see some rather silly Labour MPs like Caroline Flint and Gareth Snell talking about backing the PM's deal- would not only be the end of their career, but frankly they should have the whip withdrawn if they voted against Labour on the most important parliamentary vote since 1979.

Around 15 MPs means less than 15 btw

[Blair]

1.) we’ve discussed many times already that the British fishing industry was already dying- it’s another job sector that has been turned into a culture wars baton when in fact automation killed it a lot more than the EU did.

2.) I don’t think people being ‘posh’ invalidates they’re political opinion.

3.) Liverpool- one the historic bastions of the industrial organised working class voted 58%.

It’s all about culture folks- people in Redcar weren’t voting against state subsidy laws were they?

[Blair]

They're voting against immigrants who don't live in Redcar.

Yep- I remember reading polling of similar areas in the 1970s which said they hated the race relations act, wanted to keep out the East African Asians, wanted to ban buggery and being back the gallows.

If you polled these communities now you’d find similar sentiments about banning burqas, cracking down benefit claimants and stopping immigration.

I’m talking about the whole population of places like redcar- only 55% of those who turned out voted labour

[Blair]

The argument about an EU army is stupid when you remember that NATO's command structure means that we'll always be ruled by an American General regardless of what happens. It's such a juvenile obsession from people who are stuck in a pre-WW1 view of how military command works

[Blair]

Thstchers Dad was a proper Tory- she hardly came from a pit village

[Blair]

Jacob Reese-Mog is not running to be PM, and he will never be PM,
England is a class divided society, working class people and lower middle class people will never vote for an aristocrat..

I mean I remember 2005 very well, the moment working class voters heard Cameron's posh accent they were turned off, he was seen as arrogant posh Eton Tory who didn't care about normal people,
I honestly believe had David Davis won the Tory leadership he might not have done well in London suburbs but he would've done much better in the midlands and the north back in 2010...

Jacob Rees-Mogg: I have six children but have never changed a nappy
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/21/jacob-rees-mogg-have-six-children-have-never-changed-nappy/

Jacob Rees Mogg isn't an aristocrat- beyond his Dad having a life peerage (something that John Prescott has) he's got virtually no link to the aristocracy of this country. He just acts like one because he knows how gullible the public are.

Besides, working class and lower middle class have a very well documented history of voting for aristocrats- Churchill, Douglas-Home, Eden all won a fair share of the 'working class' (male) vote- and the history of working class conservatism in cities like Birmingham is very well noted.

The point about Cameron is factually wrong- voters actually quite liked Cameron, and Labours lazy 'he's a posh tory' attacks are the reason why he is the most electorally successful Tory since Thatcher.

He won a rather vast swathe of 'working class' (whatever that is?) seats in 2010- Clacton, Crewe and Scarborough etc etc

[Blair]

It's a lot of bollocks to say the Scots have 'never felt at home' with the union.

Not only does it ignore the entire 19th century, where the Scottish did remarkably well from industrialsation, and empire but it also ignores that in the last two elections in Scotland the unionist parties have done much better than they were doing.

[Blair]

Audrey you’re ignoring the fact we only have a Tory govt because of the 13 Tory Gains in 2017- stop thinking of Scotland as one homogenous block of people.

[Blair]

Audrey you’re ignoring the fact we only have a Tory govt because of the 13 Tory Gains in 2017- stop thinking of Scotland as one homogenous block of people.

13 seats / 59 seats  = 22%

Tory share of the vote in Scotland:
2010: 16.9%
2015: 14.8%
2017: 28% (meaning 72% voted against the Tories and this was supposed to be their best showing since 1983)

Tory share of the vote in England:
2010: 39.5%
2015: 40.9%
2017: 45.4%

^^ says it all...

You’re clearly ignoring my argument which is that the A.) The Conservatives became more popular in Scotland in recent years B.) Scotland isn’t just one big voting bloc.

It’s so frustrating as someone who’s actually lived, and got family in Scotland to see it continually typecaseted as something it clearly isn’t.

[Blair]

If you think the split between ‘Arab and kurds’ only started in 2003 Audrey you need to do some more research into Iraqi history.

Besides Iraq in 2003 wasn’t stable; everyone forgets that Saddam was trying to convince the world that he had nuclear weapons. He’d bankrupted and starved his country, whilst also ethnicallly cleansing a good portion of it. Iraq was anything but stable (hence why his regime collasped) does that justify intervention? No. But it’s wrong to buy into the revisionist idea of a stable Iraq.

The irony of course is that Saddam would have either been deposed or thrown into a civil war in the Arab spring. Let’s give the people in these countries agency and blame rather than thinking it all revolves around us.

Besides it’s a repetitive debate; targeted air strikes and military operations with a clear aim can clearly work if they have broad support from the international community.

[Blair]

A throughly decent man- sadly caught out by his flies.

He was part of a great generation of actual statesman from all three parties.

There’s also a part of my more liberal side which wishes he was offered a cabinet seat in 1997- as much as the quirks of the Liberals annoy me, they certainly could have tempered some of the worst New Labour traits (Iraq, 90 day detention etc)

Ashdown iirc was one of the only Lib Dem’s to tell Clegg not to go into coalition in 2010.

[Blair]

Clearly a talented and respected man- but tbf you can never actually know how well someone would perform as PM until you see them in a senior cabinet role. (Indeed even this is questionable- if GB died in 2006, no doubt he’d be hailed as the best PM we never had)

[Blair]

Clearly a talented and respected man- but tbf you can never actually know how well someone would perform as PM until you see them in a senior cabinet role. (Indeed even this is questionable- if GB died in 2006, no doubt he’d be hailed as the best PM we never had)

Brown was arguably screwed by two factors outside his control - the global financial crisis and the exponential rise in the importance of consistent presentability in politics in the age of 24h news and emerging social media. He arrived in the PM chair right at the inflexion point of when the New Labour brand could no longer be controlled from within. 

There's certainly an argument that he would have benefited from being around in the 70s, and 80s- but I remember doing reading about political media in that era, where the common complaint was that it was 'too personality' orientated and 'too flashy'. They said that politicians like Michael Foot, who were rightly intellectual giants, had been caught flat footed. Indeed to take it to extreme lengths I remember reading how some liberal politician in the 30s couldn't do radio broadcasts because he kept speaking like he was at a hustings. It's always a complaint of politicians that they're living in the wrong media age- but it's fascinating in that it can often be reversed (compare the power of the British Press in the 1992 election, with that in 2017)

I'd disagree about the GFC- it certainly damaged Labour's brand, and prevented anything but a spirited defeat in 2010, but it allowed GB to do what he did best- global economics. I always suspect the reason why David Miliband (or any other cabinet member) didn't plunge the sword in during '08 was because they knew they didn't want to have to manage one of the biggest global crisis since the 1940s.

The problem I've always had with Brown is that he was a political genius, who could have actually reformed Labour's brand in 2007- but without an actual policy agenda he was useless.

[Blair]

The problem for May is that Norway sees the ERG go nuclear (and NCV her) and No-Deal sees Remainer Tories like Boles/Morgan/Grieve do the same. So of course she'll go with 'I can't believe its not a backstop' fudge from the EU which moves about 20 or 30 nameless MPs.

Just hope all this mess makes it clear to everyone in the European community what an awful idea it is the leave the EU, which is, despite its flaws, the best thing ever happend to the continent.

And that the Article 50 process is designed to act as a vice around the balls of any government wanting to leave

[Blair]

It's absolutely, utterly baffling that May has no intention to resign, and it's even more baffling that the people who voted no are not gonna force her to resign. It's like everyone is deliberately trying to make Brexit as much of an abominable mess as it could conceivably be.

The only thing the Tories hate more than the status quo is the thought of Prime Minister Corbyn.

Every Government thinks the leader of the opposition is the absolute worse incarnation of what that party can offer

[Blair]

Watch Tom Watson's speech at the end of the debate- a very underrated speaker, who's clearly not been used enough by Labour since 2015. Does the Parliamentary performance that Corbyn can never do.

https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1085610232170999808

[Blair]

And Cooper amendment failed due to Labour rebels- and they're certainly a motley bunch.

[Blair]

We can't really rule anything out, and that's part of the problem. No one has a clue what's going, including and especially the people making the decisions.

A serious question that has to be asked is how quickly can we 'recover' from a No Deal situation i.e. revert to pre-existing customs procedures?

Some estimates I've seen have said we'd have 12-18 weeks of serious delays at the border, both due to increased checks and the pile up that these checks would cause.

If there is a No Deal the Government would collapse. A Government with a majority would collapse if they had food and medical shortages, along with the huge hit that councils and local government would face.

We can't really rule anything out, and that's part of the problem. No one has a clue what's going, including and especially the people making the decisions.

A serious question that has to be asked is how quickly can we 'recover' from a No Deal situation i.e. revert to pre-existing customs procedures?

As quickly as you can hold a second referendum.

(Unless the No Deal is bad enough that a cross-party consensus emerges for rejoining CU/SM - i.e. Norway - but I'm not sure we should wish for that to happen.)

A high enough number of Tory MPs have said they'd rebel and bring down the government if they pursue no-deal, of course the problem is that we're trusting that people on the Government payroll would join them and also resign- the vote this week showed that some Labour MPs are happy to bail the govt out.

[Blair]

Labour and Tory MPs in talks over setting up new centrist party

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Why not simply join the Lib Dems outright?

They’re mainly social democrats on the economy, whilst supporting more authoritarian social policies- basically the opposite of the the Lib Dem’s.

But yes agree with other postings- this will be a rump of MPs who don’t have much in common beyond having different reasons for hating Corbyn and his project. If 100+  MPs quit then I’d be more open minded about creating a credible party of the centre left but this doesn’t look like anything close to that.

It’s easier for them just to retire in 2022- Chuka is the only one of the group who actually had a cabinet level future

[Blair]

Anyway, the irony of the present situation is this: if a genuine equivalent of the original SDP were to be formed - a more moderate and small 'l' liberal version of the Labour Party headed by three and a half popular former cabinet ministers formed at a moment of apparent national crisis - it would almost certainly sweep all before it in the current climate; the various structural factors that doomed the SDP are no longer relevant. Trade Unions no longer have any hold over the political imagination or voting habits of the historic Labour electorate, the remarkable grassroots political organisation still possessed by the Conservative Party in the 1980s is long gone, the postwar generation - with its deep sense of loyalty towards Labour and the Tories and its propensity to turn out at extremely high rates - is dead, and the LibDems do not have the cross-class credibility as a protest option that the old Liberals had. The critical part, however, is 'three and a half popular former cabinet ministers' - a couple of callow randoms who are not even household names in their own houses would (probably) not cut through, no matter how widely reviled May and Corbyn are these days.

To echo this people shouldn’t forget how volatile the electorate has been- The Yes campaign in Scotland went from something like 25% to 45% in two years, the SNP routed the whole of Scotland in 15, UKIP won a national election in 2014, Labour was taken over by a grassroots leadership campaign, and then managed to flip a campaign on its head (with absolutely insane results in seats that have not flipped for 50 years)

Combine that with the millions of pounds of funding and data in the pro-EU groups, and you’re in for an interesting campaign.

Of course this too applies to som hideous non Faragist pro-Brexit Party.

[Blair]

Labour and Tory MPs in talks over setting up new centrist party

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Why not simply join the Lib Dems outright?

They’re mainly social democrats on the economy, whilst supporting more authoritarian social policies- basically the opposite of the the Lib Dem’s.

But yes agree with other postings- this will be a rump of MPs who don’t have much in common beyond having different reasons for hating Corbyn and his project. If 100+  MPs quit then I’d be more open minded about creating a credible party of the centre left but this doesn’t look like anything close to that.

It’s easier for them just to retire in 2022- Chuka is the only one of the group who actually had a cabinet level future

I had the impression Umunna in particular was very much an economic centrist - I thought he'd have fit in well with the Lib Dems. The others perhaps less so, but as noted they are not prominent. This split was rumored last summer, too, though (with most of the same names), so seems not especially likely to be imminent.

I think strategically even if they were perfectly aligned with the Lib Dems on policy, it would make sense to run separately in an alliance as the SDP and Liberals did rather than as a single party in order to cast the widest net possible.

He was Ed Milibands business secretary and wasn’t even one of the right wingers in the shadow cabinet back then who were worried about the deficit.

For non U.K. and non labour members don’t underestimate how much Labour members are repulsed by the Lib Dem’s- this has existed long before 2010

[Blair]

So how much of this is due to anti-semitism in Labour

I'd be genuinely suprised if any of it was.

It seems to be a combination of brexit and people wanting attention.

Yeah, can't imagine why a female Jewish MP who has been mercilessly racially abused by Corbynites would want to leave the party.

Don't kid yourself. This is no principled stand. It's a publicity grab, pure and simple.

It's worth pointing just how sustained, and hideous the antisemitism that Burger (and others have faced).

I think 5 people have been convicted for making death threats against her, she's been forced to attend her own party conference with a bodyguard!. I've sat in meetings where female Jewish MPs have read out sheets of abuse they've been faced, most of it by Labour members.

If I was an MP, and saw myself subject to homophobic abuse from party members for months, and the party failed to act, it would be a principled stance to resign. The same if it was for a BAME member- almost everything possible that Luciana could have done would be dismissed as a publicity grab, and at the end of the day it really doesn't matter what motives some people ascribe to it. It's this sort of casual dismissal which is part of the problem.

Besides, lets review the action of the party. They refused to kick out Ken Livingstone, who compared Zionism to Nazism, they spend months trying to refuse to accept the institutional, and international definition of antisemitism, and they've kept a whole host of disgusting characters like Pete Willsman, and Jim Sheridan. Let's look at just one of the comments they made....

''For almost all my adult life I have had the utmost respect and empathy for the Jewish community and their historic suffering. No longer due to what they and their Blairite plotters are doing to my party and the long suffering people of Britain who need a radical Labour government.''

How can you say that and not be suspended?

Of course there's been a problem with this before Corbyn was leader, but the crucial questions seem to be A.) Why have Labour been so slow to react? B.) Why are antisemites attracted to Labour?

I've never met Adam, but I know lots of colleagues in the party respect him- as a Jewish Cllr in a strongly Jewish community, look, and read his article

https://medium.com/@adamlangleben/my-resignation-from-the-labour-party-fa330afacb86

[Blair]

I’ve always thought Berger was the whiniest, most annoying MP. I watch PMQ every Sunday on CSPAN and I’ve never heard her speak about anything other than “abusive tweets.” I’m not denying that a strongly anti-Semitic current exists in Labor, but if the UK allows Berger to individually define what is and what isn’t anti-semitism than pretty soon even the urinal cakes will be called out by her.

She's had five people sentenced for making threats against her, including some against her life. The police said she was facing up to 2,500 antisemitic, and gave her police protection to attend the party conference.

She's faced the most vile, antisemitic abuse, and it's also not true to say she only talks about it in the House of Commons considering she's seen as one of the most effective campaigning MPs around mental health issues.

[Blair]

They did poll in the mid 40s, and high 50s in 198(2?) when Thatcher was at the height of unpopularity, and Labour were well Labouring.

Of course the usual disclaimers apply (FPTP, lack of brand, lack of candidates, no policies etc etc) but this has finally made Westminster wake up to how bad both leaders have been performing, and its much harder to have business as usual if both parties are terrified they're going to get MPs poached.