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

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... if you want an analysis of the 2019 election ... this is an excellent take

Written by someone who no doubt knocked on hundreds of doors during the election!

Sadly, the author in question, David Graeber, just died

(For the record, not trying to take a shot at you, Blair. It's just kind of nuts how we talked about this two days before Graeber died!)

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Seems like Starmer is the real deal, he’s not screwing around. If he takes Labour back in a more Blairist direction, I might root for them again.

He does seem like a credible leader, I prefer him to Corbyn for sure. But hopefully his policies aren't like the 2000s, but he can take a lot of the good stuff from the 2017 manifesto and be a more credible messenger for it.

That's the best case scenario. Sadly, it's highly unlikely. We'll need a new leader in order to build on the progress made in 2017.

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Seems like Starmer is the real deal, he’s not screwing around. If he takes Labour back in a more Blairist direction, I might root for them again.

He does seem like a credible leader, I prefer him to Corbyn for sure. But hopefully his policies aren't like the 2000s, but he can take a lot of the good stuff from the 2017 manifesto and be a more credible messenger for it.

That's the best case scenario. Sadly, it's highly unlikely. We'll need a new leader in order to build on the progress made in 2017.

Not a loaded question, just genuinely curious: how do you think Labour progressed under Corbyn? Obviously you think that their policies have become better and more beneficial to society, but do you actually think they’ve become more electable, and does that matter to you?

Labour was clearly closer to government under Corbyn in 2017 than it was under Milliband in 2015 or (prospectively) Brown in 2010. Despite the propaganda at the time and afterwards, Corbyn's brand of disruptive leftist politics chimed with the electorate better than May's 'strong and steady' reactionary bullsh**t or the Labour right's apologetic neoliberal capitulation.

Corbyn's election was also a desperately needed dose of reality to the unreconstructed Blairites whose entitled attitude toward the party, and politics in general, was just as toxic as their despicable policy programme. Put another way, Corbyn reminded a lot of Labour members/MPs that after 13 years of Blairite selling out, they had to actually offer an alternative, not just promise to shave off the inequities of the Tory-New-Labour status quo.

There's no way to deny that Corbyn's gambit came up short. I'm inclined to think this was as much to do with deliberate and tacit sabotage by his ideological opponents in Labour as it was to do with its own shortcomings, but it's a moot point now. I think the party needed to jettison the assumptions of the Blair/Brown/Milliband era, and that it, and the country, are better off for it in the long run. I also think Corbyn's tenure will inoculate the party against shallow careerists, at least for a little while, though that might be a bit naive on my part.

I desperately wish there had been a Labour government this year, and in 2016, and in 2011. Politics without power is too slow for my taste. But a warmed over New Labour government would have been a chimera of progress at best (as it was in the first case), and ultimately only served the interests of the well-off and the well-connected.

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Note the fieldwork date but something no doubt that Starmers team will be pointing to...

https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1309930873068945408

No doubt in a desperate attempt to distract from this ...

https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1322213828600438785

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But equally the YouGov poll found that even Labour voters approved of the decison?

A function of exhaustion, groupthink, and capitulation more than conviction, I suspect. The centrist stitch up is complete.

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The problem with an English Parliament, with comparable powers to the Scottish Parliament, is that it would leave the United Kingdom Parliament with little to do particularly about the issues voters and politicians care most about. All the UK Parliament would be left with are things like foreign affairs and defence; together with the unpopularity of raising taxes, largely to give to the politicians in the national Parliaments to spend (who will always be able to blame the mean UK Parliament and government for all difficulties).

The result of devolution to England is for the English First Minister to do to the UK Prime Minister what Boris Yeltsin did to President Gorbachev. The withdrawal of England from the devolution arrangements would very easily lead to the immediate and total collapse of the United Kingdom.

This put me in mind of an op-ed from last year that basically argued the idea of the British nation is only about 75 years old and that it's likely to perish fairly soon anyway.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/opinion/brexit-scotland-northern-ireland.html

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Of course we realise this, and indeed know it from our own electoral experiences.

Total undiluted Trumpism, however, will not do well in this country or most other W European ones. I feel pretty confident in saying that.

At the risk of arguing semantics, what exactly do we mean by 'Trumpism' here? Depending on how you define the term, I could see a pretty convincing argument for how Berlusconi or Farage or LePen could fall into the Trumpist category and pretty clearly are capable of doing well. 

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Well mentioning Farage sort of proves my point. He is popular - VERY popular - with a section of the UK electorate, but his politics is never going to actually win a "proper" election. Hopefully.

*He* didn't need to win a 'proper' election. He won enough 'improper' (...?) elections that both major parties eventually shifted to embrace his goals.

And in any case, winning an election wasn't your original criterion. 'Doing well' was, and by that measure Trumpism in some form or another seems to be quite successful indeed across much of Europe.

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I mean, the UK is still bizarrely centralised for such a large and regionally diverse country, so I’m not sure even more (re-)centralisation is the way to go. Federalism doesn’t seem to work too badly for Germany or Switzerland. By the way, if you want to reduce the SNP’s influence in a legitimate, democratic manner, get rid of FPTP, which allows them to win 80% of Scottish Westminster seats on 45% of the vote.

It's never a bad moment to do that.

Of course last time you tried to do that it was rejected everywhere outside of Inner London, Central Edinburgh, Central Glasgow and Oxbridge... though I am not sure whether AV would change the seat distribution in Scotland that much unless there's a heck of a Unionist tactical vote?
As a slight aside, is proportional representation perceived as, ahem, un-British in the UK?

I think someone ran the number and concluded that AV would have delivered an even less proportional result in one of the recent elections, although I think it is marginally more democratic than FPTP because each constituency MP would have to get majority support. I don’t think most people have strong feelings either way on PR, but I think it would get rejected in a referendum because most people would stick with the devil they know. The AV proposal was defeated so heavily because it was turned into a referendum on the deeply unpopular Nick Clegg.

I am aware of that. Not unusual for these things to turn into a referendum on [insert unpopular politician here], like our 2016 Constitutional referendum which failed mostly because people wanted to stick a middle finger to Renzi.
I find the debacle that happened to the Lib Dems in that period quite tragicomic. It halved its support in the polls in, like, eight months?

It is a common phenomenon around the world that junior coalition partners are punished at the next election, but the Lib Dems’ case was particularly brutal.

I know that this is a very unpopular stance to take these days, but I am a bit of a Clegg apologist. While I think the coalition negotiations could have been handled better, in particular pushing harder for constitutional reform, in reality, and without hindsight, the results of the 2010 election left him with no real choice but to enter coalition with the Tories (and one can also argue that it is the duty of a political party to their voters to try to the best of their ability to implement their manifesto, and thus to enter government if they can). While the tuition fees thing was a complete fiasco, the Lib Dems did do a lot of important and under-appreciated work to curb the worst excesses of Tory austerity. In this respect, it is a tragic tale.

Of course the Lib Dems had a choice. They could have gone into a confidence and supply agreement or some other informal arrangement where they don't allow the parliament to dissolve (this is pre-FTPA days) but still prevent the Tories from enacting the worst of their ideas.*

I used to be sympathetic to the argument that the Lib Dems did the best they could with a weak hand, but the effectiveness of the DUP in hamstringing the Tories' Brexit 'plans' (lol) from 2017-2019 shows that an even smaller caucus could be even more impactful when played right. Clegg lacked the political nous and sheer ruthlessness Foster demonstrated. Allowing the AV referendum to get watered down, undercut by the Tory part of the coalition, and scheduled when it was is a case in point.

*As a side note, Clegg's, and the LD's more generally, conceit of getting into government to 'deliver on the manifesto' or curb the worst of Tory excesses looks in retrospect more and more a cover for wanting access to the trappings of office and patronage/sinecures.

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Its a particular sort of feminism that is susceptible to TERFism.

(basically the lifestyle based "what matters above all is getting women into prominent positions and actual structural inequality be damned" type - one well represented in the UK's political/media class)

I try to avoid following this particular debate in which Cherry has found herself embroiled, but this characterisation is simply not accurate given that Cherry is clearly well within the left-wing mainstream of her party on every issue except the transgender one (and made her career as a lawyer working on sex crimes, hardly the path that a lawyer unconcerned with social issues would try to carve out, and one that has probably helped shape her position on this particular issue, for good or ill).

Sadly, being well ensconced in left wing circles and ideology is no inoculation against TERFy beliefs, at least not in the UK. I wouldn't be surprised if you're correct in your supposition about her work as a lawyer working sexual assault cases being the genesis of her anti-trans views; it's a depressingly common backstory.

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Its a particular sort of feminism that is susceptible to TERFism.

(basically the lifestyle based "what matters above all is getting women into prominent positions and actual structural inequality be damned" type - one well represented in the UK's political/media class)

I try to avoid following this particular debate in which Cherry has found herself embroiled, but this characterisation is simply not accurate given that Cherry is clearly well within the left-wing mainstream of her party on every issue except the transgender one (and made her career as a lawyer working on sex crimes, hardly the path that a lawyer unconcerned with social issues would try to carve out, and one that has probably helped shape her position on this particular issue, for good or ill).

Sadly, being well ensconced in left wing circles and ideology is no inoculation against TERFy beliefs, at least not in the UK. I wouldn't be surprised if you're correct in your supposition about her work as a lawyer working sexual assault cases being the genesis of her anti-trans views; it's a depressingly common backstory.

My perspective as an outsider is that the the explicitly confrontational historical approach of the UK women's rights movement is what has made the island particularly TERF'y when compared against similar countries. The confrontational approach is arguably why those with a history of Feminist activism like Cherry might be the most likely to also view it as a binary struggle between men and women.

US feminism had a huge struggle in the 90s over "intersectional" issues that UK feminism (being of a much more homogenous country) largely missed. "White feminism" is a swear word in the US that it's difficult to imagine being here.

The lack of a religious right in this country also paradoxically makes it much easier to be transphobic from the left, due to a relative absence of conservative gender politics in wider society. UK Feminists aren't as worried that they might be on the side of Ted Cruz.

100% true. I'd add that the upswing in imperialist nostalgia and parochial nationalism of the past 15-20 years (both the Tory and New Labour strains) has equipped transphobes with an additional rhetorical weapon to resist the challenges proffered by the trans-inclusive/postcolonial/liberationist feminist movement.

On flag-gate it has really annoyed a lot of people but it's nothing new in the sense that Labour have been using this branding for a few months & this feels like the exact same argument we had back in 2014 (Rochester by-election)

As a Labour supporter I'm more broadly worried about what our immigration position will end up being to appeal to these voters, rather than the actual branding.

Altough I am starting to feel like the Labour Party & the rows it enjoys having are going to mean we're not actually going to be in Government until 2034 at this rate.

That not how it works though, loads of people will be sick of the Tories even by 2024. No that isn't on its own enough to guarantee a Labour win - but I do also think many of the intra-Labour spats are passing most actual voters by (and post pandemic things may get less "online" at any rate)

Loads of people were sick of the Tories in 2017 and 2019 - and Labour in 2005 for that matter - but that didn't prevent a win for the hated incumbent. You're right that the internecine battles that play out on Twitter are largely ignored by the public, but that's not why they matter. Labour's still not really found a workable coalition for its own party, never mind for a governing majority, and the scorched earth internal battles are an indication that a solution to this problem isn't anywhere close at hand - and all but impossible under the current leadership.

2034 may be optimistic.

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Yeah, yeah, but at the end of the day "oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them".

That's not an argument for complacency, but frankly any assertion that the Tories have not just a 5th election win sewn up but a 6th and even 7th is just too silly for words. Its not as if polling hasn't had any major changes in the last *2* years or anything.......

If anything, that bolsters my argument. What government did more to set itself up for losing an election than the Tories in 2017 and 2019? They still won, largely because Labour's old(er) leadership was unwilling to offer even tacit endorsement to its successor. Divided oppositions always lose elections. Starmer's not shown any ability to heal Labour's divisions. Far from it!

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Brexit meaning "normal" political rules didn't apply was at least as significant tbh.

And the utterly uncritical, at times deranged, support of almost the entire media in 2019 especially.

No argument on that last point. Groupthink is one helluva drug, but Tory/Oxbridge/City/media groupthink is a whole other level.

Sadly, I'm not sure Brexit's alteration of the 'normal' political rules was a temporary feature. If anything, the fact that leaving the EU ended up being the prevailing position has instantiated its assumptions and political biases even further.

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Brexit meaning "normal" political rules didn't apply was at least as significant tbh.

And the utterly uncritical, at times deranged, support of almost the entire media in 2019 especially.

No argument on that last point. Groupthink is one helluva drug, but Tory/Oxbridge/City/media groupthink is a whole other level.

Sadly, I'm not sure Brexit's alteration of the 'normal' political rules was a temporary feature. If anything, the fact that leaving the EU ended up being the prevailing position has instantiated its assumptions and political biases even further.

I think this is a good point. Even though Brexit’s done and dusted (for the moment) Labour are still in a difficult spot. Talking about rejoining the EU is out of the question for the next few years, but Labour have an electorate that is fundamentally Remain-voting (in 2019, Labour Remainers outnumbered Labour Leavers 3 to 1), and has only got more so. Even in many of the Brexit-voting Northern working class seats, the majority of Labour voters clearly voted Remain. Labour need to tread a fine line between not dredging up an issue which most of the electorate wants to move on from, but also not being too positive about Brexit.

What's even more maddening (for Labour/Starmer, at least) is that the worse Brexit goes, the harder it'll become for Labour to articulate a coherent position on it.

A declining economy, constant diplomatic antagonism, and the shortsighted governance by the Tories required to cover both of them up will make it irresistible to denounce Brexit as the inciting cause - yet doing so will, as you rightly say, come off as dredging up the past so they can't say they'd solve it all by rejoining the EU.

I guess they'll be stuck saying they'd manage it better, or something, but that will get a frosty reception from the Labour pro-EU rank and file who will be ever more convinced that they were right all along.

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FWIW I thought the actual backlash against Labour supporting the Brexit Deal wasn't as bad as I expected & it's not been something that has really caused voting changes beyond the type of people who buy the New European.

I know it's a relatively stupid lense but I've seen the evolution of brexit views in my own non-political social circle- the vast majority supported remain in 2016, were upset & dismayed about, grew more opposed over 17-19 and then a fair few non-political ones went to the PV march & even voted Lib Dem in the EU elections but none have cited Labours support for brexit or lack of enthusiasm for remain as a key issue.

It also helps that the Lib Dems aren't playing that card- on the note it does seem funny that they're now doing so badly that no-one seems to actually be talking about them. I honestly don't think I've seen any serious analysis of them other than when Ed Davey won & made some mildly lukewarm comments about rejoin which annoyed the FBPE cranks.

I think that's more a function of the politics of the moment being dominated by COVID. There's barely time to keep up with the outrage about Tory incompetence/malevolence on that file, never mind the gargantuan failings of their conduct of EU relations.

That said, even accounting for COVID, the pro-EU political movement is very much in eclipse right now. Not surprising, really, considering how devastating a loss 2019 was. That won't stay the same, though. There's a large and deep well of pro-EU (or, at any rate, not hostile) sentiment in the UK and it's only become more ingrained since 2016. That energy has to go somewhere. Eventually, that sentiment will recombine into something potent, and whether that's an ardent Rejoin movement or a reimagined 'soft' Brexit EEC/EFTA sort of proposal, Labour will have to do something about it.

Accepting the basic architecture of the Tory Brexit and subsequent souring of EU relations, offering only to tinker around the edges New Labour style, will be unacceptable for some (not just the FBPE types). More problematically, it would be demoralizing to many, many more - everyone from the hard left to Red Tories, pretty much - and lead to the sort of anemic turnout or decamping to third parties that hobbled Labour for much of the past 15 years.

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That's the point though, the left (in its broadest sense, thus including the LibDems) in this country is ultimately going to coalesce around some sort of EEA/EFTA type arrangement with the EU. But only once the next GE is out of the way, in all probability.

And we *won't* be actually rejoining, not until I am in my 80s or thereabouts anyway.

Those could happen. It could also be that the left remains hopelessly divided on the issue and never coalesces around meaningful reform in the next 10-20 years. I'm more optimistic about a rejoiner movement taking off in 10ish years, but that's predicated on a fair dramatic set of policy failures on the part of the ruling party/caste (Scottish independence, Irish unification, a Suez-style diplomatic catastrophe).

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That actually seems like... a pretty damn huge scandal?

I don't think the old lady is sleeping well tonight.

On its own it looks bad- not for the financial implication but more so for the discreet way it was done.

The crown didn't actually pay capital gains tax until 1992, despite the fact that the Queen had a private investment portfolio- which I assume is in the name of Elizabeth Windsor, rather than the various weird trusts that hold most the property owned by the crown.

As someone who is an apathetic republican I just assume this stuff has always happened; the palace did pretty much cover up the fact that the Queens Art Collector was a Soviet Spy!

See also: Andrew, Prince; and Epstein, Jeffrey.

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That's the point though, the left (in its broadest sense, thus including the LibDems) in this country is ultimately going to coalesce around some sort of EEA/EFTA type arrangement with the EU. But only once the next GE is out of the way, in all probability.

And we *won't* be actually rejoining, not until I am in my 80s or thereabouts anyway.

Those could happen. It could also be that the left remains hopelessly divided on the issue and never coalesces around meaningful reform in the next 10-20 years. I'm more optimistic about a rejoiner movement taking off in 10ish years, but that's predicated on a fair dramatic set of policy failures on the part of the ruling party/caste (Scottish independence, Irish unification, a Suez-style diplomatic catastrophe).

The problem with Rejoining is that it's quite likely that the Tories/the mainstream right of British politics basically have a veto on it even if Labour's in power. The reason for this is that it's unlikely the EU and its member states (the French in particular) will allow a Bre-entry if there's any question about the country's total commitment to the project. If one of the two biggest political parties and roughly half the country (give or take) is against the idea, then letting the UK back in would be a recipe for instability and uncertainty that the EU simply doesn't need.

Seen as I can't see the Tories doing a volte-face on the European question over the next few decades or the public becoming overwhelmingly pro-EU and embracing a European identity, I can't see Rejoin happening even 15/20 years down the line. More likely what happens is the deal is renegotiated gradually meaning that frictionless trade, free movement (or free movement in all but name) etc. are restored but full membership is not.

I'd be inclined to agree with that analysis if it weren't for the fact that the same conditions existed from the 70s-90s but with the parties' roles reversed. Prior to 1973, Labour was the party more hostile to EEC membership (both parties had pro and anti wings), but that didn't stop the Tories from petitioning for membership nor the EEC from granting it.* Flash forward 25 years and Labour had performed pretty much a volte face on the issue and became the more pro-EU of the major parties.

I agree a Rejoiner movement won't be viable as long as there's a roughly 50/50 split in opinion on the matter and until then a series of small adjustments will be made to put humpty dumpty back together again in all but name. Sadly, with the lot in charge of Labour right now, even that faint hope is unrealistic.

*Worth keeping in mind, as well, that the EEC/EU have seen the UK as a strategic partner no matter how bolshie or bigotedly anti-European the government of the day might be. Total commitment was never a condition for joining. Opposition to UK entry into the EEC prior to 1973 had more to do with DeGaulle's desire not to dilute French power or increase American influence in Europe by the back door.

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It's quite good, isn't it? Certainly better than Davies' last show (Banana/Cucumber/Tofu), and I'd say better than QaF was back in the day, though I was much more partial to the American version of that anyway.

I actually thought It's a Sin really pulled its punches on the political commentary. The complacency, if not outright malevolence, of a lot of Tory and some Labour politicians at the time was much uglier   than the show depicted. Also, the AIDS activism in the series was a little glossy and pollyannaish for my taste, a la the 2014 movie Pride.

Not sure it was mentioned before, but there was a minor media scuffle about it when it aired. One of the semi-fascist papers referred to the sex scenes as 'explicit'* while referring to equally sexy depictions of straight intercourse in another show as 'steamy'. Homophobic double standards at their best.

*In fairness, the scenes were pretty graphic in that Russel T Davies/QaF/rimming sort of way.

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Rumours abounding in the last 24 hours that the life of the Queen Consort is "drawing peacefully to a close", to use the 1930s vernacular.

So they're gonna euthanize him to fit the news cycle?

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While the result is unlikely to last, why are greens polling so high?

They’ve been bouncing around for a while at about 3-7% so I think that a lot of it can be explained by margin of error noise and differences in methodology between the various polling companies. Despite that, they are getting quite a lot of sixes and sevens at the moment, so I’d hazard a guess that they’re getting some protest votes from people on the left who would normally (and probably will) vote Labour but are dissatisfied with the current direction under Starmer (from a brief scan of the polls the ones with the highest Green shares tend to be ones with lower Labour figures). This can work the other way; anecdotally I’m aware of some Labour voters who couldn’t stomach the state of the party under Corbyn voting Green as a protest, even though the Greens were very much simpatico with the policies that Labour ran with in the 2019 general election.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if they were picking up some of the ‘plague-on-all-your-houses’ protest votes that in the past have gone to UKIP and the Lib Dems.

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.

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No, but he can articulate a big message that local campaigns can align themselves with (rhetorically, temperamentally) and improvise around. Sadly, Starmer and the current Labour leadership are unwilling/incapable of doing so. 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.

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Oof. First time I've ever heard of this. What a nightmare.

*hugs*

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-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.

That could be an epigraph for all UK politics

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An utterly ludicrous and insulting to the intelligence, indeed all but actually gaslighting, "review" of police behaviour during the recent women's safety vigil in London has been published. Complete with genuinely Orwellian demands that people "apologise" for impugning their integrity.

Who is this actually meant to convince?

Kier Starmer of how he was right all along?