UK General Discussion: Rishecession

[afleitch]

Britain today is what happens when one section of society, fêted and coddled in retirement, doomscrolling through each day and central to election success for over a decade and is still, relatively loyal to the government is it's sole focus.

Manufactured panics and concerns take months to go from
fringe to mainstream amongst people who have time to endlessly consume them.

But its an electoral dead end. Not just in itself, but as I asked just the other day - what happens when these people start dying off in large numbers, which is not that far off now?

Basically the Tory message to younger people is "YOU ARE WOKE SCUM AND WE HATE YOU".

Yup.

Generational cleavage was always going to do this. It's by design, not by accident (if we look at generational recovery from the 2008 crash) and has won the Tories all the big prizes, including Brexit (and the indy ref too) for a decade and a half.

They know it's an electoral dead end. I posted a while ago there's about a 2.5 to 3 point swing since 2019 just based on people joining the register and others 'leaving'.

That dead end has been reached.

The rush towards authoritarianism is designed to delegitimise younger voters and their concerns. Not just for the rest of this government, but any Labour redress in the next parliament.

[afleitch]

https://twitter.com/conor_matchett/status/1711371485326012609

[afleitch]

If it’s an attempt to save her career, you’d have to imagine she’ll be looking for a new seat, though are there any plausible Tory prospects in Scotland which don’t have candidates in place?

Can’t see them parachuting her over to Aberdeenshire - there are only 3-4 seats under the nee boundaries that are winnable, and those all seem to have candidate (even Douglas Ross has a successor picked). Would have to be one of the Ayrshire seats. But those are going to be tough enough as it is. 2026 is shaping up to be a rough election for the Scottish Tories too - there’s not going to be spare list seats at Holyrood to go around.

I think the defection is a nice excuse for her not to follow through on her by-election threat (which she’s now officially walked back), before she goes back to the NHS, which she’s talked about for a while.

The defection is absolutely hilarious and despite 'oh this helps with anti SNP attack lines' etc, she's spiked herself more than the SNP by joining the Tories. Which makes me suspect Labour didn't want her...

[afleitch]

Is he’s on some sort of defection charm-offensive, seemingly aimed at gender-critical MPs on the opposition benches?

I sort of hope so.

SNP heidbangers leaving of their own accord is, in the longer term, better for the party. Not many left now.

FWIW, East Kilbride's last Labour MP endorsed his Tory MP at the last GE.

[afleitch]

Yousaf said;


He said this

'Some people have been surprised or taken aback by my mention on my social media that at 99 per cent of the meetings that I go to, I am the only non-white person in the room.

Why are we so surprised when the most senior positions in Scotland are filled almost exclusively by people who are white? Take my portfolio, for example. The Lord President is white, the Lord Justice Clerk is white, every High Court judge is white, the Lord Advocate is white, the Solicitor General is white, the chief constable is white, every deputy chief constable is white, every assistant chief constable is white, the head of the Law Society is white, the head of the Faculty of Advocates is white and every prison governor is white.

That is not the case only in justice. The chief medical officer is white, the chief nursing officer is white, the chief veterinary officer is white, the chief social work adviser is white and almost every trade union in the country is headed by white people. In the Scottish Government, every director general is white. Every chair of every public body is white. That is not good enough.'

What he did is make a statement of fact based on his personal experience in government. Everything he said in his speech at the time he said it, was factually true.

[afleitch]

Sunak 'reads' the same age as Starmer. So no idea why the focus on his actual age which is at William Hague-esque levels of being removed from his peers.

[afleitch]

Her approach seems to be a combination of American talking points and a French attitude to the appropriate use of state power.

Yeah, she seems to think that as Home Secretary she can just direct the police to do whatever she wants them to, and that's just not how it works here.

What she's doing is rewriting convention in real time, with the help of the press, that this is exactly what the government has 'always done'. The same is true of the 'nothing else can happen on Armistice Day/Remembrance Sunday'.

It's amazing how quickly this has become embedded as a reality when it has never been. It is genuinely Trumpesque.

[afleitch]

Interesting comparison. Just to demonstrate the severity of the governments woes. And this is based on final possible election day.

https://twitter.com/OwenWntr/status/1721794165715931210

[afleitch]

Got to admit that Braverman accidentally comparing pro-Palestinian demonstrators and Islamists to the Orange Order is incredibly funny.

I imagine this has angered militants on both sides in Ulster, but for different reasons. Which would classify as a better thing than the vast majority of what she does.

Not just militants - it’s annoyed *almost everyone*.

Catholics see it as a denouncement of the civil rights marches they undertook on days like Bloody Sunday, and Protestants see it as dismissive of their self-identification as British.

I’ve heard quite a few variations on “she’s done the impossible, and united Northern Ireland - against herself”.

One of the more articulate summations of this was laid out by Sky’s Ireland correspondent yesterday.

It's symptomatic of British politicians not understanding Northern Ireland full stop. She 'clarified' she meant dissident Republicans, but they don't have much of a track record on marches.

[afleitch]

Sunak already trying to 'both sides' today. But the fantasy of the 'perceived threat' that sustains the right wing these days took to the streets today. It wasn't quite to the 'January 6th' levels of delusion, but there were similarities.

This should end Suella's political career if we weren't in this current hellscape. I do think she really believed everything she said and is probably quite shocked it didn't come to pass. Real Truss levels of delusion.

[afleitch]

I feel sorry for Cameron. He's going to prepare a big speech one day and an aide will have to whisper in his ear he's not included the obligatory references to the 'wokerati.'

[afleitch]

It's been suggested that Cameron hasn't really been enjoying his downtime. Foreign Secretary remains the one role, similar to US Secretary of State, that carries gravitas on a similar footing to the 'big job' and with less of the stress. It still remains an important position even stripped of the international prestige it once had. Cameron was a much more present PM on the foreign stage which since has been dominated by Brexit and Covid.

[afleitch]

Fysh amendment is actually an old one apparently, though doubtless something new is in the works.

The death throes of this government have the potential to be quite dangerous.

[afleitch]

The Tories are reduced to a loon core, who are probably enraged that the promised street battles didn't transpire. So they probably quite delicate this week and that's been reflected in the polls.

[afleitch]

We are at the point where there isn't a 'good' time to hold a GE.

Anything past next October is probably a no, psychologically, given the various potential crises over winter and the fact 'things are f-cking expensive' isn't a helpful background to campaign in. The Presidential race will also impact public perception and will swamp the online discourse which the Tories need to whip up their base. The result/candidates might also effect a Tory leadership contest.

There's big May local and lower devolved, elections which are going to shape the summer. I don't think they'd do a GE on the same day.

My bet is on an April election, or a June election. The first might effectively 'spoil' the locals; keep them low turnout, or ready to explain away as an artifact of the GE. The second would be in response to them, perhaps in the slight hope the results might be underwhelming for Labour.

[afleitch]

I know it's the EU anthem, but even in a British context I have to imagine that attempting to make a culture war shibboleth out of "Ode to Joy," one of the most immediately recognizable and universally loved or at least liked pieces of music ever composed, with an extremely widely-known and compelling personal story behind it in the life of its similarly ubiquitous composer, comes across as at least a little bit tacky?

Ode to Joy was the tune to "Rise, O Voices of Rhodesia", the national anthem of Ian Smith's Rhodesia, so it might appeal to some British right wingers

Zizek comments on this, and it's use by the Third Reich etc.

If anything it demonstrates the universality of the piece that it can be used so egregiously.

[afleitch]

Good start

https://twitter.com/BBCJLandale/status/1728105949146288378

[afleitch]

Time marches on

https://twitter.com/Dylan_Difford/status/1730567500574675198

[afleitch]

Scotland is also uncertain: all of their Scottish seats are rural constituencies where their main opponent is the SNP, who will also not being doing as well as at the last election. It is somehow at once plausible that Scotland might prove a relative bright spot for the Conservatives and also that they might get wiped out.

And unless things dramatically change, we really won’t know until the results are announced.

It depends on voter behaviour. If the Con to Lab swing in Scotland is a genuine 'I'm done' swing, as it is in rUK then we can expect limited 'keep the SNP' out tactical voting. If the SNP to Labour swing is minimal in Tory seats (because the alternative is a Tory hold and the 'swingers' are post 2015 SNP loyalists) then it could see default SNP pick ups.

[afleitch]

Budget on 6 March, which I think gives more weight to an April or May GE.

[afleitch]

It's funnier than that because King Brian takes a different line on these things and so is being very open - he has a grossly enlarged prostate and is having corrective surgery to fix it - whereas it's the usual tight-lipped euphemistic language about the 'planned abdominal surgery' for the Princess of Wales.

I laughed out loud at this post. You'll know what part 😅

[afleitch]

https://twitter.com/LauraEWebsterr/status/1752638206875460035

Also an account that flirted with COVID denialism...

Clearly whoever oversees it didn't switch accounts 😶

[afleitch]

Not ideal optics on the inquiry tweet, but I find it very hard to believe that there's anything beyond a slip of the finger, when skimming through twitter mentions of the enquiry today - which are naturally going to include appearances from the frothiest posters on both sides of the constitutional question. Do hope no one's seriously implying that a cabal of unionist interns is driving the national COVID inquiry - that's genuinely bonkers.

Anyway, I'd much rather focus on Sturgeon's refusal to accept any wrongdoing in her mass deletion of government communications, and refusal to minute "Gold Command" meetings.

Not to mention the emerging narrative, pursued by the KC, that Sturgeon's government were looking to politicise the pandemic as fuel for future elections and referenda from as early as May 2020 - which would be genuinely ghoulish.

We certainly know that independence planning intruded into decision making, as show in some of the evidence presented today - the only question now is to what extent.

The fact they were weighing hypothetical EU accession (which would be a decade away at minimum) when drawing up contemperaneous travel policy is as ludicrous as it is maddening.

The UK government, during Gove's testimony earlier this week was also pressed on 'playing politics' namely a Cabinet Office briefing paper written by Mr Gove entitled "State of the Union" that reported that the risk to the future of the union was described in the paper as the "greatest challenge" facing the UK government other than the pandemic. It's not the only issue that's been raised about the four nations response. Equally 'ghoulish'. Surely?

[afleitch]

Devolved nations took differing approaches and different restrictions were in effect within nations (tiers) etc. In terms of travel, economic and financial aids those levers were limited to non-existent as Sturgeon, Drakeford etc put to the enquiry. You can't co-ordinate a four nations approach when the PM refused to lead the co-ordination or even meet the FMs or alternatively the PM not using civil emergency powers to simply impose decision making authority across the UK, which he also did not do.

If anything, Sturgeon clung on too long to the spirit of a 'four nations' approach, after the first wave, when she should have just followed lock step behind rUK. Regardless of whether that advice was data driven or not.

If the net measure is lives saved, then by excess death accounts, by diverging Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by either accident or design, fared better.

It's quite clear, even more so with Alister Jack's responses today, that 'Scotland doing things differently' as being a 'fault' or 'errata' greater than Westminster leading, or refusing to is the main narrative of this week.

[afleitch]

The King has been diagnosed with cancer. Although not prostate cancer, it was discovered during his recent operation. It is rather more serious this time, but I note that, once again, he is being very open about a subject about which the Palace has tended to be rather closed and that, whatever one's constitutional position, this is to be commended.

For all his faults and his mother's strengths, I do think the country would have benefited from an earlier accession given his very 'landed' personability.