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

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Luckily for you I own the complete run from 1832-1974 (went through a period of checking Amazon semi-regularly over a period of years and when someone was trying to sell at a reasonable price I bought): it says he contested Southwark Central for Labour in 1918, unsuccessfully contested Southwark North in 1922, winning it in 1923, holding it in 1924 before losing it in a March 1927 election after resigning from the Labour Party (over them sending troops to China apparently) and seeking re-election under a Constitutionalist label with support from local Conservatives (finished third behind the Liberals and Labour, which probably isn't that surprising for a candidate that left his party over a foreign policy issue before seeking re-election with the support of a party that was never strong in the constituency), contested Salford North for the Conservatives in 1929 (although Wikipedia states his party label as being "Unionist" which makes a lot more sense considering the area and the person; Craig doesn't differentiate between the two post-1910 since there's no practical difference), Wycombe for Labour in 1931 (probably one of a small handful of people that supported the Conservatives in 1929 but Labour in 1931), Breconshire and Radnorshire in 1935 and then he was elected MP for Islington North in an October 1937 by-election, then retaining it at the General before before going to the House of Lords before Parliament was dissolved in 1950.  I had a brief look at Craig 1885-1918 to see if there was anything pre-war but he is not in the index. So I guess he was only successful when he stood in London!

What an absolute Legend.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I mean push-polling will find whatever the person designing the survey wants to find (up to a point) which is why it has such a bad name! There's also an obvious problem with doing marginals polling and asking the people who say they are not voting for Party X why...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The original idea was that there were several clusters of constituencies with a demographic profile that matched pretty closely the national average in most respects but which, despite that, were stubbornly voting Labour. When large numbers of these seats were lost (sometimes rather badly) in the '19 election as Labour's vote collapsed outside constituencies with significant pro-European voting pressures, suddenly the term was used in a much wider sense and often found itself being combined with stupid and decades* out-of-date stereotypes about the North of England.

My observation would be that there shouldn't be anything odd about constituencies with 'normal' demographic profiles electing Labour MPs!

_{*More like half a century in some cases.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think mostly it's still an asset, it just means occasional boobs like this. What is probably required is someone on the team who is terminally online and can keep an eye on things.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It won't be a story that many are aware of now: I've not heard mention of it on the TV or radio news broadcasts.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's really no reason why electoral reform would have to be passed via a referendum: the introduction of STV to Scottish local elections was not. There was only a referendum on AV because Clegg was a very bad negotiator.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Except that he never had the ability or capacity to produce what he claimed he would be able to and this much was obvious at the time.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It seems that multiple sources have confirmed the 'bodies could pile high' quote, which doesn't come as a major surprise - it is an excellent example of his speaking style, especially the tendency for unnecessary little flourishes.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Foster is an Anglican from the wrong side of the Bann and used to be in the UUP. In some respects it is quite a surprise that she lasted so long, particularly given her grave strategic errors and general incompetence.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

I just do not understand the psychological need some people evidently have to debase themselves in that way over politicians, of all people.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We will never reach Peak Rentoul, the mountain will ever grow.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I keep seeing people say ignore the polls because 'everyone' is on a postal vote... which seems to ignore the fact that I haven't seen any numbers & I only received mine towards the end of last week!

It comes across as a cope basically - particularly as people who vote by post are generally more partisan, or at least have already made their minds up. And also because the minority who vote by post and are not sure who they're going to vote for or if they will at all will (obviously!) be the ones who fill out their ballots and post them off the latest...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, Payne is a hack and an increasingly tiresome one so there you go!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Of course, you also have to put a lot of trust in polling done by YouGov and Mori on voter demographics, which I’m increasingly sceptical of.

The hideous reality is that so much of British politics is driven by bad and questionable data...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yes, but the electoral demand for such a Tory party is limited.

Perhaps but... remember how the last time Labour were in government and took the general line that if the price to be paid for maintaining a broad-and-loose electoral coalition (as it is no longer possible to have a broad-and-tight one) was the alienation of the social circles that most of its membership lived in?* And that this, well, this turned out to have some pretty serious consequences for the party down the line? What sort of people comprise the membership of the Conservative Party and where do they live? If there's grumbling in the Torygraph then that's significant. Further wins over a demoralised Labour Party won't entirely abate that, much as the inability of the Tories back then to seriously get one over Labour didn't either. This is the sort of thing that's worth careful monitoring even if it appears to go nowhere at first.

_{*And the whole Iraq business aside (which, anyway, did not create the situation but inflamed it) this was, once again, a matter of not being pandered to even if, yes, objectively the government was pursuing policies that were beneficial to the sort of people in question. I don't mean this in a thoroughly dismissive way in either case: in a democracy we all wish to be pandered to. Why not? Aren't we supposed to be in charge?}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yep he's a horndog

That's been obvious for a while - plenty of footage demonstrating wandering eyes of the sort usually associated with teenage boys or Italians.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Horrible, but posted here just so there's absolutely no uncertainty or confusion as to certain things from young American lefties who often believe what they're told uncritically...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

At the risk of regretting this question, what kind of people read the Daily Express?

Pensioners who bought the paper in the old days when it was an ordinary mid-market Conservative tabloid and never got out of the habit.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think as long as they're turning a profit (and I imagine they are)...

Given the economics of television I would be amazed if they are. Television news is very expensive, and television news channels are basically money pits.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well it was very good at first. Authorities then decided to over-react to that blood-clotting nonsense and restricted the use of the Oxon/AZ vaccine to people over a certain age,* which is starting to have certain predictable consequences: the pool of vaccines available to the people who are currently being vaccinated (i.e. non-medically vulnerable young adults) is more limited than it would have been and there have been supply issues, I gather.

Of course while some things are run at a UK level, there are a few differences between the constituent nations and e.g. Wales in particular has run a long way ahead of the rest.

_{*We were told that if there was widespread community transmission again then this would be changed, but it has not been. I don't understand either.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well yes, but the point is the opposition didn't show any interest in tackling this when they did take office (nor did they bring it up much at other times) Its about more than any one political party.

The more complex issues that local authorities have to deal with always are. In practice the Party X run council or whatever is always a bit of a joke and has only become more so over time: most councils end up with broadly similar policies on pretty much every important matter no matter who the political 'leadership' is comprised of.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How long before he gets an account here?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Insert your own 'What They Want To Hear In The Red Wall' joke here!

The claim is a dubious one anyway. The industry had been in decline for most of the 20th century and was already in a death spiral by the 1980s. The significance of its death as a major industry under Thatcher and Major was the brutality of the end, not the end. After all, deep mining for coal has ended or nearly ended in every 'advanced' economy,* generally on a timescale strikingly similar to that seen in Britain and I do not believe that Margaret Thatcher was in charge of any land other than this.

_{*'Modern' coal extraction largely taking place in huge open-cast works of one form or another. Occupational communities do not, as a general rule, form themselves around such operations...}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So in this weeks TERF Wars, after Philip Pullman survived an anti-trans pile on, the gender critters declared Terry Pratchett as one of their own to which his own daughter said 'absolutely not' as did friend Neil Gaiman and a plethora of fans.

To settle the debate, Sarah Ditum

The whole thing has been utterly bizarre and embarrassing. Even if you overlook cries of 'absolutely not' from his daughter, his batman and an old friend and collaborator, one of the most consistent themes in his work is a constant advocacy of that very specific sort of laissez-faire countryside tolerance that holds that individuals are wonderful and that if someone wants to call themselves this or that then it's their business ain't it?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The thing about the NCB's 'rationalisation' programme in the 1960s was that the coalfields most affected were older ones that largely produced high quality coal - steam coal or coking coal - for which demand had collapsed due to structural changes in the rest of the economy. Nearly all coal-fired power stations were built to run on lower grade stuff. For these collieries the practical impact of nationalisation turned out to be to delay closures that would otherwise have come thick and fast in the 1950s for a decade or so. But it's hard to see how they could have lasted longer and, note, the NUM leadership of the day did not actually argue that they ought to. They understood as well as anyone that the end was coming. This is the background to the huge wave of closures in the 1960s and early 1970s. Only an idiot would deem what happened political.

The situation was different in the 1980s. Essentially the Thatcher government knew that the opening up of the great oil and gasfields in the North Sea would mean the end of energy dependence on thermal coal. They knew that this would mean the end of what was left of the coal industry and, critically, that this would mean the end of the NUM as a significant political actor. They wished for revenge for the humiliation of 1973/4 and so decided to move the timeline forward, reasoning that any gaps created by the progressive closure of the pits that produced thermal coal could be covered by imports until what later became known as the 'dash for gas' began. Scargill, for whatever reason, played right into their hands and what happened, happend.