UK General Discussion: Rishecession

[Filuwaúrdjan]

because the level of support is significantly higher than it has been historically

It's hard to be sure of that as no one asked the question in a comparable manner before YouGov started doing it, or at least didn't do often: it only tended to be measured as part of a wider set of questions about options for (or against) devolution. What is true is that there's more fuss in elite cultural circles about the issue and that Plaid actually mention it in public now rather than weirdly obfuscating around the subject, but it's not clear if support for it is genuinely higher than anti-devolution sentiment, which still rattles around to an extent. The main political impact of this is that it has made Con-Plaid collaboration much trickier than was the case about fifteen years ago, especially as the Conservative group in the Assembly has radicalized as well (in the opposite direction), while also making formal coalitions between Labour and Plaid harder, even if they can still come to other arrangements (such as the present one).

given the state of the Welsh economy and how many English people live in Wales the level of support for Welsh independence is actually quite high, it's definitely above the threshold of when things start to get interesting. Just because something is unrealistic doesn't mean the level of support for it isn't interesting.

Sharp ethnic distinctions between 'English' and 'Welsh' don't really exist in Wales; it's more a matter of degree. A lot of people registered in the census as 'born in England' were so simply because the nearest/easiest to access maternity hospital happened to be in England (Chester, Shrewsbury and Hereford are the common ones), and a lot of people who move to Wales from England later in their lives have had Welsh parents or grandparents and so on. And you really can't extrapolate political sentiment from any of this: a remarkably high proportion of senior Plaid figures over the years were actually born in England, as was David Lloyd George. We do have the census question on national identity, of course, though that's a little problematic as people read it in different ways. But, basically, 'English' identity only registers above a quarter in a very narrow strip along the border (and the people ticking that box there is generally from families who have lived there a very long time... and who would probably feel 'Welsh' if they lived on the other side of the border) and in a handful of coastal towns with large retired populations.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

hahahahahahahahahaha

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's not uncommon in complex and sensitive cases for the police to arrest people that they have no intention (on the information that they have) to charge at a later date, the thinking being that it's easier to keep a tighter control of various things that way. That might not be the case in Sturgeon's case, but it could be, and it's the sort of thing that makes speculation difficult.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Some incredibly dignified and not in the least bit weird comments from senior officials in the private education industry about Bridget Phillipson have emerged.

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I've been thinking, for those who like historical analogies, Dorries is to Boris what Canning was to Pitt. Except that Canning and Pitt were both considerably more statesmanlike, if somehow even more weird. And Pitt was, you know, successful.

There's a certain Asquithian vibe to him as well, except that, well, Asquith at least presided over a government that got a lot done before everything turned to shit.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

https://twitter.com/wizbates/status/1674373987336331264

Edit: for full effect...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The whole SADIQ KHAN WILL STEAL YOUR GOLD thing does, very regrettably, appear to have been successful in its main purpose, but because it was so blatant it pretty clearly lost him votes elsewhere.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In the end the basic building block of society is the family unit and everyone also eventually gets old (unless they're rather unlucky). The state pension in the UK is also a (relatively) flat benefit paid out on top of whatever other pension scheme the individual in question has rather than a pension scheme as such, which means that there aren't long-term solvency issues. Besides as far as crude electoral logic goes, the pensioners most dependent on the state pension as a proportion of their income also happen to be the pensioners most likely to vote Labour at present.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Not much that Reeves said in the interview was really contradictory with anything Nandy has said: mostly a difference of emphasis, plus the fact that the questions were really odd, though that's normal for a Kuenssberg interview. I suspect that in government (touch wood and so on about that) there will be disputes about this kind of thing, but housing finance is a very complicated issue and not so simple as 'spending taxpayers money' or not.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The odds of him having said it are... er... low. There's an ongoing briefing war against Ed Miliband by people associated with the GMB (which is amusing as that union was supportive when he was leader, but there's nothing like friends falling out is there?) because of Miliband's proposals over the North Sea extractive industries.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

*Succession music plays*

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There is a certain 'what decade is this?' aspect to some of the reaction to the story as it has developed.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

From his wife's statement:

"The events of the last few days have greatly worsened matters, he has suffered another serious episode and is now receiving in-patient hospital care where he'll stay for the foreseeable future."

I would assume that everyone here can read between the lines, but if not: he has been sectioned and may well have attempted suicide or displayed suicidal tendencies. This is extremely serious.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The issue isn't so much regulatory changes (which are fairly likely anyway and, for whatever it's worth, relations with The Sun are really very cold: Starmer pressed the 'go' button on the prosecution of the present CEO of News UK when he was DPP and she only got off by throwing one of her co-defendants under the bus in the most spectacular manner imaginable: I wouldn't read much into the odd staffer-written piece with the by-lines of Shadow Cabinet members attached) but the potential for extremely costly legal action as a result of this from Edwards and/or his family.

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It isn't 1983, 'high profile public figure is bisexual' is not in the public interest as generally defined (and it wasn't great that it was seen to be so back then). They don't have any excuses about the supposed criminal elements (which they're pretending they never stressed now: nice try, won't work) as they will already have been informed there was no case to answer and there's no way they didn't check.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yes, the issue isn't that Labour is useless at winning elections, but that lengthy stretches in power have been the norm for both parties for a long time now. Labour were in office for all but three and a half years between 1964 and 1979 for instance, and then for thirteen years after 1997.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I suspect the main result of PR in the UK historically would have been much more frequent rotation of government and presumably a replacement of the tendency of governments of each party trying to reverse as much of what the previous government did as possible* with something more consensual.

_{*Needless to say 'possible' is a critically important word there.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Removing the tax exempt status for private schools is theoretically quite an effective wealth tax. It's also the right thing to do for other reasons, but that aspect should not be ignored.

Some people would disagree with me and say you need the political reform but after the last 13 years I very much hope that Labour will focus on their own coalition & specifically fixing the economy rather than burning a lot of energy on political reform.

Especially as, bluntly, so much of that coalition has had to be coaxed back. Can't be any taking of those elements of the electorate for granted.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Andrew Rosindell has been named as the Conservative MP presently barred from the Commons estate following his arrest for rape and a couple of other offences. He has not been charged, but has been repeatedly re-bailed: the investigation appears to be a very complex one.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Andrew Rosindell has been named as the Conservative MP presently barred from the Commons estate following his arrest for rape and a couple of other offences. He has not been charged, but has been repeatedly re-bailed: the investigation appears to be a very complex one.

Do we know why the Sunday Times has suddenly felt able to name him?

He seems to have decided to tell them officially for whatever reason.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

And - to respond to another post - would Blair have done the same in this situation prior to 1997? The answer is of course - and totally obviously - YES, and probably then some. He was incredibly cautious prior to that election, to the frustration of many just as with SKS now.

He wrote (well, had an aide write: it was his by-line though) a rather silly piece in The Sun about how Labour would 'slay the Euro dragons' or something during the election campaign, which caused the then-editor of The Independent Andrew Marr (who, back in those days, was firmly on the centre-left and quite liberal) to hit the roof. And this man was, once in office, the most pro-EEC/EU Prime Minister we've ever really had.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

His recent articles in the New Statesman have been critical of Labour’s conservative approach to policy, so he’s (soft) left of Labour at least.

He may be another case (see also David Aaronovitch) of a political journalist whose apparent views for a long time were not actually or entirely their actual views and who feels freer, now in a different position, to actually express them.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A strange statement, especially in a UK context - where it has long been accepted that manifestos are not legally binding documents, and the "we have discovered things are even worse than we thought! We now need to do X/not do Y" gambit is one of the oldest tricks in the book.

Thatcher (in)famously reneged on a supposedly iron clad "no increase or expansion of VAT" pledge just a few months after winning in 1979 - it didn't appear to do her that much harm in the longer term. And btw the Tory manifesto then was generally short on specifics and quite moderate in tone - it never even mentioned the word "privatisation". The one thing they did go big on was curbing union power.

Exactly so. This particular Rubicon was crossed as early as 1931, when the National Government announced that it was seeking a 'doctor's mandate' from the electorate (i.e. permission to do whatever it damn well pleased in order to restore confidence in the economy) and was rewarded with what remains the largest landslide since the advent of democracy. This has been normal practice ever since, at first pretty explicitly (the vagueness and conditionality of so much of Labour's 1945 manifesto is striking, I'll post an example in a minute) and subsequently implicitly, so much so that election manifestoes are a by-word for dishonesty. There have even been occasions when newly elected governments have openly ignored their own manifestoes, as was the case with Labour in 1974. Mostly what people take from them now is vibes: one of the things that has tripped this government up very badly is not that it has broken manifesto promises (as if people can even remember what they were) but that it has broken the vibes of the manifesto, and not in a positive direction.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So, this is what the 1945 Labour manifesto had to say on the subject of welfare/social security policy:

Social Insurance against the Rainy Day

The Labour Party has played a leading part in the long campaign for proper social security for all - social provision against rainy days, coupled with economic policies calculated to reduce rainy days to a minimum. Labour led the fight against the mean and shabby treatment which was the lot of millions while Conservative Governments were in power over long years. A Labour Government will press on rapidly with legislation extending social insurance over the necessary wide field to all.

But great national programmes of education, health and social services are costly things. Only an efficient and prosperous nation can afford them in full measure. If, unhappily, bad times were to come, and our opponents were in power, then, running true to form, they would be likely to cut these social provisions on the plea that the nation could not meet the cost. That was the line they adopted on at least three occasions between the wars.

There is no good reason why Britain should not afford such programmes, but she will need full employment and the highest possible industrial efficiency in order to do so.

Apart from a brief mention of Labour's support for the Family Allowance scheme recently passed by the Churchill government in the (also very brief) health section, that's it. Quite a fascinating little period piece for several reasons.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Trudy Harrison, who has held Copeland for the Conservatives since the 2017 by-election, has announced that she will not run for re-election. She has denied that this has anything to do with the poor electoral prospects of the Conservative Party. Copeland has been abolished in the boundary review, with the majority of it going into a new Whitehaven & Workington constituency, which would be an even bigger ask to hold than Copeland in a General Election.