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

[EastAnglianLefty]

Worth noting that Wakeford's defection probably did a lot to stall Tory moves against Johnson because of the feelings of betrayal it caused. It'd be mad for any Tory MPs to give up the whip when they've got Johnson reeling, because it'd just restore that dynamic.

On the other hand, provoking Johnson into suspending the whip from some of the rebels would probably make overthrowing him a lot easier.

[EastAnglianLefty]

That said: BoJo surviving is a forgone conclusion

Welp, that settles it: RIP BoJo.

This idea that I’m always wrong is silliness. Almost every call I’ve made on here that doesn’t involve Georgia or Nevada has been accurate

Anyway. It always confused by how someone could win a vote like that and it being declared that it has “mortally wounded” them. The guy won. That’s it….

This is because you're always wrong.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Is anyone this side of the 'Stop' The War Coalition even suggesting that Britain abandons its support for Ukraine?

Rishi Sunak, allegedly?

[EastAnglianLefty]

Honestly there are only so many venues that are able to hold a major party conference these days. In recent years the only places Labour or the Tories have gone have been Birmingham, Brighton, Liverpool or Manchester. Birmingham is the only one of those the Tories don't get embarrassing results in and even so it's still clearly a Labour city.

The conference itself is locked down, so protestors will only be able to demonstrate outside the entrance to the security area. And there are protestors every year, wherever it is. The fact that Merseyside hates the Tories isn't really relevant when most of Merseyside can't get near the conference centre.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Apparently it's about government plans to support the steel industry that may conflict with WTO principles.

And if you believe that, can I interest you in buying the Tees Transporter Bridge?

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's basically people who would never (and largely have never, except maybe in 1997 or thereabouts) vote Labour and a much smaller group of people who somehow always or nearly always vote Labour anyway, despite that.

Plus a much smaller amount of people in east Kent and environs who are actually directly affected by the issue.

They maybe voted Labour when they were young in the 1960s/70s, or perhaps just once in 1997.

(some remarkably right wing people did so then, as was also anecdotally the case in 1945)

My paternal grandfather (died in 2005) voted Labour in 1945 and subsequently said "never again", although he was never a particularly right-wing Tory (had reservations about Thatcher, including her handling of the Falklands). Legend has it that he was a radical leftie in the 1930s, however.

1997 saw Labour get the endorsements of some celebrities with generally unpleasant views - John McCririck (the now deceased horse racing bloke) and Michael Caine come to mind.

My paternal grandfather voted Labour in 1945 and spent the last fifty odd years of his life as an extremely partisan Tory. Though to be fair, that conversion may have been less a landslide effect and more that a) my grandmother was incredibly right-wing and b) he had to deal with the DMU when he was involved in the building of Newton Aycliffe. He never forgave them for shooting down his plan for district heating.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's basically people who would never (and largely have never, except maybe in 1997 or thereabouts) vote Labour and a much smaller group of people who somehow always or nearly always vote Labour anyway, despite that.

Plus a much smaller amount of people in east Kent and environs who are actually directly affected by the issue.

They maybe voted Labour when they were young in the 1960s/70s, or perhaps just once in 1997.

(some remarkably right wing people did so then, as was also anecdotally the case in 1945)

My paternal grandfather (died in 2005) voted Labour in 1945 and subsequently said "never again", although he was never a particularly right-wing Tory (had reservations about Thatcher, including her handling of the Falklands). Legend has it that he was a radical leftie in the 1930s, however.

1997 saw Labour get the endorsements of some celebrities with generally unpleasant views - John McCririck (the now deceased horse racing bloke) and Michael Caine come to mind.

My paternal grandfather voted Labour in 1945 and spent the last fifty odd years of his life as an extremely partisan Tory. Though to be fair, that conversion may have been less a landslide effect and more that a) my grandmother was incredibly right-wing and b) he had to deal with the DMU when he was involved in the building of Newton Aycliffe. He never forgave them for shooting down his plan for district heating.

Do you know more about her politics? I wonder what "incredibly right-wing" meant in 50s/60s/70s for people who weren't Enoch Powell.

I'm not sure. I would have placed her on the right wing of the Conservative Party, but the manifestation I saw of that was primarily visceral anti-Labour feeling rather than any particular issue positions.

[EastAnglianLefty]

On the matter of Great Grandparents and politics, it always amuses me to recall that Grandad's parents (DMA, ILP and Primitive Methodist) will both have voted against Anthony Eden when he stood at Spennymoor in 1922 and produced some of the most ill-advised leaflets in the history of British election literature: he stressed that he personally knew most of the major coal-owners in the area, apparently quite unaware that this came across as a ham-fisted threat!

My great-great-grandfather worked at Spennymoor before finally moving up to Tyneside. Around twenty years before then though.

Mine lived in Willington, where all the men for about a century worked down (and were ultimately, one way or another though usually the slow way, killed as a result of doing so) Brancepeth Colliery, the pit heap of which loomed over the town like a stratovolcano.

When you consider the population of the area now it's crazy to think that there were enough people in that stretch of Durham for a full-sized parliamentary constituency, but there were. Not quite Abertillery* levels of 'a place that people left' but not so far off either.

_{*Where as it happens a branch on the other side of the family lived until the 1920s...}

IIRC there were villages in County Durham which were basically designated by the County Council for abandonment and demolition.  Were some of those in this area?

Durham County Council's development plan used to designate some villages as category D, where new capital development was to avoided. There's a partial map at https://mattjamessmith.com/content/the-category-d-villages-of-durham

A quick glance suggests that relatively few of those were around Spennymoor and Willington, though, with the biggest concentration around Blaydon.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Polling from Wakefield floating voters on their reasons for voting. Going to be interesting to see whether this actually affects the party leadership fight, or if they follow the PM’s lead and just bury their heads in the sand.
 

The interesting thing about those results is that it suggests Boris Johnson was even more of a drag on the Tory vote than a convicted sex offender.

[EastAnglianLefty]

We just seem to be stuck in a soup of rumours this week.

Building on what CumbrianLefty said, the Times is reporting that 30 MPs have resubmitted their 1922 letters since the confidence vote, all before the by-election results were known, with a second raft of letters expected after Tiverton was lost. Obviously that’s pretty toothless while the 1-year rule remains in place, but could become significant if a significant portion of the party puts them in, piling pressure on the committee for a rules change.

More dramatically (albeit implausibly), sources from both parties have said that a number of Red Wall MPs are actively considering defection, possibly as many as six. Labour sources are bragging about having an open line of communication between leadership and the wavering backbenchers, just like they established with Christian Wakeford.

Will be interested to see if any of this turns out to be substantiated.

Scepticism is warranted here I think.  There have only ever been five direct defections of MPs from Con to Lab (Alan Howarth, Shaun Woodward, Robert Jackson, Quentin Davies and Christian Wakeford) and defection rumours have a pretty low success rate.

Speaking of changes of party membership of MPs, Patrick Grady, MP for Glasgow North who has been caught up in a sexual harassment case, has suspended his SNP membership and is now sitting as an Independent.

And indeed if you thought a defection was likely then you wouldn't be bragging about it - I suspect this is more about fuelling speculation, suspicion and bad feeling within the parliamentary Conservative Party.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Though in Prentice's case the only candidate to his right was the National Front candidate, who wouldn't have appealed to most Conservative voters in Daventry, whereas voters in Newport East or St Helens South had the option of both the LDs and various minor-party Socialist candidates.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Churchill, who changed parties twice, sat for no less than five constituencies.

I wonder why the UK is seemingly unique in having very little stigma against their politican carpetbagging.

I don't think this is true. Look at Canada.

[EastAnglianLefty]

To be fair up into relatively recently (and it's still the case in some seats) there was no difference or electoral penalty for having a 'working class' Scot, Yorkshireman etc represent a working class seat anywhere else in the country.

And while the UK had (and still has) less internal migration than say the US, it was probably more common during days of heavy industrialisation (I have family in County Durham for that reason). So an MP doing the same wasn't that unusual.

I would say in most of the country it's not an issue. Unless the candidate is clearly imposed against the wishes of local members, there's no real electoral penalty and even where that has happened, the penalty is usually for one election only.

The exception is Scotland, where it isn't considered feasible to select a candidate who isn't already resident in Scotland. A few Scots (mostly Tories) have later been selected for English seats, but I can't think of any case in recent memory where an English or Welsh candidate has been selected for a Scottish seat by a major party.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Though Worthington had been a Glasgow resident for over 15 years at the time of his election and Greatrex had been living in Scotland for at least six years, with an involvement in Scottish politics going back to the mid 90s.

[EastAnglianLefty]

what do we think of Boris getting a blowie during work hours by his then mistress now wife and offering her a job as chief of staff at the FCO during that period? In any other country it would have been the talk of the town.

The main thing that's notable about it is that Private Eye seems to have stopped using 'discussing Ugandan affairs' as shorthand.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Who's going to sack him? Yes, it was grossly unprofessional behaviour, but he's got away with things that are actual criminal offences and the Tory party haven't seen fit to remove him.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Rachel Maclean, Minister for Safeguarding, has resigned.

That letter was a bit more explosive - effectively stating that Johnson's actions made it impossible for anybody to actually promote safeguarding.

[EastAnglianLefty]

So, where does Johnson rank compared to his two predecessors? I, for one, called both Cameron and May among the worst in British history, and I knew it wouldn't be long before he usurped them both for that title. Can the streak continue?

Cameron is still the absolute worst. His Brexit Referendum gambit to shut up the Eurosceptics within the Tory Party put the UK on its current path. That's not to say that there should not have been a referendum (because, clearly, Brexit had/has widespread support), but there should have been a **plan** in case leave won.

Cameron was not individually at fault for the Brexit mess - he led the Conservatives to a narrow victory on the strong and stable message and once that happened no Tory leader could have resisted the Brexiteer wing of the party that was baying for blood. May and Johnson have to own this political disaster alongside Baker and the other hardliners who never seem to get their hands stuck into governing.

He was responsible:

• He promised the referendum in 2013 to try to avoid facing a leadership challenge, with no intention to go through with it because he assumed the Lib Dems would force him to drop the pledge during coalition negotiations.
• He then won a majority by deliberately knee-capping the Lib Dems.
• He ran a tone deaf campaign, aimed at ensuring Tory voters voted Remain and that those who voted Leave didn't get too angry with him, whilst failing to realise that in a referendum you need to get 50% and so you have to try and win the support of non-Tory voters.
• When the result happened, he promptly ran away.

His successors handled things very badly, but it's Cameron's fault that it ever happened.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Away from the Tory clown car, it looks like we're in for a nasty heatwave, with the UK record temperature likely to be broken on Monday or Tuesday with 40C forecast to be recorded for the first time; in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the record (38.7C in Cambridge just three years ago) is broken on Monday and the new record is then beaten on Tuesday.

I was in Cambridge at the time and it took about four hours to get home, because it was so hot that the overhead wires on the train line started to melt. That was annoying, but under circumstances where every ambulance trust in the country is experiencing huge delays in getting patients admitted into hospital due to lack of beds, next week could be absolutely catastrophic.

[EastAnglianLefty]

https://twitter.com/hzeffman/status/1549317013755011074

Frankly this shows the problem with the Conservative Whips' Office - they were always going to win the confidence vote, expecting MPs who had suffered a recent bereavement to come and vote on a formality was both callous and very very stupid.

[EastAnglianLefty]

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-law-in-place-to-allow-businesses-to-hire-agency-workers-to-plug-staffing-gaps-caused-by-strike-action

Finally the Tories actually enact a good policy.

It's a dumb policy, but it's also an entirely ineffective one - the major employment agencies have made it very clear that they don't want this, because their workers would rather work in jobs where they don't have to cross picket lines and most of the industries where strike activity causes widespread disruption do not have a reserve army of labour which is willing and able to do those jobs - people who are qualified to be train drivers are either employed as train drivers or they've decided they don't want to work in the industry any more, they aren't contracted to employment agencies.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I’m very boring but it’s v interesting seeing how even politically engaged people seem to be angry that Bojo isn’t doing anything re the cost of living- he obviously isn’t going to make any fiscal commitments and does anyone really think him appearing on TV would help!

Besides I’m not sure what PM Raab would be doing?

The obvious answer is that the Tories should have got rid a lot earlier or made the contest shorter…

I thought the Brown line that Truss and Sunak should get together with Johnson to agree a package they could all sign up to was interesting for that reason - the longer it goes on the more uncertainty rises.

In the meantime, the fact that the government hasn't put out any messages about ways to reduce gas and electricity use is unusual - most previous governments would have started putting out messages about that months ago.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Even if Truss ends up as the UK Kim Campbell, that still means Johnson ending up as the UK Brian Mulroney.

[EastAnglianLefty]

More broadly, a lot of seats that are now marginal have previously been marginal or semi-marginal. There have been some changes (largely where the demographics or economic structures of a seat are quite different from what they were 40 years ago) but overall the electoral map outside Scotland or London isn't actually that dissimilar from what we'd have seen four decades ago.