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

[Cassius]

Notoriously, certain police forces have tried to get people on "breaking the spirit of the rules".

Then of course you spy them chatting to their mates, on what must be their lunch-break, not socially distanced and not wearing masks!

[CumbrianLefty]

In other news, Johnson and the government are busy sulking because Labour has the temerity to use parliamentary "opposition days" in a way that might somewhat inconvenience them

[Blair]

In other news, Johnson and the government are busy sulking because Labour has the temerity to use parliamentary "opposition days" in a way that might somewhat inconvenience them

And claimed that the abuse that MPs got for opposing free school lunches last time was akin to the storming of the capitol!

It's quite funny as this is clearly the second card to play- the last time they packed the debate & basically did two footed tackles on Labour (accusing them of wanting to nationalise children) and basically tried to throw sh**t around.

A Tory MP topped it off by saying to businesses handing out free lunches to kids 'well I suppose we can have your business grant money back then'.

They're now back to the Theresa May era tactic of abstaining- which lets Labour say 'Parliament voted against this cut'.

The third & expected step is to either cut off the vote at the end (as that happens with backbench business debates) or just stop holding opposition day debates- something that I expect Prime Minister Rayner will enjoy in 2027!

[CumbrianLefty]

Over 1800 virus related deaths yesterday. Not good.

[Pericles]

Is the UK going to now pursue an Australia/NZ style approach to the borders and require hotel quarantine for all overseas arrivals? That would be a good policy I think and could keep the borders secure. Given the other potentially vaccine resistant mutations, if the UK achieves herd immunity from vaccination, it might have to keep the borders shut so it can return to normal life. It might be harder for the UK, but even big Asian countries have done a successful elimination strategy.

I do wonder whether any European countries could have pursued an elimination strategy early in the pandemic. I'm guessing it's unlikely because testing was so low that by the time they could have reasonably acted the cases would inevitably go so high that it would be too hard to go to zero. However, Victoria in Australia did have a serious outbreak and get back to zero (albeit with one of the world's longest lockdowns), applying that rate to the UK perhaps going from daily deaths in the mid 200s to 0 would be achievable. Maybe it's naturally harder with a larger population, and even limiting it to daily deaths in the mid 200s in the first wave might not have been achievable.

[urutzizu]

I do wonder whether any European countries could have pursued an elimination strategy early in the pandemic.

Some eastern European countries came very close during the summer, Croatia presumably did, Slovenia and some of the Baltics came very close. The main reason imo why it can't be sustained is because in Europe you have a huge internal market with integrated supply chains, millions of people who commute every day across borders, you cannot completely close borders like would be necessary.
Even Croatia's reinfections probably came from the western Balkans, particularly Serbia, which falsifies it's data to hide the extent of the outbreak (cool that we are still propping up Vucic btw). And Serbia/BiH is not even in the EU. In Germany and Austria we have had huge problems at our Borders to Czechia, but we cannot close the Border because our Hospitals and Care Homes are dependent on Czech cross border workers.
So the only way to do elimination would be all Countries in Europe (not even just EU) agreeing to elimination, and that is politically impossible.

UK and Ireland are of course the exception and might actually be able to, but even then you still have hauliers that have to cross the channel. And as the events from December show, the most disruption you can afford is have them do rapid antigen tests as the French currently ask for, but those are of course very inaccurate. However the strategy here for the UK is obviously to just keep out mutations and not every single infection, so it is not so important.

[CumbrianLefty]

Is the UK going to now pursue an Australia/NZ style approach to the borders and require hotel quarantine for all overseas arrivals? That would be a good policy I think and could keep the borders secure. Given the other potentially vaccine resistant mutations, if the UK achieves herd immunity from vaccination, it might have to keep the borders shut so it can return to normal life. It might be harder for the UK, but even big Asian countries have done a successful elimination strategy.

I would really be wary of talking this up too much.

Nearly all the "evidence" for this, and indeed higher death rates, is partial and inconclusive.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The leader of the Welsh Conservatives has resigned - as has the party's Education spokesman - after it emerged that he and another group of MS's broke lockdown restrictions by drinking booze on parliamentary premises.

[Silent Hunter]

This is all very much "Do as we say, not as we do" and "the floggings will continue until morale improves".

[CumbrianLefty]

The leader of the Welsh Conservatives has resigned - as has the party's Education spokesman - after it emerged that he and another group of MS's broke lockdown restrictions by drinking booze on parliamentary premises.

And has been replaced by his predecessor as leader, who shares the same surname.

[dssg0915]

i quite like boris just cuz he's actually likeable not his policies

[Pericles]

The right message that a second independence referendum and a Yes vote would create a lot of chaos and painful ‘wrangling’, especially when combined with timing concerns. However he’s exactly the wrong messenger to be making that point, given he unleashed the chaos and wrangling of Brexit for most likely no gain and at best an ‘El Dorado’ of gains years away. In one way though (not one that the polls back up though), Brexit actually weakens the case for independence, because it’s the same basic kind of emotional nationalism. The union of the UK would be so much more painful to leave than the EU (even if Scotland actually gets to rejoin the EU). That said, there probably will need to be another referendum, though a worry about a referendum immediately  post pandemic is that people’s votes are based too much on Brexit. I guess a referendum is the only real way of discovering how solid the new support for independence that the polls show.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2021/jan/28/boris-johnson-scottish-independence-vote-endless-constitutional-wrangling-video

[Cassius]

Brexit is an incredibly weak justification for Scottish independence - an independent Scotland won’t get the same kind of relationship that the UK had with the EU when it was a member state, and will face more disruption separating from an ex-EU UK than it did from Brexit itself. I think the recent surge in support for independence has been driven primarily by Boris Johnson’s lack of appeal north of the border and the perception that Nicola Sturgeon has done a better job handling COVID.

Of course, ‘getting lost in pointless constitutional wrangling’ has been baked in from the moment the Labour Party signed up to turn this country into a tea-drinking Yugoslavia through the devolution experiment, an experiment that has been continued by the Conservatives since 2010 (all these ridiculous metro-mayors et al).

[Zinneke]

...to turn this country into a tea-drinking Yugoslavia through the devolution experiment

[CumbrianLefty]

Brexit is an incredibly weak justification for Scottish independence - an independent Scotland won’t get the same kind of relationship that the UK had with the EU when it was a member state, and will face more disruption separating from an ex-EU UK than it did from Brexit itself. I think the recent surge in support for independence has been driven primarily by Boris Johnson’s lack of appeal north of the border and the perception that Nicola Sturgeon has done a better job handling COVID.

Of course, ‘getting lost in pointless constitutional wrangling’ has been baked in from the moment the Labour Party signed up to turn this country into a tea-drinking Yugoslavia through the devolution experiment, an experiment that has been continued by the Conservatives since 2010 (all these ridiculous metro-mayors et al).

Something which, of course, they did on a totally arbitary whim and for no good reason.

(funnily enough, that's the bit that "echt"-unionists skim over or deny entirely - ignoring the actual reality that the constituent parts of the UK have been drifting apart since the end of the empire)

[Zinneke]

Brexit is an incredibly weak justification for Scottish independence - an independent Scotland won’t get the same kind of relationship that the UK had with the EU when it was a member state, and will face more disruption separating from an ex-EU UK than it did from Brexit itself. I think the recent surge in support for independence has been driven primarily by Boris Johnson’s lack of appeal north of the border and the perception that Nicola Sturgeon has done a better job handling COVID.

Of course, ‘getting lost in pointless constitutional wrangling’ has been baked in from the moment the Labour Party signed up to turn this country into a tea-drinking Yugoslavia through the devolution experiment, an experiment that has been continued by the Conservatives since 2010 (all these ridiculous metro-mayors et al).

Something which, of course, they did on a totally arbitary whim and for no good reason.

(funnily enough, that's the bit that "echt"-unionists skim over or deny entirely - ignoring the actual reality that the constituent parts of the UK have been drifting apart since the end of the empire)

And that being a corollary of Westminster could be incredibly distant to some people the same way Brussels was distant to some Brexiteers.

[CumbrianLefty]

Remember when our Eurosceptics used to bang on about "subsidiarity"?

Strange how this never applied *within* the UK for a large number of them.

[Cassius]

Labour started espousing devolution in order to:

A) Hobble the ability of the Conservative Party to make policy at the national level, in the same vein as its Damascene conversion to full-throated support for the EU in the 1980s (sad how both of these schemes have now spectacularly rebounded upon the party).
B) To fend off the possible electoral threat posed by the SNP and avoid defections by nationalist-curious Labour Party members to that party (the dreaded ‘party management’ that apparently only the Tories engage in).

Of course, devolution has not fended off Scottish nationalism (or any of the other ‘nationalisms’), instead its given it a pair of skates and a jet pack.

As for the question of independence, I understand perfectly well that a significant plurality of the Scottish electorate doesn’t wish to be part of Britain and I accept the reasons for that. Nonetheless, if you’re the kind of person who wants to see meaningful policy change across the entirety of the UK, then supporting more devolution and ‘federalism’ (shudder) will simply be counterproductive. I look forward to seeing the elected ‘Council of the Nations and Regions’ set up by a future Labour government blocking Labour’s policy agenda because through some bizarre turn of events it ends up with a Tory majority.

[CumbrianLefty]

Labour has been moving to becoming more devolution-friendly since the 1960s.

Something else that is often missed.

[Zinneke]

Replace "Tory majority" and "Tory power" with "(Little) English Nationalism" In Cassius's typical blue-goggled #Analysis and you have the crux of the problem that Gordon Brown was hinting at the other day.

[LabourJersey]

Brexit is an incredibly weak justification for Scottish independence - an independent Scotland won’t get the same kind of relationship that the UK had with the EU when it was a member state, and will face more disruption separating from an ex-EU UK than it did from Brexit itself. I think the recent surge in support for independence has been driven primarily by Boris Johnson’s lack of appeal north of the border and the perception that Nicola Sturgeon has done a better job handling COVID.

Of course, ‘getting lost in pointless constitutional wrangling’ has been baked in from the moment the Labour Party signed up to turn this country into a tea-drinking Yugoslavia through the devolution experiment, an experiment that has been continued by the Conservatives since 2010 (all these ridiculous metro-mayors et al).

Why do you think having Mayors of metro areas is a bad thing? My natural inclination is that it's fine to have some executive authority in major cities, especially away from London, but I don't know enough about UK local gov't to have a strong opinion

[Cassius]

Labour has been moving to becoming more devolution-friendly since the 1960s.

Something else that is often missed.

True, but prior to the 1980’s it was an issue upon which there was considerable division (Neil Kinnock had some choice words to say about Welsh devolution and Welsh nationalists in 1979 for example), as was the case with Europe. It was only with the advent of Labour’s repeated electoral failures that firm support for both became the consensus opinion across the party (with a few exceptions).

Replace "Tory majority" and "Tory power" with "(Little) English Nationalism" In Cassius's typical blue-goggled #Analysis and you have the crux of the problem that Gordon Brown was hinting at the other day.

Oh get a grip. If Scotland wishes to leave the UK that’s fair enough. I don’t particularly see how weakening the ability of the national government to do anything meaningful (as federalism always does) will achieve the goal of ‘strengthening the Union’, but I’m sure that you, as a galaxy-brained euro-federalist, can explain it to this slope-headed ‘Little Englander’.

[Zinneke]

Labour has been moving to becoming more devolution-friendly since the 1960s.

Something else that is often missed.

True, but prior to the 1980’s it was an issue upon which there was considerable division (Neil Kinnock had some choice words to say about Welsh devolution and Welsh nationalists in 1979 for example), as was the case with Europe. It was only with the advent of Labour’s repeated electoral failures that firm support for both became the consensus opinion across the party (with a few exceptions).

Replace "Tory majority" and "Tory power" with "(Little) English Nationalism" In Cassius's typical blue-goggled #Analysis and you have the crux of the problem that Gordon Brown was hinting at the other day.

Oh get a grip. If Scotland wishes to leave the UK that’s fair enough. I don’t particularly see how weakening the ability of the national government to do anything meaningful (as federalism always does) will achieve the goal of ‘strengthening the Union’, but I’m sure that you, as a galaxy-brained euro-federalist, can explain it to this slope-headed ‘Little Englander’.

"Euro-federalist" lol no way José - do you think this because I am Belgian and all Belgian in Little Englander minds are quaint Verhofstadt-like bureaucrats? you get a grip mister.

I believe in actual subsidiarity, I'm in favour a weakening of the Commission bureaucracy if anything. I also believe in the concept of self-determination, and not as some right to exploit the concept so brazenly the way the Conservative Party, the party of narrow Little Englander national interests (or more accurately, theatrical chest pumping). The Tory Party has no vocation to call itself a promoter of the Union when it sold out Unionists in Northern Ireland out down the pipleline and pretended nothing happened.

And yes, I do think there are not enough checks and balances in Westminster, and by that I don't mean some extra courts after the fiasco of the Miller II decision. The whole system is outdated, constitutionally flawed (Devolution as a concept too - I think on that we agree on), the voting system is undemocratic and allows the small Tory membership to dictate policy, and the role of an MP is to be both a top level legislator and an agony aunt for their constituency folk - something that has to change.

 and what's more it suffers from a type of conservatism that makes it impossible to reform, that of thinking quaint little rituals like "the Mace", FPTP, jeering during PMQs or whatever are all fun and games - when there are people watching whose livelihoods are at stake. Is it any wonder the Scots are tempted by Hollyrood when you see the mature adults that populate it compared to the Westminster cesspit of "my constituents and their chips of their shoulder need reassuring blah blah...".

I won't pretend the political classes in my country or indeed across Europe are any better, but surely the UK needs a constitutional kick up the arse if it wants to survive.

[CumbrianLefty]

I'm not actually a big fan of elected mayors, but can still recognise they were an attempt to deal with widespread frustration with everything seeming to be centred on Westminster.

[Wiswylfen]

Replace "Tory majority" and "Tory power" with "(Little) English Nationalism" In Cassius's typical blue-goggled #Analysis and you have the crux of the problem that Gordon Brown was hinting at the other day.

English nationalism is not whatever you don't like.