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

[EastAnglianLefty]

Rebecca Long-Bailey sacked from the Shadow Cabinet for sharing a highly questionable interview from Maxine Peak, which claimed that the murder of George Flloyd was because the Israeli Secret Services had trained the police.

A new front in the forever war is open.

Of all the conspiracies to emerge from this era of uncertainty, this one is is almost the weirdest. For example, the 5G one is at least grounded in a faulty conclusion that both the virus and the 5G rollout occuring at the same time is more than a coincidence.

It is a simple reality, on the record, that several US police forces (including Minnesota's) have been trained by Israeli outfits. Now, I agree it is possible to do the usual AS conspiracies out of that - but the basic facts are not in dispute.

This is not correct. The claim originates in an Amnesty International report, but that one doesn't mention Minneapolis. Nor does it mention putting a knee on the neck as a technique taught.

In any case, reading Long-Bailey's statement after her sacking it's fairly clear that she made things significantly worse for herself by not immediately apologising and instead trying to defend the comments. It was a remarkably tone-deaf way to respond.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The hard truth is that the left of the party are so unpopular with the general public that the more they attack Starmer the more his standing will improve with them.

The only Labour leader to gain the party seats in a post-1997 GE was one Jeremy Corbyn.

Or is it some other "hard truth" that you had in mind?

Popularity is not in fact a fixed value. There is some rather obvious recent evidence suggesting Corbyn was somewhat less popular as of December 2019.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Honestly, deciding your opinion based on how your internal opponents react is how we got into this mess in the first place.

[EastAnglianLefty]

We're only 6 months out from an election, which is almost always too early to really change perceptions of the party, because there hasn't been time for anything else to be changed yet. Given that Covid effectively stopped normal politics for a couple of months and given that it's not going to be possible to hold annual conference this year, that probably applies even more so.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I would say there has already been a bit of that. But equally, what people like you don't like to admit is that Corbyn's actual *policy* programme was *mostly* popular.

Isn't this rather the point? As yet (some slightly histrionic wailing from the usual quarters notwithstanding) there's no sign of any significant change to the substantive programme. On the other hand, a number of symbolic actions have been taken to get rid of people and attitudes who meant that the party was unpopular, even if it's programme wasn't.

A trollish but not entirely untrue take would be that the most likely route to putting Corbynism into action starts off with firing all the Corbynite Cabinet ministers...

[EastAnglianLefty]

It has been pointed out that it leads to an increased focus on aesthetics, which is not a great thing to have when so much of our public discourse was stunningly vapid to begin with.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I mean T-May already defunded the police so I’m not sure where the meat and two veg of this argument lies?

The result of which has been, and this news may come as a surprise, a rise in crime.

Also a tendency for the police not to investigate whole swathes of theft-related crimes, because it's considered not to be a worthwhile use of their scarce resources. There's definitely an argument that certain communities in the UK feel themselves to be over-policed (although these are often also the communities most likely to be victims of crime) but not that the system as a whole is over-funded.

If Rose Twitter wants to Americanize Labour's discourse, they should do it on issues where it's actually applicable. Like this one:

https://twitter.com/MoJGovUK/status/1277153946923081729

Christ, "building prisons to support construction industry" - even American prison-industrial complex doesn't reach this level of shamelessness.

To be fairer than they actually deserve, there is an extremely strong case for new prisons to be built. Much of the existing estate is Victorian in origin and the buildings are entirely unsuited to their current purpose. There is rampant overcrowding, as cells which were originally designed for one prisoner in the 1880s now hold two prisoners and a toilet. These buildings need replacing. Moreover, most local prisons are heavily overcapacity, meaning that it's very hard for prisoners to get on to rehabilitation programs (because those are numerically limited). Indeed, where it's combined with staff shortages (which is most places) it also means that time out of the cell gets sharply circumscribed for security reasons, which increases tension and the recidivism rate.

The problem is that an authoritarian government is likely to respond to extra prison capacity by locking more people up. But if you were going to take a long-term prison abolitionist perspective, closing prisons is still not a step you would want to take any time soon.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I think the failure to investigate alleged Russian attempts to influence the independence referendum are more striking. The alleged attempts were for the losing side, so they couldn't be accused of having influenced the result, and any backlash would have been from people who were unlikely to vote Conservative anyway, so that one seems like it would have been more of a freebie.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I think the failure to investigate alleged Russian attempts to influence the independence referendum are more striking. The alleged attempts were for the losing side, so they couldn't be accused of having influenced the result, and any backlash would have been from people who were unlikely to vote Conservative anyway, so that one seems like it would have been more of a freebie.

All references to the Scottish independence referendum are heavily redacted. If anything that infers what was previously suspected is that Russia flooded both campaigns to some extent. The UK intelligence services were not poorly served by that attempt given the result, so why bother investigating it?

Because there are obvious issues with foreign nations being able to guide public discourse in a manner producing greater levels of social division? You want to deal with that before they actually refine it, because afterwards, as we've seen, it's much more difficult to do.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's worth remembering that this is what the list looks like after a significant number of names have been struck off it for failing to meet the standards of behaviour expected of members of the Lords (Bercow; Watson; Karie Murphy; apparently about half a dozen Tory donors.)

[EastAnglianLefty]

One of the problems is that as our test and trace system isn't working properly, we don't have a good idea of where spread is occurring. But anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that the primary avenue of transmission is via workplaces, much more than via social venues. If we had been slightly less keen on trying to racialise the lockdown in Leicester and had paid slightly more attention to the predominant local industries in these areas, that might have given a hint. Incidentally, these are also industries that have a significant presence in Greater Manchester, East Lancashire and West Yorkshire.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The Welsh government has now U-turned and said that students will get their teacher-predicted grades instead, as has the Northern Irish government for GCSEs (but not for A-levels.)

[EastAnglianLefty]

For the record, along with CAGs, schools were required to submit evidence underpinning their assessments. It's just that no use seems to have been made of this evidence.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The thing for me that makes this different to the u-turn over free school meals & the NHS surcharge is that this was coming for months; the Education Select Committee warned about this & other MPs, Schools and heads have written about this- this wasn't a problem that suddenly emerged.

It was clear however last tuesday that it was a disaster & the stories coming out on Thursday & Friday should have got No.10s ears perking up; which is why Williamson's strong 'there's no u-turn' was actually rather shocking & convinced me there wouldn't be one.

However once you had 20+ Tory MPs going on the radio, including some who weren't the usual suspects, it was pretty clear that the issue was toxic.

Williamson offered to resign & he should have; this isn't something you can blame on civil servants. He simply wasn't on top of his brief for the most important set piece event that he's had for months... this is what happens when you put people who are awful ministers in important jobs.

He only got the education job because it didn't require a security clearance (as he was sacked for allegedly leaking classified news from the NSC) & he needed to be 'rewarded' for helping Boris win the backing of MPs in the leadership race; the same reason why Grant Shapps, who was a middling & below average junior minister under cameron, became transport secretary. Every first cabinet has people given plum jobs as rewards & they're often sh**t at it.

His vanity is also pretty hilarous; he was pictured & filmed drinking out of a mug for some sort of surly frontpage apology spread; when I read he was a student politician it all made sense...

I'm not sure about this. The number of MPs coming out to criticise was a lot fewer than you had over Barnard Castle and I don't think any of the Tories called for him to be sacked. I think it was the realisation that the whole story was going to happen again over GCSEs and that having the same story in the papers for 10 days wasn't sustainable.

[EastAnglianLefty]

This is probably to be expected - most of the most eager combatants in culture wars don't seem to have any interest in actual culture, of any variety.

[EastAnglianLefty]

fwiw a very good tick to spot in politicians/spokespeople is when someone says something is nonense it isn't actually a denial!

Under ordinary circumstances this is true, but given that neither Johnson nor his inner circle have any hesitation in lying any time it's convenient, trying to tease out hidden meanings in their statements isn't that useful.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Most of it is incoherent, the rest is gibberish. No, rural Aberdeenshire is not 'progressive'.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Saw this on reddit and was curious as to what you guys think



https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/ijayhq/a_map_the_different_catagories_of_voter_used_by/

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/pol3d_main.html

Apparently the classifications are calculated from regression models which estimate a score for each constituency on social, economic and globalist/nationalist axes, then classify them based on these. Some are a bit strange, but by and large accurate to the extent that such an exercise can ever be. I think the Tory-held Scottish seats being classified as “progressive” highlights how left to the rest of the UK Scotland is. (Btw the progressive category is not in the US sense of the word but rather centre-left, New Labour/Lib Dem-ish.)

Yeah, that's still gibberish. There is no similarity between the politics of Perth & North Perthshire, Cambridge and Birmingham Ladywood and none of them have 'New Labour' politics. The main thing this map shows is that the underlying model is a bad one.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I actually would argue that those three seats are fairly similar. They vote for left-leaning parties and are strongly pro-Remain.

I question whether the second statement is actually true (the Tories matched their UK national share in Perthshire 2017 and had a comfortable plurality in local elections; the SNP representatives for the area have consistently been on the right of the party), but even aside from that why on earth would you argue that Cambridge and Birmingham Ladywood are at all similar? I just genuinely can't understand how you could come to that conclusion at all.

Although actually, I've found a new worst bit of that map: Tottenham is classed as 'progressive' and Hornsey & Wood Green as 'strong left'. Lolololol.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I actually would argue that those three seats are fairly similar. They vote for left-leaning parties and are strongly pro-Remain.

I question whether the second statement is actually true (the Tories matched their UK national share in Perthshire 2017 and had a comfortable plurality in local elections; the SNP representatives for the area have consistently been on the right of the party), but even aside from that why on earth would you argue that Cambridge and Birmingham Ladywood are at all similar? I just genuinely can't understand how you could come to that conclusion at all.

Although actually, I've found a new worst bit of that map: Tottenham is classed as 'progressive' and Hornsey & Wood Green as 'strong left'. Lolololol.

Cambridge and Ladywood are demographically very different, but show strong similarities in their voting record in both the Commons and the EU referendum.

This is very much not true.

[EastAnglianLefty]

In that Labour get 75% plus in Ladywood and the Lib Dems lose their deposit, whereas Cambridge was Labour breaking 50% is counted as a landslide. This is not complicated.

[EastAnglianLefty]

You do realise that Perth and North Perthshire contains Perth. Not really the hill to die on if you want to disprove the model.

I don't know Perth well, but what's the argument that it's particularly deprived? I had a look on the Scottish IMD map and the south side of the city looks to be very comfortable. The north of the city is somewhat more deprived, but not to any great extent - the headline figures look similar to Arbroath, which I certainly wouldn't characterise as a particularly hard-up area.

[EastAnglianLefty]

With PMQs there's always the question of who the audience is. If the audience is the lobby then I don't think Rayner's style is ever going to be appreciated, especially when she's facing Raab rather than Johnson. If the audience is Facebook via clips, then I think Rayner's bluntness could go down rather well with a lot of our target voter pool - similar to the way that Prescott was actually a much better deputy for Blair than the latter had first thought.

[EastAnglianLefty]

On this note I just realised that the three most well positioned corbynite MPs from the 2015 & 2017 intake are Rayner, Sam Tarry and Dan Carden who were all officials in trade unions. They know how to play the game & do the graft.

Although unlike the other two, Rayner actually won a contested selection. Carden's shortlist was thoroughly stitched up, whilst Tarry's primary local challenger was suspended from the party on the morning of the initial selection. Which does give some clue as to how much better her retail political skills are than the other two.

[EastAnglianLefty]

On this note I just realised that the three most well positioned corbynite MPs from the 2015 & 2017 intake are Rayner, Sam Tarry and Dan Carden who were all officials in trade unions. They know how to play the game & do the graft.

Although unlike the other two, Rayner actually won a contested selection. Carden's shortlist was thoroughly stitched up, whilst Tarry's primary local challenger was suspended from the party on the morning of the initial selection. Which does give some clue as to how much better her retail political skills are than the other two.

Though the "stitch up" in Walton was to stop "Big" Joe Anderson (or one of his placepersons, at least) getting it, so its hard to be too exercised about that one.

I see the argument, but for all Anderson's charm and willingness to be a team-player, he might have struggled to rise as high in the PLP as Graham Stringer has managed.