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

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

But the MoS this morning has "TORY MPs SAY THIS IS BOJO's FALKLANDS", so......

How much is from Bojo taking a strong pro-ukrain position compared to other European leaders and how much is just the war overshadowing other news.

[MABA 2020]

But the MoS this morning has "TORY MPs SAY THIS IS BOJO's FALKLANDS", so......

Desperately trying to will it to be true

[Logical]

London Bridge is near.
https://twitter.com/RoyaNikkhah/status/1500388125201379330

[CumbrianLefty]

But the MoS this morning has "TORY MPs SAY THIS IS BOJO's FALKLANDS", so......

How much is from Bojo taking a strong pro-ukrain position compared to other European leaders and how much is just the war overshadowing other news.

Most of it is a totally fantastical fever dream, in truth.

[Torrain]

Johnson currently at pre-partygate levels of popularity - turns out war in Europe does still produce a ‘rally-round-the-flag’ effect, even if it can’t shift you out of a net-negative approval.
https://mobile.twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1500883993725747202
I guess the real question is whether that persists, and what on Earth happens during the local elections…

[Cassius]

Johnson currently at pre-partygate levels of popularity - turns out war in Europe does still produce a ‘rally-round-the-flag’ effect, even if it can’t shift you out of a net-negative approval.
https://mobile.twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1500883993725747202
I guess the real question is whether that persists, and what on Earth happens during the local elections…

Still two months to go before the locals, which is a Hell of a long time. Who knows what the situation will be vis-a-vis Ukraine, but my guess is we’ll be living through the unpleasant hangover of both the conflict and the sanctions, which I suspect won’t do much for Johnson’s popularity. On the other hand, were the locals held today I’d expect a less dreadful than previously anticipated performance for the Tories that Johnson would be able to spin as turning the corner, giving the Conservative party yet another excuse to avoid making a decision on his future.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Note also that because that poll is a weekly one the approval figures in it are particularly bouncy.

[Blair]

They haven't (for some reason) tweeted out the Voter intention- which is still Labour 40, Conservatives 37.

The same as last week but broadly a sign about where we are heading; it's not a surprise. I'm not sure we've something like this in my lifetime other than the very early days of Iraq (which obviously had the large anti-war movement too)

Even Afghanistan at its height only really got a week of back to back coverage in the news & that was largely full of stories about how much of a disaster the Government is.

I think the lesson with Boris is that his approval ratings will always find a way to recover (to a degree) and his Government will always find a way to tank them!  

[Blair]

If I was in No.10 I would be worried about this; not only is it Ian Dale saying it but the public want to see us doing more to help refugees, Priti Patel is already hated & the Home Office will keep creating bad story after bad story- please see my essay on why it should have been split up after Windrush!

https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1500915420995411975

[Cassius]

I know Dale is a media person and thus has the attention span of a botfly, but you'd think he'd understand that the Home Office's 'incompetence' with regards the processing of refugees is the intentional result of a policy that successive Conservative governments have pursued for the last decade, designed to minimise refugee intake from wheresoever that might be, with the full support of the right-leaning sections of the press and media that he belongs to.* Expecting the government to change up this process within weeks (or to reform it at all) is essentially magical thinking.

*This is, of course, a tactic that has been employed in other areas, such as at the DWP with the process of claiming universal credit; make the process as byzantine and inefficient as possible in order to reduce uptake, which enables the government to reduce uptake without precisely spelling out that the goal of the policy is to reduce uptake.

[Blair]

I know Dale is a media person and thus has the attention span of a botfly, but you'd think he'd understand that the Home Office's 'incompetence' with regards the processing of refugees is the intentional result of a policy that successive Conservative governments have pursued for the last decade, designed to minimise refugee intake from wheresoever that might be, with the full support of the right-leaning sections of the press and media that he belongs to.* Expecting the government to change up this process within weeks (or to reform it at all) is essentially magical thinking.

*This is, of course, a tactic that has been employed in other areas, such as at the DWP with the process of claiming universal credit; make the process as byzantine and inefficient as possible in order to reduce uptake, which enables the government to reduce uptake without precisely spelling out that the goal of the policy is to reduce uptake.

It's actually quite an interesting link- a lot of frankly middle class people & Conservative voters who had to claim universal credit for the first time in the pandemic were shocked to discover the number of nasty conditions within it- such as not getting as much if you have more than £6K in savings, not covering mortgages etc etc. They were of course aghast... but it had been one of the things boasted about it!

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/LouiseRawAuthor/status/1500587397276393478

[Blair]

These are ofc the same people who claim taking away their tax free status will lead to them shutting down on mass so lets see where this goes.

[Silent Hunter]

John Bercow has been found guilty of bullying and effectively banned for life from the parliamentary estate. Labour have also suspended him.

[Blair]

John Bercow has been found guilty of bullying and effectively banned for life from the parliamentary estate. Labour have also suspended him.

FBPE Twitter is defending him and ofc using the same excuses as Owen Paterson- it was a very obvious tell when Bercow defended him last year.

[Blair]

In another trend its interesting that many of the covid deniers in UK politics have now moved onto to parroting Russian propaganda- unsure if this is because they're idiots, because they want attention or because they've had their brains melted.

[YL]

In another trend its interesting that many of the covid deniers in UK politics have now moved onto to parroting Russian propaganda- unsure if this is because they're idiots, because they want attention or because they've had their brains melted.

I'm not really sure who you're talking about here -- there really aren't many people anywhere near the mainstream of UK politics who are pro Putin right now -- but I imagine the answer is that the sort of places they get their "news" from push both of those positions.

[Torrain]

Looks like Extinction Rebellion are planning a wave of disruption to energy production in the coming weeks.

Extinction Rebellion plan to block oil refineries next month to take a stand against fossil fuels
The group has also warned that following the blockades, it would "flood" London with people to create their largest number of roadblocks and cause "maximum disruption".

Climate change protesters have said they intend to block major UK oil refineries next month and "take a stand to stop fossil fuels once and for all".

Extinction Rebellion said the action would begin on 9 April with the aim of causing enough disruption "to create a tipping point moment".

The group has also warned that following the blockades of refineries, it would "flood" London with people to create their largest number of roadblocks.

It said the protest group, Just Stop Oil, will be joining the action at refineries and called on other organisations to take part.

As often with Extinction Rebellion, I remain highly sympathetic to the message, and utterly cynical about the methods. Slowing down energy production amidst a cost-of-living crisis and international tensions in the oil market is hardly going to win them friends in the public.

I imagine the only person who cheered at this headline was Rupert Murdoch, who may have been given a golden opportunity to run climate-sceptic headlines across the country for weeks at a time.

[CumbrianLefty]

ER are surely reaching the "they've *got* to be plants" stage.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Forceful Peter Oborne column defending Corbyn on Russia and savaging the Tories and British political establishment in general for their many years of courting Russian oligarch money and turning a blind eye to Putin’s influence in the UK:

Let’s imagine that Corbyn had somehow won the last election. That he had then filled up Labour Party coffers with Russian money; that his party chairman had an office in Moscow to advise oligarchs; that Corbyn personally had repeatedly visited a Russian oligarch whose father had been a KGB agent and close friend of Vladimir Putin, and that he had been reported to have ignored security service objections to secure this friend a peerage, and funnelled government money towards his paper.

For day after day there would have been front-page denunciations of Corbyn. He couldn’t have survived. In my view rightly so. Yet Boris Johnson is the one who’s done all of these things. But Corbyn is the one who’s supposed to be pro-Putin.

This is deranged.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia-ukraine-war-jeremy-corbyn-right-putin-oligarchs

[Farmlands]

His latest crime is to have criticised Nato’s over-aggressive eastward expansion, while supporting a negotiated solution to the Ukraine-Russia conflict. You can disagree or agree with Corbyn. I am not an expert on Russia or Ukraine, but these views do not strike me as either treacherous or unreasonable.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia-ukraine-war-jeremy-corbyn-right-putin-oligarchs

It's right there in the article that he again immediately turned to criticize NATO/opposing British politicians for Russian aggression, just like in 2018 with the Skripal poisonings. And given his noted pacifism, I doubt there'd be any machinery going Ukraine's way.

One of the most fortunate consequences of the 2019 election is that Britain had Boris to be at the helm of the UK's response to this war, as opposed to Corbyn, which would've been an unmitigated disaster for the West and our PR.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The extremely senior position of Seumas Milne in his leadership team does rather argue against that thesis, even if the remarks about the Conservative Party's interesting relationship to Russian money are perfectly valid in their own right. Most of the rest of the article heavily distorts the historical record, and does so in an especially laughable manner over the Skripal Affair. But he's an irrelevance now and so, frankly, is Peter Oborne.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Fair enough.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

And given his noted pacifism, I doubt there'd be any machinery going Ukraine's way.

Just to correct a common misunderstanding, but he is absolutely not a pacifist. Like a lot of people associated with what used to be called the New Left he is a believer in the notion of international alignment and bases his stances on this principle, not on a moral opposition to violence, which he does not have.

[Farmlands]

The extremely senior position of Seumas Milne in his leadership team does rather argue against that thesis, even if the remarks about the Conservative Party's interesting relationship to Russian money are perfectly valid in their own right. Most of the rest of the article heavily distorts the historical record, and does so in an especially laughable manner over the Skripal Affair. But he's an irrelevance now and so, frankly, is Peter Oborne.

Oh, absolutely. It's long been known how much the Russian oligarchy has benefited from their dealings in the United Kingdom. But I can't agree that the issue on its own, especially now given the sanctions imposed, is comparable to Corbyn's consistent poor response to Putin's actions.