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

[EastAnglianLefty]

Those were of a different character though - there the Labour lead was simply a function of the Tory vote share having collapsed slightly faster.

If you must draw a comparison, the poll leads in 2017 are a better parallel.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Reading between the lines, it sounds like the Treasury didn't turn down a request from Williamson for more money, because neither he nor Sunak wants it; but also that HMT probably did tell DoE civil servants on the quiet that they shouldn't try to persuade Williamson to ask for more money because it wouldn't work and they'd lose friends in Downing Street if they tried it.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Something I truly do not understand is why so many politicians on the left seem to utterly despise the interests of young people, a voting bloc which is regularly among the most reliable for the left. Every other bloc seems to get so many concessions, but the youth just consistently get spit on. If this didn't happen so regularly, it's easy to imagine that youth turnout would be much, much higher across the board.

We literally had a general election last year where Labour's entire strategy was predicated on a "youthquake" surge in youth turnout that never materialised...

It doesn't help that both sides of the argument seem to think it's just about getting the under-25s to vote more, when in fact the increased electoral salience of 'youth' issues is because they increasingly affect everybody under the age of about 45 (and the 25 to 34 bracket actually tends to be more strongly Labour than 18 to 24 year olds, because they're less likely to be cushioned from the full realities of the housing and labour markets.)

[EastAnglianLefty]

Worth noting that a) whilst anti-lockdown feeling is fairly strong amongst Tory members, it's very weak amongst Tory voters and b) UKIP/Brexit Party are still getting a negligible share of the vote, so there's less obvious pressure for Johnson to move right. The backbenches are fractious but not yet mutinous.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I haven't seen it discussed but this does make it marginally easier to do a big reshuffle in the Spring; but every suffering Government has talk of a big reshuffle which often ends up as a failure.

I'm not sure it does.

Firing Cummings means that Tory MPs have a reason to like Johnson. That disappears as soon as he has a reshuffle and has to let somebody down.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Starmer is obviously playing politics but as a lawyer (ok granted not a constitutional one) he needs to acknowledge that Devolution in the United Kingdom has been an institutional failure. Assymetrical federalism in general is bound to put salt in certain wounds and create discord. But Labour seem to trudge along with "that's just the way things are done around here". If Labour were to come out in support of a radical constitutional overhaul that includes an English parliament and Scottish and Northern Irish devolution being turned into symmetric, and equal, federalism, would that be such a bad idea?

Yes, it would be a very bad idea.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Well Northern Ireland would yes - the point is that at the very least Northern Irish politicians would have a constitutional lock on their devolution, and in exchange they don't vote in Westminster affairs ( i know such mechanisms already exist in some cases by hey ho). Similar situation for Scotland - the fact that Jo Swinson played an active role in voting to tripling English students tuition fees while negotiating zero tuition fees for Scots is absolutely scandalous.

This never happened. Tuition fees were abolished by the Scottish Parliament in a process Jo Swinson had nothing to do with.

And given that EVEL is already a thing, you seem to be tilting at windmills anyway.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Well Northern Ireland would yes - the point is that at the very least Northern Irish politicians would have a constitutional lock on their devolution, and in exchange they don't vote in Westminster affairs ( i know such mechanisms already exist in some cases by hey ho). Similar situation for Scotland - the fact that Jo Swinson played an active role in voting to tripling English students tuition fees while negotiating zero tuition fees for Scots is absolutely scandalous.

This never happened. Tuition fees were abolished by the Scottish Parliament in a process Jo Swinson had nothing to do with.

And given that EVEL is already a thing, you seem to be tilting at windmills anyway.

Swinson was a leading member of the Scottish Liberal Democratic Party. She eventually went on to lead the Liberal Democrats.

When fees were abolished in Scotland, Jo Swinson was 21 years old. She wasn't a prominent figure at the time.

[EastAnglianLefty]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/27/boris-johnson-defends-covid-tier-system-england-tory-backlash-grows

I hope I'm wrong, but if one in 80 people really have Covid right now in the UK and the daily death toll is in the mid hundreds, perhaps it's too early to relax restrictions? Hopefully they aren't just doing it because they set themselves a deadline of 2 December and don't want to lose face. Still, the tier restrictions seem pretty strict so maybe it can stop a third wave. Though is hundreds of daily deaths and a high stable level of cases really an ok outcome?

Restrictions aren't really being loosed in any meaningful sense. Less than 2% of the country is in tier 1, tier 2 is basically the old tier 3 and tier 3 is not very different from the lockdown restrictions.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The deal has been imminent for upwards of 12 hours now, so I wouldn't rule out one last burst of idiocy. It's unlikely, but not impossible.

[EastAnglianLefty]

In 2017, the Tories were hoping to win the votes of people who hadn't voted in 2015 but voted Leave in 2016 and were disappointed. Anecdotally, a lot of them turned out in 2019 whereas the people who voted Labout with qualms in 2017 did not in 2019.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The closure of all London schools has been announced, after a hamfisted attempt to do it on a borough-by-borough basis which didn't appear to be backed by any coherent methodology. Gavin Williamson continues to hold the coveted title of most conspicuously incompetent minister in the government.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The London decision was baffling; I realise I'm going down another topic but it seems striking that England has struggled a lot compared to other countries who operate a federal system, in the sense that political leaders can't easily justify the borders of divergence & the public don't understand why they're in.

There was some gripping in Scotland & Wales based on the changes over the last year but people understood A.) Why it was being done B.) Where the idea came from. The one ray of fortune before was that they've avoided the tempation (and begging from outer london tories) to split the capital up into sections... until now.

I would have also hoped the DofE would have known how many london secondary school kids (and a lesser extent primary kids) travel across borough to get to school; it's something around 20%!

The puzzling thing about the school closures is that whilst there clearly wasn't a rational basis for the boroughs initially told to remain open, it doesn't necessarily follow any clear partisan logic.

All the Tory boroughs had schools closed (even when, as with Westminster and RBKC, case rates were low) and it was only Labour boroughs (plus Lib Dem Kingston) that stayed open. But Brent and Ealing (both Labour-controlled) were shut, whilst Harrow stayed open (even though all the non-London authorities is borders also had schools closed.) Islington and Greenwich, both of which tried to close schools before Christmas, were told to stay open, but Waltham Forest (which did the same) was allowed to shut. Lambeth and Lewisham were told to stay open, but Southwark was allowed to close.

Undoubtedly Williamson is both very incompetent and very partisan (this Cabinet's Grayling, arguably) but it's hard to see what was being played at with that one.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Maybe its as simple as being petty enough to target boroughs (eg Greenwich) that contradicted him?

But Harrow hasn't done anything, whereas Waltham Forest has - and I haven't noticed Lambeth being any louder than Southwark either.

[EastAnglianLefty]

With schools and universities now shut for the foreseeable future, it’s difficult to see how the restrictions can practically be made stricter, short of ‘well if we self-nuked the country then that would prevent anymore COVID-related deaths’.

Shutting the construction sector would likely make a difference. In addition, there are probably some businesses still making staff come in which could plausibly shift to WFH, but it's not something that would make a huge difference. One thing that is worth considering is the shift from the first lockdown, where people went beyond what the guidance called for in terms of distancing and not doing activities, to the current situation where people are sticking to the letter or as much less as they feel is reasonable.

[EastAnglianLefty]

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).

That's one hell of an understatement. There's a reason the Welsh devolution referendum only barely succeeded.

[EastAnglianLefty]

This also got me thinking again about Gordon Brown’s encounter with the “bigoted woman”. I view it as a truly tragic moment in British politics, not because of how it may or may not have affected that general election, but because cemented it being taboo to dismiss concerns about “mass immigration” as being scapegoating not grounded in economic reality.

Honestly my perception is that this moment has become much more important in hindsight (past few years) than it was considered at the time.

It's often forgotten that Rochdale was a Labour gain in 2010, so it didn't even have an impact locally. The mythologising of the incident really got going as part of the 2010 Labour leadership election, for reasons that in retrospect had little to do with national electoral politics.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Green support bouncing up is a pattern seen in several polls and is notable but perhaps not significant in the long-term. Neither a boost for the Lib Dems nor a fall for the Tories has been seen in other polls, so Occam's razor applies.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Alternatively they could build a high speed rail link between London and Darlington so that any senior treasury staff that did get moved there would still be within range of the Royal Opera House and Harrod’s.

It's a couple of hours on the ECML already, which is a bit much for day-to-day use but is fine for going back to London at the weekend. There are middle-class bits of Darlington itself, but I suspect you'll also see staff buying houses in Gosforth and commuting from there.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The leader of the Labour Party should campaign on whatever issues the Labour Party polls best on. There are some areas where particular local issues get people more engaged than nurses' pay (although there won't be many of those), but those issues are still irrelevant to 99% of the country because they don't live in the same local authority.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Starmer to his credit has been talking a lot about local government funding- both in the context of a decade of cuts & then largely in the context of the council tax hike. There was even an opposition day debate on it-  The lobby just decided it was boring (it was!) and yet somehow criticise him for talking about something more likely to get headlines.

*I would be curious to know how many people even know the difference- a rather large number of people think that the local MP is also in charge of council services. We're not taught this stuff at school!

And part of the reason we're not taught about it is that it is both complex and intensely boring. Most people do not want to understand the difference between the responsibilities of a parish council, a district council, a county council and a unitary council, because it just doesn't affect them until something goes wrong and they find whichever council is responsible isn't willing or able to help them.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's not just what happened, but the way it happened and how the Met has tried to justify itself - the level of lazy mendacity is indicative of a force which believes that the rules do not apply to them.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's Bristol, so a lot of those trustafarian dicks will be local anyway.

[EastAnglianLefty]

But that is the sort of thing quite a few low-information voters *do* say. Whereas a common criticism from the politically engaged is, indeed, that Starmer and his party have not been opposing the Tories enough. Which maybe just shows its a no-win situation if you aren't in government?

Yeah that data point reads to me like people being asked if a politician is doing politics, and saying yes.

Agreed, it's an insipid question. I suppose the significance to be drawn from it, though, is that it's part of a poll that's being broadcast loudly and portrayed as valid, as opposed to being buried and shrugged off. Starmer still hasn't found a way to steal the spotlight from the Tories and their preferred media narrative. (Probably won't happen until we stop talking about the 'Red Wall' altogether, tbh).

I doubt there's any way of controlling the media narrative, given how reflexively loyal to the Tories the bulk of it is these days, particularly at an editorial level. The best you can do is not to present an easy target, but that's a defensive strategy. You need some way of getting your message out despite a media that is aggressively disinterested in helping you with that.

I think that is probably a bigger challenge for Starmer than the generalised background grumbling.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Biden was the nominee in the run-up to the election and is now the incumbent. There was a lot of important news to report then and he had more opportunity to drive the narrative.

In contrast, we're years out from the next election, Starmer has no real influence on what happens right now and there isn't very much political news now that is getting much attention. So mistakes like this get more attention, because there isn't as much to drive them out of the news.

That said, I'm not sure this shows the benefit of being terminally online. Johnson had a screw-up like this on a regular basis during the election campaign and it didn't make very much difference. Starmer doesn't have nearly the same teflon qualities, but it still won't be a story even the terminally online will recall in 6 months time.