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

[Cassius]

Have we heard from the various weird FBPE twitter people about this yet?

https://www.cityam.com/michel-barnier-calls-for-halt-to-immigration-across-europe/

I mean for a lot of those types ‘the globe’ ends at the straights of Gibraltar in the south and the Oder-Neisse line in the east so I imagine they wouldn’t be hugely concerned.

As for the so-called ‘online radicalisation’ of the ‘boomers’, Ofcom did a study back in 2018 which found that the main news platform used by over-65’s (at that point most of the ‘boomer’ generation) was TV (at 94%), followed by the papers (60%), Radio (54%) and finally the internet at just 38% usage. The two most popular individual news sources were the BBC (82%) and ITV (53%), whilst Facebook and Twitter were used by just 12% and 2% respectively. Of course, no study’s perfect but it makes a fair degree of anecdotal sense. Older people have always been a relatively Tory leaning demographic (even in 1997, according to Mori, Labour only led by a measly 4 points), it’s just that Labour have been... particularly off putting at the last couple of elections given their leadership and the general image of the party. But if old people are being ‘radicalised’ by anything it’s what they read in the paper or see on the BBC (as people on the left never tire of pointing out!), not by anything online, at least for the most part.

[Cassius]

There is a case for saying a *minority* of older voters have been radicalised by Facebook especially.

I’m aware that some research has been done on this in America (haven’t read it unfortunately), so I’d be interested to know if work has been done on it in the UK. You’re probably right that a minority have been ‘radicalised’ by social media (although anecdotally I’d say this is much more prevalent amongst people of my generation, on both sides of the spectrum), but not enough to make an appreciable difference to the overall voting totals. Of course, you also have to put a lot of trust in polling done by YouGov and Mori on voter demographics, which I’m increasingly sceptical of.

[Cassius]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57176858

Rail to come under unified state control. There will be private contracting though.

When will the Tory right get fed up?

Probably never. There are very few MP’s from the pre-Cameron intakes, who tended to be more doctrinaire when it came to shrinking the state, left over. Whilst there are some fairly old-school economic liberals from the 2010 intake in particular (including in the present cabinet), I think most Conservative MP’s are primarily concerned with winning elections these days and this sort of thing is fairly popular with the public so they’ll let it slide.

The primary ‘economic’ issues that will cause problems for the government from the right are likely to be taxation and the various aspects of the government’s ‘green agenda’, both things over which Johnson should be very careful indeed.

[Cassius]

Perhaps if he’d done more research when writing the Churchill Factor he’d know that his waifu didn’t write any books whilst in office (although I suppose Disraeli did write Endymion whilst he was still PM).

[Cassius]

Yeah, it seems as though some people on the left have been sidling over to PR as well, even though PR would almost certainly put the kibosh on the possibility of any of their more radical proposals ever being enacted.

[Cassius]

2019 was the first general election since 1959 where Labour’s seat percentage was lower than their vote percentage. Based on Labour’s current coalition, FPTP is reasonably likely to continue to disadvantage them, as their votes are reasonably packed; there are lots of seats where they get above 60%, but far fewer where the Tories do the same.

True, but on the other hand, assuming that a switch to PR leads to at least some fragmentation of the Labour Party (which seems quite likely even if the party itself keeps going), the route to any anti-Tory coalition government is going to run through one or more centrist political formations who will block at least some of the left’s priorities. This is the flaw of ‘progressive alliance’ thinking, in that it assumes, wrongly, that the Lib Dems are basically aligned with ‘progressive’ priorities. PR will simply give them (or a similar centrist force) the whip hand in any parliament.

Perhaps if he’d done more research when writing the Churchill Factor he’d know that his waifu didn’t write any books whilst in office (although I suppose Disraeli did write Endymion whilst he was still PM).

What about the final volume of The Second World War?

I was under the impression that he finalised that before he returned to office. I suppose he might’ve done some work on the History of the English Speaking Peoples whilst PM though.

[Cassius]

The shining prophet of moral clarity that is the Guardian’s ex-gossip columnist Marina Dudley-Williams.

In any case, Johnson is much too soft, lazy and incompetent to ever be ‘Britain’s Orban’ (quite apart from the obvious fact that Britain today is not the same as Hungary in 2010).

[Cassius]

The pandemic is over - the disease in now endemic in the UK but that ultimately doesn’t matter because we can now combat it with vaccines. 60% of the UK population (including children) have had at least one dose of the vaccine, that’ll probably rise to about 66% by June 21st based on the current pace of vaccinations. Nearly all of the most vulnerable groups have now had their two vaccines. It’s Summer. There’s no evidence that the “Indian” or any other variant has the ability to evade the vaccine in any significant way. It’s over and it’s time to return to normal.

[Cassius]

https://youtu.be/XZD-uAo3vQ8

1.04 = Five seconds into watching a clip from the freshly launched GB News.

[Cassius]

It does seems as though the there's only one thing Cressida Dick isn’t interested in and that’s bent coppers. Son.

[Cassius]

The former Speaker who formerly had a sideline in MP’ing has defected to the Labour Party. Another ego to add the roster.

[Cassius]

Haremcock is apparently staying.

[Cassius]

Tinfoil Hat O’Clock: Johnson decided to get rid of Hancock after Cummings’ gave his evidence, but needed a way to lever him out without it looking like it was caused by Cummings, so the government leaked the 18 certificate CCTV camera footage.

[Cassius]

Sky News isn't particularly right wing or anti-woke (KRM has only a minority stake in it these days)

There is of course GB News, but viewing figures for that are approaching only visible with microscope territory (which may of course tell its own story) I really don't think that simply trying to import US tropes on this straight over to the UK is particularly wise.

Rather like taking the knee

The embrace of the ‘culture wars’ concept by some on the right was always stupid, especially given that the popularisation of the term in the States by Pat Buchanan in 1992 ultimately did the Republicans more harm than good. The bane of UK politics continues to be UK politicians and anoraks who are also aficionados of American politics; some of the sincere believers in ‘culture wars’ probably read too much into Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail by Hunter S. Thompson and thought “ah, shiny concept that needs some #analysis”.

[Cassius]

True, although as far as I’m aware Labour were in power for all but eight of the years in which these events took place, including periods when the council was one of the most radical in Britain.

[Cassius]

The only thing Cummings has a point on re the government’s pandemic response is the failure to shut the borders in March 2020. That was the only point at which an Antipodean solution to the pandemic was a possibility (although given that Britain is neither Australia nor New Zealand that was always a possibility only). Since then the only way of keeping deaths at an absolute minimum would have been to keep the country in a permanent state of March style lockdown, which would have been fairly unsaleable politically back in the Summer of 2020 when no-one had any concrete idea as to the timescale of vaccine development. Cummings’ is bullsh**tting (not surprising but hey ho) if he thinks that his approach (of instituting lockdowns a couple of weeks sooner than the government eventually did) would have made a significant dent in the death toll.

[Cassius]

I mean, the only paper I read on a regular basis is the Guardian so as usual you’re missing the point. Frankly, expecting ‘science, reason and any kind of realistic data-based (lol) policy’ to inform decision making in this situation (as in any other) was always a fantasy. Of course someone like Cummings, having spent x-number of years huddled up in a County Durham bunker imbibing Otto Von Bismarck through his eyeballs, might actually con himself into believing that, but someone like you with a bit of common sense shouldn’t.

[Cassius]

I mean, the only paper I read on a regular basis is the Guardian

This.......surprises me.

Well, it’s free (because I am a good Tory voter and thus mean and tight fisted as regards all potential items of expenditure bar booze and cricket tickets) and reading their opinion section gives my blood vessels good exercise in the morning.

[Cassius]

The Lib Dems are calling for UN Peacekeepers to be deployed to Afghanistan.

Perhaps Vince Cable can ask the Chinese to take part.

Well Ben Wallace certainly appears open to a possible high tech re-enactment of the Retreat from Kabul by the British Army!

[Cassius]

Why should Raab resign? We’ve not had combat troops in Afghanistan since 2014, and whilst I’d agree that there is much to chew over as regards Britain’s role in Afghanistan, the problems relating to that role long predate the current government. Plus, it’s not as if we exercised any significant influence over the US’ decision to pull their remaining forces out; regardless of the strength of our past commitments, we’ve been very much a peripheral player for the last few years. The bottom line is that this was a US affair and that the US doesn’t care very much about what we think (nor does it care very much about what the other NATO powers think).

[Cassius]

I think some of our MP’s need to sit down and have a nice cold drink (or perhaps that’s the problem).

[Cassius]

I am 100% certain that if the Vicar’s daughter was still PM then everything in Afghanistan would have been absolutely great forever. 100% certain.

[Cassius]

A lot of MP’s remain severely deluded (or maybe wilfully blind), both in general about Britain’s level of influence in the world and in particular over Britain’s level of influence in Afghanistan and over US policy there. Any government, whether it were led by May, Cameron or a Labour PM, would have received the same (faulty) intelligence advice, and given the lack of bandwidth caused by coronavirus I very much doubt that the outcome would have been significantly different under May, Cameron or a Labour PM. This session of parliament is a particularly worthless one - Johnson should have stayed on his holidays.

However, I suppose the recall of parliament does represent an excellent chance for the armchair generals on the Tory backbench to sagely reflect on what they (exercising no executive responsibility) would have ‘done differently’, and for the rest of serial wafflers on the backbench of both parties to get a shot at appearing on telly (I notice this debate was rather better attended than debates on quotidian domestic issues, which aren’t as glamorous but where MP’s can actually exercise some meaningful influence and input, generally tend to be).

[Cassius]

From that video you can tell he is not a true aristocrat. Far too materialistic. I must say that I find Rees-Mogg quite vacuous, though sometimes rather amusing.

British aristocrats love money and material possessions like a cat loves catnip. They just don’t like having to put in any actual effort to acquire said money and material possessions. You are correct of course that Rees-Mogg isn’t an aristocrat but there are… other reasons for that.

[Cassius]

Michael Gove has greatly enhanced his reputation in the race for my vote in the next Tory leadership election.