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

[Estrella]

Hey, do y'all remember when Boris was this amazingly popular invincible man of the people etc?

To be fair to him, people do simply get tired of politicians. It's most likely just fatigue after all of his...er, eleven months in power. 

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1276960024355618817

[Estrella]

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.

[Estrella]

I'm watching Monty Python's Flying Circus on Netflix and that makes quite a few political jokes aimed at the Heath government in particular. Home Secretary Reginald Maudling was a common target for satire in general, especially when he resigned from that post in a bribery scandal.

Flying Circus can itself be very hit and miss - if one sketch is boring, something better will be along in a few minutes. The third season very much isn't the best, apart from the "Dennis Moore" episode; Chapman's alcoholism was pretty bad by that point for one thing.

I'm an unashamed Python fan and I find the 'hit and miss' nature of Flying Circus to be overstated - most of what you get in the first two seasons hits, at least for me. When Chapman began to lose control and Cleese began to lose interest in the third season is when it begins to fall apart a bit, but even then there's some good stuff in the last two seasons.

And to avoid going totally off topic, Flying Circus' best political joke is the Conservative candidate from the end of the Mr Hilter sketch.

[Estrella]

Re Westminster's attitudes to Indyref2, there's the possibility that Boris being the, er, pragmatic politician he is, could come to a realization that having 50-odd less non-Conservative seats in the Commons (among other things) might not be a bad thing.

[Estrella]

[...]
Why would Belgium or Latvia (or the UK for that matter) want to make it on the world stage. The world’s a scary place mun and I don’t particularly see the logic in smaller countries getting themselves dragged into greater power politics.
[...]
I do think there’s a good point to be made here, which is that EU partisans like to lie and say it’s all about promoting peace and democracy and fluffy bunnies and ‘European values’ and all the rest, but we don’t need an EU for any of that. We do need an EU so that failed politicians can get their snouts in the trough and arses in the air, and we need an EU so that small countries can play at being big countries, and we need an EU so that national politicians can spend copious amounts of time arguing over problems (the Euro, Schengen, EU budgetary contributions being funnelled to states that other EU countries don’t like) that wouldn’t exist if we didn’t have an EU in its present form.

This is the reason why Sir Humphrey would be a catastrophic politician; at a certain point, one crosses the cynicism event horizon and it's no longer about taking a realistic look at the world, but just denying reality for the sake of edgy hot takes about how ~nothing matters~.

[Estrella]

BBC banning staff from Pride as it could breach impartiality rules.

Hilariously hypocritical from a company that publishes things like this. The original version of the guidance apparently banned participation even in personal capacity (and still includes a bizarre rule against "virtue signalling"), but now they're waffling about it being allowed if it's not "politicised or contested".

I still don't understand how unconvincingly pretending that queer people don't work there would make BBC seem more impartial to right-wing chronical complainers, but I digress.

[Estrella]

Just as well that Trumpism is so popular in this country, then......

I'm afraid to say it probably is. Not Trump himself, but that same level of boorish reactive populism with Boris.

This is only vaguely on topic, but it's why I dislike people saying that country X is oh-so-progressive (or at least not reactionary) because a poll shows that everyone and their dog hates Trump: in UK's case, 76% would vote for Biden. Political analysts and people who think they are political analysts *cough* *cough* this place need to realize that in the real world, almost no-one cares about ideologies and policies of foreign politicians; the only thing they see is style, and they form their opinion based on that. Of course Europe has a more, uh, civilized political culture so everyone's going to hate Trump, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't support that sort of reactionary demagogy if it conforms to the style of politics they're familiar with. REEEE OBUMMERCARE will not get you very far in Europe, but REEEE EUROCRATS will.

[Estrella]

This is where we are at folks

https://twitter.com/lgbtqiacatfem/status/1356971438012567553

None of this will ever get reported as the joke it is. No journo will investigate the dark money funding this crap, the links with right wing US 'heritage' groups and the endless threats of lawsuits for anyone taking transphobia to task. Because they are all making money off of it.

There's a crisis in British feminism, with British cis women, just as dangerous and destructive as men falling down into the incel, alt-right etc pipeline over the past few years.

In Eastern Europe at least, the typical person you'd expect to hear the phrase "gender ideology" from is a red-faced nonce of a priest giving a particularly deranged sermon about anything from muh gays sexually abusing children to, yes, feminism.

That made up my mind on the subject of TERFs, by the way.

[Estrella]

On that point it's hard to describe but there's certainly a tendency for people who think of themselves as being progressive to get their mind absolutely warped by what is fair to call propaganda; a lot of it is targeted at what I'd broadly call middle class mothers with outlandish & highly sexualised theories.

Hot take: this is UK's version of American suburban wine moms getting into QAnon.

[Estrella]

Handforth Parish Council. Discuss.

[Estrella]

[Estrella]

That actually seems like... a pretty damn huge scandal?

I don't think the old lady is sleeping well tonight.

[Estrella]

This Tory obsession with plagiarising Republicans is getting ridiculous.

https://mobile.twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1362022590064304129

[Estrella]

Rumours abounding in the last 24 hours that the life of the Queen Consort is "drawing peacefully to a close", to use the 1930s vernacular.

So they're gonna euthanize him to fit the news cycle?

TIL

Dawson, who supported the "gentle growth of euthanasia", admitted in the diary that he hastened the King's death by injecting him, after 11.00 p.m., with two consecutive lethal injections: 3/4 of a grain of morphine followed shortly afterwards by a grain of cocaine. Dawson wrote that he acted to preserve the King's dignity, to prevent further strain on the family, and so that the King's death at 11:55 p.m. could be announced in the morning edition of The Times newspaper rather than "less appropriate ... evening journals". Neither Queen Mary, who was intensely religious and might not have sanctioned euthanasia, nor the Prince of Wales was consulted.

[Estrella]

Minimum wage increase from April, eh? My country's so-called "liberal" governing party can't even accomplish that.

Ay, there's the rub.

[Estrella]

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.

Cutting out unforced errors can't hurt.

(just this morning we woke up to the news SKS had decided to mark Easter by visiting a church - all well and good you might say, except that this one believes gay people can be "cured"; not just that, but then PM May got stick for visiting it a few years ago)

A pretty huge & stupid error, and quite worrying after the other recent failures for LGBT rights within Labour- I'm actually quite surprised that there hasn't been an on the record apology from Starmer over this.

It appears that Prince Charles also visited it recently...

Did Labour have any big failures on the LGB part recently? (That the party has a very big problem with the T is sadly obvious)

[Estrella]

I would be wary of reading a *massive* amount into an undertaking a decade ago which was putting forward far from the most popular option for electoral reform, and for a large number of people turned into a de facto plebiscite on one of the most despised politicians of modern times.

Though of course it *could* be passed without a referendum, especially if various parties committed to that in their manifestos.

It's not the AV referendum but people don't tend to vote for actual electoral reform unless there is a very obvious need for it. And sadly, the last two hung parliaments haven't shown a very obvious need for it.

I wouldn't be surprised if the message people took from the Cameron I government is that coalitions automatically lead to chaos, disasters, extremely unpopular measures etc etc.

[Estrella]

British polling industry gonna British polling industry.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ksituan/status/1390553072368193537

[Estrella]

Not sure where to ask this, so I figured this would be the best place: anybody have any idea what happened in the 1989 European elections? The Greens apparently won 2.3 million votes, that is 14.5% (?!).

[Estrella]

Bye, bitch.

https://twitter.com/MattHancock/status/1408836570069753858

[Estrella]

Has this guy gone completely crazy?

That Rubicon was crossed a while ago :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQA2X4yvK_g

this is what happens when you can't sleep at two am

[Estrella]

Can't speak for anyone else but I'm sure I probably knew about breastfeeding before primary school, unless this is some bizarre thing linked to 'woke culture' scare stories. I'm not going to waste time finding out what he meant, however. What a pathetic and sad little man.

'Chest feeding' is a transphobic straw man argument about things being relabeled in the interests of gender diversity/inclusion.

Progressive activists said that they would not try to claim young children as having trans identities. That has turned out to be a lie. No doubt they will similarly push for euthanasia laws to be extended to terminally ill little children.

You might be surprised to find out what the word "terminal" means.

[Estrella]

Matt Hancock is the first minister to resign in order to spend less time with his family.

Is he?

[Estrella]

Some Guardian readers want to know why the footballers are taking a more bolder stance than Labour? Where's Labour?

AlbanianinLondon
AlbanianinLondon
3 hours ago
5

England Team is doing miles more than Keir Starmer in opposing this government’s deadly and racist attitudes. They are most competent opposition of an incompetent political class.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/14/england-footballers-new-generation-britain-progressive-young-

Ah yes, news website comment sections, truly the agoras of our age where the most pressing issues are discussed among the brightest of minds.

[Estrella]

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.

To add to the above: reading in the Guardian that the Tories are far-right makes me feel better about being a Tory.  It's a bit like the joke about the two Jews reading an anti-Semitic paper.

Something I've been wondering about - what would y'all's ideal Tory party look like?