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

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Is keir starmer trying to copy Biden's soft protectionism with his Buy British plan ?. He's also using a lot of law and order rethoric.
https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/1412145453106401284

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Rumour mill.

Boris "jokingly" threatened to demote Rishi to Health Secretary after a bust-up over net zero.  Sunak doesn't want to go full green loony as it will hurt poorer voters most whereas Boris is hell bent on trashing the economy in order to chase the fools' gold of net zero.  Anyway this "joke" didn't go down well and "sources close to the Chancellor" have said that if Boris dares to demote Sunak then Sunak will resign and organise a leadership challenge from the backbenches.  By the way rumour has it that Sunak would be replaced by Truss with Mogg as deputy.  Yeah that seems a stretch.

But wait there's more!  Boris wants to sack Priti Patel too and replace her with Gove (because of the illegal immigration getting out of hand) and her "sources" have made it clear she won't go quietly either.  Both Boris and Priti have lost a lot of popularity in the grassroots recently.

To round up: things might be about to get wild or it could all be a damp squib.  The latter is, of course, more likely.

That would all be great if the Tory grassroot had any real power but sadly you're one of the most powerless party member in the world.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Scottish independence would be 'Brexit times ten'

This is a basic point that has been missed. Scotland is linked so much more closely to the rest of the UK than it was to the EU. Just like Brexit, independence is an emotional but economically irrational policy, with no clear plan for how it can be done safely. Fortunately, despite feverish media commentary, a hypothetical second referendum is not a done deal by any means for Yes.

don't tell that to the fine inhabitants of /r/scotland.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Couldn't find the UK redistrcting thread.
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1435213967845208064

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Weird in Singapore cricket is mainly a sport followed by immigrants with a very strong ethenic divide, you've got all Indian teams and you've got anglo teams with almost no mixing despite all the infrastructure being shared. The native fanbase is negleible.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Williamson is now the numbers man for Jeremy Hunt, according to the Mirror. Probably tabloid gossip to some extent, but just about the only thing Williamson is good at is Tory parliamentary arithmetic - he was a pretty good Chief Whip and ran the campaigns of both May and Johnson.

Who the heck is going to prefer Jeremy Hunt (a man most known for an unfortunate rhyme with his name) over Boris ?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Williamson is now the numbers man for Jeremy Hunt, according to the Mirror. Probably tabloid gossip to some extent, but just about the only thing Williamson is good at is Tory parliamentary arithmetic - he was a pretty good Chief Whip and ran the campaigns of both May and Johnson.

Who the heck is going to prefer Jeremy Hunt (a man most known for an unfortunate rhyme with his name) over Boris ?

Hunt ran a pretty competent leadership campaign with an attractive pitch on social care and (as BoJo once could) can present himself as an outsider while remaining prominent because of his Health & Social Care committee chairmanship.

He’s probably too much of a wet to win (and a challenge looks really unlikely in the short-to-medium term), but he has gone with the party’s flow on Brexit and should not be dismissed out of hand.

Wasn't he pretty aggressive about NHS cost-cutting ? will that really play well with the electorate around now?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Can I ask why UK parties find it hard to recruit canidates local to the areas they're contesting, all 3 major parties seem to commonly pick random activists often from very far counstieunces are located to contest them.

Is there any particular reason for this ?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

I know it doesn't really matter and all that, but by all accounts today's PMQs was an absolute horror for Johnson - including being ticked off by the normally "tolerant" Speaker.

Quite possibly his worst ever.

Video link ?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

What are some good books to read about British politics ?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

I wonder what the demographics for the secular indians are, generarly in my personal experience and data seems to suggest that Muslim-indians growing up in the UK tend to be more religious than those from the same background who didn't leave to the UK.

Which community is the increasing number of irrelgious indians coming from ?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

A broken record but the hysteria over council by elections is getting to the stage where I’d ban them from Twitter.

It’s insane. People are reading more into them than a sane person would gleam from a parliamentary one!

Is this the reaction to green council gain ? Can someone explain why the greens are sometimes randomly strong in conservative rural areas ?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

A broken record but the hysteria over council by elections is getting to the stage where I’d ban them from Twitter.

It’s insane. People are reading more into them than a sane person would gleam from a parliamentary one!

Is this the reaction to green council gain ? Can someone explain why the greens are sometimes randomly strong in conservative rural areas ?

Because vague environmentalism is popular just about everywhere, especially when it's harnessed to NIMBYism; because the Green vibe is much more acceptable to middle-class shire Tories than the Labour vibe is; and because the Greens have got quite good at adopting LD by-election techniques.

Although the gain last night wasn't in a rural area and a slightly (though not entirely) different set of reasons will have existed there.

Don't the greens have like a strong reputation for kooks and cranks ?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

The ultimate in buffoonery was the #FBPEer who decided it was Labour's fault for "handing the Tories victory" in the W Devon byelection - even though they came within a single vote of winning it.

Yeah claiming they should have stood down for the Lib Dems, as they came third last time.

It's also frankly even more stupid to argue it should extend to council election- there are councils where I would not vote for the Liberal democrats out of principle, and equally a whole swath where people would not vote Labour.

Additionally, Council by-elections literally do not matter to any issue any hypothetical progressive alliance would agree given how weird many council coalitions can be.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Religious Breakdown interesting, would have expected Sikhs to lean conservative. But only Hindus and Christians.

For Sikhs to vote Conservative would have surprised me. I can't think of any foreign country where they vote regularly for a right-wing party; Sikhs are as natural a demographic for the left as any ethnoreligious group I can think of.

They vote PAP in Singapore.(though tbf that applies to pretty much every other demographic).

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Well of course there has always been a section of Indian voters who prefer the Tories - they did well amongst the "Ugandan Asians" from the start for example, partly out of gratitude given it was Heath who let them in (I think Priti Patel is from this group)

There have been some atttempts by the right to attract Sikh voters with anti-Muslim tropes, though with fairly limited success thus far.

My dad's landlord when he studied in cardiff was an Indian Uganda, they're were an extremely conservative Tory who had similar politics to his roommate, a white Rhodesian who dreamed of reconquering Zimbabwe.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Is it true that British Evangelicals tend to vote liberal democrat ?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Is it true that British Evangelicals tend to vote liberal democrat ?

I grew up in a UK evangelical household, which was typically Lib-Dem (occasionally Tory in certain constituencies). It was pretty common in our congregation too.

I know things are a little more fractured now, but that was certainly the state of affairs in the 00s and the coalition years.

As a disclaimer, most of that time was in Scotland, where tactical voting has become more common, and we lived in a LibDem-SNP marginal seat.

Was there any particular reason for this ? Seems odd given that the libdem don't seem aligned to evangelicals on any particular issue and the electoral behaviour of their American brethren

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Major rule breaking by the PM and others last Xmas seems to have been just discovered by the media.

This could be killer especially among the Tory membership which really resents the covid measures.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

It's worth pointing out that the wedge issues like abortion and LGBT+ rights often important to Evangelical support for Republicans in the US are traditionally outside of party politics in the UK, regarded as matters of conscience which are free votes in the Commons (as is capital punishment).

Of course there is also the traditional link between Anglicanism, especially High Church Anglicanism, and the Conservative Party, Nonconformists being more likely to be Liberal (and later Labour).

I know that, but it still seems weird for them to vote for the liberal democrats.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

It's worth pointing out that the wedge issues like abortion and LGBT+ rights often important to Evangelical support for Republicans in the US are traditionally outside of party politics in the UK, regarded as matters of conscience which are free votes in the Commons (as is capital punishment).

Of course there is also the traditional link between Anglicanism, especially High Church Anglicanism, and the Conservative Party, Nonconformists being more likely to be Liberal (and later Labour).

But both Abortion and LGBT rights were both issues the liberals seemed to lie on the left of the main parties in terms of parlimentary legislation.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

I don't think it's really sunk in yet just how screwed we are in Teeside for example

A lot of that is down to Houchen though, fortunately people like him aren't two a penny in the Tories.

And this is one part of the country (and I mean Teesside specifically not the wider North East) where local Labour parties have a spectacularly horrible image way worse than that of the national party at its lowest ebbs.

Yes, and they have been the "establishment" locally in a way that is widely resented.

What specificaly has caused this resentment ? any particular policy or fiasco or something ?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

He's a fair bit younger than Skinner, but it's not easy to fight a competitive FPTP election once over a certain age.

Joe Biden did it.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Poor old Matty Hancock was in essence forced to hand in the towel over less than this.

Half a chance that Bo Jo will be out within hours, a full chance that the polls will show another significant shift towards Labour.

Really, you think he'll have to go because of this ?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Poor old Matty Hancock was in essence forced to hand in the towel over less than this.

Half a chance that Bo Jo will be out within hours, a full chance that the polls will show another significant shift towards Labour.

Really, you think he'll have to go because of this ?

He was genuinely awful - even pathetic - at PMQs today, if only he wasn't such a totally disreputable human being in every possible way you might even have felt a bit of sympathy for him.

But as if to show his sheer brass neck even now, Johnson is making an announcement on incoming Covid restrictions shortly. I wonder what most journalists will want to ask him about?

Do PMQ's even matter much ? I thought it was a political cliche that they don't matter.