This Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I will carefully note that the local election results in that constituency were actually not uninteresting.

[Coldstream]

The moment after I posted this I saw a certain former Home Office advisor has been selected for South-West-North Suffolk or wherever.

Said man has spent a lot of time on Twitter and in the Torygraph bemoaning both crime and the general state of the public realm which errrr poses questions for his former boss and his political project.

One of the more overrated ‘thinkers’ of his generation in politics but oh well- 5 years in opposition as shadow trees minister will be fun to watch.

I agree that he’s overrated, yet he’s still got far closer to an original thought than almost any Tory MP. Timothy at least tries.

[Torrain]

It is a tad amusing just how desperate Seb Payne and Paul Mason are for a safe seat at this point. My modest proposal is that they should be offered their respective party nominations uncontested - but in Orkney and Shetland, and be forced to do retail politics, in Gaelic, in remote hamlets on the isles for the next year.

If nothing else, at least we could film it as a half-hour sitcom for Channel 4, so something useful comes out of all this. Working title: Electoral Payne

[EastAnglianLefty]

Nobody in the Northern Isles speaks Gaelic. That said, that's no reason to tell Payne and Mason that.

[icc]

I will carefully note that the local election results in that constituency were actually not uninteresting.

If you want something to happen I find that totally ignoring local election results is a useful tonic to avoid the inevitable disappointment.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Nobody in the Northern Isles speaks Gaelic. That said, that's no reason to tell Payne and Mason that.

Paul Mason should be forced to do retail politics in the Western Isles, where Gaelic is actually spoken, but for a different reason - it would be really funny to see his head explode when surrounded by Wee Frees and other people who lock playground amenities on Sundays, not to mention the evil Papists of Barra and South Uist.

[CumbrianLefty]

The moment after I posted this I saw a certain former Home Office advisor has been selected for South-West-North Suffolk or wherever.

Said man has spent a lot of time on Twitter and in the Torygraph bemoaning both crime and the general state of the public realm which errrr poses questions for his former boss and his political project.

One of the more overrated ‘thinkers’ of his generation in politics but oh well- 5 years in opposition as shadow trees minister will be fun to watch.

I agree that he’s overrated, yet he’s still got far closer to an original thought than almost any Tory MP. Timothy at least tries.

He maybe did try, once.

His recent stuff is dismal autopilot Barclaygraph boilerplate, without exception.

[Zinneke]

Why would Payne immediately want to jump from think tank gig to MP so soon after leaving the journalistic gig? It seems like his revolving door is at maximum speed. Is he bored already?

[Cassius]

Why would Payne immediately want to jump from think tank gig to MP so soon after leaving the journalistic gig? It seems like his revolving door is at maximum speed. Is he bored already?

Given how many big beasts (actually that’s probably a misnomer, let’s call them big pygmies) are retiring or going to be defeated at the next election, Payne’s chances of a rapid ascent through the ranks of a Tory opposition are probably pretty good, if he manages to secure a safe seat. He’s also young enough that he can afford to hang around on the opposition benches for a decade or so before the Tories have their next go with the rattle.

[CumbrianLefty]

Why would Payne immediately want to jump from think tank gig to MP so soon after leaving the journalistic gig? It seems like his revolving door is at maximum speed. Is he bored already?

Loads of these people have a quite breathtaking sense of entitlement. In many cases, having smoke blown up their fundaments non stop by fellow "journalists" has to be a big part of it.

[Blair]

I’ve had a rather miserable few days and this thread has bought me great joy

Why would Payne immediately want to jump from think tank gig to MP so soon after leaving the journalistic gig? It seems like his revolving door is at maximum speed. Is he bored already?

To be cynical the think tank gig is merely a warm up; it allows you to work and appear on the media and at events- iirc Sunak had some sort of role at some think tank in 2014 when he clearly didn’t need the money!

Weirdly enough it use to be a pipeline for Labour MPs but that route seems to have closed off a bit

[JimJamUK]

To be cynical the think tank gig is merely a warm up; it allows you to work and appear on the media and at events- iirc Sunak had some sort of role at some think tank in 20142 when he clearly didn’t need the money!

Weirdly enough it use to be a pipeline for Labour MPs but that route seems to have closed off a bit

Off the top of my head there’s going to be a couple in the next Parliament. Faiza Shaheen was head of CLASS while Miatta Fahnbulleh is the head of the New Economics Foundation. Both on the left and did regular media appearances during the Corbyn era.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

I just don't understand where all this funding is coming for think thanks who produce reports that no one ever reads. Like who thinks this is a good use of their money ?

[CumbrianLefty]

The think tank "industry" is described as that for a reason.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

The think tank "industry" is described as that for a reason.

I mean I don't even understand what the industry is getting out of it. I know the Institue of Economic Affairs was funded by the Tobacco industry, but like for all the insanity Liz Truss embraced I don't she even wanted to liberalize tobacco laws and move away from government policy prohibiting it.

[Zinneke]

The think tank "industry" is described as that for a reason.

I mean I don't even understand what the industry is getting out of it. I know the Institue of Economic Affairs was funded by the Tobacco industry, but like for all the insanity Liz Truss embraced I don't she even wanted to liberalize tobacco laws and move away from government policy prohibiting it.

If it's anything like the EU Bubble think tanks, then its a way to lobby without actually being labelled a lobbyist/interest group. Instead you are an "NGO/think tank".

There are actually some strict rules as to what the trade federations for example can or cannot do vs the NGOs and think tanks*. So outside of wanting to hide that you are purely profit orientated, it's actually in the interest of certain industries to fund a "fake NGO" that produces purely "think tank"-y reports in order to have much less scrutiny in terms of access to institutions, contact with policy makers ,etc.

For example, its a well known fact that most MEPs don't necessarily write amendments to legislative texts or written questions to the Commission on their own. But they cannot get caught essentially copy-pasting from an email by trade federation or major multinational lobby office in Brussels. So instead the trade federation creates a fake think tank that draft "independent" reports with "recommendations" that directly concern incoming legislation and maybe even get some independent consultants in to provide an extra layer of plausible deniability to ensure that these "recommendations" reach the required actors - and then are copy pasted as the MEP's amendment or written question.

I'm interested to hear if the above is the case with the UK. My prima facie impression is that the UK's think tank scene is vastly more inflated than the Brussels one per capita, and that is because it's also a hybrid of both the above use of think tanks and also the Washington DC beltway circuit where more ideologically-orientated interest groups outside of industries are better organised and also have almost unlimited donor power and thus need to set up think tanks as way to use the money to create a 3rd sector NGO/think tank bubble in their image. You also have the very British problem of MPs having to be the customer service of their constituents on top of mastering national-level policy so they need someone to think for them sometimes.

* and because of the above phenomenon, it actually means sometimes trade federations have less scrutiny than civil society actors. To enter the European Parliament for example they don't have to disclose who their funders are, but CSOs/think tanks absolutely do and it will get worse with Qatarigate.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I just don't understand where all this funding is coming for think thanks who produce reports that no one ever reads. Like who thinks this is a good use of their money ?

I'm half tempted to set up a mock think tank - 'the Institute for Institutes' perhaps, or the Institute for Institutional Ideas' - but I worry that it's just not possible to actually parody these things effectively, as they are so absurd already.

[Alcibiades]

I just don't understand where all this funding is coming for think thanks who produce reports that no one ever reads. Like who thinks this is a good use of their money ?

I'm half tempted to set up a mock think tank - 'the Institute for Institutes' perhaps, or the Institute for Institutional Ideas' - but I worry that it's just not possible to actually parody these things effectively, as they are so absurd already.

I’m particularly fond of the name The Daily Mash likes to use for their mock expert quotes - the Institute for Studies.

[CumbrianLefty]

Just when you think Jenrick can go no lower in unpleasantness, he somehow manages it.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Just when you think Jenrick can go no lower in unpleasantness, he somehow manages it.

Reads eerily like an old Scott Morrison presser, quite frankly. I half expected his rebuttal to be “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”.
It’s almost poetic that the only cosmetic difference is using a repurposed prison barge instead of a remote tropical island. Invokes each of our primary 19th century prison systems!

[CumbrianLefty]

Not just that, its his repeatedly smearing Labour/Starmer this morning and declining to back it up - in spite of repeated requests to do so by the interviewer (who was Andrew Castle, which really does say it all given that it is one of the worst kept media secrets that he is not exactly Labour-sympathetic)

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Yea, getting ambushed by a favourable lightweight on talkback radio (as we call it) particularly reminded me of early ScoMo. Would I be right in assuming LBC generally leans Tory?

[TheTide]

Yea, getting ambushed by a favourable lightweight on talkback radio (as we call it) particularly reminded me of early ScoMo. Would I be right in assuming LBC generally leans Tory?

LBC is probably fairly 'balanced', if not left-leaning, overall. TalkRadio/TV, on the other hand, is more or less the audiovisual arm of The Sun.

[CumbrianLefty]

LBC has James O'Brien yes, but many of its other regulars are at least centre-right.

[EastAnglianLefty]

And O'Brien is a very online FBPE-er, rather than a left-winger.