The Political Thread

[CalHab]

And so, Sajid Javid gets the job. The same Sajid Javid who last year declined to protect the UK and European steel industries from predatory practices and "dumping", then shed crocodile tears when steel plants shut. The BBC radio report this morning described him this morning as "competent" and "respected". That's not my memory of the man.

Meanwhile the architect of the policy that lost Rudd her job is lumbering along incompetently in the country's highest office.

[TordelBack]

Meanwhile the architect of the policy that lost Rudd her job is lumbering along incompetently in the country's highest office.

The same ghastly cypher whose office had complete control over the majority of net migration into the UK for the 6 years up to the Brexit vote, which she campaigned against, and then once shuffled into the PM's office, apparently by default, began asserting the necessity of leaving every vestige of the EU largely in order to... reduce net immigration.

And now this.

It's bewildering how such a rudderless, drifting creature could hang on to her position so long.

[Professor Bear]

Rupert Murdoch won't let her quit.  The power balance in The Opposition has drastically changed and no amount of wrangling will put a Blairite back in charge of the party in the near future to ensure the cross-party neoliberal consensus is maintained in Parliament, so all the Tories and their backers have going for them at the moment is the tenuous soap-bubble illusion of stability maintained by the media that goes out the window once May resigns.

[TordelBack]

But surely Johnson or Rees-Mogg or Gove would do just as well, what with their having willies and all as an added bonus*.

Hard to believe we live in a world where that sentence can be parsed.

At least crucifixion gets you out in the open air.



*Well, maybe not Gove**, I mean a willy on Pob is more than six-impossible-things-before-breakfast level of difficult to believe.

** Prime Minister Gove, ahahahhahah, why that's almost as ridiculous as... as...

[The Legendary Shark]

 Avengers - Infinity War: [spoiler]give one person too much power and they will use it, even if only to see a sunrise, and when they do use it, everyone suffers.[/spoiler] But in a really entertaining way.

[Professor Bear]

The local election results are in: Labour have had their best performance in nearly half a century and have taken control of more council seats than all of the other parties combined and yes, that number includes the Tories so naturally the fair and impartial BBC narrative declares there is "no clear winner" and the corporation has begun airing interviews with minority Blairite MPs who demand an explanation from the party leadership for this poor showing.

Good news: UKIP are officially fucked, and even their voters going back into the Tories didn't stop the party tanking.
Bad news: voter disenfranchisement was a great success.  4000 people denied ballot papers and some Tory seats were saved by numbers of votes in the single figures, so we can now expect vote denial tactics to be rolled out nationwide.

[Tjm86]

I think part of the reason for the narrative is that although Labour have gained a significant number of seats, they have not gained overall control of councils.  I suppose it's a case as well of how this would compare to a GE and whether this would see Labour achieving overall control in the Commons.  Considering this is against the most inept, disingenuous, immoral government in living memory (possibly longer) it is easy to see why questions are being asked.

The voter ID trial is a particularly troubling issue.  As was pointed out on R4 news, the number of cases of potential voter fraud in the UK is in the single digits and the proportion that have resulted in a conviction are at concentration levels that even a homeopath would be embarrassed by.  Where there are issues they tend to be around postal ballots rather than polling stations.  Definitely an issue that needs to be watched carefully.

[Professor Bear]

I suppose it's a case as well of how this would compare to a GE and whether this would see Labour achieving overall control in the Commons.

Locals aren't a good indicator of voting intentions in a general election because the motivators are different and the turnout is much lower - particularly among left wing voters whose politics tend to skew more holistically.  As one Twitter wag put it: Labour wins where people vote on principle, but the Tories win where people vote on bin collections.
Having said that, the BBC tried to downplay the consequences of the locals results by applying them to a general election via the usual filters and found the best case scenario for the Tories was to be the second-largest party in a hung Parliament.
Which still means absolutely nothing, but is at least amusing.

Considering this is against the most inept, disingenuous, immoral government in living memory (possibly longer) it is easy to see why questions are being asked.

Most on the left absolutely agree with you, Tjm.  They are very, very keen to take a good hard look at whatever or whoever might have been damaging the party in the eyes of the public over the last few years.

[Leigh S]

If for every voter fraud stopped, another person is denied their valid right to vote, it isnt worth it is it? Are we to believe there were 4000 people trying it on, or were 4000 denied democracy? It would seem unlikley to be the former....

[Tjm86]

They are very, very keen to take a good hard look at whatever or whoever might have been damaging the party in the eyes of the public over the last few years.

This is quite a tricky one.  There is a real risk in tinfoil hat thinking that might result in a far less accurate assessment of what is going on.  Is the MSM narrative skewed against Corbyn?  I think there is a lot of evidence to suggest that this is the case but then he also has a really nasty habit of handing his opponents ammunition as well. 

His approach to issues like Syria has a lot to commend it but when he allows journalists to send him up on it rather than staking out ground assertively it doesn't help.  Why he doesn't link these conflicts with illegal immigration and human trafficking is a mystery to me.  He could have pointed to Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan and challenged on the end game.  How much damage have those conflicts cost on multiple levels?

The antisemitism one is an odd one and probably an excellent example of how politics is dominated by London.  It is a bit disingenuous of the Tories to suggest that they don't have a problem either by all accounts.  How much of his response is guided by his position on Palestine is open to question but certainly he hasn't done himself any favours there.  That said, as I've mentioned before, Smee's 'performance' that resulted in Wadsworth's explosion from the party looks a tad suspect.

Then there is the Blairite wing of the party which is still heavily represented in the PLP and probably the reason why the party comes across as divided.  A questionable bunch on a good day.  "Et tu ..."

Let's hope the post mortem addresses some of these issues properly.  Eight more years of Tory rule is a truly terrifying prospect, particularly considering the damage they've already inflicted.

[IndigoPrime]

Increasingly, my take is Corbyn is he's awful. He's an ideologue on Europe, meaning he'll betray his core voters ("jobs-first Brexit" – sure, but only in the sense jobs will be the first thing to go), and ignore the wishes of the majority of his party (democracy!) and, accordingly to all polls now, the electorate at large (democracy!), not least on the single market, for which there is something close to a super-majority (democracy!). And it feels like he loves being the activist, but not a leader. He misses so many open goals in PMQs, and has a rabid following that if you criticise him often screams WELL GO AND VOTE TORY THEN. Oh, OK, thanks.

A sensible leader would have played chess with the Tories from day one. He'd have said there was a slim mandate to leave the EU but not Europe. He'd have talked about options like Norway+, mentioning that this is what the likes of Hannan and even Farage had been suggesting. He'd have built consensus. Instead, because Thatcher was instrumental in the single market, and because he clearly doesn't understand state aid and competition law, he wants to wrench us free from the one thing that might not cause economic armageddon. (And what the blazing fuck is Abbott on of late, rampaging around and arguing that ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS BAD, like a right-wing Tory bigot. Just fucking stop already. Reboot the conversation around migration, and make your party seem like actual humans, because those in power clearly are not.)

As specifically regarding the locals, I said on Twitter something along the lines of it wasn't a defeat, in the same way it's not a defeat when a team misses an open goal and scrapes a score draw against terrible opposition. But it's nothing to crow about. Really, no-one really 'won' last night:

• UKIP are basically fucked
• The Conservatives didn't do terribly, held up in rural areas, and got a kicking in a few councils (and really amusingly in a couple where the Lib Dems flipped the councils in eye-opening fashion)
• The Lib Dems showed that they weren't dead after all, but are still very much a minor party. They have some hope that they might be able to claw back the position they once held as the default for people who want something different, but they've a hell of a way to go before they're back in Kennedy territory.
• The Greens got some new councillors, which is lovely and all, but basically remain a rounding error.
• And Labour did OK, but seem to think anything beyond a disaster is suitable now for a victory dance.

[Professor Bear]

Let's hope the post mortem addresses some of these issues properly.  Eight more years of Tory rule is a truly terrifying prospect, particularly considering the damage they've already inflicted.

General Election cycles are five years in the UK, which was one of the first things Davey Cameron changed when he took office, but I'm sure any post mortem's findings will be reported fairly and accurately, and anyone proved demonstrably incorrect or at fault will admit as much and move on.

[Tjm86]

Increasingly, my take is Corbyn is he's awful. He's an ideologue on Europe, meaning he'll betray his core voters ("jobs-first Brexit" – sure, but only in the sense jobs will be the first thing to go), and ignore the wishes of the majority of his party (democracy!) and, accordingly to all polls now, the electorate at large (democracy!), not least on the single market, for which there is something close to a super-majority (democracy!). And it feels like he loves being the activist, but not a leader. He misses so many open goals in PMQs, and has a rabid following that if you criticise him often screams WELL GO AND VOTE TORY THEN. Oh, OK, thanks.

Aye.  When he was first put up as leader, the alternatives were incredibly undesirable.  Since he was given the job he has pretty much clearly demonstrated his ineptitude.  May could and should have been torn to shreds in PMQ's on so many issues it's unreal.  Leaving aside Brexit, pick any issue and go to task.  As for her poll tax response, the simplest rebuttal would have been on how it affected the quality of services for the needy.  How many councils are struggling to provide statutory services because of cuts to funding?  Just as well those residents don't live in Nottingham (is that the right council)?  Kirk's line about marksmen from Wrath of Khan is pretty much spot on.

[Professor Bear]

I am curious: how does one "win" PMQs?  Objectively, I mean.
I know it can't be if the media agree that someone did well because that's a subjective analysis, and one in which Corbyn seems to be doing well - as I have pointed out here on the thread in the past, I have not been able to see even the slightest bit of difference between his performance with Cameron (which everyone agrees he kept losing, even that time Cameron turned red in the face and screamed about his mother) and his performance with May (against whom the media seems to broadly agree that Corbyn is doing well) and I voiced my suspicions that it had more to do with gender politics than what is actually said or done.

Anyway, as I said, genuine question: how does one "win" PMQs in an objective and verifiable manner?

[Tjm86]

I think that is a valid question.  I suppose in many respects a 'win' is a bit like witty come backs.  At present neither side is putting the other in its place.  May has some reasonable responses to queries by Corbyn  but there is so much scope to put her on the back foot it is unreal. 

A good example is on Windrush, a cracking manifestation of 'nasty tories'.  She responded that this was a policy started under Labour.  The first rebuttal should surely be 'well, why didn't you change the policy then?'  After ten years, to be still following on under that policy is questionable at best.

Another is her comparison between different boroughs and their council tax.  A tory council with incredibly low council tax vs a neighbouring council with high council tax?  Okay, but how do their service provisions compare?  How many people are struggling to access social care in Wandsworth?  I'd hate to be a service user in Chelsea and Kensington, even after the fire ...

A win?  I'd have to say that it is a response to May that leaves her no room for manoeuvre since she knows that it is true.  The scope here is massive.  Gender politics aside, she is getting in an awful lot of hits (anti semitism?) that she should not be.

Anyway, that's my tuppeny ha'porth ...