The Political Thread

[IndigoPrime]

You can just imagine the scene in 2020. Corbyn has somehow managed to keep Labour together, and while its voice doesn't always act as one, the toxic, caustic policies enacted by the Tories are now biting hard on anyone with the sheer audacity to earn under £100,000 per year. The working class have recognised they are fucked. The middle classes have also woken up to being royally screwed.

The GE is a mess. Boundary changes, allegations of gerrymandering, and a press imploding all result in a chaotic vote that leaves the Tories with big losses, but still as the biggest party. They're 27 short of a majority, but there are now just three Lib Dems in the Commons (Farron and Clegg having been ousted by a gleeful electorate), and not enough DUP support to make up the numbers. Meanwhile, Labour's impressive 267 seats leave Corbyn tantalisingly close to a victory of sorts, not least given the SNP's strong showing, dropping only to 38, despite the boundary changes.

A deal is hammered out. The SNP recognises that being pragmatic and able to have strong influence beats leaving the UK at the mercy of a minority Conservative government. Labour promises full-scale electoral reform and, in effect, a federal Britain, carved up along EU voting regions. The Lords revolt, but 2024 sees the first elections for the British senate. Every single newspaper apart from The Mirror leads with CORBYN IS EVIL AND WILL DESTROY THE UK, every single day. The Mirror simply prints a massive sadface emoji on its cover, because it's given up.

Corbyn's Labour doesn't destroy Britain. Change is slow, but the economy gathers some strength, the NHS slowly recovers from its beating, and education policy sees dying flames of creativity flicker back to life. Rail services start to be nationalised, and the result is no worse than what went before, and, in some cases, sees marginal improvements. Corporations start being held to account regarding taxation. The press remains aghast. Come 2025, every editor in the land is essentially calling for Corbyn's head, because Prime Minister Boris Johnson would "make Britain great again!" It's national brainwashing on an unprecedented scale, and it finally fully takes hold.

Unfortunately, Labour's blind spot remains: electoral reform of the Commons. Corbyn's reluctance to switch to AMS or STV finds Johnson's Conservatives win in a landslide. It takes Johnson precisely eleven seconds into his victory speech to make a major gaffe that leads to the UK being at war with Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and Burger King. The press blames this on Corbyn, and notes that at least Johnson sounds and looks like a real Prime Minster. The UK loses the war. Every Briton is forced to eat a Whopper for every meal, until the end of time.

[Jim_Campbell]

Mummy... I'm scared.

[Professor Bear]

The actual chain of events will be much less complicated: Corbyn is ousted before 2020, the new Labour leader is a Blairite whom the papers crucify just as much as Corbyn, the unions desert Labour, the hundreds of thousands of new Labour members and supporters abandon the party overnight, and all the while the press has a field day.  Labour lose the GE by a huge majority and blame it all on Corbyn - who has been retired from politics for years at this point - and his supporters - who haven't been involved with Labour for years - citing "the damage they did was too great."  Every failure that follows is also blamed on Corbyn, until another scapegoat comes along.
Eventually - in 2030 or 2035 - there is absolutely no doubt that someone other than the Tories will win, and so the Blairites decamp Labour and swarm to that party, using pressure groups, bullying and intimidation to force their preferred candidate into the now-vacant top job (the previous leader having suffered a sudden and fatal heart attack) just in time for the election win, then they claim it was their centrist philosophy that won the day for the party and not 20 years of Tory misrule.

[Dandontdare]

I'm always up for a good game of What Happens Next...

I can see the labour party coming apart at the seams, possibly before 2020. In  it's place the blairites will form a new centre-left party attracting what's left of the lib dems and a handful of tories who object to their own leader calling them terrorist sympathisers. The remaining leftwingers and unions, will rebrand themselves as "true labour" and be attacked, smeared and misrepresented by all sections of the press and establishment. They will be written off as unelectable militants, but in 2020 (or 2025) will stun the pollsters as vast swathes of the country, fed up with minor variations on austerity, sweep them to power.

[IndigoPrime]

I do find the whole "there will be another SDP-style split" argument throughout chunks of the press baffling. Because that worked SO well for the 'gang of four' and co-conspirators! Ironically, though, it would be the absolute best thing for Labour if we had AMS or List PR instead of FPTP, because people could vote for 'their' Labour, and chances are the two Labours would form coalition (with or without the likes of the SNP or the Liberal Democrats, should they one day remember they're not Tories). But even today, Commons reform's not seen as a priority by Labour. (The party really messed up by believing its own press when Blair swept to power and throwing the Lib Dems under the bus. There should have been constitutional reform then, when they had colossal power, which by 2005 may have at least resulted in Lab/Lib rather than Con/Lib.)

[The Legendary Shark]

The rich continue to accumulate wealth from the masses, using whichever puppets the electorate favour to facilitate the transfer. Cash is demonised as a tool of terrorism, rape, murder, drug dealing and general beastliness. The public fall for it and, after another Gladio-style attack in Canada, start to look suspiciously on anyone using cash.

The economy continues to be measured using biased and unrealistic mechanisms resulting in actions being taken to cause further decline, which will be disguised as growth. The NHS is sold to Richard Branson and the money generated used to pay down the unmanageable government debts. Not one penny can be spared for investment in the country's infrastructure. The bankers use the profits to have large ocean-going palaces constructed and to buy up whatever isn't nailed down. Whatever is nailed down they get the government to legislate over to them. Then they take the nails as well.

A train derails near Glasgow, killing dozens and injuring many more. Network Rail engineers blame the tragedy on a length of track known to be old and fragile, pointing to months of ignored emails to the Chief Safety Officer. The engineers are ignored and then fired. Terrorism is blamed and the Prime Minister is urged to declare Casey Jones an international terrorist and bomb North Korea.

Cash is outlawed in response to the vicious Glasgow Railway Attack, driving everyone to use electronic cards and finally killing off the car boot sale. With every financial transaction now monitored and logged, barter enjoys a brief resurgence in popularity until outlawed by the government on Health and Safety grounds. Still losing money, the banks blame the cashless system's mechanisms, cards, software and, most especially, the general public for not using the system efficiently. To offset their losses, the banks begin to charge everyone a fee for the use of their services. Savers must now pay the banks to look after their money, leading to an accelerated upwards transfer of wealth.

A celebrity is killed by a drunk driver. Terrorism is blamed and the Prime Minister is urged to seize control of the road network, building fortified checkpoints at every major junction and manning them with armed sentries hired from Blackwater and to bomb the Moon.

Before the people of Britain can realize what's going on the Moon has retaliated, leaving the world in ashes. Only the cream of the kakistocracy survive unscathed, safe in their floating palaces way out at sea. Floating palaces that will sustain them and their kind until it's time to return to the land and take the reins of power once more. Floating palaces that we paid for.

[Modern Panther]

An RAF bombers is shot down over Syria.  Cameron announces that additional measures are needed and begins moving troops into the country to provide "support and training" to rebel fighters. 

A BBC journalists is passed information that the plane was brought down by Russian forces.  A full investigation is filmed, but blocked from broadcast.

Turkey seizes the border area with ground troops, which are regularly bombed by the Russians.  Rumours abound that they are purchasing oil from IS.

The Labour Party votes in favour of increase troop numbers.  Corbyn resigns and goes into local politics. Benn becomes party leader.  Trade unions stop supporting the party, the transport workers union announces the formation of a new party.  London is brought to a standstill by illegal tube strikes.  Even moderate unions are demonized by the media.

In Scotland, there are increased calls for a second referendum, which the Westminster government refuses.  There are several large protests.  The devolved government s have their budgets cut and most are encouraged to raise income tax to meet the shortfall.

The camera pulls back to reveal Tommy Westphall staring into a snow globe.

[ZenArcade]

Well shark, I for one am happy to give a supportive grunt to our future land recolonising neo masters. I hope there will be still a few sharks about to interdict the operation. Z

[The Legendary Shark]

IF the current attack on Syria is legitimate because it's the result of a few people voting, would the same hold true IF a handful of people had voted to conduct the Paris massacre? Are both attacks legal because a few people voted on whether to launch them or not? One legal and one not? Both illegal?

[Professor Bear]

"Hilary Benn, the product of his father's tempestuous affair with Lembit Opik, showed a fighting spirit that was direct proof of Johnny Cash's A Boy Named Sue."

[Tjm86]

IF the current attack on Syria is legitimate because it's the result of a few people voting, would the same hold true IF a handful of people had voted to conduct the Paris massacre? Are both attacks legal because a few people voted on whether to launch them or not? One legal and one not? Both illegal?

My big thing with the logic behind the air strikes is that it has all the logic of trying to sort out a scrap between a pair of 5 year olds:

"So why did you punch him in the face again?"

" 'cos he said Spiderman is a wimp."

"So what did you do?"

"I kicked him in the balls, din I!"

Or if you prefer a more literary allusion"

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
    Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
    Had spoiled his nice new rattle.

[JayzusB.Christ]

I've said it once and I'll say it again: Psychopathy is a requirement to be an MP (or the equivalent thereof in other countries).  I'm not exaggerating; this is my honest belief.

By voting for the bombing of Syria, you become directly responsible for thousands of innocent people dying (and I think it's pretty safe to say that ISIS will retaliate horribly, so those deaths will extend to our side of the world).  This is not a case of killing the few to save the many:  it will almost without question lead to many, many more deaths.

Maybe I'm being naive, but I think most of us couldn't sleep at night with that on our conscience. But MPs? No problem at all for them.

[TordelBack]

You're probably not wrong, JBC - but sometimes the ability to dispassionately make unpleasant decisions MIGHT be an advantage in an administration: sometimes the best choices don't make for restful sleep*. The problem seems to arise when you take your high-functioning psychpaths and rather than encouraging rational analysis to guide their actions, you make them perform for their supper to the choreography of corporations, their media and the assorted small-minded bigots they both create and feed off so that the currency of approval is appealing to the basest fear, avarice and ignorance.


*Although personally I'd love to see what sort of a job people with actual consciences would make of running the world, just for a change.

[The Legendary Shark]

I have noticed, not on this thread, that there seems to be an embryonic witch-hunt for psychopaths developing.
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I seem to recall from Jon Ronson's book, The Psychopath Test, that around 1% of humans are what might be termed "true psychopaths" although we all fall somewhere on the psychopathy scale. From an evolutionary point of view, the psychopathic person might be invaluable for, as Tordels points out, their ability to make rational and emotionless decisions in irrational and emotional situations.
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I also agree with JBC that the "top jobs" in the corporate and government arenas do attract (and in some cases actively so) the psychopathic personality type.
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All that being said, I think we must be wary of blaming and hounding the psychopath. It's not as if most psychopaths are evil or actively setting out to hurt people, or that they don't understand emotions or the concept of right and wrong. Many psychopaths are decent people who have learned to mimic emotions in order to fit in.
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A story I heard on a podcast (this was a few months ago and I can't remember the source, so you can ignore this if you want) of a female psychopath who always wanted to kill somebody just to see what it's like. Being psychopathic and not stupid, she understood full well that society doesn't hold with this kind of thing and so decided to join the army. She was rejected and so had to pick another job where the opportunity to fulfil her desire might arise.
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So she became a nurse.
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And a very, very good nurse she became - able to engage with and mimic her patients' emotions whilst acting in a calm and clinical way. In many ways, psychopaths can be exceptionally good at jobs like that which the rest of us would find emotionally draining.
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Did this nurse ever kill anyone? She hinted that yes, she had "eased certain terminal, suffering patients on their way" but would never just kill someone at random because she knew that doing so was wrong without fully understanding why.
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Isn't that what we want from a nurse? The ability to put patients at their ease whilst retaining the ability to perform onerous tasks (any painful medical procedure, not just euthanasia)?
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Psychopaths, especially high-functioning psychopaths, have played and can continue to play important roles in human society. They should, however, just like the rest of us, have an eye kept on them and operate within the confines of the law.
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To blame the state of the world on a few psychopaths in positions of power (which nobody on this thread is doing) is to ignore the fact that it is we who put them there and keep them there and regard their pronouncements as law.  It is we who support and idolise the systems through which psychopaths achieve and maintain power, we who allow the worst of them virtual free-reign and it is we who suffer as a consequence.

[JayzusB.Christ]

*Although personally I'd love to see what sort of a job people with actual consciences would make of running the world, just for a change.

I think this is why Corbyn is being attacked by Tories and Blairites alike: Despite being a political leader, he's normal. Like the vast majority of us in non-political positions, he's got a normal conscience and is averse to killing.

I do believe the world would be better off in the hands of such normal, conscientious people and as such probably could be branded an anarchist - but I'll always vote.

It's all well and good for Russell Brand to scoff at the idea of choosing the 'least worst', but the alternative is sitting back and letting the worst of the worst into power. Which is precisely what the pipecleaner- legged arsehole* has done.

* with thanks to Viz for the description.