Posts by Rich Lock
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Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I truly think the best approach for the UK is to break up into London, Scotland, NI and the rural rump (an independent Brighton would also be good).
I'm holding out for the Independent People's Republic of Mercia.
I think the Welsh feel they have to be yoked to England so they have something to whine about.
THAT'S RAAACIST.
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Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Corbyn was ambivalent on Europe for good, socialist reasons and has always been ambivalent on Europe. Unlike the new labour liberal middle classes who have benefited financially from the neoliberal European project he could see it’s considerable flaws, and has been a consistent critic of them.
Corbyn was mainly hammered on his Brexit position by the snowflake liberal elite media pundits for daring not to to fall about having an extended hissy fit at losing the referendum, for daring to suspect that heaps of the traditional Labour base were not a bunch of white trash little England racists and for daring to being personally ambivalent about an EU that has turned into a vehicle for German imposed neoliberalism and bullying economic austerity on people like the poor old Greeks.
The lib-dems went with a straight reject the referendum and remain position, and got slaughtered for their troubles.
As it turns out, Corbyn was right and the snowflake tantrum throwers of the Guardian were (as usual) wrong. His position of actually thinking about the problem and then deciding to accept the outcome of a democratic referendum and then work hard for the softest of Brexits was enough to bring back huge numbers of ex-Labour UKIP voters and satisfy most reasonable Brits, who realise you can’t simply ignore a referendum result you don’t like. Polls indicate that most British people now accept Brexit is going to happen, and it is up to the pollies to make it work – and Corbyn has the most common sense program for that.
OK, cool, with you so far (mostly).
I know it is hard for a lot of people to accept the reality that a certain style of politics they follow has had it, but get used to it – Corbyn’s success signals not just the end of Blairism. It also signals the final smashing of the identity politics of the reactionary PC liberal middle classes and that reactionary classes pretensions to owning the left, and a victory for those of us who have always argued the centrality of class and that socialism and the radical hope of socialism to improve the economic circumstances of the many rather than the few is what the left actually means, and what it is actually about. People have short memories. Corbyn’s victory as leader was greeted by the Labour neolib “centrists” with the most appalling weaponised indentity politics smears – he was an anti-semite, he was a racist, he was a misogynist. All were trotted out and paraded before an approving audience of the cackling, venomous chattering classes on the liberal “left”. That is how the liberal middle class “left” has asserted it’s control and buttressed it’s position as enablers of neoliberalism – it has used weaponised identity politics to cow, bully, browbeat and and control it’s opponents for over twenty years. Well, that spell has been broken.
Russell Brown said that the exuberance of the left at Corbyn’s success was a bit difficult to understand, but it wasn’t just a two finger salute to the toffs in the Conservative party, it was a right royal fuck off to insufferable middle class liberal wankers and their suffocating, weaponised identity politics as well.
Just no.
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Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to BenWilson,
It's cynical in the way that Corbyn backing Brexit is cynical, he basically can't not back it now despite the support being not exactly a clear majority.
He got hammered before and straight after the referendum for not appearing to back remain strongly enough. Assuming that was fair, and not just a convenient stick that was handed to the media with which to beat him, then it isn't his cynicism that's driving his current position. One of the many problems with the referendum is that it's hard to get people to vote for (i.e. with at least a small teaspoon of enthusiasm) an institution which is essentially a bureaucratic trading block. You may as well be asked to get enthused as to which font you prefer on local council form 27b(i) - planning permission for temporary garden structures, not including sheds and other storage structures.
It also doesn't help that (like all large institutions), the EU has a huge number of issues and valid criticisms, and clearly and demonstrably completely fucked Greece hard the year before. There are strong and valid criticisms/arguments against the European Union from 'the left'. But unfortunately, the choice was 'we're having this referendum. Take it or leave it' (would sir prefer his rotted cabbage raw, or boiled?).
The libdems went all-in on 'no brexit' as more or less their only campaign issue, and ended up essentially spinning their wheels - marginal gains. It would have been a big wedge issue if Labour had done the same.
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Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to BenWilson,
I don't think I've ever seen a more disuniting movement. It's literally a movement to break out of a union. They are incompetently pissing away one of the few good things about being in Europe. The most frustrating part is that there is a huge number of people in Britain who aren't stupid and don't want this. But that is not how Blighty works. It's vying to out-clownshoe the USA and at the moment that is a big ask.
Not sure about this. The neolibs in power who badly wanted Brexit, and campaigned hard for leave, adroitly managed to get the referendum result they wanted. However, they also wanted ultra-hard Brexit, and they've tripped up on that hurdle.
The mistake they appear to have made is that those voting leave weren't all stereotypical swivel-eyed UKIP loons. As Russell has pointed out, the Conservatives went all-in on picking up the UKIP vote. But a lot of people who voted leave are just worried about jobs, schools, local ecomomic issues, and legitimate immigration concerns*, and used the referendum as a way of expressing that. Given an alternative option in this general election that addressed those concerns, they voted Labour rather than Conservative. Teresa May absolutely does not have a mandate for hard Brexit, and given the current division of seats in parliament, the amount of horse-trading required both within and without her own party to make any sort of progress....well, who knows, but it's probably going to be a lot softer than it might be.
*immigration is a boil that still needs to lanced in UK politics - there is a tendancy of 'the left' to shout 'THAT'S RAAAAACIST' at any normal person who attempts to raise the issue, and shut down discussion. But it's a visible issue that is of genuine concern to many people, that needs to be discussed sensibly. Leaving aside the gangmasters and farm workers (slave labour, effectively), who are mostly under the everyday radar, there are huge and visible proportions of builders, plumbers, cooks, waitresses, petrol station attendents, delivery couriers, hotel receptionists, etc. When we came back to the UK in 2012 after ten years in NZ, it was surprising to the point of shock how often, in ordinary every day domestic and business situations, we would be interacting with someone with a non-British accent. I cannot remember the last time we got a home delivery, or bought petrol, or got some minor building work done, or were served in a cafe, by someone with a native British accent. Basically, many low-paid, long-hours, insecure jobs are now...well, I hesitate to use the word 'dominated', but it does seem applicable. Obviously, that's something that is going to worry people in pre-existing communities who might be struggling with employment and financial issues.
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Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to Russell Brown,
There's been a petition calling on both May and Corbyn to commit to a proportional system and it's now nearing its 300,000-name target.
But the awkward reality is that it won't happen because both May and Corbyn benefited greatly from third-party votes collapsing.
I really liked voting under NZ's MMP system. Simple, and never made me fell like I had a wasted vote because I happened to be living in the wrong street. The complete ongong failure of any sort of adult discussion for an alternative to the constituency FPP winner-takes-all in the UK is a continuing souce of irritation.
However, it does look like some of the patches developed to work around the flaws in the source code are starting to work - there's be some post-election chatter about the effectiveness of Labour's constiuency-targeted advertising, the nummber of users of mynearestmarginal.com, etc.
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Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to Daniel,
I'm absolutely not an expert either as I barely know how it all works at the best of times.
However, I think you're right: the main risk is mutinous tory defectors who are either pro-Europe moderates or who want to check a spanner in the works for thier own ends (looking at you, Boris). They'll either defy the whip by voting against, or by just not bothering to turn up.
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This is interesting, cut and pasted from someone else:
Apparently, the DUP can't vote on English laws (due to the EVEL law passed in 2015). So, the Tory/DUP coalition only have a majority when it comes to non-English laws (Brexit, basically). The DUP promised a soft Brexit in their manifesto (due to the border with the Republic of Ireland). Which means the tories can't vote through their manifesto without the consent of other parties MPs (and it looks like a lot of their own MPs will vote against anyway).
Technically there can't be a coalition with the DUP due to the peace agreement and our promise of neutrality, so the tories are a minority government.
If it becomes evident they can't pass bills then there will be a vote of no confidence and there will be another election (hence Boris getting ready to oppose her).
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Is it worth talking about percentage changes in voting? Doesn't this rely on a relatively staticly-sized pie to be useful? There were one million newly-registered voters in this election. While that's only a 2.2% increase, that's still a significant wild card factor.
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Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to WH,
Labour held 349 seats going into the 2010 election. They currently hold 262.
You missed out the bit where they lost 91 seats at the 2010 election (under Gordon Brown), and a further 26 at the 2015 election (under Ed Miliband), going into the 2017 election with 232 seats.
The pundits of the political establishment - people who are paid large sums of money to dropt heir pearls of wisdom onto an adoring public - were confidently prediciting they would end up with around 150-180 seats, and a mid-30's percentage vote share.
So what's your point?
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Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to Russell Brown,
Of course there's going to be a hangover. But frankly, that's a tomorrow problem, because at the moment, I am having the most fun I have had in ages.
The sight of the legs of the political establishment (both left- and right-wings) getting kicked out from under them, and them dropping on their arses harder, wetter and splittier than a cheap binliner full of diarrhoea from a third-floor window, has kept me giggling all day
It's priceless, the expressions on their faces as they not only realise they've been sold the emperor's new clothes and that we can all see, but that they've all had 'a little accident' to boot. May is so utterly grasping at straws that she's climbed into the cage at the zoo that contains the monkeys that are kept away from the public because not only do they fling their shit at all and sundry, but they're rabid, too.
There is NO WAY she (or her successor once the sharks rip her to pieces in the next month or so) is going to be able to keep this together. Even with the DUPpers she has such as rizla-thin majority that every single one of her MPs needs to turn up, every single time in order for any legislation to pass. Every. Single. One. Given that half of them ae still sane enough to HATE those idiots, that's simply not going to happen.