Ken vs. Boris: It's So On

Welcome to 1979.

This is waht happens when idiots like Tatchell campaign against Ken. You don't get Greens, you don't get Lib Dems, you get fucking Johnson. I expect he'll be make financing the History of gay life museum one of his priorities.

oh hey guys i had this really bad dream last night oh wait

I have never felt better abt my decision to move from London to Glasgow than on this awful morning - let the mass exodus begin!

so are Labour just gonna accept the inevitability of an election defeat in two years time, and let Brown take the fall for it, and start again in 2010 with some fresh young charismatic twattish upstart?

-- Upt0eleven, Saturday, 3 May 2008 01:34 (7 hours ago) Link

Basically, yeah. On current status the next election won't be a hung parliament or a tiny Tory majority, but rather a 1997 in reverse. A Tory majority of 150 seats is now not just obtainable, but also likely. Why ruin another leader, just let Brown sit this out, take the blame in 2010, and then hit restart with Straw/Johnson/someone who isn't a Milliband.

"This is waht happens when idiots like Tatchell campaign against Ken. You don't get Greens, you don't get Lib Dems, you get fucking Johnson. I expect he'll be make financing the History of gay life museum one of his priorities"

THIS :-(

I have never felt better abt my decision to move from London to Glasgow than on this awful morning - let the mass exodus begin!

Mass exodus starts with "failed asylum seekers"...

http://www.express.co.uk/img/covers/257x330front/2008-05-03

Mr Brown’s catastrophic premiership has brought Britain so low that even failed asylum seekers are now trying to flee the country, immigration officers revealed last night.

I don't really understand where they're going with this - are they saying this is a good thing or a bad thing?

I was really annoyed that they cut off the pretty Green lady's speech. She sauntered up with her red handbag, and they went back to the studio...on BBC and Sky! Damn them!

That City and East result tells you a lot about NuLab - white working class fuck off to the BNP... when for 60 years they'd been the bedrock of Labour's support.

It's a myth that this is confined to New Labour, it happened towards the end of previous Labour administrations as well, except for BNP read National Front. The parties of the extreme right did badly in the 80s because their supporters, or people who might be tempted to vote for them, swung behind Thatcher, not Labour.

I've removed the bit about Respect because, well, it just didn't exist before.

Also the notion that "the white working class" (not exactly an amorphous mass) has been an unassailable bedrock of Labour support for 40 years is highly questionable, especially across London and the South of England. One of the reasons Thatcher was so good at winning elections was because she separated working class voters from 'traditional' party loyalties (then only 40 odd years old). The flow of working class votes to Thatcher can't be ignored.

This is also why I am maybe not that surprised to see former Labour strongholds falling to the Tories. If Thatcherism was such a successful electoral machine because it separated voters from traditional loyalties (only to be destroyed once they realised the voters they created then had loyalty to no one), the success of the Blairite electoral machine lay in neutralising upfront party-political ideology.

The Tories lost repeated elections because they were too "tax, Europe, immigration", Cameron has wiped that from public Tory discourse. If Blair and Brown have helped create an ideologically neutral mainstream political landscpae, where we are sold politicians as effective managers, and Labour are no longer percieved to be effectively managing the country. This is why you get a flaky, indecisive electorate, opinion polls that fluctuate wildly over the course of the year, this is why Boris has won a mayoral election in the UK's most ethnically diverse city.

Over the course of a year, I mean.

Labour lost Scotland too, which wasn't something I thought I'd ever see happen.

Boris
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5b/Trashofthetitanstruck.png/200px-Trashofthetitanstruck.png

Ken
http://www.simphoni.net/forums/uploads/av-7904.jpg

That, especially "we are sold politicians as effective managers", sums up what I've been thinking for a long while now. Which leads us to the overwhelming question: is it ever gonna be possible to unsettle this monolithic "centrism" in the future and to create a (small s) socialist politics that can win elections? Unfortunately I find it a lot easier to envision a shift of the new consensus rightwards. In short, aren't we screwed?

i don't even slightly know the figures, but i assume that "ethnically diverse" applies way more strongly to the inner city than to the burbs -- and hence that there's at least an element of "white flight voters" (of all classes) in the outer borough voting (in a rather vague but pointed way) "against" the "multiculturalism" of the inner boroughs?

(i'm being a bit hesitant here bcz my assumptions are based totally on generalisation and guesswork -- and probably prejudice, i don't know much abt the outer boroughs, i drive thru em sometimes on the way to non-london bits of the uk -- rather than ANY empirical fact) (alsio i really DO think this election has been more than anything about the revolt of the private car user against the public bus user)

NV - I dunno, a serious and prolonged economic downturn might change that, as Tracer said a couple of days ago:

Matt that's a good point but as many people have been pointing out in various venues (vainly so far), the ideology that markets will regulate themselves, self-correct, and serve the public good to boot is coming under severe strain. It would be ironic if it were Blair who started the first new government under the post-Thatcher free-market consensus, and Cameron who started the first new government under the breakdown of that consensus.

-- Tracer Hand, Thursday, 1 May 2008 12:32 (2 days ago)

I am not sure if a serious and prolonged economic downturn is something I want to happen on the vague offchance the Labour Party might move to the left.

xpost to stet's simpsons analogy: i was thinking about exactly that earlier on: how voters have rejected the serious/politically diligent (ok, ken's not exactly ascetic, but he has that air about him) for the clowning buffoon at a time of, umm, great international instability. it's almost like a merry-hell approach: "we're fucked anyway, so we might as well have cap'n chumpy at the helm!"

either that or it's entirely down to the congestion charge.

i don't quite buy into the labour line that the mayoral election is a reaction against brown/the tax thing/labour in general, because a) ken/nu-lab was an uneasy afterthought at best; b) i get the impression the mayoral race has transcended party politics and is much more about individual personalities. that said: i'm observing this from a distance, and i could be completely wrong. (it has happened, once or twice, i'm told.)

That was in response to:

Also, if we accept that post-Thatcher global capitalism is now so dominant in Britain that no government can really go against it (big assumption but run with me), then Blair's was the first 'new' government in this environment. We don't actually know how much further to the right the Tories will run, given the opportunity.

-- Matt DC, Thursday, 1 May 2008 12:20 (2 days ago)

(xpost)

if the social problems are real, noodle (and they are), then the centrism will break up against itself as its inner conflicting interests begin to emerge -- or are brought into public discourse and articulated (<-- important and hard to achieve)

i don't think it's monolithic at all, except in the sense that it's large -- i think it's unusually variegated for a voting bloc

And I think one of the huge barriers to reinventing socialism has been the nigh-desperate willingness to settle for being in "power" that characterizes the last 11 years' government, to the point where preferring the Labour party over any other feels like not much more than a salve to conscience or a kind of moral particularism to convince ourselves that we are "nicer" or some other inanity than other voters.

xpost Yeah I kinda think that maybe some kind of burgeoning environmental disaster might realign the political system when it gets pressing enough, but I'd prefer something to happen a bit sooner than that thanks.

Sorry that xpost was to Matt not Mark. Yeah "monolithic" is probably an inaccurate word here, the Tory vote represents a coming-together of diverse interests like any other party.

GIANT METEOR HEADING FOR EARTH, QUICK LABOUR CHANCELLOR, RAISE THE TOP RATE OF INCOME TAX!

If all these morons are voting against the C-Charge (which I'll wager many of them don't pay regularly as who can afford to park in central london every day); why did the vote for Boris who has pledged not to abolish it? (well nothing so direct but he certainly plans o keep it)

Impact of the Cloverfield monster attack on global macroeconomic policy, 2015-2045 (Oxford University Press)

I was thinking more of scarcities of natural resources or repeated serious flooding, but I can see how Lembert Opik could suddenly step up to the plate in the event of meteor attack.

One Cheeky Girl either side of him, manning the giant laser that is our last line of defence.

See that's the kind of government we can all get behind.

two huge and gaping holes in libertarian and/or free-market ideology: transport systems (how they get designed built maintained and improved) and the management of immigration <-- can either of these issues can be tackled without a giant big dose of nanny-statism? (in particular: how paid for?)

(incidentally UK socialist nanny-statism was constructed largely on the back of brit imperialist nanny-statism: a co-opting of institutions started by one side and converted by the other)

("nanny-statism" used in its objective and non-pejorative sense here -- ie as something that can be used to good or awful ends)

True free-market Liberals would have fully open borders immigration and emigration, efficiency of the market and all that, but I can't see that flying. Freemarketeers always cripple themselves by compromising their theories because of their personal nightmares.

I don't think true free marketeers necessarily have those nightmares, I think it's more a case of them often belonging to conservative parties that are an uneasy coalition of economic liberalism and old school authoritarians/hierarchists.

what i'm slightly getting at here is that the boris management of london has either to be

i: actual real libertarian freemarketism = will fuck up transport beyond any of our imagining
or
ii: some sort of (needs to be paid-for) big govt <-- i think under boris this will be in the form of massive wealthy suburbs welfare rather than inner city welfare and will thus NOT WORK given the demands of london as a whole but it DOES start to begin to rehabilitate the role of big govt (the issue being: WHOSE INTERESTS TO BE SERVED)
(iii: yes neocon imperialism also entails a rehabilitation of big govt, if only war- and occupation-related but i'm not certain that's gone so swimmingly that the left can move in and co-opt the attitude turnabout)

so ii. at least has the potential to include developments which are convertable from evil to good :\

(i'm using "welfare" semi-metaphorically)

i don't quite buy into the labour line that the mayoral election is a reaction against brown/the tax thing/labour in general, because a) ken/nu-lab was an uneasy afterthought at best; b) i get the impression the mayoral race has transcended party politics and is much more about individual personalities. that said: i'm observing this from a distance, and i could be completely wrong. (it has happened, once or twice, i'm told.)

Not completely wrong I don't think but considering how crushing the defeat was for labour nationally, and how narrow the defeat was for Ken, I can't believe that it didn't make a difference to the outcome. That cunt Gilligan's entire raison d'etre (yes i am a twat for employing that term) these past months has been his vendetta against the national party. Stick it to Labour by sticking it to Ken. Why wouldn't individual members of the public (at least, enough of them to swing it to Boris) be prepared to make the same point?

(sorry don't mean to derail the discussion but it's a bit above my head as it is)

More straws to grasp at: at least this bad news has provoked interesting posts from mark s and Matt DC, whose government-as-ideologically-neutral*-management-bids suggestion switched on a few lightbulbs of recognition for me

(* neutral/interchangeable/noncommital because any kind of content makes for a less universally bidder-friendly tender plan)

Sad to think that if Ken had stayed independent... but as a non-Londoner I couldn't begin to work out the effect of anti-Labour sentiment on his vote.

Thank goodness Ken has gone and we now have a mayor who seems to put London before himself. The ridiculious emmision charge will go, along with bendy buses. Good Luck Boris

[Fed_Up_With_Idiots], London, United Kingdom

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I don't really mean ideologically neutral, but there's a presumption of neutrality, an imaginary ideological centre and consensus that people just don't notice because it's become so all-pervasive.

I don't think Ken would have been able to get as much out of central government had he stayed independent. How Boris interacts with ministers will be interesting to watch.

One of the most painful things about ken livingstone loosing is that it was porbably the last chance we had to elect someone who at least once had an ideology.

Not trying to start a fight, but that doesn't seem like much of a reason to vote for anybody. Straw was supposed to be some raving Lefty in the 60s, god help us.

The memories I have of ken from growing up in hackney in the 80s make it seem like he was fighting a lefty battle of rourkes drift against the spear waving thatcherite hordes.

I was definitely a Livingstone fan in the 80s. Perhaps the most relevant thing to the mayor's job I could say about him now is that you feel that he really does love London, which isn't a vibe you get from BJ.

no ken was always basically a shapeshifting pragmatist, very very shrewd -- possibly the greatest "politician" (good and bad senses) of our age (since wilson maybe? but wilson leaned on the power of his party a lot more, and in the end achieved less*, and did a lot more harm to it: ken worked with a lot less heft behind him -- the more i think about this, the more i think he actually held back the tide of generic anti-labour voting on thursday, just not enough... no wonder he looked so tired and wan last night, he was shafted by brown's haplessness and the deep damage blair's done the party)

*this depends a bit on how much of ken's achievement on transport survives -- if none, then his achievement will be spectral also

This is fucking shocking shite from the BBC.

But disaster loomed again, when a tape surfaced of an old Oxford friend Darius Guppy, who had been convicted of fraud, asking him to help locate a witness.

Hmm. Locate a witness? Or provide an address so someone could be beaten up to warn them off Guppy?

But the best bit was:

His headmaster at the school which Prince William and Prince Harry were later to attend, Sir Eric Anderson, was also Tony Blair's housemaster during his schooldays at Fettes - often dubbed the Scottish Eton. Sir Eric could spot similarities between the two future politicians."Both of them opted to live on their wits rather than preparation," he told Mr Johnson's biographer, Andrew Gimson.
"They both enjoyed performing. In both cases people found them life-enhancing and fun to have around, but also maddening." But unlike Mr Blair, Mr Johnson did not rebel against the system.

WTF? Blair? Rebel? The person who wrote this - Brian Wheeler - is a fuck cockhead of the highest order. It's a disgrace of a piece.

His academic records prove him to have powerful intellect,

Boris started as he means to go on by nearly falling over, tripping on the scenery, as he started his first press conference.

The last post from Mark S there absolutely correct. Would Ken have served his own interests better by remaining outside the Labour party throughout his two terms? He may have won last night if he had, imo.

Today, I've found myself suddenly remembering that this has happened over and over: " . . Oh, shit!"

Had the same experience when Major got back in.

post-poptimism thort:
what are the economics against decent after-midnight transport for (hip young) londoners (ie not me obv -- i was home by 11.50 -- but some of you)?

can boris lock in the ultra-young "post-ideological" vote by delivering this? (am assuming there is a post-binge-britain dimension to this discussion which even phantom-libertarian boris will have to pay mind to) (<--- haha a old person too-often kept awake by noisy boozy youngsters writes)