bojo is king, brexit is on, stuff is fvcked, tomorrow starts here -- new govt new thread new battle

Another excellent thread.

I have been thinking about this some more, and it absolutely isn’t going to be easy. There is a serious and visceral antagonism between two groups, neither having any real power, but each viewing the other as having more power than they actually do. https://t.co/jxqT4toHHD

— Sonia (@Sonia_Bologna) December 15, 2019

But we have to breach the divide, if the left wants to build a broad base and a successful future majority. And I think the thing to do is for at last one group to develop extremely thick skin, be prepared to take some abuse and keep showing up for the other group.

— Sonia (@Sonia_Bologna) December 15, 2019

"(Also I did have a post brewing on yesterday's Jess Phillips discussion, but then Fred agreed with me, so the job's fucked. Time to sit and find lessons to learn)"

Or listen to this rather than what Fred thinks about anything.

As BAME Officer for London Young Labour, I utterly condemn Jess Phillips' overt racism. Our movement is broad, but there's no space for transphobia, anti-blackness, or the frankly weird levels of ignorant white feminism and self-obsession she exhibits.

— Faiza (@fzjmmd) December 16, 2019

I am not a labour member, but I have to tell you, one of the conflicts she raises in her previous thread is red passports as something Leavers care about (which is...a lot) vs the GFA. So if this was me being addressed, she’s saying I need to subsume my identity to bring back trust? What does taking “abuse” mean in this context? After four years of anti Irish sentiment?

gyac - don't think it's meant as just that...I saw it as an acknowledgement that this will be painful for both sides. Certainly not an invitation to throw anyone under the bus.

xp

LOL if the Tories end up building a bridge between a unified Ireland and the new Republic of Alba.

Needless to say, this can frack off

This from Natascha Engel, whose Red Wall seat went blue in 2017, really gets to the point about culture. It’s not even that voters there necessarily disagree - it’s that they don’t share the liberal obsessions of the metropolitan bubblehttps://t.co/jV1zbfFgdj pic.twitter.com/gZU7XuUZ3f

— Matt Singh (@MattSingh_) December 16, 2019

it’s the least they could do tbf xp

I'm not saying that we should wait until the bridge is groaning under the traffic from the first applicable Old Firm match before removing the one crucial bolt, but I am also not not saying that.

Like one of the reasons NE lost her seat in 17, against the trend, was because she supports fracking and it was wildly unpopular with her electorate. And she wants to give advice on being in touch with the people who vote for you?!

rest assured, imaginary red wall voters, that net-zero carbon emissions, or lack thereof is going to have an effect on everyone’s lives

(xxp) I'd wait to the marching season otherwise some innocent people could drown.

Every single staffer at Tory HQ is white. In 2019 in the most diverse city in the world, that is quite a remarkable feat. pic.twitter.com/QXuROhdD1l

— Liam O'Hare (@Liam_O_Hare) December 15, 2019

Aww bollix, that’s the Irony-meter fecked again. https://t.co/QiK5wpa6cr

— Duncan Foster (@GoneCaving) December 15, 2019

my jess phillips anecdote is that she used to drink in the pub i worked in in birmingham and one of her mates kicked off at me, a bartender on minimum wage, for the fact the pub had a £5 card minimum, so that’s the company she keeps i guess

— don’t give up (@multiplebears) December 15, 2019

The membership have always been to the left of even the Corbyn leadership. We need someone that can keep channelling it. That's it.

I'd dispute that the membership has always been to the left of Corbyn (in, say, 2005? Really?) But they need to keep channeling it and provide a credible plan for getting it into government, otherwise it's effectively a vote for another five years of far right government.

RLB could be that person - I haven't seen enough of her to judge. She's more approachable, more relatable, a recognisable human being, fresh enough to the electorate that they haven't seen enough to form an opinion. I think McDonnell did her no favours when he put up his hands and took responsibility for last week's disaster and in the same interview went ahead and endorsed her. Heir apparent figures tend not to fare well in these situations.

We'll be able to tell how politically skilled she is by how she navigates the campaign, she'll need to differentiate herself enough from Corbyn to persuade people the outcome will be significantly different. Otherwise she'll be painted as Corbyn and McDonnell's puppet and that's unlikely to end well for anyone.

One thing that can't be emphasised enough is that it isn't domestic policy that lost it for Labour, it was foreign policy. The centre ground isn't where a lot of self-described centrists think it is and there could be a route to a new one - sensible social democracy with a lot of Corbyn's more divisive views around foreign and defence policy removed. The media hammered Corbyn and eventually the mud stuck but he was particularly obliging when it came to giving them ammunition. This is a big challenge for those of us who want to see Britain's place in the world and place in history re-evaluated but that has to be done in ways that are less naive. But it means that a successor to Corbun, even from that wing of the party, won't necessarily have the same problems and drawbacks.

Agreed that Starmer's human rights law background is a goldmine for journalists wanting to confect lines of attack, I hadn't thought about that.

"I'd dispute that the membership has always been to the left of Corbyn (in, say, 2005? Really?)"

I said left to the Corbyn leadership so that's from 2015, and I reckon this has probably hardened since.

"One thing that can't be emphasised enough is that it isn't domestic policy that lost it for Labour, it was foreign policy."

There is some of that in the public's perception of Corbyn but the people who did some numbets tell me BXP ate the difference between Tories and Lab in ~ 40 seats. The Greens did it for Lab in a few more. The Lab vote splintered off in different directions.

I don't know,I wouldn't describe the people I know who joined the Labour Party after Corbyn as especially left wing.

Sorry 'even' isn't clear it Ed was elected over David so its probably longer than 2015.

Also we need to keep the conversation going about imperialism and what we can and can't do. The UK could get a major shocks on deals with India and China.

They are not left wing in the sense of having read Marx blah blah. But they easily backed most of what Corbyn had to say on a range of issues except possibly the EU.

Not Labour Party members, but people I know who became Oh Jeremy Corbyn types weren't particularly political before and I'm not convinced they are now either. Not a lot of deep thinking was going on.

If anyone in the media has a problem with human rights, and we capitulate to that in candidate choice, we are ffffffucked. Keir would argue back. There needs to be passionate arguing back, it gives strength to supporters in a time when the government will almost certainly try to scale down human rights legislation.

love to do trade deals from a vastly weakened position with very large nations that
(a)hold entirely justifiable grudges about mass deaths we caused among their peoples in the 19th and 20th centuries (and then casually forgot about)
(b) when they are in a vastly much stronger position than us (and very much did not forget)
(c) and whose current leaders are not at all evidently bothered abt the downside effects of their decisions on those they consider foreigners and wrong uns

lol we're all gonna die

I bet Bojo will soften Indian and Chinese diplomats with his nice, pleasant, open demeanour.

The current Indian and Chinese governments will get on with Boris like a Muslim family’s house on fire.

One thing uniting them all, sweet.

😞

I'm sure they'll be fascinated about the road to mandalay.

This is very important to look at pic.twitter.com/JtjWsGyUAh

— Joe 💐 (@Iibdem) December 15, 2019

some of the stats that could explain the unfortunate gammon-quake in northern constituencies.

oh it's measured over 3 decades so doesn't really explain the changes since '17, but still interesting nevertheless

Plenty more here

https://www.centrefortowns.org

The different directions of Preston and Blackpool in terms of population are pretty stark. Though some of that could be expansion of UCLAN?

Greece now getting 10K asylum seekers a month and the EU doing fuck all.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/greece-says-its-reached-limit-as-arrivals-of-refugees-show-no-sign-of-slowing

In a way I’m glad Johnson’s administration doesn’t now have any say in whatever the way forward is here.

lol just read there are reports that big bazza gardiner is going to throw his hat into the ring.

oh it's measured over 3 decades so doesn't really explain the changes since '17, but still interesting nevertheless

I’ll support our leader whoever it is. But if you think replacing JC with RLB (+ improving policy-messaging discipline a bit), with Labour and Momentum undergoing no fundamental strategic rethinks about how radical electoral politics works today, is going to succeed - you’re mad

— Jeremy Gilbert (@jemgilbert) December 15, 2019

OK now THAT is otm, and I read all LG it this time

*of

Quickly looking at the list:

Hartlepool - majority falling almost uninterrupted from 1997 (17,508) to 2019 (3,595).

Darlington - Labour gained it from the sitting MP, Michael Fallon(!), in 1992, majority peaked at 16,025 and its trended downwards ever since.

Mansfield - safe seat reaching back into 50s and earlier, majorities dropped dramatically during Thatcher. Really interesting change between 1987 (majority of 56) and 1992 (majority of 11,724).
Since then, almost uninterrupted slide like the others - vote fell off dramatically post-2005 and now the sitting Tory MP has a majority of 16k.

Joe Kennedy has some takes

Massively important uncomfortable truth here. Milbank and those clowns imagine LS Lowry landscapes in need of a little Arnoldian cultural steering; this is not what they would find should they actually deign to *visit* Leftbehindland. https://t.co/NWDSP7RjaK

— Joe Kennedy (@joekennedy81) December 15, 2019

Folger's incest commercial was shot there

Joe Kennedy otm, can't even walk to Aldi round here without chancing a gauntlet of steroidal cokefiends casually fucking and voting Tory. and that's just the pensioners.

yougov poll for the most popular Labour politicians in the UK

former ilxor tom ewing -- whose job involves analysing nonsense like this --posted it on twitter: as he said, this is entirely irrelevant to choice of leadership, but extremely 👀 👀 👀 👀 👀 👀 just in flat content

Many xps but in all seriousness, Johnson can probably be fairly bullish about trade deals with India and China. May wrecked the relationship with the former- if Johnson can get the study visa and skilled migration bit right, it’s salvageable. The Chinese elite has more money parked here than anyone realises and is unlikely to want to rock the boat.

The big potential spanner in the works with China, as with the EU deal, is the US.

xp

all of the top 5 seem explicable except perhaps Broon

LOL Vernon Coaker

Balls was on Strictly Come Dancing or something. Blunkett is the really odd one, but I guess he kept up his tabloid column?

i know nothing matters anymore but this still seems like a pretty big deal, no?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-russia-report-brexit-interference-general-election-release-a9248446.html

Blunkett - tabloid presence plus vestige of Tru Lab integrity cosplay plus patronising struggle against adversity soft disablism