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

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

luv2murder a million iraqis and still have 20% of the nation think i'm cool

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

gonna go out on a limb here and suggest 'no'

xp

all of the top 5 seem explicable except perhaps Broon

luv2murder a million iraqis and still have 20% of the nation think i'm cool

^^^ and that, in brief, is part of the near-insurmountable fuckery of UK politics

Kate Hoey more popular than big John? LOL OK

They’d be fools to run Sadiq. His coverage would make Corbyn’s look like Cameron’s pre-16.

i would imagine that Sadiq's popularity is pretty London-centric

Find it hilarious that Corbs is still more popular than the king over the water

Interesting gender divide on some of these. Corbyn & Khan more popular with women, Johnson and Blair more do with men.

they both play to versions of deluded toxic masculinity

This social conservatism thing is nonsense, as we know. People saying this are getting mixed up with decisiveness and clarity. There is nothing inherently conservative about this, people just like to know where they are and what we're going to do, and dislike unnecessary prevarication.

It doesn't need to be cartoon hardhat performativity, it just needs to be clear. This can be done in any number of ways

blair at 21st place with boomers but fourth with gen x and fifth with millennials

what the fuck

the fuck is that a popularity chart is essentially nonsense

tony bliar we need u now more than ever

boomers left or right were always generally p suspicious of blair, he only picks up the tail-end of the long tail really

also what NV said, vernon coaker shd be at 87 at least

blair at 21st place with boomers but fourth with gen x and fifth with millennials

what the fuck

You have to ask why Blair is popular with Gen X? Gen X are the melts you know who tell you he won three elections bla bla bla.

i know, i'm one of them! just kinda shocked and depressed that people my age who lived through the entirety of the run-up to iraq and afghanistan and the subsequent two decades of carnage could look back and think 'yeah tony wasn't so bad i s'pose' xp

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.

― Srinivasaraghavan VONCataraghavan (ShariVari), Monday, 16 December 2019 bookmarkflaglink

He has attracted the racists that want no foreigners whatsoever. I'm not really sure he has the skill to sell it to the public. The media will help him all the way here though.

Be interesting to see what the atmosphere is like for foreign students for the next few years and whether they would want to keep coming.

Might be easier for China and India to take English academics lol. A brain drain is a possibility. It could sink a lot of universities and plunge cities associated to them further into the ground.

but then i always forget that people don't pay as attention to politics as us maniacs

i have a v depressing story about that from the weekend if anyone cares to hear it

Hearing from a couple of sources this afternoon that old friends Rebecca L-B and Angela Rayner have agreed between them that L-B will stand for leader, and Rayner as deputy. Not confirmed...

— Heather Stewart (@GuardianHeather) December 16, 2019

As long as it ends with lol we're going to die then sure why not xp

RLB should be shadow chancellor, if anything.

Please give this woman a shadow cab job.

Warrington North’s new MP @charlotte2153 says she’s not going to apologise for saying Lazio supporters doing Nazi salutes should “get their heads kicked in”. Says “sometimes fascism needs to be physically confronted”. I asked about the abuse she’s had in the campaign too: pic.twitter.com/gmvt56LBje

— Phil McCann (@phi1mccann) December 16, 2019