2015 UK General Election campaign & aftermath discussion thread.

xp That was Kael and Nixon, not Sontag and Bush, but the analogy stands.

I'm actually dreading the EU referendum, because it looks like the politicians are mostly going to be anti-EU, and that the voice of sanity in the debate is going to have to come from the CBI and other representatives of UK big business.

On the contrary, bring it on, Cameron and Osborne (and majority of the Tory cabinet) will have to be start being honest about how they want to stay in the EU.

Idk, the stigma of voting Tory is definitely still there in much of London but it seems to be evaporating. Johnson has probably helped, the shift away from aggressive homophobia has helped, the virtually indistinguishable positions between the main parties on immigration too. A lot of the people younger than me I speak to aren't from wealthy backgrounds but are from communities that place a heavy emphasis on personal responsibility and entrepreneurship. They like some of the messages on tax, law and order, etc, but would have been put off by the hardline social conservatism and transparent racism in the past. It may still be a small proportion voting Tory but it's a much more vocal group than before.xp

On the contrary, bring it on, Cameron and Osborne (and majority of the Tory cabinet) will have to be start being honest about how they want to stay in the EU.

― Cram Session in Goniometry (Tom D.), Saturday, 9 May 2015 14:10 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Absolutely!

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/david-runciman/notes-on-the-election

Isn't the narrative as follows: Cameron goes to Brussels to get concessions -> does not get enough of them -> sets a referendum in which he has to campaign against the EU as he didn't get enough concessions to stay in it.

Anyway yes looking forward to it.

I can't see Cameron campaigning to leave the EU so the narrative will probably be: Cameron goes to Brussels to get concessions -> gets hardly any of them -> paints this as a great triumph against tremendous odds -> asks the British people to allow him to finish the job of reforming the EU. Something like that, but with more of a pro-EU spin on it.

How can he do that when he has already said he'd leave after five years? Doubt he'd be able to go back on that as Teresa May has to take over.

Allow us to finish the job then. And Osborne will take over, if Cameron has anything to do with it.

honestly if we're inevitably going to have an eu referendum i'd rather it be under a tory government led by a pm that isn't from the eurosceptic wing of his party. if labour were forced into this with the opposition and media out for blood i think there'd be far more chance of an exit.

Who know, Cameron might not last till 2017!

Lab was never going to be forced into it.

They won't do it, but EU could concede to every one of Cameron's demands and there would still be thundering demand for a referendum - I can't see any way in which he can get out of holding one while remaining Prime Minister.

I've been so far out of the loop the last months due to baby I think I've missed tons because I don't understand half of what's being said at the moment wrt what the Tories are now champing at the bit to do - repeal the Human Rights Act, lift foxhunting ban, EU referendum - I think I assumed most of it was Twitter silliness but are there specific actual reasons for trying to do these things?
this is what happens when you get all your 'news' from social media and ignore it

Fox hunting is a dead cert. It's a totemic issue for a lot of their rural support. The rest looks up in the air.

it's Blair's legacy legislation, placing his feelings about the value of the lives of foxes vs the value of the lives of Iraqis in clear relief

Tory voters, they and their views are fucking repulsive.

Ugh, I've got to stop watching this shit.

having a go at the Human Rights Act is pretty certain - it's a manifesto pledge. They want to replace it with a British (English?) bill of rights, some shit like that. I assume they can do it now - I don't know if it's the kind of thing that'll show up the cracks.

in good news Lib Dems lost £170,500 in deposits.

heavy and aggressive kettling and arrests at the parliament square protests while elsewhere a heavy police presence is protecting an edl march, c'mon now there's plenty of time to ease in to our dystopian future this is just crude

Right, that's what was going on, i was passed by a dozen police vans while waiting for bus earlier

Nothing about this on the BBC News website. Sign that the Beeb is going to be even more cowed by a Tory government than it was by the coalition?

awful lot of division in senior lab ranks between Umana (not well-liked politically it seems, but with *some* powerful backing), Hunt (number of senior figures backing him), Burnham (same) and Cooper (again, seemingly not well liked, esp among blairites)

Burnham is awful. But then, they all are.

xxp beeb generally not great at reporting on protests until it has a number of arrests to put in the headline tbh

choosing a new Labour leader is like picking your favourite member of the 1970 Leeds United squad

says David Peace in a 500 word thinkpiece for the Observer tomorrow

so the fox hunting thing is purely because a bunch of posh twats aren't over it yet, not for any demonstrable 'reason'
I was wondering if there was a specific Human Right they want to get around idk maybe they can ramp up the kettling even further

ramp up the kettling

I find this phrase pleasing :)

Nothing about this on the BBC News website. Sign that the Beeb is going to be even more cowed by a Tory government than it was by the coalition?

BBC News, especially at the weekend, has never really been a breaking news type of organisation. They report news broken by others, sometimes very quickly, but they work off-diary an awful lot of the time. The protestors PR should have rung the newsdesk last week. And what Merdeyeux said.

Human Rights: Fuck, where to start? They don't think criminals or the unemployed should have any rights at all, and May in particular has the hugest hard-on for Stasi-style snooping.

afaik, they can't actually change any human rights without leaving the ECHR. What they can change is the way they are enforced in British courts. The final court that decides is still Strasbourg - it just makes it much more of a nuisance for people if they have to take it there rather than a domestic venue.

xxxppps yes it was kael about nixon, and it she wasn't making the point she's often implied to have been making

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/10/The-Fraudulent-Factoid-That-Refuses-to-Die

ramp up the kettling immediately scans to the m/a/r/r/s track

I think most Tories are confused about the difference between the ECHR and the EU, and are thinking this renegotiation will mean the "Europe's crazy judges" won't have final say over good old British laws. They'll probably end up lobbying to pull out of the council of Europe as well when they realise

on human rights act, prisoner voting is I think the particular thing that had them frothing - Europe telling us what to do etc

prisoners could sometimes vote in the ussr afaik

Soviet elections in the late 40's were quite predictable, but it was ill advised to protest about the lack of any discernible choice!

Seeking the appearance of democracy, the Soviet Union held elections, but only one Communist Party candidate appeared on the ballot for each office. Fear of punishment ensured that nearly all Soviet citizens “voted” by taking their ballot and ceremoniously placing it into a ballot box.

In 1949, Ivan Burylov, a beekeeper, protested this absurd ritual by writing the word “Comedy” on his “secret” ballot. Soviet authorities linked the ballot to Burylov and sentenced him to eight years in camps for this “crime.”

Job application from Chuka Umunna http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/09/labours-first-step-to-regaining-power-is-to-recognise-the-mistakes-we-made

Even more horrific

This it is "absolutely time" for a new generation to "step up to a leadership role" thing from Lammy would actually mean he is ruling himself out.

there's increasing calls on the backbenches for dan jarvis to run. i don't know much about his ideology but his appeal is clear on paper.

ex-forces so xelab's a fan

It is academic in this case because I will never vote for labour again, but yeah he does look like an appalling tosser as well!

Who better to break with the toxic legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan than a guy who fought in both?

yeah but how can the sun and daily mail attack the character of one of our boys?

(they totally can and will)

xxp beeb generally not great at reporting on protests until it has a number of arrests to put in the headline tbh

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32678518 ah there we go

cheap lols at the sky website report having the caption "the police claimed around 100 people were involved in the protest" under a photo of several hundred people

These fucks haven't even begun to absorb or comprehend what has actually happened before falling back on whatever their one entrenched position happens to be. Calling for more Blairism at this point is the equivalent of bombing out of a World Cup in the group stages and then immediately calling for a team built around Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard. It's evident from that Chuka Umunna piece that he has no answer to what happened in Scotland (and doesn't want to look too closely in case it leads him to a conclusion he doesn't like).

Jarvis looks at surface level to be meant to appeal to the UKIP/white van man vote, but I'm not sure that vote is big enough to swing seats in the right areas, and UKIP support may collapse anyway without Farage at the helm and with an EU referendum in this Parliament.

I have no idea who Andy Burnham is meant to appeal to.

this is incredible (can be viewed in an incognito tab if you don't have a login)
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/scottish-politics/scottish-labour-inside-the-campaign-from-hell.125560928

It's evident from that Chuka Ummuna piece that he has no answer to what happened in Scotland (and doesn't want to look too closely in case it leads him to a conclusion he doesn't like).

And if you needed any confirmation of that he's just been on the Andrew Marr Show saying that Jim Murphy had done a good job as leader of the Scottish Labour Party! SNP supporters are delusional on so many fronts but the main one is the idea that "they're going to have to listen to Scotland now", the Labour Party aren't, if the Blairites win the day (which they surely will after Milliband) and the Tories certainly aren't. "We have 56 MPs now, they can't ignore us", yeah well they managed it well enough for decades with the Lib Dems as third party.

By the way, interesting interview with (leading Eurosceptic) David Davis where he said (basically) that benefit tourism from within the EU doesn't exist and that the free movement labour from country is not a big issue and all that he really wants from EU negotiations is an opt out on things the UK doesn't agree - straight bananas and the like I'm assuming. So seems like even Eurosceptic Tories are rowing back on the anti-EU rhetoric and demands now that they've got their majority.