2015 UK General Election campaign & aftermath discussion thread.

the more the Tories run down the welfare state the worse these feelings of insecurity are going to get, and conversely they will probably continue to benefit from them, until such point as they suddenly don't

this is what this 'blue collar conservatism' thing is all about right? a vision of everyone treading on each others heads to get in to the lifeboat, which then starts sinking anyway

UGH. David Miliband was such a dick yesterday. It must have been difficult growing up as London's answer to Alex P. Keaton.

i liked what the Compass fella said on Newnight last night, that the Labour party needs to be about collective aspiration: the aspiration for good wages, an education, an affordable place to live, a fair society, for clean air to breathe

UGH. David Miliband was such a dick yesterday.

yeah - agree.
nagl.
but hey he now works for a big global charity raising millions etc, so, its all good.

"Blue collar conservatism" is probably a bit of reheated divide-and-rule Thatcherism aimed at winning back parts of the working class Labour vote, but particularly in hoovering up the voters who have defected to UKIP.

In my lifetime at least, the Tory view has usually been that there are two working classes, the ones who are interested in social mobility who should be helped (as long as it doesn't hinder the people with actual money), and the others, who policy makers basically shouldn't bother with. I don't really believe that "poverty of aspiration" is as widespread as these people say it is, certainly not among kids, but it is a useful tool if your aim is to decide who you should allow to basically starve.

We were sitting in the garden of David Miliband's local in Primrose Hill yesterday when news of that actual incident of filial backstabbery came through.

was it really back-stabbing? the newspapers had it as "blasts" ed but when i read the article it seemed there was nothing in there to justify the headline, as per usual.

Agree - in the bbc interview I saw he chose his words really carefully and took great pains not to be backstabbing. Tbh I think the interview was more to leave him open to come back at a later stage than to settle a score with Ed.

Scintillating curveball 'let's ask his betrayed brother what he thinks about this' tactics from the press.

i reckon he should have held back from any interview for a few weeks.
let things settle.
no matter what he said, it was going to be portrayed this way.

the only bit that felt cold to me, but not an attack, was when they asked if he's in touch with ed and his answer was something like "we speak" rather than "of course, he's my brother"... but that was more revelatory than critical.

Scintillating curveball 'let's ask his betrayed brother what he thinks about this' tactics from the press.

.. except it had been "DMil will be issuing a statement later on today", so I don't think the press were involved, directly.

'let's see if his betrayed brother will tell us what he thinks without any prompting at all'? got it

yup.

I think it was more "Oh well, now they'll all come asking, guess I'd better say something, oh well..."

so the conservatives want to repeal HRA and replace it with a UK-wide bill of rights but human rights are a devolved issue in scotland. this means that if WM wants to enact legislation which applies to scotland in this area, they either have to obtain the consent of the scottish govt first (under the sewell convention) or enact it anyway in direct contravention of the convention. the scottish govt have already signalled that they will withhold their consent to this

trust conservative toad michael gove to blindly trundle down a potentially constitutionally explosive alleyway in his first few days in office

Meanwhile the SNP are mischief-making in the Telegraph and saying they're trying to talk to the more liberal Tories about striking down the snooper's charter.

This would all be great fun if people weren't dying.

either (i) their plans have been sketched on the back of a fag packet or (ii) this is a political ruse they know can't go through but will appease their backbenches and also allow them to further bemoan the scottish horde (or even (iii) both.)

My guess is that they're not really that arsed about repealing it and just wanted the headlines, and the SNP will provide a convenient way out while ensuring they get to make the right kind of noises until everyone loses interest and the policy is quietly binned.

So yeah, ii there.

originally a Grayling fag packet scheme? I think he was pretty regularly called 'legally illiterate'. ianal but everything I've ever read makes it sound either pointless and hideously complicated or hideously complicated and unworkable.

Suspect it may have moved from cat i towards cat ii over time.

Add Ireland to that mix too http://www.caj.org.uk/contents/1293

But I think they do genuinely hate it. Rights for prisoners? Having to give Our Boys rights while deployed? Not being allowed send those filthy foreign back where they came from if their lives would be in danger? Not being allowed to snoop on people? Blood boils at the very thought.

all these people passing round the "why do Tories hate human rights" gifs shd know the answer is really simple - these are people who never fall foul of the law - not the real law - and don't give a fuck what happens to those who do, in fact they want the punishment to be as medieval as possible because hey, they've never broken the law so everybody who does is some kind of poison that needs excising from the populace

yeah if you've got nothing to hide why would you be against a snooper's charter *stuffs fist down own throat*

1901 hrs:  subject observed taking part in fisting incident

These stories of plane loads of bankers cheering things like "Ed Balls is gone" on Friday remind me what's at stake with these cunts.

Cameron: “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/13/counter-terrorism-bill-extremism-disruption-orders-david-cameron

And we all thought Clegg was basically bullshitting about having watered all this stuff down.

i'd say it was an unbelievable quote but...

The definition of harmful is to include a risk of public disorder, a risk of harassment, alarm or distress or creating a “threat to the functioning of democracy”.

a risk of distress? fuck me

creating a rival threat he means

among the extremists theresa may has said she's looking to root out are the 'neo-marxists', i'm gonna be so bummed out when all of my friends are in prison

“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone."

This is truly an astonishing quote.

utterly crazy

The supposed context just makes it worse. Apparently now the government has to decide to take a stand on what "views" are acceptable.

The Tories are mental authoritarians, but they also have a long tradition of small-state pro-liberty types, and I think a good faction of their MPs are still subscribers. Surely this won't swing with them?

Oh, they would also like to curtail freedom of information, in the wake of the black spider ruling.

The aim is to catch not just those who spread or incite hatred on the grounds of gender, race or religion but also those who undertake harmful activities for the “purpose of overthrowing democracy”

hold on maybe it'll have its uses

Protecting free speech by banning hate-speakers. No longer tolerating the causing of extremism through neutrality.

a requirement to submit to the police in advance any proposed publication on the web and social media

stet can you get the system to do this automatically? v inconvenient if neo-marxists have to go to the police station to post.

They don't recognise the state, the newsagent next door is getting quite annoyed.

Most of the blame, inevitably, is being aimed at the leader’s office. ‘When the campaign started we were told we had to clear all leaflet design past the leader’s office,’ said one party worker. ‘We thought that would be a nightmare, but for the first part of the campaign it worked really well. We’d email the art, and about an hour or so later we’d get the response, “Great. Go with this.” Then one day someone got the message, “Excellent. All good.” But when they went to respond they realised they’d failed to insert the original attachment.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9528312/inside-the-milibunker-the-last-days-of-ed-did-ed-miliband-sacrifice-ed-balls/

trigger warning: dan hodges

wtf

Another Labour insider told of the scene in the press office when Miliband posed with the notorious Ed stone, the 8ft 6in slab of limestone upon which his six key election pledges were inscribed. When it appeared on TV, a press officer ‘started screaming. He stood in the office, just screaming over and over again at the screen. It was so bad they thought he was having a breakdown.’

Mary Creagh has thrown her hat in the ring for Labour leader. Even smaller majority than Ben Bradshaw, iirc.

She has always struck me as broadly competent but not a particularly confident speaker.

As far as I can see, Chuka Umunna is the only one to have had a job outside politics, and that was at a law firm so doesn't count. Surely they can't all be so lacking in self awareness not to see this is a problem.

How they position themselves on the issue of austerity will be instructive, my suspicion is they will all just bobble their heads around while going "tough choices, financial discipline, aspiration" over again.

they can sort of hope that by the time any of them get a shot at PM there'll be no welfare state left and austerity will cease to be meaningful tbf

Austerity clearly doesn't work, what would have been so hard about taking that and running with it?

A group of disabled people is taking the government to the High Court over delays in benefit payments.

This was on News 24 this morning and then it abruptly disappeared and is now just a minute paragraph on the bbc website.

When it appeared on TV, a press officer ‘started screaming. He stood in the office, just screaming over and over again at the screen. It was so bad they thought he was having a breakdown.’

2001. apes. monolith.

Then one day someone got the message, “Excellent. All good.” But when they went to respond they realised they’d failed to insert the original attachment.

I laughed. I read the article. And then, god help me, I read the comments. People who think Miliband is a Marxist and the BBC was "relentlessly" pro-Labour.

I know, I know, it's the Spectator.

5 years of this. And then...

...then...

Unless there's another economic disaster in the next five years, I can't foresee any situation in which they don't get back in in 5yrs time, especially if Scotland continues down this path, the LibDems remain toxic and the Tories get free reign to redraw constituency boundaries, all of which seem extremely likely right now.