love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

He's been on Ferrari's show before and did ok iirc.

imago you have the same strategic goals as a dipshit? Please re-think your life man.

what is wrong with checking whether mass non-distancing at a time like this is a good idea for any reason? and i even said, in response to what others then posted, that protest probably comes first. 'concern trolling' - go fuck yourself

Then again if I'm in a cab and LBC is on it's usually just like please turn on Kisstory or Magic like the good lord intended.

This is what I mean – the red wall wasn't made of melts.

It was made of people who're into brexit, as far as I can tell, and so "let's be more racist" would actually be valid from a realpolitik pov (goes withoit saying I'm not advocating it). It certainly wasn't a protest motion against meltism by the left.

Oh great it's another xyzz/LJ face-off, gonna be a fun day on the UK pols thread. -_-

Yeah LBC is the only ever thing I’ve ever heard in a cab, but the drivers themselves vary when I talk to them. Regardless, Starmer going on Ferrari is a joke. The comments about this on twitter were all conspiracy theory shit about grooming gangs, if you want an idea of the audience.

it's been a few months tbf

also it symbolises the absolutist vs inclusivist dialectic Labour must struggle with

but even as an inclusivist I am not sure hanging out with Nick Ferrari is a good look either

xps to ogmor

but supporting a rotten party that will just naturally follow the course of least resistance to the bottom is almost guaranteed to maintain the rotten status quo, you could say it's a binary choice! but I don't think anyone believes it would guarantee a Labour pivot back to the centre-left.

And I have to say I agree with alphie, was there so much reaction to VE Day parties, or beaches, or people queuing for takeaway beers? Because that’s where the rise in cases now is from, and protesting for your civil rights is a far better thing that any of the above.

So if you are on the left and want to say “don’t vote Labour” it is hard to see anything other than you’re saying “I’m OK with the hardest right option possible keeping control”

this difference in attitude to electoralism does get at a fundamental dividing line between left and centre-left, but its striking that voter turnout is generally lower among ppl most likely to get fucked by hard right govts

this is taken directly from Claire Ainsley's book (Ainsley being Starmer's head of policy). Labour spent five years under Miliband banging on about the 'contributory principle' and if anything compounded the 'strivers vs skivers' framing https://t.co/Cir5fkJE65 pic.twitter.com/OBS17v13NC

— tom (@malaiseforever) June 5, 2020

It was made of people who're into brexit, as far as I can tell, and so "let's be more racist" would actually be valid from a realpolitik pov (goes withoit saying I'm not advocating it). It certainly wasn't a protest motion against meltism by the left.

Most former Red Wall seats are how held on thin majorities so as Ogmor says the picture is a lot more nuanced than that.

was there so much reaction to VE Day parties, or beaches, or people queuing for takeaway beers?

obviously i am MUCH more against all of these. at some point you have to be better than the idiots idk. protest is one of the few areas where i'd say there IS a debate!

Lol @ protest 'probably' comes first. You just can't help yourself.

Imago you've got chill. If you are angry whenever I throw your own words at you maybe you should think before you type your garbage on here every fucking day.

He's been on Ferrari's show before and did ok iirc.

― ShariVari, Friday, 5 June 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Lab people go on Sky or highly unbalanced QT panels, but this really feels different.

Being better and more dignified than the flag-wavers isn’t dealing with the structural inequalities that people are protesting. I’ve seen lots of them wearing masks and I think it’s fairly obvious the racialised quality of the protests will be the government’s excuse if there’s a spike in a month - that doesn’t make the protestors wrong, it makes the government racist.

I've seen a few ppl make the case that, globally, turnout is the big problem for the left rather than swing/floating voters, and intuitively it makes sense to me

completely aside from this discussion: I totally missed that the SNP had re-admitted Neale Hanvey this week?

There was lots of reaction to VE Day parties and people going to beaches. It's been widely decried as stupid, irresponsible and dangerous.

Not quite to the same extent.

There is a certain demographic that didn't complain about that and is complaining now.

"Racists", I think we call 'em.

It's very easy to over-rely on non-voters though and as a grouping they're incredibly varied. They aren't necessarily a particularly substantial pool of Labour voters and there's no guarantee they're going to turn out regardless of policy platform. The wider mood music makes a difference as well.

I've had a look at the target seats and it would have taken around 87,000 votes in the right areas to deprive Johnson of his majority. That's a pretty tiny amount all things considered.

It’s interesting to compare the Tory route. The current admin is far more right-wing radical than Corbyn was left-wing. But they got control of the country by first taking power, then taking the party.

This is completely arse over tit btw. The Tory radical right took the party first, literally throwing out of the party those who didn't agree with them, and then won an election.

I think he's talking about Cameron?

There is a certain demographic that didn't complain about that and is complaining now.

"Racists", I think we call 'em.

I think he's talking about Cameron?

I think he's talking bollocks in that case.

it's the most politically fractured time in british politics certainly in living memory and mb ever. behaviour has been v irrational from an electoral pov for a long time, anger and apathy have been building on the left at least since thatcher and you can't wish or indeed really argue that away. what issues you can use to unite enough different groups to beat the tories is a big q, but you can't appeal to everyone left of ken clark and as many have said, it's not necessarily true that there always is a possible platform you could run on that would find enough support. different groups are constantly being taken for granted, and it's p tough work persuading those left outside of a given coalition to vote for you, and lesser evil logic simply doesn't hold for most ppl.

matt idk what you mean by over-relying on non-voters!

This is completely arse over tit btw. The Tory radical right took the party first, literally throwing out of the party those who didn't agree with them, and then won an election.

Ogmor - I mean you don't want to actively depress turnout among your core voters (assuming there can be an agreement on what the core vote actually is) - that probably did for May in 2017. But equally you don't want to assume that there's a pool of latent voters who are just waiting to be attracted by whatever policy platform you're advocating. Voter and non-voter groups in general are much more complex and contradictory (and sometimes irrational) than these kinds of broad brush arguments allow for.

This is too narrow a view. The radical right already had the country – Brexit began under Cameron, driven by UKIP. Because they had the country they were strong enough to take the party and kick out everyone who disagreed. Then they proved they were right by getting a whapping majority.

The other way around wouldn't have worked. If they'd first moulded the party into the no-deal-ahoy! swivel-eyed loons they are now would they have won a majority in 2015? Fuck it, probably the answer is yes with this country, but I still doubt it.

Sorry but that still makes no sense to me, Brexit happened because of a catastrophic miscalculation by Cameron and the parliamentary Tory Party, the majority of whom were opposed to it. The Tory radical right were never in control of the country at any point because they were never in control of the party until the disintegration of May's government.

xp sure but the complexity and contradiction of non-voters as a group doesn't mean they balance out evenly between left and right. busting it out again but in the last four elections only half of people voted for the same party four times. lots of ppl didn't vote labour until corbs and a lot of them won't vote labour again for a while ! most of the big conditions for labour victories - economic crashes, strong lib dems to poach more centrist/lib tory voters - are out of the control of the left entirely, it seems reasonable to me to address the absolutely atrocious turnout in a lot of areas where labour perform relatively well (it makes electoral sense atm too ofc but even when it doesn't)

Yeah, I fucked that on my phone, I meant to say "power". They had (political) power because Cameron's lot were scared enough of UKIP to give them the referendum, which exposed just how much power the right really had. They then leveraged that into total control of the party, which gave them total control of the country.

Put it another way, would the racist right have the level of control they do now if they had just went "voting sucks" at some not-racist-enough coalition tweet and left it at that? xp

They had another party to vote for, and they did in their droves.

Most former Red Wall seats are how held on thin majorities so as Ogmor says the picture is a lot more nuanced than that.

The former red wall seats that flipped have greater boomer percentage than the ones that didn't. A large factor in whether they went blue or not is how much the seat aged. I don't know what those seats start to look like once boomers start filtering out of the electorate

That may take a long time.

Also it bears repeating that the pandemic is a once in a lifetime seismic event that can and probably will alter the picture in ways we can't fully understand or anticipate yet. That four years is going to feel like entire decades in political terms.

The UK political system is as much use as a vuvuzela for making any kind of nuanced point - unfortunately the left's traditional means of applying other pressures (get out of work, get into the streets) aren't massively functional right at the moment.

all three main (suppress your laughter!) parties

I know enough to know better, but you mean the Lib Dems here, don't you?

Not quite to the same extent.

See from what I can see, it's a much greater extent. Front page after front page about idiots in parks, but it's at most an 'angle' on the protests.

I did indeed mean the Lib Dems! Sorry SNP stans

Some good news.

BREAKING – Belly Mujinga: CPS to review evidence of coronavirus death https://t.co/WWFNpPxM1I

— Nadine White (@Nadine_Writes) June 5, 2020

That may take a long time.

It might! But coupled with thin majorities in many cases, it also might not

i guess fundamentally what it comes down to is that in order for a leftwing party to win you need the votes of a lot of ppl who do not identify with power or indeed electoralism v much and who do indeed think voting sucks. the right doesn't need these ppl as much, but they've been excellent at stirring up and harnessing contempt for politics in general, that was the genius of 'get brexit done'. starmzy has taken the complete opposite approach trying to bring grown-up care and forensic respect for infinite inquiries back in fashion

See from what I can see, it's a much greater extent. Front page after front page about idiots in parks, but it's at most an 'angle' on the protests.

All depends on who you're listening to I think, willing to bet there's close to no overlap between people complaining about the VE conga line and people complaining about the protests. People in the park less obviously political, except whining about it reinforces the tory you-brought-it-on-yourselves agenda so it's seen as fair play.

They had another party to vote for, and they did in their droves.

i guess fundamentally what it comes down to is that in order for a leftwing party to win you need the votes of a lot of ppl who do not identify with power or indeed electoralism v much and who do indeed think voting sucks.

Question is whether there are enough of these people out there, whether enough of them will vote for a left-wing party in any circumstances, and whether attracting these people risks repelling the other groups of people whose votes you also need.

Starmer's approach so far appears to be based around dampening down the rhetoric around anything that might be used against them when culture war tactics come back into play. It might work to some extent but it might also look like rabbit in headlights fence sitting, which is probably the most damaging thing of all, electorally.

ding fucking ding

Not really, it proves that if you stop voting for the party you're supposed to be voting for it forces that party to follow you not lurch in completely the opposite direction.

The sticking point is there's no left equivalent of UKIP in England.

that's the whole point, aye. if you vote for something else you give it power and it can affect change, and that worked for UKIP. But there's no left equivalent, so that ends up being "not voting" rather than voting for something else, and that plays out pretty differently.

whether attracting these people risks repelling the other groups of people whose votes you also need.

this comes back to my point about coalitions. it's not clear that there's enough of anyone out there. starmer has decided to risk repelling a lot of ppl who were too leftwing for labour throughout the 00s in courting the centre; he is unelectable for them.

The lack of a UKIP/Brexit Party next time round could have a surprisingly big effect as well - assuming none emerges in that time. Course they could all just end up voting Tory anyway.

feels obvious that the next populist challenge will be a leftist one