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

well quit yipping then!

Johnson probably won't make it to the next election..

I'd put money on it.

Your optimism disgusts me.

I didn't vote Labour in 2015 specifically because of the red lines they crossed on austerity and immigration, I was very much "I can't endorse this bollocks", but then again I lived in one of the safest Labour seats in the country. I can't say that would have been the case if I'd lived in a marginal.

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.

Depends on where they physically are - some voters are easier to risk than others. If the vast majority of these people are in places like Bristol or Hackney or Liverpool then they can probably afford to risk losing a few of them, providing they don't start taking these seats for granted when they get into power. This last bit is where New Labour fucked up, but they got away with it because the real consequences didn't become apparent until years later.

My fear is that once people out themselves as Tories the Rubicon has been passed and they often don't go back, I think this is partly what has happened with many working class unionist, let's call a spade a spade, Protestant voters in Scotland.

Agree that those voters are gone, they're not coming back. But there are other voters in those seats. Becoming explicitly the party of pensioners comes with a cost, eventually.

Boris will have been deposed before the next election, irrespective of his obvious long standing ill health

Also this government is proving especially efficient when it comes to reducing the number of pensioners.

well quit yipping then!

Agree that those voters are gone, they're not coming back. But there are other voters in those seats. Becoming explicitly the party of pensioners comes with a cost, eventually.

Plus people who don't vote!

xxxxp right, the short term concerns of electoral maths are not the same as the long term concerns of anyone trying to build a strong left movement (not to say that the right of the party really does want to build a movement ofc). these groups are ofc concentrated and while overall demographic shift will slowly favour them and make them spread out, I also think ppl will continue to migrate & cluster more and you'll get more regional and local disparities. new labour were able to take advantage of a legacy of a core of partisan left voters that doesn't exist any more. to my ears a lot of the centre left moaning about ppl not voting sounds like wishing there were more ppl who cld be taken for granted. the landscape is more volatile in general, but the more starmer makes it clear the left of the party has no hold over him, the less reason they have to vote for him, there's no room for appeals to common sense in there

I won't be voting Labour, whether I live in a safe seat or otherwise in four years, unless the manifesto aims to meet the material needs of the many.

This shouldn't be a controversial point.

What’s controversial, apparently, is what you choose to do instead

all the same stuff as before obv

It does seem ass backwards to me how often ppl demand voter's loyalty to a party outweigh the party's loyalty to them.

In the end I suspect that Starmer will toss enough policy scraps (and maybe some substantive policies as well) to keep enough left-leaning waverers onside, and they're also probably calculating that having a few tankies very publically flounce out will do them no harm with other voter groups. His situation is completely different from Blair's because the Tories were already way behind in the polls by the time Blair even took over. The Tory vote this time round does seem incredibly loyal though but if any situation is going to test that then we're currently in the middle of it now.

i'm worried they'll eventually come up with a manifesto which sounds just about enough to vote for and then whip the carpet away if they get to form a government

because in all honesty i'm not voting to get kicked in the face by the party with the softest shoes

What about the other groups of people who get kicked in the face even harder under the current lot?

everybody's got to decide their own level of tolerance in that situation. i'm not interested in the soft right waving hard right boogeymen at me just so's they can continue the status quo.

because it hasn't led anywhere good in 40+ years

Yeah I mean I'm uncomfortable with telling people how to vote at the best of times, but it isn't a zero-sum game and lots of the people most at risk are in groups who by and large aren't especially represented here.

The challenge with tactically threatening to withdraw your support, as a bloc, in order to influence policy is setting the red lines in a place that gives that threat some teeth and doesn't automatically get you written off as a lost cause.

"We are not the Tories" was the problem not the solution under New Labour as much as anything and they were capable of being pretty authoritarian when it came to some of those groups.

"to keep enough left-leaning waverers onside, and they're also probably calculating that having a few tankies very publically flounce out will do them no harm with other voter groups."

They are courting LBC phone-in racists rn! They don't care for tankies.

no one has said anything since the election as grimly otm about future of the social movements around and encouraged by corbyn and the long-term relationship between the left and the labour as aditya chakrabortty on desolation radio just before the election, m/l predicting the demise of the left for a generation https://soundcloud.com/desolationradio/assessing-corbynism-with-aditya-chakrabortty-chakrabortty

remember relistening to this on election night at 2am ahhhh

https://armchairideology.blogspot.com/2020/06/welfare.html?m=1

"Reading the interview the remark is part of, his overall intentions are clearly to increase the size and the scope of the welfare state while building some level of consensus amongst the sceptical. But I do wonder if it might be possible for politicians to discuss the welfare state without doing so in a way that detracts from its purpose."

This seems OTM broadly.

National Insurance has never functioned like insurance since the day of its inception btw

when chakrabortty quotes voltaire at the end there saying "you really can't retreat to your garden" it just made me think that's exactly what's going to happen

Well even just bone-simple car insurance doesn't 'pay out what you pay in'. Once you're covered by a policy it pays out, even if you just bought your first car last month.

I understand the issue with the quote but in context it seems clear that the point he was making is that the government is letting people down by chizzing them out of what ought to be their due, which seems reasonable enough.

I guess I am psyched to see how ppl who supported the starmzian pivot to a second ref will do telling leave voters who abstained in 19 about the importance of voting

If the argument is to make the case for welfare both more accessible and more appealing to those on higher incomes, then say so. Don’t wink at the deserving/undeserving poor idea that was so successful for the Tories. The reason this country has children going hungry today has its roots in much of the ideology that the benefits system should be difficult to navigate and punitive towards those who need it most.

This too seems difficult to refute

why should a recently unemployed worker in wales be entitled to less than an english worker in the home counties who has had state economic policy (investment, interest rates, protecting industries in recessions) catered for around their needs for decades?

— ▀▀▀▀▀▀ (@immolations) June 5, 2020

I tell that unemployed Welsh worker to vote for the red donkey anyway.

If you view the main purpose of unemployment benefit to be providing a soft landing that lets you maintain your obligations / standard of living as far as possible after you've lost your job, until you've found a new one, it doesn't seem that hard of a question to answer. Whether that's the appropriate way to view it is the harder part.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52933804

Sizeable margin for error here but... this seems good?

it seems good but we've only just charged pluckily out of lockdown so i'll wait a couple of weeks

That is good - but also quite a long way from the '4000 cases a day across Britain target' that iirc they wanted to get to before the easing of lockdown.

The bit that's simultaneously reassuring and terrifying is the part about only 29% of people returning a positive test having any symptoms at the time.

That's 21% lower than I was expecting

Good news message from Emma @Underthecranes https://t.co/SpdP12cRWc

— Michael Rosen (@MichaelRosenYes) June 5, 2020

I feel like I say this at least once a day, but I ❤️ Zarah.

Speaking to the Women and Equalities Select Committee in April, Liz Truss brought into question the rights of trans women and young people.

I've written to her for answers on the Government's plans for the reform of the Gender Recognition Act and trans healthcare. pic.twitter.com/Obx8jTIe7x

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) June 5, 2020

Q. When will UK zoos be able to reopen?

Hancock says this is close to his heart because he comes from Chester and knows Chester Zoo “extremely well”.

But they must be reopened in a safe way, he adds.

Exclusive: Tory MP attended lockdown barbecue with journalists - Spectator deputy editor, Freddy Gray, and Isabel Oakeshott - as well as Richard Tice, Brexit party chairman https://t.co/IZ9POz4tWn

— Claire Phipps (@Claire_Phipps) June 5, 2020

Q. When will UK zoos be able to reopen?

Yes, these questions from members of the public are always so salient and probing.

open the zoos, free the prisoners

... 'cos that's a jubilee

(Dave Greenfield RIP)

Hancock has been known to throw turds at the gbp occasionally and publicly prance about with a visible erection next a female of the species, wouldn't doubt his suitability to be housed there!

at Chester Zoo I meant!