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

do all our partners have to write for the Mail now, is that it?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chris-grayling-intelligence-committee-julian-lewis-boris-johnson-a9621131.html

I suppose this makes it that little bit less likely that we're all gonna die, so small victories.

And this is how it's done.

EXCLUSIVE: Julian Lewis has had the Conservative whip removed.

— Emilio Casalicchio (@e_casalicchio) July 15, 2020

Yeah, they're not fucking about. I mean it's in the service of god knows what corruption and dark money but they do not fuck about.

That's fucking mad.

He owes them nothing now and he has access to the Russia report they've been sitting on for months. Presumably they knew he was planning to go ahead and release it anyway.

Well yeah..

I’m told Intelligence & Security Committee, after humiliating Boris Johnson & his choice for chairman Chris Grayling by electing Julian Lewis instead, will meet again tomorrow & is expected to agree to publish long-suppressed report on Russian meddling in UK politics next week.

— Jon Craig (@joncraig) July 15, 2020

Can't help wondering why BoDom didn't choose a less risible stooge than Grayling

because that wouldn't have been as funny

This is amazing. Giving up control of ISC is mad enough, but before the Russia report to boot.

Yeah they really bungled it picking Grayling. If they'd just put some grey haired nonentity up they'd have got away with it.

I'm sure they only did it for lols as well, in fact I'm convinced!

Makes me wonder how many useful idiots that are fully on board with the project they have access to.

Meanwhile I've just seen the horrible new advert for Brexit, I'm sure that was a good use of public money.

I can't quite work this out - as an ERG member and brexiteer, wouldn't Lewis be exactly the kind of person that gvt. would want in this position? He seems to be a sort of Christopher Chope type.

Cummings hates the ERG and wants them all gone. And they just want yes men scattered about the place, fundamentally

I didn't know that he did. Makes a bit more sense.

Absolutely incredible, this. According to Newsnight he told the Con. whip shortly before the meeting started that he wasn't standing even though he'd agreed to stand 48 hours earier.

I wonder if this signals open hostilities between BoDom's Libertarian nutbag wing and the England Uber Alles nutbag wing of the Tories. Should be a lot of edifying fun if so

Was thinking the ERG thing would make him want to suppress the report but he also appears to be a military nut and Russia hawk so probably not.

The cancellation of @afneil's show is great news for those in power wishing to avoid scrutiny and a shame for everyone else. https://t.co/2yRL5O8Jrf

— Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) July 15, 2020

lol stop it Wes, you are killing us. No I mean really!

"a shame for everyone"
!

Such a drama qunt

We've never met or talked. You have no idea what my views are on any major issue today, tho you think you do. To call me "scarily right-wing" is inaccurate, a smear and a hard left trope. You should withdraw it. https://t.co/gOf3XQjGln

— Andrew Neil (@afneil) July 15, 2020

Ah yes, those in power such as the PM who took a pasting from Andrew Neil before the election oh wait

This happened two years ago and it remains one of the most cursed mental images I've ever been given by this website pic.twitter.com/LmQ1WijkIo

— RopesToInfinity (@RopesToInfinity) July 16, 2020

at least you used to be able to laugh at the startlingly crass and embarrassing incognizance of Liz Truss back then, now she is a top trade negotiator and the deals she makes could have a lasting legacy on our lives!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/16/labour-changing-minds-rightwing-voters-roy-jenkins

".. that the future health of British society depended on doing things that the majority didn’t necessarily approve of, and that without radical change what was merely stagnant could rapidly become necrotic."

this is very good even though it makes reference to the SDP and is in the cursed Graun

the idea of leading isn't about listening to every fucked up radge on the doorstep and moulding policy around their rants in between gulps of drinking their own urine. This much should be bleeding obvious.

yeah i could quibble with that piece but the general argument is good and true

You could probably argue that 2016 represented the end of the line for politicians being able to say "you may not like this, but it's in the health of the nation and we know best", which had been stretched to breaking point from 2010 onwards. At this point I'm pretty sceptical about the idea of politicians being able to lead the debate, win the argument, convince people but trust in politicians is so low - that process tends to happen outside Westminster, other influential voices shape the debate more prominently.

The most successful politician of the last decade, in terms of effecting real change, was Farage and even he managed to take what was already latent, already in the air, and channel it. For a while it looked like Corbyn was the politician who would break that mould, but once again he was channeling something in wider society, my old point about Corbynism preceding Corbyn.

The pandemic might have blown all this up in the air again, in fact it probably has already, but it's too soon to see how that would play out.

Was thinking the ERG thing would make him want to suppress the report but he also appears to be a military nut and Russia hawk so probably not.

xp

there's two issues at stake here tho, we could call them tactical and ethical, tho it's much more complex than that. it seems increasingly obvious that tactical calculations have been failures for the last 10-15 years as the electorate becomes harder to second guess, more disconnected from traditional party loyalties and more influenced by culture war stuff disseminated thru online media.

shaping policy based on broadly ethical grounds has the advantage of focusing your message and creating the impression of consistency and integrity, even if you're initially campaigning for goals that seem unpopular. the gameplay elements of politics are more visible than ever to even the normiest of normies, and nobody likes (to believe that they can be influenced by) a party that will say anything for the sake of easy votes.

this is why i roll my eyes sometimes when we talk about optics or strategy, they've got some interest for sports fan reasons but imo they're no way to engage with politics *and* they've become increasingly unsuccessful in the arena of winning elections. the mythology of Blair and Campbell et al has been allowed to obscure the material reasons for the 97 election win, and there's a whole cohort of the PLP and the broader party that have swallowed the foundation myth of the right use of PR and triangulation and can't understand why that shit won't continue to work forever and ever

just because doing what is the right way to do things fails during an election cycle or two it doesn't justify listening to angry racist middle-class man with regional accent from Workington for the direction of your manifesto and messaging.

listening to angry racist middle-class man with regional accent from Workington

They've already decided exactly who they're going to listen to in Workington, and anyone in Workington that doesn't fit that is discarded, its a self-fulfilling prophecy, they are listening to their imaginations and then looking for people who'll say what they've imagined in order to validate it

BBC has same problem

The most successful politician of the last decade, in terms of effecting real change, was Farage and even he managed to take what was already latent, already in the air, and channel it.

this is a really good point, and I think it's interesting that Farage had/has nothing- literally nothing- to offer in terms of actual policy; his offer is/was solely based on change for its own sake, regardless of the consequences of the change- or perhaps even in spite of or because of those consequences. Not exactly an original thought, I know, but it always makes me sad that this (along with Cameron-Clegg then Johnson, who has learnt the most important of his political lessons from Farage) was the offer that was chosen as opposed to the mild social democracy of Miliband or Corbyn

that's a good point anvil and i should've added it. it's not just that the appeasers of social conservatives or whatever euphemism you like are doing this against their better instincts for tactical reasons, it's a reflection of their own prejudices. Starmer loving the pigs isn't a front.

You could probably argue that 2016 represented the end of the line for politicians being able to say "you may not like this, but it's in the health of the nation and we know best", which had been stretched to breaking point from 2010 onwards.

Give me a minute while I get my chrome extension working.

Ok, I'm not sure this is fundamentally true (though its probably currently true). I still think the UK public would accept this if delivered correctly (especially when you factor in deference and vague yearnings for authoritarianism). Public really likes clarity! hates prevarication, and does on some level respect sticking to guns and cut the waffling.

It's the triangulating and changing of message that creates the mistrust. Saying "you might not like this but it is what it is I'm not dressing it up any differently, deal with it" can still work

Have to say this isn't happening in a vacuum, the increasingly rabid right has been dictating the terms of debate for a decade at least now and one reason why the left, or even the centre left, has failed during that time is because they weren't paying sufficient attention to what the right was doing and were caught on the hop by them.

I used to believe that if you offered enough positive reasons for people to vote for you, they'd overlook all that, which certainly seemed to be the case in 2017, but there's a wider problem which is that a lot of voters no longer valued what Labour could offer them enough to outweigh a lot of the other shit. And the right knew that and made hay with it.

One of the reasons Blair was able to start on the front foot was that he inherited a party with a substantial lead over a lame duck government, Tory failure had pushed voters Labour's way, that may happen again regardless but it would be foolish to bet on it.

whether or not they were paying sufficient attention to what the right was doing they were also happy to play along with what the right was doing, hi racist coffee mugs

that's where tactical politics leads you. a party needs to have bottom line principles so they don't end up dragged around by their enemies.

Let's make a list of people on the left that you would trust to be able to fix a garden gate or be at the wholesalers at 8.30 on the dot

Also think the left (via the Labour Party) just isn't able to offer voters what they promise. If Lab had won in 2017 how much of the programme would've been watered down. There is a sense that many people know this, or at least aren't confident to read or process a manifesto promising changes to then tick the right box at the ballot. The PLP didn't help.

Anyway, spend or else:

Covid-19 economic recovery will fail if public refuses to return to shops and restaurants, says Rishi Sunakhttps://t.co/DXOvH9lhlU

— i newspaper (@theipaper) July 16, 2020

The coffee mugs are a straight-up result of a failure to pay attention to what was really happening, focusing on the surface rather than the underlying reason. One side went "controls on immigration", the other side waited a year and said "take back control", and one of those succeeded because it understood something the other didn't, because they were the ones exploiting gigantic volumes of highly granular personal data. They didn't just decide on a course out of pure belief and plough through with it, they made it appear that way, but really they analysed and triangulated more than anyone else did and made it work to their advantage. They were more successful at the dirty stuff than Labour because they knew the game had changed since the 90s.

That piece is very good. I think left unsaid is the part where following the voters makes you look weak and it’s because it is. Preferences aren’t formed in a vacuum, and gay marriage would still be illegal if they waited for every single social conservative to change their minds.

Lynsey Hanley is from a w/c council estate background, so it's good that she is bringing some "legit concerns" "electibility" is a load of bollox perspective where people can't retort she's from the elite looking down on these silly little provincial racists!

I think I've said this before but you need to listen to people, any party that doesn't listen is doomed, but you need to understand not just what people are saying but also why they're saying it. The Labour right has tended to stop at the first bit and go 'job done'. It's the second bit that allows you to split voters off from rivals.

Shamima Begum has won her appeal btw, so this is going to be an exceptionally good day for any unwanted news to be buried.

Best thing on Twitter this week no contest https://t.co/BH8Q2ctqUV

— Complete Control PR (@pollybirkbeck) July 16, 2020

The Hancock ukelele is tremendous.

you need to listen to people, any party that doesn't listen is doomed, but you need to understand not just what people are saying but also why they're saying it

Could 'Controls on immigration' mugs not be considered an example of this?

Were they not a product of listening and understanding?

All depends on which people