Free as a Dodo: UK Politics Welcomes 2021

interesting, depressing stat

The average 33-year-old will have experienced 5 major UK-wide polls in their adult life. If they voted like the majority of their age group, they will have lost every single one.

The average 66-year-old has witnessed 13 such polls. They have won *every single one*.

— James McAsh (@mcash) January 20, 2021

i mean i'm not surprised, but when you put it like that. oof.

I gave a list vote to the Scottish Socialist Party in the 2003 Holyrood election (shame!) and Carolyn Leckie was elected from the list in the Central Scotland electoral region. Every single election I have voted in since the candidate, or side in a referendum, I have voted for has lost.

My parliamentary constituency - Glasgow Central - went from big Labour majority to big SNP majority, I voted for SNP when it was Labour and Labour when it was SNP.

I am electoral Jonah.

xp this is basically me, I can’t recall if I discussed it on here or the slack, but between elections here and at home, yeah, fucking shit

I remember a few years back during the mayoral election and I’d moved out of London then but every person my age I know and younger expressed some variation on how nice it was to vote for a winning candidate

Ok at home we have had the gay marriage and abortion referendums but I personally couldn’t vote on those so

I wonder if that’s why US politics has such a pull, at least “your” candidate wins occasionally?

Tbh I did vote for Diane Abbott when I lived in her constituency but I’m not counting it as a win cos the Tories still got in

Can’t blame you for voting SNP when it was Anas Sarwar though

My voting record is Miliband 2015, Remain 2016, Corbyn 2017-19 and that's it - I'm finished with parliamentary democracy for life now. From now on I'm just going to carp from the sidelines and perhaps occasionally threaten to murder every more melty/conservative/right-wing arsehole that leads the Labour Party. But fuck em' all basically

oh i think i voted Green on my list vote in some elections so i think i might have been successful once or twice more, but literally only through list votes, thank you Monsieur D'Hondt.

I am not voting in the next general election - which will be my last that I am eligible to vote in the UK. And I don't know if i will ever bother becoming a Canadian citizen. So i might have voted for the last time.

my bois fuckin killed it in 2010 #cleggy #coalitionambition

they r no longer my bois alas, no matter how much some people wd like them 2 b

US politics has zero pull for me tbh. I've always voted Labour and every constituency I've lived in has been Labour apart from when the Lib Dems won in Haringey, so blame me for New Labour.

Sorry, scrub that US politics remark, misread the post.

My local ex Labour MP unfollowed me on twitter for persistently retweeting posts by anti-Starmer shitpost accounts with names like Bear Starmer is a bitch! I know that isn't really funny but it still does make me laugh.

Welcome back, America. We’ve missed you.

— Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) January 20, 2021

Who’s the fucking “we”, Wesley, we live in a country that voted in numbers for a far right government and the party you’re in spends the time trying to appeal to those voters

he was another of the Labour Right names practically handing it to right-wing tories to attack the Chakrabarti Report as a whitewash, because scoring party factionalism points is so much more important than honestly addressing Labour anti-semitism, especially if you don't really care about it anyway. I never saw him attacking his pal Reeves for celebrating the unveiling of a new statue of a pro-Nazi pro-holocaust Tory mp from the 40's

Like America gives a fuck about what Wes Streeting MP thinks.

I wonder if that’s why US politics has such a pull, at least “your” candidate wins occasionally?

These days I kinda think the opposite: Portugal having a much healthier amount of minority parties it's actually conceivable for a leftist party to gain enough votes to enter a coalition without watering down its programme too much - which is an option I really miss here. Of course once they're in coalition the majority party will still do its best to make them irrelevant, but overall it feels more hopeful than the US-UK model.

Reminder that we live in hell
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsQEV64XcAEVDwF?format=jpg&name=large

"Why are you hitting culture-warring yourself?"

Obviously the left needs to not bring up these contentious issues

if you pretend the sun actually cares about this they've won, there is really nothing short of "yes boris" that will not be taken as more woke culture war bollocks and even then...

but the sun has already won anyway because this is the only criticism the party actually takes seriously

Imago nodding to a Sun editorial is it

Yeah that's obviously what I was doing there

No idea what you do, that's true

Still trying to reckon with The Sun now being edited by a woman from Liverpool (not sure how much time she spent there though).

Going to ignore xyzzzz__ and imago at it again (srsly lads), because Johnny Mc was posting about his taste in music last night, and we haven’t had such a good sample since the days of baggymp. Linking all the tweets because fuck you so people can click through if they want.

Tonight I did Crispin Flintoff’s ⁦@Standup4Labour⁩ Castaway programme in which you chose 7 of your favourite songs. This is one of them. Jamie Webster “ This Place.” https://t.co/7PJsAlnDRD

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) January 20, 2021

This was another Christie Moore “Viva La Quinta Brigada” https://t.co/9iCbBqGrgF

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) January 21, 2021

The next. Gill Scott Heron “The revolution will not be televised.” https://t.co/5zDuTfsW0E

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) January 21, 2021

Next The Style Council “A stone’s throw away.” https://t.co/xhyfNqLFa5

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) January 21, 2021

Next Troubadours Du Roi Baudouin “Missa Luba Sanctus” https://t.co/kAuSgL4BjN

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) January 21, 2021

Next Stormzy “Crown” https://t.co/BjIGGD7JaV

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) January 21, 2021

Finally Chumbawomba “Tubthumping.” Thanks Chrispin, I enjoyed selecting but wish I had 8 as I would have included anything by the great Sean Taylor. https://t.co/5nh9zv6GMP

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) January 21, 2021

looking at their twitter activity I don't think JC has for a good long while but JMcD definitely does

— Ovens Heterlijs QC (@owenhatherley) January 20, 2021

Oh yes I do.

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) January 20, 2021

Back in a minute, my heart jumped out of my chest at 'Viva La Quinta Brigada'

(should have picked Amnesia for the last, mind)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/21/britons-buying-from-eu-websites-face-more-than-100-import-duties

Norwegian premium jumpsuits aside, I was looking into official consumer-facing information on rules around personal imports / shopping online from the EU about two weeks ago and there was essentially nothing. It’s like they just didn’t get around to it.

Oh did i note the thrust of many, many mails my foreign affairs frontline contact is dealing with from uk suppliers

"What dyou mean not part of britain

Get yr facts straight m8, thats embarrassing. Eire isnt part of the united kingdom m8 but it is absolutely still part of the islands of britain, sort it out"

More than several, talking several dozen where this appears to be the actual received wisdom on yknow how this was going to be sorted

Regret to inform that we have not as yet gotten this sorted

ts: “on the pig’s back” vs “sure what would you expect from a pig but a grunt”

Some mash of the two anyway

Common (area) as muc, perhaps

as a nation i'm sorry to say we probably deserve to have this man as our prime minister.

Boris Johnson answers ... is Joe Biden woke? pic.twitter.com/RAOKWusEQO

— Sam Coates Sky (@SamCoatesSky) January 20, 2021

The Yanks have got rid of Trump and we're stuck with this absolute cunt for the foreseeable.

I hope Biden turns round and says "Up the RA!" and then declares war on us.

Sleeper Joe

xp get your passport if you’re entitled to one!

anybody who doesn't want Joe to say "up the ra!" is a cop imo

Boris could reply "Hey! I'm Turkish"

oh man i've just remembered when that attention-hungry flag shagger tried to reboot Clap For Heroes, how's that working out?

I didn't hear any clapping, not even in the posh Tory voting side of Town

the magic's gone!

I think it is much harder to get this kind of mass fake spontaneous applause thing going for a 2nd time after the novelty has gone. And also with the apocalypse in full swing and lots of NHS workers saying they'd rather get a decent wage instead - it's perhaps got to a rather awkward stage.

I think my fave NHS worker comment was: If you voted Conservative and intend to clap for us, then take a good shit in your hands first.

ha I had this in drafts for one of the rona threads: I know I’m a broken record on these threads but I keep thinking of that weird “missing the mood of the nation” copypasta from last spring and how it feels a bit like that and yet not, now that the govt’s whole thing is “weee vaccine number go up” while lockdown is barely keeping a lid on infections & the death toll is catastrophic and ppl seem to be going along with it ime (not just credulous journos). Obv people have been in denial passim - eat out to help out, back to normal by (insert ludicrous timeframe here) - but it feels strongest now, or maybe just more jarring given how fucked we are

But as I say it’s not quite that because anecdotally everyone is fucking miserable (cf no fucker bothering with clap for carers this time round) so I have to think people are aware of how terrible the situation is, just nobody is talking about it

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/21/ministers-ponder-paying-500-to-all-with-covid-in-england

I wonder why countries that started doing this last March have much lower covid new case/death rates than this hellhole.

mind you Tories will say you can't incentivize people to get the Rona just so they can stay at home rather than spreading it to dozens of other ppl in some fucking sweatshop.

Wait does this mean if I can catch the Rona Rishi will finally give me my fucking PS5?