Free as a Dodo: UK Politics Welcomes 2021

Is James Mumford, a "public thinker" no less, related to any of Mumford & Sons?

he used to be, now he'll be running as an "anti-woke" candidate in the next London mayoral election after this one.

lol or maybe not - I thought he might be that arse that got thrown out of the mumfords!

Mumford demonstrates an admirable ability to zero in on things too often missing from political conversations ... A plea for nuance and ambivalence, in a world that often seems to be in danger of mislaying both. * John Harris, Observer

this is all I need to know about the cunt

it's a bit like the Aesop fable, the more wankers like this talk about "nuance" then the less nuanced and more reactionary I become in dismissing them as total waste in about 3.6 milliseconds

So who wants to play a game?

Apprently there is no institutional racism in the UK. But there must be SOME explanation for the clearly evident racial disparity that shows up in all aspects of our lives...#TryNotToBeRacist!

— Dr Peter Olusoga (@PeteOlusoga) March 31, 2021

that's a brilliant, angry thread

Just saw well-known bell-end David Goodhart, who I suspect was involved in the report, say that there are proportionally more Pakistani origin people living in the poorest areas of the country, but in terms of actual numbers there are more white people living in those areas. I mean...

Every single person not actually involved in the report I've seen interviewed about it has comprehensively trashed it. The Beeb have obviously been desperately ringing round trying to get someone on to be a little more conciliatory but no luck so far.

Ignorant question: Is Olusoga a common Nigerian name or is that guy related to David?

it's his brother I think.

Alba updates:

Alex Arthur, boxer. a fucking idiot who has posts about AIDS patients, not needing a COVID vaccine because he's not fat and unfit, and stuff about gypsies is a candidate.

Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh is the number one candidate in central Scotland. for viewers not in scotland: she has previously been a member and candidate for the tories, briefly a member of labour, and an SNP MP. Not against the GRA but a Salmond loyalist (and seemingly an opportunist) who worked on his RT show. also got in a bit of bother with borrowing money from a trust in her professional life as lawyer.

George Kerevan and Craig Berry - members of the left-wing Common Weal group within the SNP have defected to Alba. Kerevan is a boomer trot who in the IMG and was briefly an SNP MP. Why they think a party lead by Salmond is going to help them advance a left-wing agenda god only knows.

If you don't have a lot of time and want to discover why Labour lost Scotland to the SNP from 2010 onwards, this one tweet will explain all https://t.co/LxvRyxO5CZ

— Stephen Smith (@SteveNickSmith) April 1, 2021

I didn't watch the full thing but I saw a few clips and my impression is Sarwar did a surprisingly decent job at the debate?

I only recently found out who his father is, don't know why I hadn't put two and two together before. His old man used to be the local councillor when I lived in Pollokshields and there were all sorts of rumours about him being bent as a five bob note but apparently he was honest enough but he surrounded by a lot of dodgy local 'businessmen'.

Mohammad Sarwar is now the Governor of Punjab!?

One of those people who always land on their feet.

He was of course the MP for Glasgow Govan, which was famously lost for the Labour Party by Bobby Gillespie's dad!

She's at it again :(

So what exactly has the government done to improve things for white working class boys for the past 11 years? Where I live it's cut their school budgets so they go to school for fewer hours. The wages and income of their families has fallen, more of them rely on food parcels

— Jess Phillips MP (@jessphillips) April 1, 2021

april fool!

What a thickheaded toxic dickhead. I didn't realise they had racially segregated schools in Yardley like an inverted version of 50's Alabama where the whites are the underdogs and these days you get arrested & thrown in jail for saying you are English

You know, I roll my eyes whenever I see "oh Jeremy you were too good for us and now we've lost our last hope!"-type comments on JC's social media posts but I gotta admit, these days it would be nice to see someone, anyone with a sufficient platform defend anything even vaguely close to my values.

wow. jess why don’t you start your own front national you racist farmer of white cocks

this should haunt her to her grave

each of her follow-up tweets also specifying “white”

Is this a subtweet of Phillips or have the front bench decided white working class boys is the thing to be taking about? https://t.co/IjEIXhCGsC

— Simon Vessey (@Simon_Vessey) April 1, 2021

the Deputy Leader get's in on the action as well

it’s the same with the institutional racism report. the next time we get a half decent or effective labour leader any utterance by the tories on race should be met with jeering derision and a verbatim quote or two. get back to your garden parties you twats

Phillips' tweet is an excellent example of how bad she is at communication. Her point seems to be 'the government can't highlight minority groups outperforming white working class kids at school as evidence that they are not unfairly disadvantaged because white working class kids are also unfairly disadvantaged' but, rather than saying that, she sounds like she's running a Margaret Hodge tribute act.

Yeah, it's clearly a "by your logic..." move, while trying to move the conversation away from race because as we know labour cares not for minorities these days.

It's odd about Alastair Campbell. He has been associated with terrible things, can be considered a terrible person.

But when he simply focuses on attacking the Con party he still actually has skill at it, reminding me of why he was long accepted / endorsed for doing this, even if we now think of him as a terrible person and the things he says seem extremely hypocritical.

My @BBCNewsnight clip on how @BorisJohnson and his crew of corrupt charlatans smashes the 7 Nolan Principles on a daily basis. Honesty. Objectivity. Openness. Selflessness. Integrity. Accountability. Leadership by example. They mean nothing to him pic.twitter.com/Po0W7q6pFm

— ALASTAIR CAMPBELL (@campbellclaret) March 31, 2021

The Labour Party politicians using the phrase 'working class' at all is pretty novel.

in an actual class sense. as code for reactionary white british mostly-men of all classes it's quite popular

the next time we get a half decent or effective labour leader

lol good one

i know i know

Boris Johnson’s Government Is Built on Cruelty

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/opinion/uk-immigration-boris-johnson.html

How to goad your opponents into buying water cannon and actually use them this time

Violent crime is up and the number of suspects charged is down.

Under the Conservatives, criminals have never had it so good. pic.twitter.com/X4aBDbkKjn

— The Labour Party (@UKLabour) April 1, 2021

oh fuck this

shaun bailey campaign going hard on this too (promising to increase stop & search etc). get ready for another racist authoritarian arms race

Kieth's "you're sure this is a good idea?" face a less than perfect fit for the Judge Dread vibe they're going for.

I saw that earlier - didnt even take in the whole thing just that fucking pic of starmzy with the word LAW - and felt a deep desire to give the prick a kick in the arse (does look like someone got there before me as it was being taken at least)

in an actual class sense. as code for reactionary white british mostly-men of all classes it's quite popular

"Hard working families" is the preferred term for politicians.

disgusting

this situation can't hold and something is going to have to explode sooner or later, like last year, or like 2011, or bigger

I've been having daydreams lately about a post-pandemic pressure group that exists purely to hold the Gov't acocuntable for the scale of preventable deaths in the past 12 months, how their active and wilful negligence has fucked up this country in so many ways that we might never properly recover from.

Truth in typos

I genuinely hope they get their arses skinned in these local elections, local councils are all fucking arseholes anyway, barring the rarest of examples of "radical localism" like Preston and a few other exceptions. What is needed here is a resolute no-vote of no-confidence in how rotten Labour is and it might push them slightly to the left on birching unruly children, 10 year prison sentences for knicking Parker Pens from WH Smiths and about 1 micron closer to publicly accepting that the working classes are a multi-ethnic group of society with common self-interests beyond race.

They are going to get absolutely annihilated and blame Corbyn for it.

Some of the commentariat are already are blaming Jez for it before it has happened, because they look a bit silly now after excitedly packing so much weight onto Kieth's very narrow and arthritically weak shoulders last year. Next stage is: If Yvette Cooper had won in 2015, we would have a Labour govt and be 20 pts ahead right now.

They're going to blaming Corbyn for the next 10 years at least. I can almost see a Winter of Discontent situation arising where wankers who weren't even born at the time are invoking the 2019 election 40 years later.

Not that the Labour Party will still in any significant form exist 40 years from now.

... still exist, that is ....