Free as a Dodo: UK Politics Welcomes 2021

that Toynbee piece in the Graun today is her most embarrassingly bad work since her Owen Smith piece in 2016

lol when has sleaze ever ‘felled Tory governments’? The best guess most academics made circa Cash For Questions is that it cost them two seats.

Is the sleaze a ref on The Back to Basics type stuff in the Major-era followed by sex scandals?

It’s both that and the whole business with al-Fayed. The impact was negligible.

Cash For Questions seems so antiquated now, especially as one of the longest serving Labour MP is a registered "Professional Lobbyist" and the likes of Jenrick can get away with outrageous conduct without the Labour leader or even the Mancunian great white hope of the soft Left calling their head.

People get fussed, let's say, about the smaller stuff.

Spending billions on PPE that never happens, is a thing. That the money went to a "crony" is incidental detail, whatever.

An MP claims a duck-house on his expenses, however, is an easily assimilable image to enrage.

It's the old "nick a tenner, go to jail. nick a million, get a knighthood"

Someone should perhaps tell Polly that Boris Johnson is the current Prime Minister, not Sir Alec Douglas-Home.

It's very on-brand for a Guardian liberal to think that the problem with the Major government was poor optics rather than, idk, Black Wednesday and the ensuing economic devastation.

Major could have done with someone like Polly and her fellow SDP chums to rip apart the Labour Party like they did in the 80s.

Am I right in thinking the Guardian have simply ignored today's Hartlepool survey, as opposed to all the Corbyn-era by-elections - Oldham West, Peterborough - when they couldn't wait to file misguided predictions of Labour's polling day doom? VMIC if so.

It's covered in the politics live blog

After thinking about it for a while, I have an idea what 'VMIC' might stand for, but a search for it yields:

https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/VMIC

Acronym Definition
VMIC VME Microsystems International Corporation
VMIC Virginia’s Manufacturing Innovation Center (James Madison University; Harrisonburg, VA)
VMIC Vermont Maple Industry Council
VMIC Vietnam Meeting and Incentive Club
VMIC View and Markup Information Center
VMIC VLSI (Very Large-Scale Integration) Multilevel Interconnection Conference (IEEE)
VMIC Veterinary Medical Information Center (est. 1977; Purdue University; West Lafayette, IN)

I initially mistyped it as MVIC which was even more doomed to failure.

vmic

It's very on-brand for a Guardian liberal to think that the problem with the Major government was poor optics rather than, idk, Black Wednesday and the ensuing economic devastation.

I don't pretend to understand 'the economy', and I suspect that 'economic success' might often mean success for some people, not others. But can it be said that, in terms most people understand, 'the economy was doing badly' by May 1997? As far as I recall, the opposite - Labour inherited a boom (again, defined on certain terms).

My recollection FWIW (see acronym list) is that the nearest recession to this was around 1990-1, not post-1992.

In which case why did the Major government fall? There are reams of books on this but I think a certain sense of 'government fatigue' was relevant, ie: they had hung on for 18 years; and 'sleaze optics' was part of the general atmosphere. It may be relevant that their majority was small by then anyway - they had lost MPs from an already quite weak point in 1992, and were, I think, relying on UUP support - so they were not a very 'strong government' by the end. Effective opposition (unlike KS) was also relevant.

Imagine if Blair had employed a KS style "constructive opposition" in '97. Even with all the fatigue and sleaze optics it still might have been a hung parliament or a struggling Labour minority govt. John Major said he'd have still lost if he had run against himself - but he'd never met Kieth at this point!

I think there were lots of factors involved, including the splits over Europe, but Black Wednesday killed the automatic right the Tories had enjoyed, since god knows when, to be regarded as the default party of economic competence. As soon as it happened, they were polling under 30% and didn’t win a by-election again until Major had gone.

The economy didn’t go into recession but iirc inflation and negative equity were perceived at the time as being huge issues.

John Major said he'd have still lost if he had run against himself - but he'd never met Kieth at this point!

That's amusing.

Black Wednesday helped the economic situation, as devaluing the pound helped exports and meant interest rates could be lowered without the need to prop up the currency at an unsustainable level. But it meant that the government didn't get credit for the subsequent economic acceleration, as it was the humiliating failure of their policy that made it possible. Tbf to the labour party of the time, they were good at not letting people forget that.

Probably most importantly, the press barons never forgave Major for it.

Final closure of virtually all remaining coalmines around the same time was also massively unpopular at the time, but doesn't get remembered at all by Serious Pundits

It was, but that was late 1992 (or the protests were) - I don't really feel that it was a big causal factor in May 1997.

Every photo he looks creepy af pic.twitter.com/aCydfVDlpY

— K 🦋 🌸 (@stealmoonshine) April 7, 2021

three word horror story: starmer gaetz sleepover

I can't believe his campaign office would consider that a good pic to put out there!

"Do you want to see some puppies?" That can't have been released by the Labour Party surely?

some of the comments are suggesting it was! Maybe they are thinking it never did Hancock any harm getting filmed looking like a leering creepazoid with a semi!

Tony or Matt?

giving off Salmond ice cream girl vibes xxxp

is kieth a known drinker? he's looking a bit red cheeked these days.

I’ve been in Hartlepool helping get MPs out campaigning, listening to people on the doorstep. Let me know what day you are coming to do some canvassing and for how long x

— Stephanie Peacock (@Steph_Peacock) April 7, 2021

Labour MP on MP action here. Would like to see more of this stuff spilling out into the open, tbh.

And of course she utterly ignores the substance in Trickett's article, just for a cheap snipe

so the loyalists/drug dealer gangs are kicking off in the 6 counties. the unionist establishment isn't exactly helping matters. arlene posted on twitter that a mob firebombing a bus (with the driver in it) was taking away the focus from "the real criminals" the shinners, because nobody being charged over the heavily-attended and covid protocol defying funeral of bobby storey last year is the purported rationale behind this rioting. that along with brexit and arlene foster helping to create an economic united ireland

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/northern-ireland-bus-hijacked-and-set-on-fire-as-disorder-continues-1.4531437

that shit from Arlene this morning about the funeral kicking all this off is absolutely barmy!

"is kieth a known drinker? he's looking a bit red cheeked these days."

his face looks really puffy and bloated and has aged a lot in the last couple of years - I'm no oil painting myself and am only judging here because it's the ham with a bad plan. But going by his current rate of aging he will look older than Corbyn within 2.7 years. I heard he had a remarkably well observed portrait made in 2019 that captured the rotten essence of his hollow decayed soul so well he had it locked it in his attic, where it get's more handsome and vital looking every day!

Spot the difference pic.twitter.com/2nrnSG7T2B

— Ben 🟨🟥 (@Ben_Jolly_9) April 7, 2021

the ham with a bad plan

Amusing!!

simply masterful tweet from arlene last night

This is not protest. This is vandalism and attempted murder. These actions do not represent unionism or loyalism. They are an embarrassment to Northern Ireland and only serve to take the focus off the real law breakers in Sinn Fein.
My thoughts are with the bus driver. https://t.co/2JRcOb6s8C

— Arlene Foster #WeWillMeetAgain (@DUPleader) April 7, 2021

8 year anniversary of the glorious day Thatcher died

i had to look up an obtuse facebook 'on this day' message ("there go the tv schedules") this morning which turned out to be thatcher's death.

Going all-in on ASBOs again.

Our analysis showing appalling rises in antisocial behaviour in @DailyMirror.@UKLabour’s plan is to put more police on our streets & support communities with a Victims’ Law.

Action is needed-under the Conservatives criminals have never had it so good.https://t.co/4e34tHbB94

— Nick Thomas-Symonds MP (@NickTorfaen) April 8, 2021

Nearly 1.2m people had seen abandoned or burnt-out cars in their areas, according to the survey, 3.7m (8%) had suffered from noisy neighbours or “loud parties” and six million (13%) had spotted yobs being drunk or rowdy in public.

....almost seven million (14%) experienced teens hanging round on streets

2.4m (6%) had seen the best minds of their generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix

Please don’t make light of the fact that nearly 3% of the population has seen an abandoned car, this is serious.

1.4% had seen things you people wouldn't believe...

How many of the 14% are the teens in question

Spiderman meme but its teens

better than them being at home on computers playing violent mind destroying video games

a fucking abysmal dying days of Blairism tribute act - is that all these cunts have got? Can't wait to see them wiped out in the local elections.

still miss those cute little miniature bottles of free milk. I wonder if social media had been in existence in the late 80's would I be sharing memes of breakdancing dogs pissing on Sir Anthony Eden's grave .. probably not! Lots of young people born after 1990 seem to despise Thatcher even more than some of us old bastards that lived through Thatcherism. Pure fucking evil, but still I feel like I probably had it easier than people who grew up under the late-Blairism to the current stage of her project. At least there was still actually stuff left to dismantle and sell back in the 70's-80-s and to get social housing you didn't have to go on a 10 year waiting list.

How many of that 3% thought it was 'beautiful'?

xposts

Lads, we're going to have to decolonise without the help of Times columnists 😞 pic.twitter.com/AO10IT0SN8

— Nicholas Guyatt (@NicholasGuyatt) April 8, 2021