Free as a Dodo: UK Politics Welcomes 2021

The history of the Labour party for the rest of time is just opposing factions, journalists and columnists accusing the other lot of being too London, too metropolitan, too woke, too middle class. It wont end. Its meaningless.

NEW: Exclusive polling for @Channel4News by @JLPartnersPolls shows the top reason given for not voting Labour in elections in England yesterday was Sir Keir Starmer's leadership.

More in @GaryGibbonC4's report on @Channel4 and @All4 tonight at 7pm.

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) May 7, 2021

mahmood is a bit of a slow learner it seems. he's talking about an issue the labour party has had starting in the 60s. back then the greatest predictor of voting labour was being working class and the greatest predictor of voting tory was having a university degree. but since then there's been the increasing move of white working class votes to tories, with bedrock of labour support increasingly becoming racialized voters and the urban, university educated middle-class. piketty's brahmin left thesis. the majority of white working class men voted for thatcher though so im not really sure that that is kieth's fault

xp. love to see it

https://i.postimg.cc/prv36cPy/4-E147-A5-C-F9-EE-4-DF0-96-C7-62-DBBBDB5-B4-A.jpg

1. Patriotic COVID bonds
2.
3.

No poll for me.

https://i.postimg.cc/prv36cPy/4-E147-A5-C-F9-EE-4-DF0-96-C7-62-DBBBDB5-B4-A.jpg

fascinating in this discourse how the most precarious and marginalised people in the country are consistently framed as some kind of elite which is somehow oppressing a largely propertied, sometimes business owning "working class" with idk wokeness or whatever xps

They are even politically nuanced enough to judge Kieth's merit as a leader, why do we even allow these plebs to vote.

jesus christ the bbc coverage is insufferable

earlier it sounded like Keunssberg was suggesting that life is rosy in the de-industrial regions of the north that they don't even need an opposition party to vote for anymore

They're considering moving Labour HQ out of London now? Cheaper rents I guess, they'll need to cut corners somewhere.

I'm sure they could find somewhere just as handsome as that iconic Transport House building they used to be based in at a good price in Dewsbury or Doncaster!

Love this wordcloud.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E0ziHb3WYAI9NIJ?format=jpg&name=900x900

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E0za03NXsAA4_up?format=png&name=large

"no get up and go"

give him a chance till the pubs are open

one can dream

One thing I do hope is that public political discourse finally takes seriously the demographic recomposition of these “red wall” seats, including and especially rates of home ownership, rather than acting as if it’s people facing breadline poverty abandoning Labour

— Jason Okundaye (@jasebyjason) May 7, 2021

snp has won 3 of the constituency seats it needs to get a majority - it needs another 3 and not to lose any of its own. constituency seats will probably be known by the end of the night with list shenanigans to be done by tomorrow night.

the long, drawn-out process of reaching another indy ref begins, perhaps.

xp
Wont happen. If the "public discourse" is mainstream journalists talking about it, its in their interest to obfuscate this very basic reality. Grace Blakely and her cohort are on it, cf Keir Milburn's chapter in the Futures of Socialism book. But they are saying an unsayable truth, like the fact that the vast majority of "woke metropolitan middle class latte-drinking" Labour voters are actually working class, if that term is applied strictly.

Only white people are considered working class in the UK, it's always been like that.

Have you got a regional accent? Then you're in too.

It looks like second preferences will save Khan, will still be a humiliation if he loses on firsts to a figure who the Tory party effectively abandoned https://t.co/Q0rkSiOXFO

— Stephen Smith (@SteveNickSmith) May 7, 2021

can't wait for the pissy takes on complacent Londoners casting frivolous first pref votes on candidates they prefer to Khan

I still think its mostly because he has a voice like a muppet

all politics and factionalism aside, that voice really should have precluded him from the job right from the start

Curtice saying he thinks the SNP will a seat or two short

*be

XxXpost

Is that Starmer or Khan you’re talking about.

I think he definitely means Kieth because he was an early analyser of the voice on here!

I know none of us like to acknowledge it, but people from Surrey are human too!

Here’s a council bucking the trend - vote share and votes up and everything:

RESULT:
Labour 30 (+/- 0)
Cons 11 (+2)
LD 7 (-2)#PrestonModel council marches on! pic.twitter.com/iChyNKASkx

— Preston Labour (@prestonlabour) May 7, 2021

not true

i briefly attended the university of surrey dont ask and its pod ppl all the way down

"For Scots of my generation — millennial and younger — the belief that Scotland would be better off running its own affairs, free from the strictures of Westminster, is almost axiomatic." I wrote about the break-up of Britain for the New York Times. https://t.co/cZ9DbCTea2

— Jamie Maxwell (@jamiedmaxwell) May 7, 2021

he's overstating that a bit.

Curtice saying he thinks the SNP will a seat or two short

― stet, Friday, May 7, 2021 1:10 PM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

think he will likely be right.

im mainly looking forward to the d'hondt to see what happens with the greens and alba - hopefully only salmond gets elected - but i understand that won't be until tomorrow (even in my 8 hours behind timezone).

Unbelievable

*Taps sign I put up in early April*. *Taps sign again*. pic.twitter.com/wQxJfTeUlT

— Glen O'Hara (@gsoh31) April 30, 2021

Can we please not post that poisonous goblin here even as a joke thanks in advance

Last time Khan won Ealing & Hillingdon with about 82,000 votes but Bailey has beaten him there by about 5K (80K vs 75K rounding up). Turnout not too affected in the outer boroughs then it seems?

i briefly attended the university of surrey dont ask and its pod ppl all the way down

were any reassurance in London needed this is a useful thread

London overall:

2016 R1: Khan 44%/35% Goldsmith
2016 R2: Khan 57%/43% Goldsmith

So Bailey needs a 7% swing to win, roughly. He's hitting that in a single constituency of the half-dozen which are counting so far. He's just not on course or anywhere near.

— Pip Moss (@PipsFunFacts) May 7, 2021

Can we please not post that poisonous goblin here even as a joke thanks in advance

― Scamp Granada (gyac), Friday, 7 May 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Only posting classics now sorry if this offends

Strikes me that McDonnell either got it slightly wrong yesterday or was biting his tongue (probably the latter) when he was talking about sending candidates out without policy. Obviously policy matters hugely but all this is first and foremost a problem of representation. For all that Corbynism alienated key groups of voters it also massively enthused others - including groups like working class black people who as people on this thread have already pointed out might as well not exist as far as the professional punditry class goes. Now Labour's losing support from both sides because, other than a few Zone 2 professional types and middle-aged commuter-belt liberals, no one feels especially represented by Starmer's Labour because there's pretty much nothing to feel represented by.

On policy, there are a lot of hacks who thought Starmer was doing brilliantly because he was doing exactly the things that they were saying should have been done all along, plus this bizarre train of thought that told them that because Biden had won, that meant that Starmer was going to, provided he did all the things that they said should have been done all along. The lack of policy or vision under Starmer wasn't a result of a lack of ideas (although it may have been that as well), it was a deliberate strategic decision by the people advising him. It's there in the interviews with these guys, they were actually pouring scorn on the idea that he should commit to a vision, one of them literally called the idea "vapid". Well, who looks vapid now?

Strikes me that the problem isn't with individual politicians so much as with the entire group of professional advisors that surrounds them - I don't pay attention to the ins and outs of Labour politics very much any more because who can be arsed, the whole thing is just so soul-crushing - but a lot of these people should never be allowed near a major political party ever again. It's all based around a fantasy version of a centre ground that hasn't existed since 2008 at least and probably never did, which is why they keep managing to pitch Labour up in a position that pleases precisely nobody.

Going back to the issue of representation here, Andy Burnham's campaign for the leadership was a disaster, no historical revisionism here, and it's probably the result of this exact same advisory mindset. But if he wins comfortably in Manchester then it's probably because he has made people feel represented over the course of the pandemic. I've no doubt that would all be sucked out of him if he were to somehow win the leadership. On the flipside, thinking about people like Thangam Debbonaire in Bristol who said nothing when her constituents were being beaten by the police at protests. A by-election in a formerly safe metropolitan seat would be very interesting right now.

I know you all know this stuff but I needed to say it somewhere because I've been inwardly screaming at the wider discourse. (Also, never, ever, ever type 'Sadiq Khan' into Twitter unless you're feeling the urge to emigrate).

wb king

at least Burnham has shown some desire to learn from his mistakes and not dig in on a losing formula - even though he's still too slick and untrustworthy by half for my liking and made dickhead pandering to bigot comments last year re: Asian communities and Rona - but still after a year of Starmer Labour, jesus fucking wept - almost anyone would be an improvement.

I mean he would be better than Yvette Cooper, but I doubt I'll vote again in my lifetime tbh

I'm reasonably sure that whoever comes next is likely to be worse and even if they are better it won't matter as long as they're being advised by the same sort of people. Which isn't to say they should go out and rehire Seumas Milne because Lord knows he was a disaster but there's been very little fresh thinking over the last year (or maybe there's been too much thinking and too little decision making).

Very strong Unai Emery at Arsenal vibes to Starmer's Labour. Only Mikel Arteta can save them now.

Ahh, nothing like the growing realisation that you're reading a DC post 👍🏻

Great to see your thoughts on this Matt.

calz yes but I also think Matt's right - that whatever pugnacious belief Burnham's found as mayor would be efficaciously repackaged - and perhaps spoken of reverently, as a foundational myth, like Khan's childhood - but stowed safely away in a glass case should he decamp to Westminster as Labour leader.

I think McD was definitely biting his tongue. I'm sure he'd have something much more discerning to say about yesterday when amongst friends and family, but he'd probably get the whip removed if he said it publicly.

Sadiq Khan loves telling people they shouldn't vote Labour doesn't he pic.twitter.com/F3DVeea5M3

— Dan Hancox (@danhancox) May 8, 2021

i think there was a moment during burnham's 2015 leader campaign where you almost saw the lightbulb go off and realise where things were going and instead of doubling down and looking increasingly desperate/irrelevant as cooper did, started to seem relaxed and philosophical. if it does become the case that the narrative shifts as a result of the divergent results in preston manchester etc and he ends up becoming starmer's successor, there will be those who say that he should simply have been elected then. i seem to recall his campaign having a remarkably similar whiff of starmer's recent john lewis wallpaper stunt desperation (wasn't his line that he was the candidate of which? magazine readers? absolutely bizarre market-research led politics).

Both him and Cooper got absolutely owned by Jez in the leadership hustings debate, whilst Liz Kendall shrivelled into micron sized insignificance. Oh happy days!