Nigel Farage's new political vehicle has been a bit of lesson to the current political parties. It demonstrates clearly how our current generation of 'professional' politicians are no such thing. The chumps of Change UK and the Tories are not able to even do basic political campaigning and messaging. Meanwhile, Labour have been fantastic, led by a young group around Corbyn - but they have come unstuck over the message of anti-Semitism and envy, as well as the fence-sitting of Brexit.
So enter a new party with a very simple message and bit of slick presentation - but also learning the lessons of the current mood. All races and classes are reflected, there are a few politicians in the ranks but plenty more from all walks of life. Very canny stuff.
But, should the Brexit party, which is likely to just top the Euro elections, but only in the 20%'s range, go for Parliament. Arguably, in my lifetime the two party system has never been weaker and a big shove may really hurt it.
However, will the Brexit party manage a coherent message for Westminster? The left/right gulf in the membership maybe hard to overcome and Farage puts nearly as many off as he encourages, plus likes to rule in a Presidential style that may prove harder in a political campaign - Theresa May is an example of how it may seem like a good idea to run a Parliamentary campaigning like this but the reality is different.
Also, if Brexit destroys the Tories where will exist a pro-business, pro-economy party in the UK political system? Perhaps the Tories will recover, but to me it is a worry that sensible and sound economic policy would be abandoned to a coterie of anti-business and pro-state parties.
20 comments:
CU - "they have come unstuck over the message of anti-Semitism"
No, they haven't 'come unstuck', there's been a concerted and well-organised campaign against Corbyn because of his relative neutrality on Israel/Palestine. That has certainly done them a great deal of damage, but the only thing JC could do about it is change his foreign policy.
Brexit Party should wait til Euro elections and see what the results are. I intend to vote in them but will probably spoil my ballot in the local elections, as both parties have shown they don't respect a democratic vote. We should all do the same.
I hear that a lot of Tory councillors are refusing to canvass - I'm not surprised. How can they face Brexit voters on the doorstep?
*If* Brexit destroys the Tories? I think Brexit is more of a coup de grace.
Let's be clear, no one votes Tory because they're the cuddly party, they vote for them for a sense of security in economic and criminal matters that Labour cannot match.
Being socially liberal myself, I have no issues with the Tories *adding* that sensibly (e.g gay marriage good, hugging hoodies bloody stupid), but it should not be replacing their core offer of an economy ticking over and people feeling safe on the streets.
Walking through Manchester in a morning, it now looks like a scene from Threads - mainly down to a benefits system the Tories have managed to badly fuck up, and Cameron's genius idea of criminalizing Spice, thus ensuring supply still exists, but the quality, contents and strength now vary. It's like no fucker read up on how the Mafia went from a problem to an epidemic in the US.
My True Blue village has seen an uptick in crime, carjackings were unknown a few years ago, now you're best off having a second, beat-up, car in case you need to drive over to the supermarket after dark. Partially down to police cuts - hard to fear forensics when, should they bother to send someone out, it'll be stuck on a backlog. The Lib Dems are currently very active, whilst the Tories are keeping their heads down.
The business rates farrago. IR35 taking a scattergun approach, costing loads in failed court cases and increasing uncertainty and cost.
I see a government who have failed in helping businesses - other than the Big Boys wafting their future job offers in the faces of MPs of course - and who have failed in maintaining a reasonable standard of law and order through mismanaging "austerity" and overseeing a benefits system that has seen people made homeless and/or turn to food banks.
Their abject failings over Brexit just joins plenty of existing nails in their electoral coffin.
Were Labour not such a fucking mess, they'd have tanked in the polls, possibly into the teens.
Be explicit when not voting for any party. Strike through all the check boxes and write 'NONE' across all the candidates. Make it explicit you don't want any of them.
Anon 10.50 - read up on Anti-Semitism stuff. it really, really is not overblown. if anything, it is sadly under-appreciated how deep that well is on the far-left. Plenty of them should be looking at chokey over this.
Anon 11.04 - Um, I have spent lots of time in Manchester over the years, spice is a horrible thing and has had a horrible impact on the city and I notice from my travels that it is a peculiarly Mancunian issue. But the whole crime thing - do you remember Gunchester? Manchester is way better than 20 years ago, much safer.
The whole benefits thing does not ring true either - there are far more people in work, what has happened is that the real mentally unwell people are finding it harder as benefits are less freely given out. This is a social care issue, not just about how much free money is being thrown around, it is about how little of a social safety net there is - whereas previously generous benefits and low-level criminality hid this from view
There's certainly a need for a centre-right, pro laura 'n order, pro business party but the current Tory parliamentary party isn't it and thoroughly deserves to be euthanized. I'm guessing that PR will be coming soon. Certainly, plenty of people will propose it as the answer to the current, broken system. When it does, new centre right parties will arise. I'm not really looking forward to the loonies that will get elected under PR.
CU, we'll have to agree to disagree, and its not often I disagree with you. It's funny how this wasn't an LP concern until a leader neutral on Israel got elected. I'm sure if it would suddenly become just as big a problem for the Tories if, say, Alan Duncan (whose politics I also detest) became leader.
Anyway, twitter informs me that it's Lesbian Visibility Day, so I'll take the dog out and see if there are more mannish, tweedy women walking Rotties than the usual two or three!
@CU - yes, I've lived through Gunchester, various riots (reported and otherwise) and indeed the IRA doing a spot of unasked-for urban renewal.
I've never seen it in it's current condition. Drug dealing is endemic, as are knives, and in public display like at no time in the past. The old sunken gardens at Piccadilly could be a bit rough at times, but still less dangerous than now. There is no fear in the more feral.
The level of homelessness has crossed into a genuine parallel culture. Twenty years ago I helped a few, and even got to meet one I helped off the streets not too long back. Now? Almost beyond help. It's horrific.
As for benefits not being a problem, you can say it rings however you want, the bald reality is that people are having to wait in scales of months for money. Working class folk who've done 30+ years putting into the system having to go down to food banks waiting for the bennos to get off their arses and process claims.
Or do you think the massive increase in food banks is just some hipster fad?
The simplest way for the brexit party to bridge the broad membership issue is to have a very focused platform. No massive changes proposed to the UK. One goal, which is to leave with no-deal, and gradually sign agreements with a range of other countries not just the EU.
The SPD approach of having a view on everything makes their audience narrower and their message on brexit hugely diluted.
Mmm. My guess is a lot of Conservative voters will go on strike for the locals and give Farage a protest vote at the Euros - whatever it takes to get May's claws out of the Downing St doorposts.
Brexit party at the GE? Well, not for me. I'm a Libertarian Tory and loathe autocracy - and a party that doesn't have members or democracy ain't for me. It's downright lethal to consider such a single issue campaign for an inclusive parliament. We'll have to wait for the EC returns to see where Farage is getting his money from - but it will take a lot more than £750k raised in £5 paypal donations to compete in a GE.
No, I'll stick with the Conservatives and fight to democratise the Party, and fight to rid it of Hague's patrician centralisation, returning authority to the Local Associations like we had before 1979. We lost a million members between 1979 - 1997, and I was one of them.
And no to PR. Of course Farage wants it - he's seen how it enables corrupt horse trading for power, wealth and influence in the EP, far far worse than our FTTP system does, and no doubt there is pressure from the Brexit Party funders for such an outcome.
As CH had it this morning, Farage will rise like a rocket and fall like a stick. Conservatives will use him to secure Party reforms and a Brexit leader. Sorry, but as much as I appreciate what he will achieve at the Euros, Nigel is disposable.
It is not true that Corbyn is "neutral on Palestine". He strongly supports Hamas, an organisation that advocates the destruction of the Jews.
Don Cox
Don, unless you can give me some evidence, my understanding is that Corbyn has spoken at Palestinian meetings/rallies where Hamas speakers were also present. That's a long way from being a 'strong supporter'. And isn't it the State of Israel that Hamas are agin' (I may be wrong, not following the politics closely)?
On the other hand, our nice moderate Conservative, that decent small business owner on your local council (I'll ignore the crooked estate agent), has leaders who have funded, armed and trained - with our tax money - real, head-chopping jihadists in Syria. Now that's what I call "strong support".
We even set up (via an ex-British intelligence guy, if you can ever be said to leave) a fake rescue organisation, providing fake footage of bewildered kids from jihadist-controlled areas where any independent journalists would be killed, in a failed attempt to manipulate public opinion into extending our undeclared war.
To top it all, we've given several hundred of them asylum in the UK - a decision we'll hear more of in the future when they start blowing people up.
In the 1980s Mrs Thatcher's administration funded and armed Islamist terrorists in Afghanistan against the Russians - which was where a Mr Bin Laden cut his jihadist teeth.
In 2010/11 Mr Cameron's administration let anti-Gaddaffi Islamists, who for some insane reason had been given asylum in the UK, return to Libya to fight against the Libyan regime. One returned to the UK and blew up a concert in Manchester, killing a lot of young British girls. Mr Cameron also used the RAF to help destroy Gaddaffi, probably (although a nasty piece of work) the most competent leader Libya has had, and the country became not only a shambles but an Islamist training ground for the people who, a year or two later, killed 35 middle aged Brits in Tunisia.
When Corbyn starts sending weapons and money to Hamas, getting the SAS to train their fighters, then you can rightly comdemn him - and I will too.
(As you may have noted I feel quite strongly about this)
I remain hopeful that "this too shall pass" and we remain a 2.5 party state under FPTP. No idea which 2 parties that will be.
Clearly things are not working when the issues are not on party lines. I am sure Farage's party will do well in May, but he has stood for Parliament 16 (?) times and always failed. I have great respect for the judgement of the british people.
where will exist a pro-business, pro-economy party in the UK political system?
hmmm.
All lab have to do is place a big poster "F*** business" (c) Boris Johnson 2018 around the City.
Anon - when Corbyn is in power he will be doing all that and more.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Seriously, look at Seamus Milne today in the news for claiming Israel founded ISIS.
Whataboutism does not excuse in anyway the severe failings of the current Labour leadership on ignoring anti Semitism. I suggest you follow Rachel Riley on twitter if you want to see it in action.
May I suggest a pro 'free market' policy rather than a 'pro business policy.'
The latter tends to mean that the government gets to decide which businesses survive or dies through taxes, subsidies and regulation. With the former it is the public who decide.
"Also, if Brexit destroys the Tories where will exist a pro-business, pro-economy party in the UK political system?"
Ah, diddums, you think the Tories are pro-business and pro-economy! They haven't been that for 20 years or more. The Tories are instead pro-global corporations and pro-Big State, the two go hand in hand. They are also anti-competition, anti-freedom and anti-low tax.
A communist and a Royal Marine SBS commander have joined their ranks. It's difficult to see how they could provide a manifesto beyond a single issue.
@ single-issue:
'Brexit Party' is a nice Ronseal-type name for the euros: but there could be future circumstances where it wouldn't carry them any further. I don't have a cleverer suggestion for the name but really, if Farage is minded to do anything more in politics than this one last single-issue spectacular, he should have striven mightily to find one.
Anonymous @3:47 - spot on.
@Don Cox - thats bollox - even Hamas dont support 'destruction of the Jews' - destruction of Israel, yes. Not the same thing no matter how hard you plug it.
CU - "they have come unstuck over the message of anti-Semitism"
Bollox they have.
They are pro-Palestinian, and strongly so - yes. But Labour is not anti-semitic.
I do not pretend to know the Jewish mind but there are many factions/denominations/groupings within Judaism which oppose Israel in whatever domain is pertinent to their individual agendas.
This is demonstrable fact.
Corbyn has a particular position, derived from his poitical convictions, which dovetail (rightly or wrongly) with several Jewish religious, political or social groupings.
Thus, to call him anti-semitic is an egregious slur and one which reflects badly - in spite of the robust to-and-fro - on a blog I have respected for many years.
Corbyn has a lot of faults and flaws. There is a lot to be wary of and a lot of outright ideological bullshit.
But he is not an anti-semite and imagining him as such is to do nothing other than parrot an Israeli Propaganda operation.
"look at Seamus Milne today in the news for claiming Israel founded ISIS"
Whether that claim is ridiculous or not doesn't make Milne an anti-semite. Just up the thread I have accused multiple Brit govts (Thatcher/Cameron/May) of funding, arming and training terrorists - that doesn't mean I hate the Brits.
OK - Anon - I cannot force you to accept a truth you want to deny. That is life. See for yourself the litany of anti-Semitic tropes published in Labour's name, the whitewashing of those accused and the investigation of them by the Human Rights commission. Something is amiss but if you want to believe it is nothing to do with St Jeremy then I can't help you. next you will be saying he was the one who brought peace to Northern Ireland.
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