Friday 8 November 2019

Guardian Wimmin Worried About Election

They've evidently had one of their angst-ridden coffee mornings (are you allowed to say this? - Ed) because the Graun wimmin are worrying in unison about how things will go with the voters.  First up was Ellie Mae O'Hagan (get that shiny face!), fretting that Tactical Voting would hurt Labour.  Next came Zoe Williams, worrying that Tactical Voting would, errrr, hurt Remain.  Finally, Oor Poll reckons what we really need is another Hung Parliament (sic).

I conclude from all this that none of them give Corbyn a cat's chance in hell of getting an absolute majority.  As our BTL friend Andrew hinted yesterday, this presumably means a dirty deal between Labour and SNP, so that (as they'd see it) the Left get their hands on the levers of power for at least one last destructive roll of the dice.  Enough time to do all those vicious scorched-earth things that can never be reversed, before they are ejected forever a few years down the line: votes at 14, opening the ports, leaving NATO, scrapping the nuclear deterrent, GCHQ and the security services etc etc etc.

Is a hung parliament enough to stop them?  If Lab + SNP have an overall majority, then probably No.  The SNP would be only too happy to destroy the rest of the UK on their way to the door.  

In this leftist wet-dreamworld, Nigel Farage gets (how shall we delicately put it?) a rather unflattering write-up in history.  He really does need to think carefully what he's doing.

ND

Update: this is quite funny, too

18 comments:

Thud said...

All politics ends in tears and Nigel is screwing his legacy like there is no tomorrow, only there is and its going to be communist thanks to his pride.

hovis said...

History always depends on who is writing;
I know you are a true blue ND, but it is the duplicity and the principle free content of the Tory party of the last 20 (50?)years that has got us here.
The constant Tory belief that the BXP are really just Tories waiting to come back feeds the mistaken view they can still win or be will be trusted, that is what will do the damage, imo.

Has the party machine truly recovered from the May disaster?

david morris said...

But if the conservative party is not there for the conservative voter, what else is there to do but bring down the temple ?

Ghyh said...

If Poly thinks it will be a hung parliament then bet on a Tory majority.
Toynbee has called it wrong for every election result since 1992

Raedwald said...

If Farage not only screws Brexit but hands the country to Corbyn, I fully expect him to flee to the US on December 13th and beg for a job there. Except his special friend, facing impeachment, may not be in a position to help him.

Now is the time when the very wealthy wonder if they have sufficient little packets of diamonds made up ready to go ..

E-K said...

Tory's fault not Farage's.

dearieme said...

Toynbee has called it wrong for every election result since 1692.

My ambition for British politics is the permanent destruction of the Labour Party. If the price is the destruction of the Conservative Party, so be it.

God's ambition is for British politics to be Whigs vs Tories. Quite right too. What they will call themselves is unpredictable (except presumably to Him).

andrew said...


After an ATL namecheck, in the interests of balance, I would point out that other calculations are being done.

I recommend Toulouse in October. Apart from being quite a nice place it hosts the most enormous flocks of starlings. You can stand on one of the city bridges and watch them wheeling in the sky, then slowly sailing off into the distance or descending on a group of trees and then arguing at such a volume conversation nearby becomes difficult.
Why that tree and not another?
There was no one bird that led a flock on 100,000 to a specific place (it is not 1979) and in the same way personality politics are not the best lens through which to look.

Personalities just speak to their own fanbase.
No-one is really reaching out and trying to persuade or change minds.

I suspect people want one thing - no changes for a while please - and the party that best reflects that will do well.

Odds of ~20-1 against a lab majority are incorrect - but they are not going to actually win.

Neither do I expect the cons to form an absolute majority (as at now).

The flock had no idea of the roosting point until it was there, and in the same way, any prediction needs to be taken with a sack of salt.

Especially the ones I just made.

Nick Drew said...

Murmuration of starlings is a great analogy / idiom, Andrew (by coincidence I was discussing it with an academic physicist of my acquaintance this week, and I feel a blogpost coming on ...)

for now, what I would suggest is this: sheepdogs know how to corral flocks of sheep; dolphins know how to manipulate vast bait-balls of small fish; and some politicos have a way with electorates ...

Matt said...

Like others, I put the blame firmly at the feet of the so-called Conservative party. If the Left gets in then it's their fault for having many years of centre-left wet policies and politicians.

Burn them down if that's what's required.

BlokeInBrum said...

As I keep saying, the Conservatives are the Stupid Party. Where is the crackdown on postal votes. What happened to the boundary review? Why are they chasing the vote of them that's never going to vote Tory, ever. Boris may as well ask Liverpudlians for their vote for all the good it will do him.
For the likes of me, I'll vote Conservative when they put up conservative candidates pushing conservative policies.
I like Boris, the first couple of weeks were promising. Ditching the faux conservatives from the Party was a positive move. Everything since then has been dreck. A plague on all their houses.

Anonymous said...

The groundwork is already there for a LAB/SNP pact and, yes, it's mostly the Tories fault, but not because they're not conservative enough.

Those who claim that might, possibly, want to consider they're just reflections of the Corbynistas whose One True Faith is an ever decreasing circle of allies as anyone who who disagrees with the ever more stringent rules is cast out as an enemy.

The country is put together in a rather more complicated matter, where there is a constant strain between wanting low taxes and better public services.

Austerity was handled badly, providing public sector bodies grounds to complain as front-line services were cut and management and waste was mostly protected, rather than central government cracking the whip for more efficiency, protecting the front-lines and going through bureaucracy with the sharpest of knives.

Scotland hasn't been fertile for the actual Tories since Thatcher, unwisely, abandoned it to the left and the nationalists.

And, if after Brexit, the Tories don't revert to being a wide church, they're in trouble.

The thing about the UK is that, where other nations may have coalitions between parties, we have coalitions between factions inside a party. It's what makes FPTP vaguely functional in that we can have two main parties representative of great swathes of people with different ideologies and beliefs under the same tent with policies reflecting that.

If the Tories and Labour decide they want to focus on single factions for any great length of time, well, best of luck, as the vast majority of the population will find alternatives as that time passes and they can become obsolete.

Scrobs. said...

I'm struggling to decide who is better at getting their retaliation in first.

To begin with, we have the usual faux pas from all parties, then a week or so of wandering around, then another real disaster, then uncertainty written up by the loyal rags, and so it goes on.

One might just as well be a dormouse, and wake up on the 12th December, because, deep down, minds have already been made up, despite Mori, etc, and of course the dire BBC.

Matt said...

@ Anonymous

The trouble with being a wide church is that you end up standing for nothing as your lowest common denominator policies that don't offend anyone also don't appeal to anyone.

It's a myth that the centre ground needs to be occupied - the last 20 years has demonstrated that you can't paper over the cracks between the factions.

Best to just hoist your colours and see what the electorate think.

BlokeInBrum said...

Historically there used to be a distinct split politically between conservatives and socialists, each ideology a fairly broad church able to cover a large swathe of the populace.

Poor, downtrodden, struggling to make ends meet? Throw off the shackles of those evil Capitalist overlords and vote Labour.

Hard working, self employed, ambitious? Take responsibility and throw out those lazy, spendthrift socialists and vote Tory!

Of course that period of time has run its course and is no longer applicable.

This isn't a problem unique to these isles.

It's a reflection of the fact that Britain isn't a homogenous whole any more.
We are far far more ethnically diverse now than we have ever been and of course far more politically and economically diverse.

The political landscape has fragmented and the real question is how is a politician supposed to pander to everyones prejudices and interests?

You can't tell porkies any more, or tell one section of voters one thing, and another lot of voters something different.

The journalists are hopeless, but the internet and ubiqitous phone cameras means that every slip, every lie is recorded for posterity.

Notice how many comment sections of the legacy press have closed down.

Not too many journalists liked it when their biases, prejudices, inaccuracies and sometimes outright lies were pointed out, often within minutes.

Politicians hated it, as they couldn't use their pet journos to push their line in the press without getting monstered.

So what next?

The middle ground is dead, traditional two party politics is dead.

Stick a fork in it, it's done.

Anonymous said...

The fragmentation was and is deliberate.

Between 1997 and 2017 (mostly IMHO down to a vast increase in the labour supply)

a) real median male wages actually fell by a couple of percent.

b) real house prices rose by 2.5 times - that £100,000 3-bed semi is now 250K.

c) real GDP rose by 50%

d) unsecured debt for the median household has tripled from £5k to £15k, and is rising fast as student loans kick in

So the top few percent are getting all the benefit of that 50% GDP growth, none of its going to ordinary people, who are getting poorer.

In a non-divided society that would be an outrage and the #1 political football, as "standard of living" was in 1970. So its very important to our elites to keep us distracted with "climate emergency", "women in boardrooms", "minorities on TV", "windrush scandal", "grenfell scanday", gay and trans stuff, "racism".

The UK "left" (including nearly all the unions bar a few like the railways, whose staff are not by coincidence still fairly well paid) is a wholly owned subsidiary of globalised capital.

PS - Farage is doing the decent thing and not standing candidates against Brexit Tories. Good.

E-K said...

Anonymous - Seriously. Rail staff pay was down to privatisation and the way it was done.

The delay penalty system (at around £300 a minute on many Inter City routes) has meant that big companies preferred to poach proven crew rather than train up novices who are delay-prone for at least their first year.

This was particularly inflationary in the London circle of companies, some within walking distance of each other.

I think the unions take more credit than they should.

hovis said...

Anon 1.58pm - I think the phrase you are looking for is deliberate Balkanisation