Friday 13 December 2019

The Potential Significance is Great

... but only 'potential'.  Johnson's crew must use this astonishing opportunity, to wrench the Overton window into a new position in the multi-dimensional political space.  But this needs to be adroit; it needs to be very determined; and it needs not to be distracted by the inevitable EU negotiating morass (which must also receive full attention).

The aim (to caricature it briefly) must be to force 'reasonable' members of the Momentum tendency - yes, they exist - to give up their recent dreams.  A truly vital task.

Wow.  More over the weekend.  Have at it BTL.

ND

20 comments:

hovis said...

Potential... like an egg from a battery hen .. may be it could be a fully grown chicken, more likely to be someone's breakfast.

I certainly don't disgree about what could be done, the hope for optimism for given the structures and personalities in place I find admirable.

Matt said...

And so it comes to pass. BoJo already spouting the One Nation crap. He's taking this to mean the people like his BRINO and Bliar era New Labour policies.

Anonymous said...

Funny really. 10,000 "Corby the anti-semite" stories had pretty much zero effect, but Starmer, Watson and co inserting "second referendum" into Labour policy was the sneaky poison pill that killed Corbyn.

A fair few more seats were only saved by BXP taking Tory votes.

Anonymous said...

Philip Davies in Shipley had some wise words to the effect of "don't think this vote is a personal endorsement", saying that for many voters he or his party was the least worst option.

Hopefully Boris will listen, but I'd imagine hubris is the CCO mood currently.

Anonymous said...

A smaller Tory majority would have been preferable, so that the ERG can hold his feet to the fire if need be.

Already the Blairite 'centrists' are blaming anything but Labour's Brexit non-policy, which was the major Labour policy change since 2017.

Thank heavens I have no illusions to lose where BoJo is concerned.

Jan said...

Hopefully Anna Soubrey and the like will now shut up and slink away but somehow I doubt it and there are probably more than one or two plotting right now. There's John Major/Tony Blair/Kier Starmer/Michael Heseltine/Ken Clarke/Chuka Umuna et al and not being MPs won't stop them trying to put spanners in the works at every opportunity. They just can't seem to accept a democratic vote. Then there's all the younger lot: Jo Swinson/Jess Philips etc etc to contend with.

Boris is going to have his work cut out keeping them at bay and I wish him the best of luck. I'm hoping we've all underestimated him and underneath the bumbling exterior there's a canny political operator. I think he could yet surprise us (in a good way).

Raedwald said...

I get the feeling I may be the only one on Boris' wavelength here.

Burke has a fairly good idea how to incubate a sense of belonging and nationhood - starting at allegiances and identity at a local level, membership of the 'little platoons' that united squire and ostler, merchant and innkeeper. It is the antithesis of social division based on class and wealth - rather, it stressed a commonality of interest that exists *despite* of what we would term these days diversity, of class, wealth and education. That's my understanding of what One Nation means and yes, I'm a fan.

I suspect those such as Nick with experience of the armed forces have a better feel for it than those without such experience. In WWII the Italians had three scales of rations; one for officers, one for NCOs and one for enlisted men. The British army had just the one. Now there may well be those who will term the UK rations as dangerously 'socialist' - and would also I suspect condemn the notion of One Nation.

Globalism has disadvantaged the median wage earners of rustbelt and traditional manufacturing areas, and the beneficiaries of that globalism have been the 1%, the owners of the capital invested outside the UK in industry and commerce that competes with the UK. Andrew here has suggested that a flood of cheap chinese crap and consumer goods is fair compensation for these disadvanaged workers, but I don't agree.

They have given their votes and trust to Boris and I believe he is entirely genuine in his undertaking not to forget them, or their part in this momentous victory. Scoff and scorn as you will, but I come from a rural tradition where such paternalistic obligations are taken seriously and there is an endogenous appreciation of the bonds and loyalties - and obligations - that tie us together.

Right. Steel helmet on.

Anonymous said...

Trouble is, Raedwald, Boris is as big a globalist as any. Remember he wanted Turkey in the EU, and as Mayor of London wanted an amnesty for illegal immigrants?

Voted Tory but held my nose as I did so.

Obvious New Year Honours - arise Lord Farage!

Elby the Beserk said...

"The aim (to caricature it briefly) must be to force 'reasonable' members of the Momentum tendency - yes, they exist - to give up their recent dreams."

Well listening to Labour top brass this morning, it is absolutely clear that they refuse to acknowledged that Corbyn was a huge part of this. So assuming therefore that they continue the same way - elect McDonnell or some other psycho lefty as leader, and continue with the same hardcore Socialist crap we always vote against.

Anonymous said...

Well, my expectations of a hung parliament were quite firmly blown out of the water!

The next hurdle is Brexit - anything that harms the economy will now be blamed on Brexit. So they need to tread carefully, I know I bang on about IR35, but the effects in the public sector cost billions to the public purse (it had knock on effects to Crossrail and HS2) and project delays. It'll be on another scale next year, and no hiding it under any rugs, and Remain will use it to state Brexit Isn't Working despite it not having anything to do with Brexit, but HMRC.

Remain have retreated for now, but they'll be probing for weaknesses to exploit.

The Tories are also going to need to go all out in order to keep those seats up here where there be dragons, otherwise they will revert back to Labour in five years. Of course, the Corbynistas will hopefully have been purged by then, so a Labour government becomes less of a risk.

I'm not sure I buy into Raedwald's view, seems to me a lot of people held their nose to vote Tory. They like Boris well enough, but don't particularly trust him, however he was the only leader offering to break the deadlock, so Tory was the reluctant choice. A better Labour leader, or more clarity on Brexit, and those seats would still be red.

To get that vote again will require an effort to get past the regional dislike of the Tories and an equal effort by Labour to repulse them, I'm not that lightning will strike twice without a major effort - and major expense.

Elby the Beserk said...

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Funny really. 10,000 "Corby the anti-semite" stories had pretty much zero effect, but Starmer, Watson and co inserting "second referendum" into Labour policy was the sneaky poison pill that killed Corbyn.
=========================================================================

Not according to a number of Labour (ex) MPs who noted the extreme distaste for Corbyn at every door they door stepped. Working class people don;t like pricks like Corbyn. End of. Our neighbour, 83 year old ex-Miner, Labour voter all his life made his strong dislike of Corbyn and co. very clear.


As usual, the working classes have let down the middle class elite who know what is best for them. 'Twas ever thus, from Ivan Ilyich onwards.

Anonymous said...

Elby - you have to see whether the Labour (ex) MPs were already anti-Corbyn - he was elected leader by members, not MPs. Most MPs were surprised, Blairites were horrified and harked back to a golden, moderate age of Middle East wars and open borders.

This defeated guy in Stoke was right. Mind, BBC asked if he thought Corbyn should quit, he said yes and THAT was the Guardian headline, not his main point.

“It’s a lovely and toxic combination of the fact that the message in Stoke-on-Trent that’s been heard by the voters is that the Labour party tried to stop Brexit. It would be remiss of me not to mention that Jeremy Corbyn has come up on the doorsteps. Some people really like him. Some people really dislike him, and that has been a turnoff.

But John [McDonnell] is right to say that it’s Brexit. The Labour party had a choice when Theresa May presented her deal. We could either have stopped the Tories or we could have stopped Brexit. And unfortunately some of the siren voices in the shadow cabinet who have big Liberal Democrat votes in their London seats decided that stopping Brexit, and therefore lining themselves up for future leadership bids, was much more important than respecting the votes in marginal constituencies in the midlands and in the north west and the north east. And they’ve sacrificed us for whatever political ambitions they want to do next.”

I think he may have Keir Starmer in mind.

DJK said...

If you spend three years sneering at your core supporters, telling them they're racist and xenophobic and didn't know what they were doing when they voted for brexit, and telling them you're going to ignore their votes because they got it wrong, then it turns out they won't vote for you. Who knew?

E-K said...

We'll know soon enough. Boris need to realise that Brexit Party votes are borrowed too.

I wasn't voting Tory until Coogan and Grant had their say. You just don't do that to an enfranchised population near polling day.

And still they're trying to claim it as a Remain win.

Nick Drew said...

@ The British army had just the one [scale of rations]

Even more radical than that, Radders! As you know, in the British Army when time comes for food, it's horses first, then the men - officers last.

There's many a time as a subaltern I've missed my meal altogether. It's expected. And, yes, it encourages respect. A L/Cpl of mine, in a quiet moment over a beer, said to me: we all know you junior officers get it worse than we do. He'd been a driver @ Sandhurst and seen the beasting that officer cadets get

CityUnslicker said...

All I can say for now is phew. Very glad the anti-semites got a proper routing.

I fully belive Boris will pivot to a soft enough brexit to be able to go through and why not. We are all sick of it, get some pluses like fishing and giveaway some engatives (state aid!) and we are done.

The naysayers say oh you dont understand it is so complicated etc etc. All technocrats and not politicians.

Also if there is going to be a recession, best in the next 2 years with time to recover for 2024 - Labour have a huge mountain to climb and are unlikely to do it in one bound anyway.

E-K said...

Well CU. Boris is going to have to reconcile two distinct groups. Labour voters and Tory voters who will have to indulge them with a bit of socialism.

The only thing that can reconcile them is a Leave Means Leave Brexit and sooner rather than later.

Boris needs to remember that Brexit Party voters (who no longer see themselves as Conservatives, ie me) have lent him their votes too.

There is no going back in the EU as was. We will get shafted. And already Remain are arguing that they won this 52 to 48 and that Boris only won by taking EDL voters. He needs to keep the momentum going ('cause the other Momentum clearly isn't going to be around for much longer !)

Anonymous said...

Giving away state aid would be bad imho. And Corbyn, while I cordially detest him, is not an antisemite - more of an anti-Anglo if you ask me.

As I said above, the irony is that the "second referendum" so beloved of the Blairites is the thing that sank Labour - while the non-stop barrage of (mostly) lies didn't help it certainly didn't sink them. Labour did pretty well in 2017 - all that's changed since then is that in 2017 they were going to honour the vote, in 2019 it was Referendum 2.

It's all turned out very well for Boris, and not bad for Starmer and Co, in that they've shafted JC with bad advice rather than the stab in the front. And of course it's pretty good news for all those who didn't want British foreign policy to be neutral vis a vis Israel/Palestine. No danger of that with Boris!

Anonymous said...

You have to laugh. London "comedy club", hosted in pub, tells Tory voters they are no longer welcome there.

Pub tells "comedy club" they are no longer welcone there!

https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/1205527699470598146

Elby the Beserk said...

Anonymous said...
Elby - you have to see whether the Labour (ex) MPs were already anti-Corbyn
===========================================================================

Well a huge majority of the PLP voted in the No Confidence motion against Corbyn. But it was the voters who recoiled at Corbyn. That is absolutely clear and no surprise. We do not do that Marxist claptrap here.