Tuesday 16 June 2020

UK Unrest: Scores on the Doors

Last week we looked at runners & riders cynically looking to make capital from putative UK unrest this summer.  So far, no flames - for which, thank God.  Much, much too early to declare the arrival of autumnal cool, however.  So let's look at the current scoring for the players we identified.

The would-be hard-men

Pritti Patel     - she's had a crack at it; but not very convincing
Boris       - trying to box clever: widely assumed to be adopting a Cummings-strategy of invoking a Culture War that he can win.  Probably better at this than his utterly, culpably lame Covid performance (see also Starmer below)

The extra-parliamentaries

Stormzy   - yup, he's pitched in, but with cash rather than outright leadership
Owen Jones   -  feeble, predictable stuff; and he's quickly risen to the Boris Bait on trans rights
Gary Lineker   -  ditto feeble & predictable
Oxbridge Armchair revolutionaries    - still armchair-bound: well, Social Distancing, don't y'know (!)
A.N.Other   -  well Marcus Rashford has certainly trended strongly this week: & perfectly responsible, too, if we allow footballers to input politically (see also Demands below).  Any other nominees?

The parliamentary Left

Diane Abbbottt   - not really trying.  Along with the rest of Team Corbs, she's vacated the field (at least for now)
David Lammy   - started exactly as we said: voice of reason & nuance.  Has decided to go for it a bit more in the last couple of days - so, one to watch.  In the obvious absence of any clear leadership, he's keeping all his options open
Sadiq Khan   - as confidently predicted, he's been ducking & diving all over the shop.  And will continue to do so, triangulating and calibrating every inch of the way, every hour of the day.  Is anyone impressed by this?  I've never met anyone on the left who considers him anything other than a (successful &) unscrupulous careerist.  Then again, ditto Boris ... so everyone has that wary degree of respec'
Kier Starmer   - aloof, as we knew he would be: but the whole Starmer picture needs to be covered in more than just a one-liner: some preliminary observations below

The missing Demands

Infinite kudos to Rashford - he's come up with something concrete and deliverable! For the rest, they're floundering.  I have seen the word "reparations" crop up a couple of times (and not just BTL on this blog).  Anyone else spotted something in the "feasible / deliverable" category? - besides the laughable "bi-partisan statue protection" policy ...

No sign of the XR-style strategy being readied by Government: but I'm sure it's on the shelf - they have laudably tended to act by bold strokes that take people by surprise.  Nobody's really formulated it as a demand yet, although there are loads of vague desiderata in the air.  We must believe it's being ruminated upon in the camp of ...

Kier Starmer

This man's willingness to piss off the Left knows few limits.  As I've suggested here before, he's presumably decided an out-and-out showdown is inevitable, so let's get it on, and out of the way.  But his reactive and non-combative output is driving the left beserk.  Classic example: his own condemnation of the weekend confrontations didn't attack "racism" in those terms - but Boris' did!  

Strategically he must be right to be precipitating off the Left per se.  But there is a danger for him in this:  it  seems that BAME members are quitting Labour at a disproportionate rate, to cries of "the BAME vote is being taken for granted".  The optics are obviously awful.

As we said before: he needs to watch his back, even if he thinks Labour has nowhere else to go for leadership.  (Incidentally, he does benefit from a posse of heavyweight Blairites watching his back for him.) 
_   _   _   _   _

The "Labour Together" election report will be published soon; and we must suppose the EHRC will come off the pot eventually.  They'll be important events in the grid. 

ND

9 comments:

E-K said...

Actually I think the BBC is winning.

It is desperately stoking away at this little BAME pyre.

E-K said...

Mood music during a news report again this morning. That's propaganda, not news.

Anonymous said...

@Rashford. He saw an open goal and scored. He also managed to take out Therese Covey at the same time with her sneering correction of his comment about water being cut off.

@Starmer. Picking a fight with the left - so New Labour.

@Patel. Pretty awful but not to be discounted.

We suffer in this country from GODY (Grand Old Duke of York) politics. We change for change sake and call it progress whereas we are not really making going anywhere fast unlike the discipline of the Chinese in PRC, Taiwan, andSingapore

E-K said...

Well. I don't go with the IQ thing as I've known enough black men a lot brighter than me but do have a look at YouTube David Lammy Mastermind.

At least I'm not stupid enough to show my ignorance to the nation like that.

decnine said...

John Harvey-Jones used to speak of Managing by Walking Around. These last few weeks we seem to have Government by Being Pushed Around.

Anonymous said...

E-K - we've all known black men (and women) brighter than we are, but what difference does that make to an average?

(And anyone say in IT will tend to run into the Talented Tenth a lot. You'll get people selected by intelligence, not a more random sample. To do that you have to go down to say lorry unloading or Tube cleaning, both jobs which I have done - and even those jobs require diligence and a reasonable certainty you'll turn up, which a lot of the guys you'll see on the Standard's crime pages don't have.)

Anonymous said...

(Lammy's not stupid, btw, which is why he's worse than Abbott IMHO. But there are a lot of intelligent idiots out there)

old git carlisle said...

I love the phrase of my wife's police inspector uncle who said to his smart-alec solicitor son.

The trouble with you lad is that you are educated to the point of stupidity!

Applies to an awful lot of those that appear in / on the media.

Matt said...

All Rashford has managed to do is divert £15 per week from feeding the scrot's kids to spending on more beer, tabs, sportswear and Sky TV. Still, I suppose it might give the economy a lift.