- a leadership vacuum if riots ensue
- the 'XR solution' from Starmer - OR Boris
- frustration for Khan
- the EU's Big Play ...
For every Zuckerberg and Gates and their homegrown empires, there's a Green, an Ecclestone and a Deripaska. They spotted the distressed or undervalued asset, they capitalised on it, invested it, looted it.
The world of power-politics is full of entrepreneurs on the lookout, too. And we've all been mulling over a distress scenario - BLM copycat riots, for want of a better term - which might be coming to the boil right now, and which must look like the plummest of plum opportunities for several people, particularly on the Left, if they can stop it degenerating into another 2011. If they can get ahead of it at all, that is ...
Now let's immediately acknowledge that sometimes these violent prospects evaporate. A good example is Grenfell. That seemed pretty febrile at the time: but to my surprise, it settled fairly quickly into a deep and luxuriant patch of traditional English long grass, its insurgency potential slipping away. Nor did Les Gilets Jaunes ever really gained hardcore Political traction (we'll come to XR later, because it's important). Yes, Britain's armchair revolutionaries - white, Oxbridge, dilettante - are indeed wedded to their equally luxuriant armchairs. They still hanker after being the officer-class, though, directing the street-masses via social media from their châteaux HQs. And there's no obvious sign of organic leadership within the demonstrators just yet.
The anti-racism demonstrators, overwhelmingly aged under 30, have largely been part of a movement using the LDNBLM hashtag that has no identifiable leaders and whose events are publicised via word of mouth and social mediaWe'll start with the more lurid possibilities. Let's consider at least the possibility that UK summer riots, if they occur, might allow for political initiative; and that several ambitious fellows have spotted a leadership vacancy. If things develop into no more than 2011-style looting & arson, well, not many established politicians want their names to be blackened by association with inchoate anarchy. But the Left is keenly looking for opportunities to Politicise (as Kev commented BTL here, "it's the Left's way of gaining back what they couldn't get through the ballot box"), eagerly abetted by the Beeb, as many have noted.
The question, then, is: IF rioting starts here ... who's likely to attempt what?
The Players
In many such circumstances someone on the government side might try to make a name for themselves as the hard man. It could be argued Cameron had a crack at this back in 2011, along with his DPP, one Kier Starmer ... But - Priti Patel? Doesn't look terribly plausible. Boris? Errr, no.
No, we're looking for Grabber to emerge from the other side. If Corbyn's regime was still in place, I'd have expected it to be McDonnell, a genuine revolutionary on paper: but again, none of them really ran with Grenfell.
Is there anyone who can front for the putative rioters, in the sense of declaring themselves to be the leader, particularly for "negotiating" purposes? This would be quite difficult for any established politician when (innocent) people, including coppers and fire-fighters, start getting hurt. It's possible one of the new intake of firebrand Labour MPs might give it a crack, (nothing to lose, see what happens). Clearly enough there are some unpleasant people in those ranks, but personally I don't know enough about them to nominate any. Of the established urban MPs: David 'Broadwater' Lammy? No revolutionary, he: rather, in recent times a man of measured statements and nuanced views. Diane Abbbottt? Hmm.
I think we may also rule out Starmer. For several reasons he doesn't look like fronting up for violence: it's categorically not in his makeup (respectable lawyer, not revolutionary; and a prosecutor to boot). He'll want to capitalise alright - by staying exactly where he is, risking nothing, in order to have the plum fall in his lap all the more certainly in 2025. He might be wrong about that, of course, but it'll be his strategy - statesmanlike mediator; distant and lofty proscriber of vague & worthy medicaments. He just needs to watch his back for the serious impatience within the People's Party that has already been angrily directed his way on several occasions already.
Outside Parliament (which is of course where the really fidgety Momentum types feel the action should be) ... Stormzy? Owen Jones? Someone from rather more, errr, mainstream pop-culture - Gary Lineker? Who can tell; the hour doth sometimes bringeth forward the man: but can anyone seriously spot a Martin Luther King or a Nelson Mandela out there in Park Lane?
Someone who can be absolutely guaranteed to be seen prominently flitting about with both the hare and the hounds is of course Sadiq Khan. His ambition to be seen to be in command of the "BAME vote" is never far below the surface; but his desire for world-stage metro respectability is pretty enormous, too - him with his world-class police force and armoured Range Rover. Plus, of course, he's ultra-transactional (and very pragmatic, as every mayor ends up being): everything's up for negotiation - and he's busting to get back at HMG for the recent TfL settlement he was forced to swallow. Like Starmer though, what he really wants is a Good-War rep for future purposes, not a high-risk position in the streets. (And if there's half a chance of a "responsible", Parliamentary outcome - see XR below - Khan, as so often, will be deeply frustrated at his own current lack of a Parliamentary platform, and will try hard to inveigle himself onto the platform.)
All in all, for want of obvious outright, authoritative leadership willing to get down and dirty, Gerry Adams style, the Left may encounter some challenges in re-purposing riots into something more tangibly Political. It's tantalising for them, because (a) they don't get many opportunities and are currently smarting from GE2019; (b) in strictly Marxist terms a section of the urban BAME community might actually be in a technically revolutionary frame of mind: nothing to lose, any change whatsoever must be beneficial to them. But the same theory would also suggest that an ethnic minority doth not a revolution make - nor indeed anything short of the entire Working Class.
What will be the demands?
All this is by way of ruminating on an age-old issue: in large-scale conflict, it suits both sides to know who speaks for - and can deliver - the other side. Even calling for unconditional capitulation generally pre-supposes some effective leadership on the losing side that can present themselves for signing the instrument of surrender, and reliably thereafter give the dismal command to stand down. If it's more balanced, then actual negotiations need to be conducted, for which an authoritative counterparty is required (e.g. Good Friday Agreement).
There's something else that in due course needs to be tied down. What, concretely, will the Left be demanding? If they don't know, it all descends into mere anarchy and they lose their moment.
Sometimes there is tactical merit in making ridiculous ("impossibilist") demands to ensure failure and dissatisfaction, a strategem often associated with Trotsky. But in June 2020, as we've said, there is likely to be a strong desire on the Left to leverage the rare moment to obtain something immediately tangible on the political front (as well as, errr, electrical goods and fashionable clothing). "A better deal for BAME people" or similar doesn't really advance their cause in quite the immediate ways they'd like. Black History Month to be extended to a full year? Compulsory diversity training for the entire population? A special BAME minimum wage? Immediate rehousing for everyone living in a tower block?
The problem is clear. For a political demand to be successful, the gain it seeks must be tangibly, irreversably deliverable. This is a real challenge for sudden uprisings, when the said gain must be promptly deliverable, too - before the rain starts and everyone packs up and goes home. As British history amply illustrates, it ain't as easy it it might seem (Chartists, Pilgrimage of Grace, Peasants' Revolt etc etc).
This puts us in the realm of what I call politics with short lines of logistics. Stuff that can effectively be done with the stroke of a pen. (That's why "release of prisoners" or "returning troops to barracks" feature so often, for example.) Foreign policy can more often be in this category - treaties, troop movements and the like. But big domestic items - "general improvement in welfare" or "Green New Deal" can't be delivered on the spot. Even legislation can't be promised in a useful timeframe for a riot situation
The XR Precedent
XR is interesting - and not, in truth, really a riot. In many respects it's surprising XR was so easily fobbed off with can-kicking legislation, albeit notionally epic in scale. If things get really bad, Boris will keenly wish to repeat this trick. And I could well imagine some on the Left reckoning the XR type of outcome - virtue-signalling legislation for long term change, mutatis mutandis - is actually quite a good one, if less immediately dramatic than a coup. If Starmer is as smart as some reckon, that's what he'll angle for: it's Parliamentary (which he'll happily front for any day of the week); it can be packaged to look highly responsible; he can even attempt to get (some) all-party support - very PM-like. In fact, if Cummings is really on the ball, he'll be planning how to get ahead of this one right now, as May more-or-less did last year. The upcoming "Great Recovery Bill" is the obvious vehicle; and if Boris doesn't propose the relevant clauses himself we may be sure Starmer will be quick with his own amendments.
But back to demands emerging from the more lurid extra-Parliamentary riot-scenario: what's it to be? I mentioned release of prisoners with a purpose, because amnesty for looters might very well be on the list by the time we're finished. Beyond that, I'm not keen to give anyone ideas. Except ...
The EU Angle
As has been widely surmised, part of this imminent potential crisis is surely tied in with the looming deadline for Barnier to come off the pot. A classic stroke-of-the-pen job would be to demand, say, that Frost be sent to grovel for an extension of the transition period. Let's see how this is first floated in public - a C@W Extension Bingo prize for the first authentic sighting of this in the specific context of the putative riots. (Note, however: a lot of the activist Left is for Lexit.) With the Beeb's active connivance, ways can be found to insinuate this, then try to sell it as part of a package to appease the looters. Far-fetched? That's before you factor in the deviousness of a Mandelson or the brazen determination of a Gina Miller.
Here's a prediction. If the putative arson etc is on a scale that's material for the economy, the EU will swing in with an offer, along the lines of: UK to get a pro rata share of an EU post-Covid economic stimulus package, plus immediate solidarity & cohesion fund payments targeted at inner city areas (to be distributed by city mayors) - in return for a 2-year transition-period extension, plus x, y and z ...
Even Starmer might find it hard not to front for that.
ND
40 comments:
The largely white working class voted in a Tory government after Labour tried to stiff them over Brexit. They are also conservative and want to work hard for a better life for their family. They don't care about BLM or XR who want them to foot the bill for their childish demands. As ever, it'll be a case of how far you can push before they bite back. The emergent leader could be Tommy Robinson.
It took me a moment to work out what "XR" means.
I suspect that a Conservative government could win quite a lot of support by having some XR skulls cracked if those twats start their nonsense again.
See, they could aver, no picking on Blacks here - them's middle class tosspots being walloped.
The Player :
Joanna Lumley
The Demands :
1. Increase the NHS budget by £lots
2. Roll Social care for the elderly into the NHS
The EU :
Has problems of their own.
You don't have to go to South Africa to see whites (who usually have British passports) being exterminated. Just pop along to your local care home.
Surprised they are not all out there with their zimmer frames protesting given their shocking treatment, along with us all, in this pandemic.
But if you are there, day in day out, on the BBC giving your tractor stats, then people get bored.
I can't see any way BLM riots could be gamed to get a transition extension. Not even Mandy could swing it. For a start if the BAME riot backing groups & community leaders are from the Commonwealth they are easily bought off with pledges of enhanced Commonwealth immigration to replace those no longer admitted from E Europe
The lines are being drawn for us to pass the point of no return in 3 weeks. Everyone is now slowly shifting to an acceptance of our red lines and a deal-lite in Aug / Sept with tariffs. Frosty has even explicitly offered this.
Any Rejoiners hoping that riots will trigger an extension are just wishful thinkers - if anything, riots will have the opposite effect as the public swing behind 'Take Back Control' - of the streets and of public order - and a counter-narrative emerges that it's the EU and their 'Uman Rights that's behind the riots. Not a big shift to achieve.
And as France blazes this weekend the Rejoiner news orgs can't resist forever not reporting it. The Kermits do love a good riot in a way we can't even imagine - it's part of their constitutional right or something.
Memories of 2011 are long in the ghettoes. Two years for a bottle of water. Four years for incitement on Facebook. I can't see it even kicking off here, let alone having any effect on the transition period.
@ Memories of 2011 are long in the ghettoes
Bankers don't remember what happened in 2008. Why should wankers remember 2011?
"Nicola Sturgeon and Scotland’s chief constable, Iain Livingstone, urged Black Lives Matter supporters to avoid taking part in large public protests because of the risk of transmitting coronavirus.
Politicians have been scrambling to keep up as the movement gathers strength and have avoided joining the marchers. Sir Keir Starmer only briefly raised the topic at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday"
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/06/george-floyd-protests-uk-anti-racism-campaign
There's no realistic way that any riots could be exploited to affect the Brexit process. It's gone too far already and nobody would believe that the urban underclass actually cares about the EU. It would be too obvious that any linkage was a cynical contrivance.
It's also unlikely that the EU would want a long extension. An endless Brexit process soaks up its institutional resources and creates continued uncertainty, obstructing the drive towards ever-closer union. Both sides need to move on.
As for the risk of riots, the BLM cosplayers in London are unlikely to start anything significant because they are trying to import a distinctively American form of racial politics into a British context and it doesn't really translate.
"And as France blazes this weekend the Rejoiner news orgs can't resist forever not reporting it. "
The BBC and Guardian pretty much ignored GJ for a year, major rioting every weekend in multiple French cities and towns. But that was ordinary French people, and the BBC doesn't care about them. If onoly they'd been in Hungary protesting Orban, or Russia protesting Putin!But just across the channel? Nothing to see here.
Now the right people are protesting... that's different.
"the BLM cosplayers in London are unlikely to start anything significant because they are trying to import a distinctively American form of racial politics into a British context and it doesn't really translate"
Oh, it translates all right. I think some guy in the 60s did a speech about how we must be mad to deliberately reproduce American conditions in the UK.
Don't you read the Guardian, watch the news or do mandatory diversity training at work? Our children are being taught about Mary Seacole and Rosa Parks, not Florence Nightingale.
https://order-order.com/2020/06/05/department-for-education-tells-civil-servants-fck-the-police/
Nor did Les Gilets Jaunes ever really gained hardcore Political traction
==========
It's on hold from Covid 19
it will be back with even greater force. The simple reason is that Macron has no solution for the French state's socialist pension debts. All debt, no assets. To pay he has to tax. He can't tax at the level required, so you are left with not paying.
The right Honourable, Multimillionaire, Sir Keir Rodney Starmer, KBC QC, the leader of her majesty's opposition
Please use his full title.
XR is easy to deal with. What you do is just say that we will give them what they demand, but we will have a 10 year experimental period to start, on willing experimental subjects.
They have to sign up, and all BBC employees are automatically signed up, including contractors.
Then they are added to the no fly list. The devil in me says as soon as they jet off long haul. They aren't allowed to fly. Period.
We add a new electric only driving license. Their licences are converted. Uber get told etc. Electric only, no hybrid. If caught in a fossil fuel car, the car is crushed. If its someone else's car they are on the hook for the loss.
Ditto for buses. Gets rid of diesels that way.
Now the can't use gas, so we cross check electoral register against gas supply and chop them off.
For electric, its smart meters and green tariffs only, no subsidies. If the wind doesn't blow we send a message to the smart meter and cut the power off.
All very simple. Exactly what they want. We can see how that works out.
For a start if the BAME riot backing groups & community leaders are from the Commonwealth they are easily bought off with pledges of enhanced Commonwealth immigration to replace those no longer admitted from E Europe
=========
Those rioting etc, are of West Indian origin. Not many from Bangladesh, Pakistan. So your bribe won't work
Matt said...
The largely white working class voted in a Tory government after Labour tried to stiff them over Brexit. They are also conservative and want to work hard for a better life for their family. They don't care about BLM or XR who want them to foot the bill for their childish demands.
11:33 am
============================================
We should all love the proletariat. They always utterly disappoint their self-appointed middle class revolutionary leaders...
@ E-K
I also don't seem to be able to find statistics that link the ethnicity of both the victim and the offender. Perhaps this is difficult to extract as you have to link the eventual outcome of any court case back to the original offence and victim.
However, I guess there are some insights that can be gathered. In London, Afro-Caribbeans are victims in 23% of knife crimes but perpetrate 47% of those crimes. That implies they are responsible for 24% more knife crimes than they are victims of.
Last page - https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/foi-media/metropolitan-police/disclosure_2019/february_2019/information-rights-unit---ethnicity-of-perpetrators-and-victims-of-knife-crime-in-london-from-april-2008-to-november-2018
It's interesting that you quote the homicide figures for whites as 75% - it looks to be 87% across all of England & Wales which is close to the 86% of people in the general population. Blacks are slightly over-represented (5% vs 3.3% of population) and Asians a bit less (6% vs 7.5% of population).
Figure 3.03 - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/849200/statistics-on-race-and-the-cjs-2018.pdf
London is totally different - what you read into that I'm not sure!
I see that statues are being pulled down here. Probably no monument is safe now (except for statues of Nelson Mandela and Ghandi).
I will back any pol (Tory I would imagine) who cracks down and destroys this new leftist inspired nonsense. The damage to our society is huge, who wants to be told to reassess their thoughts and views on what is in effect criminal population and to recognise ones white privilege. I'm proud of my country, race, ancestors, culture etc etc. Yet again....fuck em all.
Ghandi's not safe. He said rude things about Africans.
Don Cox
Raewald: "I can't see it even kicking off here,"
Here being Austria.
E-K: "I think this time there could be a backlash against the backlash. They are pushing people too far after what they've already been through and this time many will have nothing to lose."
Thanks to the Tory initiated 'lockdown', many of those who might have been too busy tending their businesses, have no business now.
So in the past, only the indigent left took to the the streets. There is a chance, that it may not be the same this time.
Yes, I forgot about Ghandi's views on Africans. If Pol Pot is your example, then anything produced in the past is suspect. Obviously those racist imperialists Churchill and Nelson have to go, along with all those war memorials that glorify the oppressive British Army. Those statues of Queen Victoria need to be pulled down (and all the Victoria railway stations renamed). In fact, we should just bulldoze most city centres and start again.
I suppose it's too much to expect the police to restore order, they seem more interested in trying to out-woke the protesters.
@ Anon
Thanks for that. The wording helped fine a more up-to-date version (from 2016) which displays the data in a more helpful format.
See Figure 3.07 - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/669094/statistics_on_race_and_the_criminal_justice_system_2016_v2.pdf
Looks like whitey kills < 5% black men whereas the black suspects kill about 25% whites.
Sorry, typo - 35% whites.
Also, not black men - the graph doesn't breakdown by sex.
I see the Churchill statue in parliament square got vandalised. He's probably too tough to pull down, unlike the rather more delicate statue of poor old Edward Colston.
Thanks Matt - most appreciated. Maybe the figures were there all along, in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
@ DJK
It's going to kick off. The establishment policy of appeasement of BLM is going to come back and bite them in the arse. The Football Lads are looking to get out in London tonight and there will be a Patriot Unity Demonstration at Churchill's statue in London on Saturday.
APL looks like they called it right when they said many will have nothing to lose after the government pandemic lockdown...
Actually Matt, unlike the 2004 data, the diagram (3.07), while showing that over 50% of people killed by blacks are white, doesn't break it down to actual numbers as the 2004 data does. It gives a source of "Table 3.19", which occurs nowhere in the report. Turns out that to track down Table 3.19 you need to look at this
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/848965/a-technical-guide-to-statistics-on-race-and-the-cjs-2018.pdf
Which in table Table G.01 tells you that the homicide data comes from "Homicide Index (Home Office)" - which AFAIK is not publicly available.
"in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory..."
@ Anon
Yep, back to E-K's point about the government suppressing facts that don't support their agenda:
https://data.gov.uk/dataset/1d139f71-36f6-4cff-ac0e-a632fe326ca2/homicide-index
The fact is that you can't find this year's nor last year's figures and there's a reason for that.
I go on this:
A white man kills a black for racist reasons and we know about it: Stephen Lawrence.
So that took place 27 years ago and there hasn't been similar since. There have been six BAME on white murders in the last year that have come to prominence but all forgotten long before the first anniversary.
What are BLM UK complaining about ???
It's not kicking off here in the UK
The EDL/NF/BNP lowlifes will be as disappointed as the Marxists and anarchists, but no crinkly tin JCB sports or TKMaxx sheds have been looted and burned, no Carphone warehouses trashed. No mass riots. A few score political activists chucking stuff at plod, who were stupid enough to kneel to them, and tipping a Victorian statue of someone no-one likes very much into the river. The rest of the black yoof know that CCTV is 10x better than it was in 2011, when we jailed over 1,200 for a total of 1,800 years.
And in London, where Black Knives Matter, we've just ended their free bus travel. Teen gangs travel either by bus or stolen moped - they don't do walking. Khan is terrified a fall in knife cime will show up his free travel policy for stabbers as a contibutory factor in London's black-on-black slaughter.
Funeral on Tuesday, so we've potentially got a couple more days of the activits (of far right and far left) trying to get the mass of largely quiescent blacks into riot mode, but it won't happen.
"...a Victorian statue of someone no-one likes very much" Just to defend Edward Colston, the reason a statue was erected in 1895, and streets, two schools and almshouses are named after him is that he was a very generous philanthropost. He seems to have made most of his money as a commodities trader, although he was also (amongst other activities) a director of the Royal African Company, which was founded to search for gold but ended up trading slaves. But having made the money, he then devoted most of his time to using his money to help others.
I suppose we can be thankful it's a lawless mob tearing down statues, rather than a Corbyn led government.
@ rather than a Corbyn led government
watch out for Labour councils, though
there will be an avalanche of vitue-signalling road re-naming (on the "constructive" side) and portrait removal etc
I have often laughed at the timidity of today's woke students - "Rhodes must fall", but his statue still stands in Oxford: in my day it would have come down the same evening as the SU motion was passed
if & when Oxford reassembles in Michaelmas, what price the Oriel College authorities having already quietly taken it down?
I notice that in Ireland there was a stabbing of a white lad in Cork the other day.
Gang of vibrants decided to nick his phone, tab him in the face with a broken bottle, then as he was comatose on the ground, stab him several times in the back.
Only came across this as the vibrants had filmed it at the time and it made its way on to social media.
Naturally went on to the RTE, Irish Times, Irish Sun websites to find the details from their 'talented' journalists - not a sausage.
A report later popped up on the RTE web page, somewhat down from the headlines, with no mention of who, what, where or why.
Tell me, why do we need lamestream media again?
I know I'm a racist, as I posted on Twitter the stats on ethnicity of victims and perpetrators in homicide in the US
Whitey way down on all counts, and black and black homicide by far the highest category.
The time we live in, when facts are racist.
https://twitter.com/search?q=Carrigaline&src=typed_query&f=live
Name of attacker, bname of victim, and some very unpleasant gloating from the attacker's mates.
GoFundMe took down the appeal for the victim!
This is a useful exercise for the police and security services - make sure the surveillance, mob management, plod training etc is up to scratch, take out a few ringleaders and bang them up before September.
The coming recession will hit like an express train, and mob violence and looting will get very much more serious.
@ Raedwald
What, and the pathetic display by Plod over recent days will be improved in future for the coming shitstorm?
Pull the other one it has bells on it.
Plod only pulls out the full riot gear when those nasty EDL thugs are demonstrating.
When BLM and Antifa make a show then it's all twerking and bending the knee. Or in very special cases, dressage with added traffic lights.
As an added thought, are the Police allowed to kettle 'protesters' in the era of Social Distancing and the advent of the Kung-Flu?
"Unknown said...
Ghandi's not safe. He said rude things about Africans.
Don Cox 5:54 pm
==========================
As did that Marx feller, racist and anti-Semitic
https://www.dailysignal.com/2017/05/10/ugly-racism-karl-marx/
"It is now completely clear to me that he, as is proved by his cranial formation and his hair, descends from the Negroes who had joined Moses’ exodus from Egypt, assuming that his mother or grandmother on the paternal side had not interbred with a n—–. Now this union of Judaism and Germanism with a basic Negro substance must produce a peculiar product."
"What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. … Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man—and turns them into commodities. … The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. … The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general."
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