Things We Already Knew - Jonathan Freedland is a Pillock

 Jonathan Freedland uses the fall of Boris Johnson to continue to fight two wars that any sane, non-obsessed man would have put behind him.  In an article titled Everything Tainted By Johnson's Lies Needs To Be Undone, he first decides 2022 is CLEARLY the most opportune time to have another go at Jeremy Corbyn and the buffoons who made him leader:

In 2019, it put to the electorate an alternative to Johnson who, by every possible data point, was shown losing and losing badly. By sticking with Jeremy Corbyn in the face of all that evidence, Labour flung the door of Downing Street wide open for Johnson and all but ushered him in.

No, Jonno.  YOU and your Guardianista, relentless anti-Corbynista partisans in the media flung the doors of Downing Street open to Johnson and ushered him in, because you would rather see that happen than see Corbyn win.

Don't try to shift the blame to the Labour membership who elected Corbyn leader twice - remember it is THEIR PARTY, you arrogant prick.  If you don't like their choices, feel free to join the Tory Party, or perhaps the Lib Dems - where you might feel comfortable as you (like them) like to enable Conservative governments.

Given your bully pulpit in the Guardian you COULD have supported the Corbyn project and helped 'usher in' a social democratic government that might have made things a bit better for the people of Britain.  Instead, you and your trendy journo mates and buddies in the rightwing of the Labour Party opted to torpedo the leader of the Labour Party.

And when your first attempt to do it failed, you redoubled your efforts and the result was an 80 seat conservative majority.  Which you clearly preferred - since you've never said so much as "Aw, rats, that sucks!"

Now, years later, instead of hanging your head in shame when you look at the consequences of your decisions back in 2017 you indulge in a spot of victim blaming, telling the membership they were too stupid and short sighted to see what was obviously going to happen.

Yeah, maybe.  Perhaps they were foolish thinking the right wing of the Labour party might tolerate a left wing leader.

I don't think you are stupid, by the way.  You knew what you were doing and could clearly see what was going to happen, and did it anyway.

The other war Freedland is still fighting the apparently unending attempt to turn back time and undo Brexit.  He is pretty explicit about the, not pining in maudlin mode for the good old days of ever closer union: "Surely, a country will lose faith in the product it bought when the man who sold it to them has been exposed as a fraud."

Mate, this is your delusions speaking again.  Boris Johnson did not "sell" Brexit to the British people.  They voted for it in 2015, remember.  He wasn't Prime Minister then.  He wasn't even the NEXT Prime Minister, or the Prime Minister who oversaw the crucial preliminaries, or triggered Article 50.  He was a part of the Leave campaign but only one - to characterise him as the one who "sold" Brexit to the public signals a height of delusion on Freedland's part that is almost Johnsonesque.  the arrogant assumption of superior insight and dismissal of those silly little people - with their Jeremy Corbyn and their Brexits - makes you wonder if Mr Freedland and Mr Johnson are not, in fact the same person.

But Freeland's bonkers narrative requires a magical re-writing of the past just like he had to re-write history to blame 209 on Corbyn and the dim witted members of the Labour party, and not the intractable MPs and journalists who set out to destroy him.  Somehow, the collapse of the Johnson administration negates the referendum, the 2019 election somehow means all that history can be undone.  Jonno, mate, the reason there are people saying leaving the EU was a mistake is the same reason they were saying we should leave in the first place - because they are unhappy with the way things are and are looking for a panacea or at least something to blame.

But like the pillock you are you think people being unsatisfied with life in general means they actually support your pet cause.  they don't, you sheltered Guardian column writing pillock.  They are fucked off because life is shit and it is shit for a lot of people all around the world and it is likely going to stay shit for a long time leaving the EU was only a teeny-tiny contributing factor to that shitness.  It didn't cause Russian to invade Ukraine, it didn't cause Covid, it didn't cause climate change, it didn't cause the cost of living crisis or the breakdown in the NHS or social services or fear of crime or mental health issues.

But YOU, by helping sabotaging a decent prospect of getting a half decent leftish government into Downing Street - by helping sell Johnson to the British public by focusing your energies on destroying Corbyn - did contribute more than any decent person should to some of those festering cankers.

You, Sir, helped bring all this about.  You are tainted by Johnsonism.  So hang your head in shame, or fuck off.

Schadenfreude

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed the irony of Boris Johnson's desperate attempts to cling onto power.

I recall, almost immediately after Jermey Corbyn was elected, a bunch of memes based on the WW2 film Downfall, associating the mild manner Jermey Corbyn with Hitler in his final, lunatic delusional days, desperately trying to summon up armies that did not exist to resist the unstoppable hordes.

I am old enough to recall the aftermath of the 2010 election (after all I was blogging on a semi-regular basis then!) when people were gloating about how Gordon Brown would have to be dragged out of Downing Street, kicking and screaming, of course, in the end, Brown walked out of Downing Street having willingly pulled the plug on the Lib Dems attempts to try to wring concessions out of him he could not give.  

(His successor, of course, rather made a mess of things by making concessions he did not imagine he would ever have to give, only to find events have a way of blowing things up in your face, which is how we ended up with Brexit.  And Boris Johnson.  Cheers, Call Me Dave!)

Johnson, of course is a huge fanboy for Churchill, so it is bemusing to see him casting himself in the Hitler role, as his premiership enters in berserk bunker phase.

Living history

 Boris Johnson is fond of history - the boyish, fun bits about wars, Empire and plucky Brits winning against the odds and what not.  He particularly fond of Winston Churchill and really, really fond of matching himself up against Winston Churchill.

Only, he is comparing himself to the wrong World War 2 Prime Minister.

Today over a hundred of his MPs voted against him, on the absurdly important issue of How We Stop People Dying Of COVID.  Which - since we're talking about Johnson here, never one to miss a chance point to history and claim he's somehow being Churchillian - smells a bit like the Norway vote.  Though Chamberalin won the vote, the rebellion undermined his authority and he felt he could not continue as Prime Minister.  So he resigned which resulted in Churchill becoming PM.

Only, of course, Johnson is in the role of Chamberlain here, not Churchill.  Though it is doubtful that he has the wit, honour or decency to follow Chamberlain's lead and step down when faced with the reality that he is not up to the job.

Johnson back in hospital

So, Boris Johnson has been footering about in hospitals again.

 

We should be grateful, perhaps, that on this occasion the Clown-in-Chief is only (probably) getting in the way and causing distractions, rather than taking up a bed, vital equipment and resources and adding more strain and danger to exhausted staff.

Look at him, trying to look doctory - hands placed authoritatively on his hips, shoulders back, belly sucked in, tie tucked in, staring intently at the Very Absorbing Spectacle of someone getting an injection.

(You'd have thought a man with so many children would be familiar with the process of people getting jags, but maybe he left all that to the various mothers of his various children.)

I wonder if anyone was impolite enough to remind Boris - enfolded in his slick black mask and socially distanced - of his earlier, more caviler approach:

“I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were actually a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody, you’ll be pleased to know, and I continue to shake hands.”

Hay, Johnson!  Here's something that'll really help.  Get back in your fridge, or your tent - or anywhere else far removed from places where real people are making a real effort to save lives - and stay there.

COVID 19 - Double+ Ungood

The situation in the UK is looking catastrophic:

Hey, guys!  We've made another hockey stick!!

Note that the only bit where the trend line goes down consistently is during lockdown.

I wonder why? Did Covid get lazy? Or did closing down the economy for a few weeks, and restricting movement have a dramatic impact on the spread of the virus?

Comparison is an easy form of flattery. I mean, whoever would have thought we'd be looking back at the actions of the government in March and thinking, "They handled that pretty well, now you come to think about it."

Johnson spreads the blame

 Apparently, the resurgence of Covid-19 is down to the British people getting 'complacent':

In total, at least 16.8 million people in the UK - about one in four people - face extra coronavirus measures on top of the national rules, including two-thirds of people in the north of England.

The prime minister, who has been speaking to BBC journalists from around the country, denied that a lack of testing in north-east England had caused the virus to get out of control in the region.

That's not the reality… the nation came together in March and April, what happened over the summer was a bit of sort of fraying of people's discipline and attention to those rules," he said.

Nah, Boz.  this one is down to you.

 You failed to take obvious, timely measures.  You failed to provide effective leadership.  You didn't manage to get a clear message out.  You and your cabal of goons and carpetbaggers and borderline sociopaths didn't stick to the rules you did come up with.

People died.  Tens of thousands of them.  Because you got it wrong.

You had TWO chances to get it right.  You blew both of them.

To nick something from Oscar Wilder, to screw up the biggest challenge of your premiership once could be regarded a misfortune; screwing it twice looks like carelessness.

Aftermath, Part 2 - Why Did All The Votes Go?

Predictable, there has been a lot of effort being put into saying the disaster of Friday the 13th is down to Corbyn, Corbynism and Corbynistas.

There was a poll published by Opinium the day after the election, asking why people did not vote labour, and why Labour voters who voted for other parties switched.

The survey found the main reasons people did not vote Labour were:

• The leadership (43%)
• Brexit (17%)
• Their economic policies (12%)

They also looked at the reasons given by party vote:

Further polling focused on those who voted Labour in 2017 but not in 2019:

• The leadership (37%)
• Brexit (21%)
• Their economic policies (6%)

On the surface it looks pretty convincing.  Clearly, the Blairites were right.  The issue is and was Corbyn and his leadership team.

But ... but ... but ... but ...  I have some issues with this data.

First of all, 'Leadership' is a very vague category compared to 'Brexit' and 'Economic policy'; a lot comes under than heading so it isn't surprising it is the biggest category.  Does it mean the leadership was too leftwing?  Was it to do with the alleged failure to address anti-Semitism?  The inability to silence the criticism and attacks from within the party?  The disunity?  Because some of these aren't really criticiss of the leadership per se, but of the behaviour of the MPs and others who have been trying to throw Corbyn since he got into the saddle in 2015.

I'm also disappointed with the lack of geographic detail. I'd be very interested in seeing the result broken down by region - what if 'Brexit' was more of an issue in the Northern constituencies?  This was an election where what happened in the north was critical.  Traditional Labour heartlands revolted just two years after they had enthusiastically embraced Corbynism.  In 2015 Labour polled just under 18,000 votes in Blythe Valley; in 2017, that swelled to just under 24,000; but by 2019, the total was down to just under 17,000, and the seat was in Tory hands.  Those are remarkable changes in a couple of years.

The absence of the Brexit Party from the data breakdown by party is unforgivable. The BXP were critical in draining Labour support in a lot of constituencies, allowing the Tories to win on quite modest vote gains.  If we looked at that crucial demographic would we see Brexit significantly more prominent?  That seems to be the trend from the limited data available - where former Labour voters were more concerned about Brexit, and less so about 'leadership.'

I'd like to see more information about the reasons given for defection. Given the skewing we can see in the data we have, where almost a third of Lab / Con defectors identified Brexit 31% of the time as their reason for switching, I think it nothing much can be deduced without a more detailed picture. At the end, someone switching from Labour to Conservative is likely to be on the right wing of the party, so is likely to be opposed to the leadership anyway; we really need to know what went wrong in those northern seats and where the Brexit Party was decisive.

If we zoomed in on the Northern seats, and then in again on the Labour voters who went to BXP, would we see Labour voters switching to BXP because their old party had not embraced the referendum result?  And if we did the same again in other areas, would we see the Labou voters switching to the Lib Dems because Labour was not sufficiently Remain?

Aftermath, Part 1 - Where Did All The Votes Go?

So, that didn't go so well.

Immediately after the election, the Guardian published data showing where Labour's vote had gone:

Labour to Conservative - 4.72%
Conservative to Lib Dems - 1.34%
Labour to Lib Dems - 6.06%

The impact of the Brexit Party (BXP) on Labour has already been noted - in seat after seat, the BXP absorbed Labour votes and allowed the Tories to take the seat on relatively small gains.  In Blyth valley, the Conservative vote went up by about 2,000 - small change.  But the Labour vote dropped by 6,000 - 3,000 stayed at home and 3,000 appears to have transferred to the Brexit Party.  And this allowed the Tories to take the seat.

(It is a shame the figures don't include the BXP.  I imagine the transfer would be small, but critical in a lot of seats.)

But the third figure is also interesting.  Labour lost a lot of votes to the Lib Dems, and as a result neither went anywhere.  In spite of Swinson being ousted in East Dunbartonshire and ending up a couple of seats down on 2017, they actually increased their vote share substantially by absorbing Labour votes.  In 2017 the Lib Dems won a national vote share of 2,371,861, or 7.4% of the vote. In 2017, their vote was 3,696,423, 11.6%. It seems unlikely that the extra illion were people inspired by Swinson's charismatic leadership. It looks like they absorbed a lot of Labour voters.

Perhaps the hidden story here is that Labour lost Leave votes to BXP AND Remain votes to the Lib Dems, with both sides of the argument rejecting Labour's measured, sensible Seocnd Referendum compromise. Be interesting to know - though there is probably no way of telling - how much of this was smart tactical voting, and how much Remainers dumbly rejecting the second referendum.

This time, Labour seems to have been caught between two vote sinks - the Lib Dems taking their votes on one flank, and the BXP giving disaffected Labour voters an option than stopped short of voting Tory. And the result of this mess is that it enabled a Tory government with a massive majority.

Some of it was intentional - Farage's ploy of standing own candidates in Conservative seats was an obvious but effective ploy. And some of it boils down to the continual madness of running two parties competing for the centre left vote. Thatcher's reign in the 80s was enabled by the SDP-Liberal Alliance absorbing 25% of the vote and returning fewer than 5% of the MPs.

It seems we've learned nothing since.

This is not about trying to transfer all the blame onto the Lib dem - another, oft overlooked, reason why Blair's government should be remembered as a failure. They had the opportunity to change things in 1997; but they decided the system was working for them, so they would keep it like it was.

Of course, subsequent incarnations of the Labour Party have failed to embrace electoral reform. Stupid short-termist idiots.

Boris Johnson ... Hides ... In a Fridge

I am not making this up.

First few lines of the Dail Mail write up:

Boris Johnson's exasperated media minder swore on live TV today as the PM refused to speak to Good Morning Britain before trotting into a fridge as he started an early milkround in Yorkshire.

Piers Morgan was visibly shocked and Susanna Reid had her head in her hands as Mr Johnson's press secretary Robert Oxley declared 'for f***s sake' and blocked the path of GMB's roving reporter Jonathan Swain.

The Tory leader, who was delivering milk in the marginal seat of Pudsey, West Yorkshire, this morning, has repeatedly refused to appear on the ITV1 show.

Mr Swain confronted Boris as he put milk crates in a van and said: 'Morning Prime Minister will you come on Good Morning Britain? Will you deliver on your promise to speak to Piers and Susanna?'.

A tired-looking Mr Oxley loudly muttered: 'For f***s sake' as his boss ignored the calls and wandered into a large walk-in chiller as Mr Morgan exclaimed: 'He's gone into the fridge'.

I mean, FFS. what is going on? This campaign is getting genuinely surreal. This is how dadaists do politics.

Johnson looks utterly dazed, like he has no idea what he is doing or what is going on. it's like he's being wheeled around the country, being forced to perform for the cameras, but barely holding it together. Certainly not together enough to speak to journalists.

I'm pretty sure a few weeks ago he'd have cheerfully engaged in a bit of buffoonery, fobbed them off with a bit of whiff-waff. But he can't, Just like he couldn't respond adequately when a journalist waved a mobile phone at him.

He's broken, a hollowed out shell.

And look at this clip of Johnson delivering the milk to some 'lucky' voter:

From the .."it's this one" ...to the hand picked lucky recipient of Johnson's early morning call exclamation of......"I didn't know there would be so many people". This sort of staging should not be allowed before a General Election. #GeneralElection19 #Johnson pic.twitter.com/bCubtTwQK4

— Jude #FBPE (@jude5456) 11 December 2019

This is a rip off of the Love Actually bit where PM Hugh Grant knocks on doors pretending he's just wishing people Merry Christmas.

Following on from their 'Brexit, Actually' toe-curler.

Their campaign is actually just ripped off from a feckin' rubbish twee rom-com?!

Predictably, the Sun somehow managed to cut the sweary words and the Napoleonic retreat into the freezer from their video version of the story, gushingly entitled "Boris Johnson stuns family as he delivers milk on last day of general election campaign":

What does it feel like to have less journalistic interity than the Mail, I wonder?

Asking for it ...

"I saw a newspaper picture,

From the political campaign

A woman was kissing a child,

Who was obviously in pain.

She spills with compassion,

As that young child's

Face in her hands she grips

Can you imagine all that greed and avarice

Coming down on that child's lips?"

Corbyn the Mighty vs BoJo the Clown

Interesting contrasting pictures in the Guardian:

Corbyn gets the classic positive shot - low angle and a clear background, making him look authoritative (of course, being Corbyn, he doesn't do authoritative very well).

Where as Johnson gets pictured with children at some sort of mad-hatters' tea party:

Begging the question, who is the adult in THAT room?  ANd who is the odd large blonde child in the comedy suit?

It shows impressively poor foresight by the Conservatives. They KNEW there was an election coming and they let their candidate who looks like a clown at the best of times - sit down with a bunch of school kids.

What is more interesting, though, is that the Guardian decided to use these pictures, suggesting a more positive attitude towards Corbyn than I might have anticipated.

Another day of bonkers GNUmours (again, sorry)

First, almost a score of Labour MPs seem to have sent a letter to the EU basically begging them to accept a deal - any deal - just so Britain can get the Heck on with Brexiting instead of being trapped in limbo:

To avoid no deal, deliver on the ref outcome and break the deadlock we have sent the letter below to Juncker and Tusk #Brexit pic.twitter.com/xnvEbLFlmI

— Emma Lewell-Buck MP (@EmmaLewellBuck) 8 October 2019

They are literally asking the EU to accept a Conservative Prime Minister's hopeless deal, rather than try to gain power and sort out a better deal for Britain. They are effectively enabling and extending an even-more-dangerous-than-usual Tory government, rather than trying to bring it down.

(The even scarier thing is they aren't even the maddest Brexiteers in Labour - you won't see Kate Hoey or John Mann's name on that list. It's far too diluted for them. They like their Brexit neat, if that isn't some sort of oxymoron.)

This is why I think a non-Corbyn GNU will struggle to get across the line. That's 19 votes that probably won't be available for an alternative candidate, whereas they probably would be available for Corbyn. Basically, they cancel out the Lib Dems. Assuming those 19 - and Hoey and Mann - refused to support a non-Corbyn GNU, and all the other Labour MPs did (a huge assumption) then then it would be at 283, still needing the pro-Remain Independents to support en masse. Possible, but difficult.

Where as Corbyn, the SNP, the Lib Dems, Plaid and the Greens can probably get there, or very nearly there, as he can expect his MPs to support him.

But wait, there's more ... According to the Financial Times, in a sort of exchange student MP deal, fifty MPs, including three cabinet ministers have threatened to walk out in Johnson makes a No Deal Brexit an election commitment:

Several prominent ministers would find a no deal manifesto problematic to support, including Julian Smith, Nicky Morgan and Robert Buckland. Same for plenty in the junior ranks too. https://t.co/GUbXW77Kir

— Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) 9 October 2019

Obvious the problem with this story is ... Tories. Until they actually walk out the door, assume they will do the opposite of what they say they will do. But it does suggest the antipathy towards Johnson's 'dead in a ditch' approach is growing.

(It also suggests the 50, particularly the cabinet ministers, are pretty dimwitted, as an fule could see from years ago (well, a few weeks back) that Johnson hadn't the slightest interest in a deal. If they actually thought they were assisting other than a Titanic style Brexit, they were clearly rather hopeless - which raises the worrying possibility that their resignations might leave the Johnson administration brighter and more dangerous, by some strange alchemy.)

So, yeah, just another day of lunacy in Brexitland.

Inside the Downing Street bunker

James Forsyth at The Spectator (I know, I know) has tapped one of his contacts inside Number Ten for an insight into the Johnson administration's thinking and strategy.

It is fascinating, unsettling and quite, quite mad.  Some key points:

• Negotiations have stalled and the Johnson administration are keen to blame the EU: "Varadkar was keen on talking before the Benn Act when he thought that the choice would be ‘new deal or no deal’. Since the Benn Act passed he has gone very cold ..."; of course, it has nothing to do with the Johnson administration wasting everyone's time, acting in bad faith and proposing a ludicrous alternative to the vexed Irish Backstop.

• It is all the fault of the Germans Boche and the French Frogs: "There are quite a few people in Paris and Berlin who would like to discuss our offer but Merkel and Macron won’t push Barnier unless Ireland says it wants to negotiate." This is like reading the story of Brexit as re-told by Commando Comics; which, now I think about it, is a very apt description of how the Johnson administration is approaching the whole thing.

• The Euro-meanies and the Remoaners are conspiring to Do Britain Down, but they will be shown up in time by British pluck and cold hard steel, which has always seen of their Continental guile: "Ireland and Brussels listen to all the people who lost the referendum, they don’t listen to those who won the referendum and they don’t understand the electoral dynamics here."

• The Johnson administration really is intent on going full steam ahead into the iceberg, because they are more scared of Nigel Farage than they are of ruining the country: "To marginalise the Brexit Party, we will have to fight the election on the basis of ‘no more delays, get Brexit done immediately’."; never mind the arguments about 17.2 million voters, this is about one man. Oddly, their plan for stopping him is to do exactly what he wants, which seems a bit silly, but they aren't interested in what is better for Britain here - it is simple psychopathic careerism. Cock up, blame everyone else and hope that people will fall for it so you don't lose your job.

• The Johnson administration intends to Subvert the 'Benn Bill' to prevent delaying Brexit: "Our legal advice is clear that we can do all sorts of things to scupper delay which for obvious reasons we aren’t going into details about."; one wonders if this 'legal advice' springs from the same mind that told them proroguing parliament for five weeks was legal, and that they could win court cases without presenting sworn affidavits?

• They will use bribes and threats to try to get the EU to vote against offering a further extension: "We will make clear privately and publicly that countries which oppose delay will go the front of the queue for future cooperation — cooperation on things both within and outside EU competences. Those who support delay will go to the bottom of the queue."; so,having failed to win any intellectual arguments, they will resort to bullying - "within and outside EU competences" is particularly ominous.

• The EU offering something that has been requested by the British PM acting on the instructions of the British parliament is "hostile interference in domestic politics, and over half of the public will agree with us"; presumably they will apply the same 'logic' to any attempt to form treaties or agreements in the future. And the cynical statement that the public will agree with them reveals they are intent on plunging even further down the Faragist populist bullshit rabbit hole. All, you know, to stop Farage.

• They actually still think this is all about them: "We will also make clear that this government will not negotiate further so any delay would be totally pointless. They think now that if there is another delay we will keep coming back with new proposals. This won’t happen." Hate to break it to you, guys and girls, but people are now hoping that it won't be "we" coming back with new proposals.

• They will take their toys and go home: "Any delay will in effect be negotiated between you, Parliament, and the courts — we will wash our hands of it, we won’t engage in further talks, we obviously won’t given any undertakings about cooperative behaviour, everything to do with ‘duty of sincere cooperation’ will be in the toilet, we will focus on winning the election on a manifesto of immediately revoking the entire EU legal order without further talks, and then we will leave." Yes, gentle reader, they actually think the courts and parliament are somehow irrelevant obstacles in all this, not the things that give them legitimacy. Heads up! If the courts say your are doing illegal stuff, it means lack legitimacy; if parliament refuses to back you, you lack legitimacy. You will not have the authority to put anything in the toilet. And for all their eager talk of elections, there is one simple way to get one - request an extension so an election can be held without the country falling out of the EU by default. But the Fear of Farage is overwhelming, and they can not bring themselves to do that Very Obvious Thing.

• They are deluded: "Those who pushed the Benn Act intended to sabotage a deal and they’ve probably succeeded." No, your bad faith negotiations, posturing and hopeless alternative' to the Irish Backstop killed a deal. Which you probably knew all along it would. The ferocity of the pro-No Deal language in this whole message reveals the lie in this weak attempt to pass the blame.

It is worth keeping in mind this might be what the 'strategic geniuses' WANT us to think they are planning.

But, nah.  I'm going with this actually being what they are planning - for want of a better word.

Guardian: Poll shows DISASTER for Corbyn and the End of Times

The Guardian - ever eager to forewarn of doom and disaster on the left - are leading with a new poll from Opinium, which puts the Conservatives 15% clear of Labour.

Con 38% +2
Lab 23% -1
Lib Dem 15% -5
Brexit 12% +1
Green 4% +2

This isn't good news, and it would be very bad news if it wasn't Opinium; they consistently give the Conservatives large leads; the largest, indeed.  Looking at recent polling (i.e. September to present moment), here's how the different companies compare:

Large Tory leads (6% or over in majority of included polls):

• You Gov (leads range from 7% to 14%, 7 polls included)
• Opinium (Leads range from 10% to 15%, 5 polls)
• Kantar (Leads of 14%, 1 poll)
• Ipsos Mori (Lead of 9%, 1 poll)

Small Tory Leads (5% or less in majority of included polls):

• Panelbase (Lead of 3%, 1 poll)
• ComRes (Leads range from TIE to 4%, 5 polls)
• Survation (Leads range from 3% to 5%, 2 polls)
• Deltapoll (Lead of 3%, 1 poll; BUT a poll released 31/8 gave a Conservative lead of 11%!; make of that what you will.)

(BMG are also included in Britain Elects' table but don't seem to have released a September poll.)

So, from that, what can we conclude?  Nothing.  The polls are all over the place but at least individual pollsters seem to be finding fairly consistent results.  Someone is definitely wrong, and it is just about possible everyone is.

Bad Language, milk shaking, abuse of politicians and so on

So, there has been a lot of talk about 'inflammatory language' in the British parliament recently.

The whole culture of British politics has become very polarised and toxic.  Some recent examples:

• In January of this year, a group of men surrounded MP Anne Sourby as she walked to parliament, calling her a Nazi, invading her space and videoing her without consent, presumably in the hope of capturing a reaction or tears.  I won't include the images or footage as it was filmed without her consent.


• Journalist Owen Jones was crowded, heckled and abused on the same occasion.  As Owen filmed them himself, I will reproduce the footage.

Just met some lovely Tommy Robinson fans and I’d love for you to get to know them too pic.twitter.com/iRom8GavNy

— Owen Jones🌹 (@OwenJones84) 7 January 2019

Owen Jones would, of course, be physically assaulted by a group of thugs in August.

•  Dianne Abbott received almost a third of all abusive tweets sent to female MPs in the six months before the 2017 election.  And the total number of abusive tweets sent to female MPs was a staggering 25,000.  That's about 8000 hateful comments being aimed at a single person in 6 months, or about 50 a day, or about two every hour.

Take a moment to imagine someone yelling an insult at you every thirty minutes; or every fifteen minutes assuming they don't do it while you're asleep. Might tend to spoil your day a bit.

• Then, of course, there was UKIP candidate and internet 'opinion shaper' Carl Benjamin's "I wouldn't even rape you" comment to MP Jess Phillips.  Phillips then received further abuse for objecting to people making comments rank with sexual violence and misogyny about her.  Apparently, that's a free speech issue.


• Anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Millar described the vitriol aimed her way in 2017.  Given she's been involved in attempts to foil the recent attempts by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to finesse break the law to get a No Deal Brexit by proroguing illegally suppressing parliament.


• Jolyon Maugham, acting for Millar in her recent case, also received abuse and death threats, has been advised to wear a stab proof vest and had a panic button installed in his home.  In his twitter feed, he describes how he had to threaten the Daily Mail with legal action to prevent them publicising his home address.  

This is, of course, tip of the iceberg stuff.  I could go on and on.  There is no scraping of the bottom of the barrel of hatred here; the barrel just goes on and on.

And lurking in the background is the murder of Jo Cox in 2016, which came into the headlines again this week when her name was brought up in parliament by and MP (legitimately) commenting on the toxic environment surrounding Brexit.

There has been a lot of talk about inflammatory language, with Johnson lobbing terms like Surrender Bill' about; but the left needs to be careful here.  We have not always been as pure and spotless as we would like to think.

Remember when Nigel Farage was getting milkshakes thrown at him?  Oh, how we laughed.  Never mind that it was legally assault, and that crowing over his humiliation was legitimising bullying.  Saying Farage 'deserved it' because we don't like his ideas is dangerously close to legitimising the hate-filled abuse being directed towards the likes of Millar, Maugham, Jones and so on because - guess what? - people on the other side of the left / right or leave / remain feel as passionately as we do.  If it is okay for us to call Nigel Farage unpleasant things and throw things at him and intimidate him by waiting to ambush him then it is okay for the other side to do it as well.  Jeremy Corbyn was egged earlier on this year; people quite rightly condemned it.  A lot of the same people probably had a good chuckle at Farage being milkshaked.

And I'll admit I couldn't resist a smirk when I saw the images of Farage covered in milkshake and blustering feebly about people being mean to him.  But that does not alter the fact that assault is wrong. Even petty assault that doesn't cause physical hurt.

If you're saying it's okay to assault someone in the real world, you can hardly complain about mean words in a text message.  If physical assault doesn't count, then how can we justify being opposed to nasty pixels?  Pixels are even more ephemeral than flavoured milk.

People don't think twice about using foul and demeaning language to deride and insult a politician whose ideas they disapprove of; but when the same language gets directed at someone they support, it 'abusive.'  It's Orwellian double think.  People just don't seem to realise they are entertaining two contradictory notions in their heads at the same time.

This seems to be part of a bigger and ongoing project to debase political discourse to the point where everyone acts and speaks like Donald Trump; where argument is replaced by insult and reason by abuse, logic by threats.  It is driven most obviously (in Britain) by the likes of the Daily Mail ("Crush the Saboteurs!"), the Express and the Sun; but it is also advanced in the more measured tones of the Guardian, the Times and the Telegraph, with the persistent 'othering' and dehumanisation of the other side.  You can insult them, then tell lies about them, and assault them, because it is okay to do all these things because they are bad people.  Though the 'people' part is becoming questionable.  We don't like to think of them as people, but as "Remoaners" or "Gammons" or "Republicans" or "Fascists"; we're millimetres away from describing other people as 'vermin' fit to be exterminated.

Orwell would have recognised this phenomenon.  “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

And another uncomfortable truth.  The left / remain have to put their own house in order, urgently.  Sad to say, we are worse at it than the right.  A study by the University of Sheffield indicated that - contrary to the stereotypes - the most and the worst abuse aimed at MPs via twitter was directed at male MPs and towards Conservative / right-leaning / pro-Brexit figures.

Now, the study is by no means perfect.  It focused on just four months over four years.  Two of those months were immediately prior to elections (2015 and 2017); in 2015 both the Conservatives and Labour were lead by males, and in 2017 Labour was lead by a male and the Conservatives by a female.  With the focus on the leaders during an election campaign, that is bound to skew the statistics.  Cameron and Milliband are the most significant receivers of abuse in 2015. Johnson and Corbyn get a lot of abuse in 2017 but Theresa May gets almost as much. It's reasonable to think that if the party leaders receive most of the abuse, having mostly male party leaders would skew those stats.

(I'm not saying abusing party leaders is okay or acceptable; but I'd be interested to see data without those 'big beasts' in it to see how that affects the figures.)

Also, Boris Johnson received a lot of abusive tweets in 2017, as the figurehead of Brexit.  So those factors might tend to cloud the day-to-day abuse and threatening language aimed at less high profile and female MPs.  And here's the thing - Johnson's segment of the 'sunburst' charts is the largest and the darkest (size indicating amount, and colour indicating intensity, of insults).


It looks like the left and / or Remainers are actually the more vituperative.  And that's very troubling.  We can not condemn the hateful, inflammatory speech of our opponents while engaging in - or at least ignoring - the virulent hatred emanating from our own side.

Thatcher claimed her greatest achievement was the neutering of socialism - Tony Balir and New Labour.  It looks like The Mail, Trump, Bannon, Farage et al have successfully managed to make the left into a nascent fascist movement.  They don't care that people oppose them; the important thing is that the people are adopting their language and tactics, which justifies and legitimises their own egregious behaviour and gives them scope to escalate it.  The more fascistic we sound, the more fascistic they can become; and they are much, much better at it than we are.  And even if we do win the odd scrap, ultimately they win the war, because we have become them.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Never do what your enemy wants you to do.  We're enabling them.  That's what they want.

Ten reasons the Tories do NOT want an election

There has been a lot of talk about Boris Johnson wanting an election, and he has blustered with great gusto about 'chicken' Jeremy Corbyn refusing one, but I think there are many reasons why he is secretly glad he has been refused the opportunity:

1. The Tories are an utter rabble,tearing themselves to pieces. They've rejected Cameronite phoney One Nation consensus centrism for extremism. They've managed to make everyone apart from the Telegraph and the Mail hate them. 


2. They've been in power for almost a decade now, people are tired of them. New Labour made it to 13 years, but only because they started from a much better position.


3. The right wing vote is going to be split. Either it is going to be split between Conservatives and Brexit (if Brexit isn't delivered) or Conservative and Lib Dem (if it is).


4. A lot of Conservative voters might not be able to vote for another party but will simply stay home, as happened in 1997. 


5. Austerity still matters and many people are still struggling. After 9 years in power, what have the Tories got to show for it? At least New Labour could point to some real achievements in the early years. 


6. An election this year will be the third in five years. That might be normal in Italy, but we didn't win the war to behave like Italians. People will be royally pissed off with being asked to vote again. So the Conservative reputation for managerial competence is shredded. 


7. An early election favours Corbyn - if the Tories could hang on until 2022 then he'd probably look too old. But having another pop now, on this side of seventy, he still has time on his side. 


8. Corbyn is a very good campaigner. Say what you like about his policies and his leadership, but put him on the campaign trail and he's happy as can be, and people respond to him. Whereas the Conservatives have put an absolute klutz at the helm who can't get through a speech without prompting commentators to speculate that he's on drugs.  Even the stuff Johnson was meant to be good at - PMQs and insults - he's been bad at. 


9. There is nothing left to use against Corbyn. Remember how some people were salivating about how the media would reveal all his dark secrets and murky stories from his past? That barrel was scraped dry in 2017 and it turned out to be a rather small and pathetic barrel; now the Murdochite papers are reduced to putting his head on a chicken.


10. Labour will run on a crowd pleasing manifesto, while the Conservatives will run on a stupid manifesto, again. People think they will have learned from 2017's mistakes, but they will simply make new ones. They just don't get it.

That's my branes, anyway.

A bad couple of days for the Conservative Party

In - what, 48 hours? - a Tory MP assaults a female demonstrator, a Tory MP verbally abuses a female colleague via twitter, a Tory MP is recalled for corruption, and a Tory MP (and likely future PM) has the police turn up at their door at 2am because his girlfriend was screaming "Get off me!"

With regards the last instance, I'm trying to be fair and imagine circumstances where a woman screaming "Get off me!" at 2am in the morning is okay.

Nope, can't think of any.

The Conservative Party - home of corruption and toxic masculinity.

Tory Leadership Slow Motion Apocalypse Underway

Get in now for front row seats as the Best Show On Earth After The American Election And Most Other Shows Even Cats gets underway.

Who will replace the red faced non-entity bumbler when he finally buggers off the political scene, having accomplished nearly nothing other than squandering a recovery, prolonging a recession and making Britain look stupid for the whole of Europe - even Greece (GREECE?!) - to laugh at?

Will it be Boris, effectively upping the buffoon quotient?

Or George 'Why did 80,000 people boo him' Osborne?

Or someone thing else?

Who will turn out to be the brightness in this dullness of Tories? The fastest in this loiter of sloths? The sternest in this gutter of wet bus tickets?

Relevant stuff:

Earlier this week there was a new YouGov poll of Conservative party members in the Times or, more specifically, two new polls of Conservative party members: YouGov polled the same party members before and after Boris Johnson came out in favour of leaving the EU to see what impact it had on the leadership race. Results are here.

At the simplest level Boris was ahead before, and was ahead afterwards, but there were some interesting shifts. Boris’s approval rating among Conservative party members dropped significantly after he came out (from 83% approval to 76% approval), but his position in the leadership race improved. Presumably he annoyed some members who saw his actions as disloyal or disagreed with his stance, but he consolidated the support from those who did not.

Almost unavoidably Boris coming out was going to upset some members – he has carefully avoided having many fixed political opinions over the years, so I expect many pro-European members would have assumed Boris agreed with them, many anti-EU members would have assumed Boris agreed with them. For once, he is forced off the fence and forced to upset some people – so his overall approval rating among Tory party members fell. However, in the race to be the next Tory leader his position has improved. 

43% now say they’d back Boris, up from 38%, with support falling for Theresa May and Sajid Javid, both of whom were seen as potential “outers” and both of whom ended up supporting Remain. Asked how they’d vote in a match up between Osborne & Boris the figures don’t change as much (Boris 55%, George 36% before, Boris 56%, George 38% after) – the broader balance between those party members who want Osborne as the next leader and those who don’t hasn’t changed much, it’s just Boris is now more clearly the “not-George” candidate.

Only a quarter of Tory party members said that the leadership candidates’s stances on the EU were an important factor in picking the next leader – 4% said they wanted the next leader to be someone who had campaigned for the UK to stay, 20% wanted the next leader to be someone who campaigned to leave, three-quarters picked other criteria as their main considerations. Far and away the most widely picked criteria was someone who will make a competent PM, picked by 67%, followed by someone who has a good chance of winning the next election on 52%.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, but if only Anthony Wells was a girl and there was a sort of heterosexual equivalent of being Gay Married, I'd do that with him in an instant.

Truly Depressing

Yesterday a thought crossed my mind that was so appalling that I decided not to mention it to anyone for at least 24 hours so I could b sure it was a real notion and not just an emanation from a heat oppress'd brain.  Unfortunately, the grisly phantom refused to depart, in fact it seemed to grow more substantial.  And eventually I saw it clearly.  It was Alan Johnson, bearing the crown and septre of the Labour leadership.

Because, given the current crop of wannabe hopeless hopefuls, he really is likely to be the best choice as an interim leader while the Labour Party pulls itself together and works out its problems.

Still it is early days. Johnson isn't even a contender yet, and quite likely won't ever be. But given how Burnham and Cooper seem to be hoovering up the nominations of the (pitifully small number) of MPs, it seems unlikely any fresh face can hope to garner enough backing.

Whoever ends up as leader, they need to deal with the myth of overspending.   He or she must not be trapped into mealy mouthed condemnation of public spending that was quite justifiable. Labour did not wantonly overspend in the years up to 2008. Labour invested in schools and hospitals and infrastructure to make the lives of British people better. Tories can not attack Labour for this when the George Osborne said, in 2007, his party would match Labour's spending.

Not a word from Osborne then about the need to mend fiscal roofs and austerity. No prophetic warnings about imminent financial apocalypse. Just a pledge to spend as much as Labour, happily demolishing the roof - if you accept his new improved post GFC stance - to let more sunlight in.

Just as Tories can't complain about Labour's failure to adequate regulate the city when the same George Osborne - in 2006 - complained in a letter to the Telegraph about 'burdensome' regultion that 'threatens the global competitiveness of the City of London'

So let us hear no more hypocritical, disingenuous palaver about over-spending when the Tories were pledging to do exactly the same, or about failure to regulate the City when the Tories were arguing the regulations were too onerous.

Or - since the Conservatives will no doubt continue to bleat that chorus like the sheep in Animal Farm - at least let us not hear Labour leaders trying to deny that they over spent. Simply tell it like it was. Labour invested in the means for making Britain a better country and achieved far more than the current government of antediluvian dingbats, Europhobic madpeople, ideologically crippled malcontents and Ken Clarke can ever hope to do.

As for the myth of Conservative confidence, bear in mind the opposing plans to respond to the 2008 crisis.  Recall, if you will the Tory pledge to eradicate the deficit in a single term, and contrast Alastair Darling's more measured target of halving it in the same period.

The Tories failed to deliver their planned austerity, though. Osborne failed, but - wittingly or not - DID manage to achieve Alasdair Darling's goal of halving the deficit in 5 years. Which goes to show that the Darling Plan was the sane, sensible and honest one, if you must go down the austerity route. The country is still here, in spite of the right wing howls that Britain could not afford another five years of Labour.

In essence, Britain re-elected the Tories because Labour's plan worked.

Go figure.

Which brings us back to the mess of the Labour leadership.  Perhaps the biggest argument against Johnson (other than the fact he's a Blairite relic) is strategic. Cameron will likely seek to repeal the Fixed term Parliaments Act, giving him the choice of when an election is held. he - or his post-EU successor as leader - can then 'go short' and hold an election before his majority is whittled away, rather than hang on Major style in the hope that something will turn up.

So is no guarantee this parliament is going to last five years and allow a successor to emerge to fight in 2020. I imagine the EU referendum will mark the end of Cameron's reign. If he wins, he'll pronounce His Work Here Is Done and resign as PM. If he loses, he'll proclaim a new leader is needed to energise the party. Assuming BoJo or Georgie wins it, they call a snap election if they think they can win, "Too confirm our mandate," rather than making the mistake that Callaghan and Brown did.

So suddenly the 'interim' leader is fighting an election - which Labour will probably lose otherwise the Tories wouldn't call it - and Labour is back in the same situation - carry on with Interim Alan for another three years, or start the whole sorry process again.

Still, even Johnston would be better than Burnham or Cooper.

Attack of the Return of the Revenge of the Night of Boris Johnson

The Great White Shark is circling closer and closer ...

Boris Johnson is to announce he will stand for Parliament at next year’s election – to avoid speculation on his future overshadowing the Tory campaign.

Friends of the London Mayor say he accepts he must make his intentions to return to national politics known well before the Conservative conference in October or risk becoming a distraction at the party’s last major event before the general election next May. 

Allies also fear that his public dithering over the issue is damaging his reputation among the Tory MPs whose support he will need if he eventually launches a leadership bid.

Link

Cameron's only chance of hanging on after the Inevitable Defeat of 2015 was to wage his fingers at the dozen or so Tory MPs left in the Commons and say, "Well, chaps, calm down. I might have led us to defeat against a useless wet-bus-ticket of a Labour leader, just as I almost lead us to defeat against Gordon Brown, but really, can any of you clown hope to do better? Really, Michael, you think you could. Don't be silly. You look like a deviant frog. George? You're nothing without me. Okay, you're nothing with me. But you're less than nothing without me. Zac? You're in the wrong party. Nick? You're not even in this party ..."

 Now the Ego is about to land in a big way, and squash poor little Dave quite quite flat.