GNUs move VERY slowly

In the hours since my last interminable wittering about the possibility of a Government of National Unity (GNU) in Britain, there has been a slight maybe development:

A Corbyn-led caretaker government could then sit for several months while it enacted and delivered a referendum with the support of smaller parties and rebel Tories, several MPs suggested. 

An election would only then follow, probably next spring. Another option would be for a ‘government of national unity’ to sit while the referendum legislation is passed. 

Corbyn listened to the advice of the PLP but did not say he agreed with it. His position has been that he thinks an extension of Article 50 is a priority to stop a no-deal exit, followed quickly by a general election. 

“It was the most united PLP we’ve had in months,” said one present.

Which seems to reflect a strengthening of Corbyn's position, if he has the PLP more-or-less behind him (which must be a novel situation for him, and them).

Well, I'm glad that some progress is being made, albeit at a snail's pace. In about another thousand years, they might finally get ther heads around the idea that a Corbyn lead GNU is the most practical option ... though I must add my breath, while I wait, is resolutely unbated.

The tactical / short term problem with this idea is the numbers are so dreadful it would be almost impossible to do anything in the interim. We'd have six to nine months of endless Brexitry, with the government - for want of a better word - unable to actually do anything about the many ills afflicting the nation. That would REALLY taint Corbyn and Labour.

From a purely strategic perspective, it would also give the Tories a chance to regroup and rebuild. I quite like the idea of Johnson being bounced out of office and then forced to face the country. If they manage to get their act together, and a protracted build up to a new referendum has embittered people against the GNU, then it is possible to imagine the Tories profiting in a summer election.

Parliamentary number crunching [Very sexy]

So,   more on the possibility of a Government of National Unity (GNU) in Britain, which is once more exercising Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson.

Ms Swinson, who declined to be interviewed by Sky News alongside the other leaders, has said she would only support a compromise candidate for PM like Tory grandee Kenneth Clarke or Labour veteran Dame Margaret Beckett.

"He simply does not have the numbers," Ms Swinson said after the meeting.

"I have been crystal clear but I will do so again - Jeremy Corbyn is not going into Number 10 on the basis of Liberal Democrats' votes."

The numbers in parliament make things very difficult.  Anyone who is saying X will happen or Y is impossible is spinning.  I'm looking at you here, Jo.

We can not tell and will not know until votes are actually cast.  And possibly more than one round of increasingly fraught voting, as brinkmanship is exposed and people have to choose between what they do not like and what frankly terrifies them.

Here are the numbers in parliament:

Conservative Party - 288
Labour Party - 246
Scottish National Party - 35
Liberal Democrats - 18
Democratic Unionist Party - 10
The Independent Group for Change - 5
Plaid Cymru - 4
Green Party - 1
Independent - 35

(Sinn Fein have 7 MPs but they do not take their seats.)

Insanely, as it stands, no party can command a majority. This is why Johnson can't win a vote (currently at 0-7, probably the worst losing streak in government history.)  Even coalitions are problematic, with 3-4 party combinations needed to get to the 'magic number' needed to command an outright majority.

(More on the 'Magic number' later.)

At the moment, parliament can't even vote to put itself out of its own misery, via a general election, because Johnson won't ask the EU for an election and the opposition parties won't trigger one without this guarantee.

The numbers don't make a GNU easy.  Looking at a Corbyn lead option, first ...

A coalition of Labour , SNP, Lib Dems, Greens, PC and half of the independents gets to 322, which is the actual number needed to command a majority with the Speaker and SF not voting (though the Speaker would be obligated to vote with the government in the event of a tie.)

(That's assuming TIG4C do not support the GNU, even though they are meant to be fervent Remainers.  Their hatred of Corbyn runs very, very deep.)

Excluding the Lib Dems and the independent MPs, Labour, the SNP, PC and Greens can get to 286, just behind the Conservative Party.

But the idea of a Corbyn lead GNU has proven problematic.  The SNP and Greens have said they will support it.  Assuming Plaid Cymru are also amenable, that gets the coalition to 286.  But the Lib Dems and the Conservative rebels have said they won't support a Corbyn led GNU and want him to step aside for another 'less divisive' candidate.

The problem with that is any candidate that is 'less divisive' for the Lib Dems and Conservative rebels will be a very hard sell to Labour MPs.  They are by no means 100% behind the party's declared policy of a second referendum, or even behind its previous position of a soft Brexit.  There aren't too many Hard Brexit headbangers in Labour, but there are a couple; and there are a lot more Eurosceptics of various degrees of virulence (including, of course, Jeremy Corbyn) and others who will be thinking long and hard about where to position themselves, having looked at how their constituency voted in the referendum, and the mood of their local party.

Whereas the numbers for non-Corbyn lead coalition are more nebulous. Sure, you'll get the Lib Dems, the SNP and so on, and let's say you get TIG and ALL the independents. That gets you to 102.

102.

How many Labour MPs are going to agree to put another Conservative MP into Downing Street?  Particularly if the Conservatives and Lib Dems have refused to vote for Corbyn?

Even if the bulk of the party does - sullenly - vote for a Clarke (or whoever) lead GNU, Labour MPs who support leave probably won't. Based on the 'indicative votes' held earlier in the year, that's between 10 and 30 MPs who are opposed to soft Brexit or a second referendum.  If it is 10, then the GNU works. If it is 30, it is tantalisingly close, but still short of a definite majority.

Again, it could work - Labour leavers might be persuaded to abstain, or more Tories might desert to support a non-Corbyn GNU. But it is all very sketchy, and anyone claiming one side or the other does or does not have the numbers is spinning. We won't know until votes are cast, possibly several rounds of them.

What is the 'magic number' needed to govern, anyway?

It is not 326, which is half the number of MPs in the house.  You need to knock off SF's 7 MPs.  That gets you 322.  But even that isn't the number needed, because votes are passed on a majority of the MPs who are present to vote, not the absolute majority of all MPs.

Not one of the indicative votes involved more than 600 MPs voting.  The far more critical Benn Act still saw 21 MPs mysteriously absent or abstain.  You can get along with far fewer than 322, though it does make things trickier.

All of which gets us no further forward that we were at the beginning of this long and - I admit it, very unsexy - post.

Which begs many questions - will they (Libs and Cons) stick to their "Not Corbyn" position even if it means crashing out on the 31st? Will Corbyn? What is the 'magic number' anyway? Do Labour really need the Libs and Cons to get to it?  Would enough Labour MPs support an alternative GNU for it to work?

The more I think about it, I am thinking that Corbyn should simply go for the VONC, defy the Lib Dems and Con Remainers to stop him, and see if he can run a short term government focused on getting a delay and a second referendum in spite of them.

It would be amusingly ironic if the Liberal Democrats - the party that have consistently opposed Brexit in all forms - managed to exclude themselves from stopping it. Which would destroy them with their voters in the subsequent election.

Rory Stewart pondering a new centrist party

Rory Stewart is hinting at a new 'centrist' political party.

For those of you struggling to remember who Rory Stewart is, he's another one of those failed leadership contenders who wanted so badly to lead the party, who was busy draping himself in the mantle of Conservative, but now wants nothing to do with it.  What is it with Tories?

So, having failed to charm Conservative voters, failed leadership candidate Rory Stewart wants to set up another party in the increasingly crowded 'centre' ground.

Where we already have the Lib Dems, and Change Uk (or whatever they are called now, assuming they are still a thing) and a gaggle of independents, many of whom are - like Rory - recently ejected from the Conservative party.

Because apparently we need more splitting of the centre left vote.

Is he actually a Johnsonite fifth columist trying to ensure a Conservative triumph?

Unity government for the UK?

There has been a lot of speculation recently about the possibility of a government of national unity replacing the current administration in the UK, with the purpose of either revoking Article 50, or at least negotiating a delay and a second referendum.

I don't think it is going to happen, because the people who make the most noise about stopping to Brexit are not willing to do what needs to be done.

The positions are - Liberal Democrats are saying they want to revoke Article 50 and stop Brexit dead.  They have a total of 18 MPs, their ranks swelled by the arrivals of MPs from both Labour and the Conservatives.  Labour, on the other hand (247 MPs), favour negotiating a new exit package, and holding a referendum with their deal running off against Remain.

For the record, the Lib Dems have previously been in favour of a second referendum; they shifted to outright revoke about five minutes after Labour committed to a second referendum.  I can't help but discern a cynical motive in their shift.  Whereas Labour's gradual drift towards a second referendum has been so torturous as to be undoubtedly genuine.

So - with both of these UK wide parties favouring one form or another of avoiding No Deal, and the SNP (who have been the adults in the room all the way through), the Greens, various independents exiled from the two main parties, and the Welsh nationalists all opposed to No Deal, and the DUP's position becoming more compromised by the minute as Boris Johnson blunders towards the cliff enge - why do I think a government of national unity (henceforth, charmingly, a gnu) won't happen?

Because the numbers make it tricky, and the Lib Dems and Conservative rebels are being intransigent, saying they will not support a Corbyn lead GNU.  They are even insisting he stand aside and let someone else - Conservative veteran Ken Clarke or Labour's Harriet Harman - take over.

This is all down to politics, I think.  The Lib Dems and pro-Remain Conservatives just don't want to be seen to be enabling or to give him even the whiff of credibility as a PM.

The moment Corbyn gets to stand up in the Commons as PM, or speak to the nation from outside Downing Street, and the sky does not immediately fall, he gains stature and his enemies within and without the Labour Party lose their best argument - "It's impossible to imagine him as PM."

They seem willing to risk No Deal rather than let Corbyn be PM. They may fold - or he may fold, which is why they are saying they won't countenance backing him. The irony being they are basing their argument on the same logic the ERG are using when they say we can not take No Deal off the table - because it would take pressure off the other side.

Whereas - if Corbyn does say he will stand aside for another candidate - The issue them becomes pro-Brexit Labour MPs. They would support Corbyn as PM even if it meant nixing Brexit. But they won't swallow their principles for Ken Clarke and I suspect they wouldn't do it for Harriet Harman either.

(Both these figures are being touted as benevolent 'national treasures' who no-one sensible could refuse to support; Clarke spent decades enabling Conservative governments; Harman has been a hate figure on the right for decades as well, though she did do some good things - 'Harman's Law' - also described as 'socialism in sentence' was a splendid idea, and repealing it was one of the great wrongs of the Cameron administration.)

Which means that if the Lib Dems and Conservative Remains won't compromise to support a Corbyn lead GNU, forming such an animal under the leadership of someone else becomes much harder.

Corbyn and Labour have already compromised massively on Brexit.

Yet it never seems to be acknowledged; instead they are accused of "sitting on the fence" by extremists on the Remain side. Labour are told to be pragmatic and sensible, but the same expectation id not demanded of Lib Dems and Conservative rebels who say they will refuse to support a Corbyn lead GNU.

If we do crash out, it will be cause of their intransigence. The numbers are there, but they are refusing to support the best placed candidate. And it is for political reasons, as outlined about.

Celebrating the original Tommy Robinson

I was puttering about in Wellington the other day and picked up a copy of Tom Robinson Cabaret 79, live at the Collegiate Theatre.

It reminded me of this cartoon:

Which captures the ignorance, bigotry and general nastiness of the Far Right.  Who could resist singing along to the chorus of Glad to be Gay?

Though my favourite tom Robinson song is the more downbeat Cold Harbour - a simple song about the confusions of love and desire, in which the pronouns are less relevant than the emotional honesty.

"Who's he... choosing,
Clenching my toes,
And just wishing to God it was me."

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.

Chris Trotter on the BFD

I don't want to give pblicity to certain parts of the internet that are better left to fester in their own irrelevance (I know, a bit like this place) but the listing of Chris Trotter as a 'author' on Cameron Slater's spinoff website, the BFD requires some explanation.

Now, I don't know if Trotter is actually providing specific content for The BFD.  I don't know if he is allowing them to recycle stuff from his Bowalley Road blog.  I don't know if he is completely unaware that he has been listed as an 'author' at The BFD and they are simply using him to give their website some heft or the illusion of balance.

(I do know I alerted Chris to his association with The BFD a few weeks ago, via a comment on Bowalley road that he did not deign to publish; and he's still listed as an auther there as of today. Draw what conclusions you will from that.)

I publically exhort Chris to explain how this has come about, and why he is allowing his name to be associated with a cameron Slater linked website.