UK General Discussion Thread: mayy lmao

[ChrisDR68]

Saw his last interview on Newsnight yesterday evening that was shot a few weeks ago.

Asked if he thought he'd go into politics now if he was a young man he said no he wouldn't. His reason was that he thought there was a class war going when he entered politics and these days it's all but gone.

I thought that was a strange reason given that the idea that there was indeed a class war going on in the 1920's and 1930's is a controversial one.

The Conservatives would never have won a general election since universal suffrage was adopted had they not had a sizeable working class vote after all.

Having said that had he won the Labour leadership in 1980 I think the party would have been far more competitive in the 1983 general election and had Thatcher still won it her government would have had a much smaller majority and may have been unable to privatise most of the things they privatised in the 1983-87 parliament.

[ChrisDR68]

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2015/10/frank-field-calls-labour-mps-stand-independents-if-deselected

2 blasts from the past in one piece: 80's Bennism and the Independent Labour name

"When there are selections of an MP, I would like to see MPs who reflect the values of members of the party," he said recently. "The fact is that Liz Kendall got 4 per cent of the votes in the leadership contest." - Jon Lansman, a veteran of the Bennite Campaign for Labour Party Democracy.

That sounds logical and highly reasonable but who then would represent the views of the vast majority of Labour voters and potential Labour voters who on average have much more moderate views than the current Labour Party leadership and membership?

One of the reasons I hope Corbyn leads Labour into the next general election is to explode the myth that the British people are willing to vote into power a left wing Labour government.

It appears the lessons of 1983 and 1987 really do need to be relearned all over again.  The only winners in this whole long winded process will be the Conservative Party just as they were 35 years ago.

[ChrisDR68]

Interesting set of opinion poll results on Jeremy Corbyn's policies from pollster YouGov. Taken from John Rentoul's article in the Independent today:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/daily-catch-up-the-surprising-popularity-and-unpopularity-of-jeremy-corbyns-policies-a6696291.html

Scrapping tuition fees is surprisingly unpopular although virtually all Corbyn's policies regarding the UK's national security are predictably unpopular with the public.

[ChrisDR68]

Striking cover to the latest edition of the New Statesman:



Of the 4 Labour leaders depicted here who is the odd one out?

[ChrisDR68]

Blair; the other three were/are all left-wing to varying extents.

But I know what you're (probably) thinking of. Well, I predict that Corbyn will never lose a general election...he'll either be dumped before the next one or win it (the former being more likely, I admit).

Haha

Corbyn is the odd one out.

The other three are the only Labour leaders to have won a majority in the House of Commons.

Was your suspicion correct?

[ChrisDR68]

Striking cover to the latest edition of the New Statesman:


Of the 4 Labour leaders depicted here who is the odd one out?

People outside of America actually know about Mt. Rushmore? I thought that was just a domestic thing mostly.

Nah, it's common knowledge. Most people probably don't know the name, but they've seen/heard about "that mountain with the Presidents' faces on it" somewhere.

Especially (for me at least) if you've seen the movie North By Northwest with Cary Grant. Hitchcock made fine use of the monument is the film's closing scenes.

[ChrisDR68]

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This is an interesting point - the main reason why the UK has survived so far is that English national identity wasn't that strong. British national identity was much stronger in the past - holding the country together - and it's fading away.

If English nationalism is on the rise it's probably in part a reaction against the perceived rise in Scottish nationalism north of the border. England itself (in my view anyway) doesn't feel like an especially homogeneous place with the south feeling very different to the north both politically and culturally with the midlands sitting rather uncomfortably inbetween the two.

[ChrisDR68]

I wonder if, hypothetically, Corbyn was younger and more charismatic if he would be doing any better.

His age is of secondary importance compared to most of his key beliefs which simply don't chime with the majority of British voters.

[ChrisDR68]

Just discovered this treasure trove of opinion poll data from Mark Pack on this website from 1943 to the present day:

http://www.markpack.org.uk/opinion-polls/

Download the spreadsheet and you can see the effect major events have on the polls (for example the nose dive Labour suffers during the IMF crisis in October 1976 and also during the winter of discontent in January 1979).

I've worked out the average ratings for the 3 big parties of the general election I'm most interested in (1979) as this was the first election I was ever aware of (being 10 years old at the time) and with hindsight it was also a pivotal election in the history of post war Britain:

36 opinion polls - March-May 1979 (not including exit polls)

Labour 38.5%
Conservatives 49.1%
Liberals 9.4%

Take off 1% from each parties score to take into account Northern Ireland (which most opinion polls don't include) and Labour ends up 0.6% too high, the Conservatives 4.2% too high and the Liberals 5.4% too low over this 3 month period compared to the final result.

A general trend from Conservative to Liberal while Labour remains steady seems to be the obvious conclusion overall for this general election

[ChrisDR68]

Is it cherry pick o clock already?

As can be seen here, most polls other than the ComRes Sunday polls have shown a Con lead over Lab of around 6 or 7 points, fairly similar to the election result.

That's still not good. Problem is for all the media hostility, Labour keeps giving them material.

If Corbyn's Labour Party is crushed in 2020 (as I expect it will be) is media hostility going to be the main excuse used for it?

[ChrisDR68]

Guardian article about the public's opinion on Jeremy Corbyn:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/datablog/2015/nov/30/labour-losing-touch-public-opinion-research-suggests

It's conclusions are fairly obvious as a result of the Labour membership's decision to elect someone of Corbyn's ilk but it's interesting none the less.

Here's a snippet:

In summary, the poll shows the depth and breadth of opposition to Corbyn as Labour leader and the policies and issues he represents. The party is winning tenuous support from former Lib Dems and Greens because of Corbyn, while simultaneously losing support from voters who best reflect public opinion. In so doing it is choosing to represent a dwindling section of the electorate that not only does not reflect the breadth of public opinion but is blissfully unconcerned by it.

It also includes possibly the most confusing flow chart I've ever seen :

[ChrisDR68]

As for Abbott, she's barely capable of carrying out her current role. It would be nice if the excessive promotion of proven incompetents could be kept to a minimum, and I would point out that it would even be to the benefit of the leadership to take that line.

Can you expand on why you consider Abbott an incompetent?

[ChrisDR68]

The inquiry into the polling cock-up was, unsurprisingly, a complete waste of time. Also worth noting that the polls were more wrong in 1992 and yet I'm pretty sure there wasn't such a massive inquiry then.

Labour had a crap leader in 1992 and a crap leader in 2015. Everything else stems from that really.

I think the polls got both elections wrong because the electorate wanted to get rid of the Tories both times but couldn't stomach putting Kinnock and Miliband in so there was a lot of last minute reluctant voting for the Conservatives.

[ChrisDR68]

Blair and Wilson, meanwhile, oversaw significant membership declines and their overall tenures arguably made the party electorally unpopular for a generation, even if they were both popular to begin with. If not for their electoral successes (which of course are considerable) they'd be viewed as disasters on the scale of IDS and Foot.

But that surely is the key as to how to judge a party leader.

Labour has inordinate trouble getting itself elected due to the enormous baggage the party saddles itself with (a reputation for tax and spend, of not being trustworthy with managing the economy, unpopular un-prime ministerial leaders, unilateral nuclear disarmament during the 80's and very likely to be adopted again under Corbyn in the near future, thuggish union leaders (to wit Len McCluskey) having undue influence over the party and regular, bitter civil wars to name but a few.

Only Attlee, Wilson and Blair have ever won an overall majority in Labour's history so their legacy is even greater than what you state above. Outside of those three leaders it's been a train wreck at general election time for the Labour Party.

[ChrisDR68]

Remembering that outside of the headline opinion poll numbers before the last general election Ed Miliband's approval ratings were awful as well as the public's view on Labour's economic competence (two measures which gave a big clue as to what the end result would turn out to be).

Jeremy Corbyn's approval ratings continue to be pretty bad:   

New YouGov research conducted prior to Corbyn's Trident claims reveals his net approval rating has fallen a further seven points to -39 since December 18, now only two points above his all-time low of -41 on December 1. David Cameron's meanwhile is at -6; below his post-election average of +3 but above his May 2010 – May 2015 average of -9.

Among the general public there is a strong tendency to believe Jeremy Corbyn has changed the Labour party for the worst since his election. 45% say he has had a negative effect on Labour compared to 21% who say he has changed it for the better. On September 28 2011, a few days after Ed Miliband became leader, few said he had changed Labour for the worst (11%) and most people (56%) said he had made no difference.

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/01/19/corbyn-rating-fall/

By and large the party opinion polls haven't moved a great deal either way since the last election so the theory that the UK public would embrace a more left wing Labour Party seems thus far to be incorrect (which would be confirmation of what happened during the 1980's for those like me that lived through that decade and remember it well).

If Corbyn gets his way and has Labour adopt a unilateral nuclear defence policy the Tory narrative of back to the future is also likely to work well.

[ChrisDR68]

Although the main unknown as far as 2020 is concerned is we don't know whp the Tory leader will be. Heck, their memberbase could do us in reverse and elect Dr Liam Fox on a policy of putting benefits claimants and asylum seekers in the stocks.

From what I've read about public attitudes those policies would be immensely popular.   

[ChrisDR68]

tbh I'm not convinced that the public at large really care about unilateral nuclear disarmament in this day and age. It's just another issue that the political factions of Labour pointlessly bicker about

Yes, its an issue that matters greatly in internal Labour politics because it has always mattered in internal Labour politics (i.e. we take the stance we do, comrades, because THOSE BASTARDS take the opposite stance) rather than for any other reason. Foreign/defence policy matters matter a great deal less to the electorate than they did in the 1980s, when they mattered a lot less than politicians tended to assume. O/c there's no way a Corbyn-lead Labour could hold Barrow, but that's just one seat.

Jeremy Corbyn's pacifism is hardly likely to gain the Labour Party net votes (remembering that the party starts off under his leadership 2 million votes behind the Conservatives) or his long standing love affair for terrorist organisations. It's all very well and nice to have principles but when those principles fly in the face of public opinion (who on the whole are not pacifists and rightly view terrorists as murderers) you're asking for trouble.

[ChrisDR68]

"If you look at every election since the '70s, what you see is that the party that has the leader with the best ratings is the party that wins. There's no exception to that," she added.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35392319

[ChrisDR68]

Even if it were true "elections since the 70's" would be such a small reference pool then it's effectively useless as an observation (let alone a hard rule).

No-one said it was a rule but since the 1979 general election there have been 8 general elections so it's not that small a reference pool.

[ChrisDR68]

Terry Wogan has died.

Not exactly political news but sad none the less.

January 2016 was an awful month for celebrity deaths:

David Bowie, Glenn Frey of the Eagles, Alan Rickman, Frank Finlay, Ed Stewart and Robert Stigwood all passing away.

I'm glad we're finally in February.

[ChrisDR68]

On This Week last Thursday there was a telling exchange between Andrew Neil and union leader Mark Serwotka.

Here's an excerpt (from about 14 mins 45 secs in):

Neil "If Jeremy Corbyn goes to the country in 2020 on a proper socialist manifesto of the type you approve of and gets thumped like in 1983 would you accept that there is not an appetite for that kind of socialism in Britain?"

Serwotka "What I will say is at that particular point the electorate will have made a particular choice and I'm a great believer that you continue to campaign for what you believe in and hope to convince people and if at first you don't succeed then you keep trying until you do succeed".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3XFU1zsyDg

What Serwotka fails to understand is that the sort of platform he and his leader believes in will only mean an extended period of Conservative government just as we had between 1979 and 1997.

Their views are poisonous to the electorate and being stubborn about it won't change that.

[ChrisDR68]

Wouldn't, say, a Tory manifesto in 1966 advocating monetarism have been poisonous to the electorate?

Ah but the clever thing about the Conservative Party is that they shape their appeal to what they believe the mood currently is of the British people at any given time.

That's why they allowed all those nationalised industries to stay nationalised during their 1951-64 period in power even when they almost certainly didn't agree with them being nationalised.

The only time that wasn't true was during the monetarist experiment by the Thatcher government between 1979-83 (although not surprisingly they didn't spell out their economic policy during the 1979 general election campaign). On that occasion they were bailed out by the ludicrous decision of Labour MP's to elect Michael Foot as leader instead of Denis Healey which ensured their undeserved victory in 1983.

[ChrisDR68]

British people are outraged that their vote has consequences...

Of course, it's the fault of those evil Dutchies of Unilever, so all the more reason for leaving the fascist EU.

Not fascist.

Just wrong headed and inflexible.

[ChrisDR68]

Professor Anthony King, political and election commentator, has died at 82. He was a regular on BBC election night coverage for years and wrote a "Britain at the Polls" series, among other things.

He appeared on all the BBC general election night programmes from 1983 to 2005.

His most famous quote (after being asked about the BBC exit poll in 1997 predicting a Labour majority of close on 200 seats) come at 6 mins and 30 secs into this clip:

"Landslide is much too weak a word.

I offer you the following metaphor - it's an asteriod hitting the planet and destroying practically all life as we know it"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouz0DVOE1go



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-38596584

Perceptive political analyst and quite an excitable character on election night.

[ChrisDR68]

The EU withdrawal bill is short and to the point:

A

BILL

TO

Confer power on the Prime Minister to notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty
on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU.

Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—

1 Power to notify withdrawal from the EU

(1) The Prime Minister may notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU.

(2) This section has effect despite any provision made by or under the European Communities Act 1972 or any other enactment.

2 Short title

This Act may be cited as the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2016-2017/0132/cbill_2016-20170132_en_2.htm#l1g1