UK General Discussion: 2017 and onwards, Mayhem

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Remember all those times people hyped Adam Afriyie for leader during Cameron's time in office?

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The source appears to be an exploding fridge; quite how that fire got through the wall and onto the external cladding remains to be determined.

The trigger to the Aberfan disaster was several days of heavy rain. Rain, of course, happens in Wales. Similarly, minor fires caused by electrical appliances will happen in residential areas. Normally, in a tower block at least, they are barely a problem (one of the more annoying aspects to the coverage of this has been ignorant people acting as if all tower blocks are death traps in case of fire; actually, no. The opposite is usually the case as the people who designed them - as misguided as they were in certain respects - were not monsters and did consider the issue of fires very carefully). At Aberfan the slag heap collapsed, hurtled down the mountain and killed 144 people; all within a few minutes. At Grenfell Tower the exterior of the building caught fire and it went up like a torch, killing (it now seems quite likely) a broadly comparable number of people, again all within a shockingly short space of time. Neither thing should ever have happened; both did because particular decisions were taken that should not have been (we don't know exactly what they were at Grenfell Tower yet, but we will). Just left hoping that in this instance the legal system is now properly equipped (and prepared) to relieved some form of justice.

Yes, that's the crucial thing about disasters: even if it's very easy to trace back some key spark point and blame the fallguy, they normally have a large number of other causes. It's like the Herald of The Free Enterprise, the ship which capsized because the bosun fell asleep and forgot to attend shift so they had their bow door open. But there was a while bunch of other problems that compounded the disaster - the ballast tanks were overly filled to allow vehicles on prior and they didn't bother emptying them (because ferries have done the cross channel run with open or broken doors), the crew were rushed and poorly trained     with focus pushed mostly on saving time, the captain and his team had no indicators or cameras on the vehicle deck to indicate they had an open door etc.

(I have a morbid fascination with maritime disaster)

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I just realized the UK hasn't had a left wing government in nearly 40 years.
That is all.

Wow, thanks for this blisteringly hot take, random american.

LOL

No but really, when I first realized this I was shocked.

Weak hot take. If you wanted to go further you should have claimed Wilson's and Callaghan's governments were not left either, and a true hot take master would suggest the UK, in fact, has never had a left wing government.

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I just realized the UK hasn't had a left wing government in nearly 40 years.
That is all.

Imagine a long-term splinter from the Democrats of Hillary allies when Sanders becomes their presidential nominee and how that'd enormously help the Republicans within the voting system.

Let's keep American garbage analysis out please. This is a thread for British rubbish analysis.

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I just realized the UK hasn't had a left wing government in nearly 40 years.
That is all.

Wow, thanks for this blisteringly hot take, random american.

LOL

No but really, when I first realized this I was shocked.

Weak hot take. If you wanted to go further you should have claimed Wilson's and Callaghan's governments were not left either, and a true hot take master would suggest the UK, in fact, has never had a left wing government.

Not even Attlee's government was left wing! He was very, very dedicated to the monarchy!

If I was trolling from the left (which I often do, if people are being particularly ahistorical in their "left wing Old Labour/Right wing NuLabour" screeds) it is very easy to suggest Attlee would today be on the centre-right of the party. He and his allies came to power in the party by defeating Lansbury and his pacifist idealogy, formed a national government with hated Imperialist/arch conservative former Chancellor Churchill, instituted a draft and various war measures that suppressed various freedoms, led a government characterized by austerity and rationing, rejected Bevan's ideas of a broad left coalition, suppressed strikes, developed the atomic bomb, joined the Korean war and the start of the cold war machinations and still had a very suspicious role in the declining Empire.

This is not to say I don't like him - he is almost certainly the best PMs we have ever had and his government one of the most important, and in terms of personality an amazing guy, but True Leftists who want to be honest to the historical record should really be honest with themelves.

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I just realized the UK hasn't had a left wing government in nearly 40 years.
That is all.

Wow, thanks for this blisteringly hot take, random american.

LOL

No but really, when I first realized this I was shocked.

Weak hot take. If you wanted to go further you should have claimed Wilson's and Callaghan's governments were not left either, and a true hot take master would suggest the UK, in fact, has never had a left wing government.

Not even Attlee's government was left wing! He was very, very dedicated to the monarchy!

If I was trolling from the left (which I often do, if people are being particularly ahistorical in their "left wing Old Labour/Right wing NuLabour" screeds) it is very easy to suggest Attlee would today be on the centre-right of the party. He and his allies came to power in the party by defeating Lansbury and his pacifist idealogy, formed a national government with hated Imperialist/arch conservative former Chancellor Churchill, instituted a draft and various war measures that suppressed various freedoms, led a government characterized by austerity and rationing, rejected Bevan's ideas of a broad left coalition, suppressed strikes, developed the atomic bomb, joined the Korean war and the start of the cold war machinations and still had a very suspicious role in the declining Empire.

This is not to say I don't like him - he is almost certainly the best PMs we have ever had and his government one of the most important, and in terms of personality an amazing guy, but True Leftists who want to be honest to the historical record should really be honest with themelves.

New Labour weren't right wing (and I never said they were), but they weren't left wing either, they were Centrists, which is why I didn't count them as left wing.

Blair/Brown/Mandelson were right-wing in the context of Labour itself. Labour's leadership often comes from the right of the party, and even most Left Labour leaders (or right/centre leaders that gained power through an alliance with the Left) leaders have had rightist elements to their cabinets and administrations. Regardless of your personal feelings towards Blair and Corbyn, the latter is far more of an abhorration in the party's history.

The point is, that if you dismiss NuLab for being "centrists", there is no reason to call every Labour government (insert any social democratic party here) a bunch of centrists, especially given that they were responding to unique contexts (for example, the postwar command economy was a lot different to Britain in the 60's or late 90's).

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Wales will lower its voting age for local elections to 16 and allow councils to move to STV if they want (I presume very few will).

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HAve we talked about George Osborne going full on Hannibal Lector?

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The Tories threw the kitchen sink at Bolsover, but it was a tactical error in retrospect, more motivated by a desire to oust Skinner than serious reasons.

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very little chance, unless O'Mara is accused of anything worse than being an edgy gobsh**te (i.e. if he turns out to be a sex pest or the like). More likely he'll be given the Naz Shah treatment.

It's been true for quite some time that the Midlands respond very well to "culture war" based campaigns, so it's no surprise they swung Toryways. Whether it is indicative of a broader trend is another matter.

As for Pidcock, well, I suppose it would be difficult for outsiders to get, but the sort of tribal anti-Toryism plays well in those sort of areas, even amongst more moderate members of the PLP.

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Btw the list has been leaked. It would probably breach the Forum Terms because it is libel, but it is fairly easy to find if you wish.

Has a few ... surprising names, especially the two female cabinet ministers  having affairs with the same MP (apparently) and a few reported gays that I weren't aware of (I guess the old stereotype still holds) but I don't read that much Westminster gossip.

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Well, May's appointment of Williamson has gone down well...

Quote an anonymous Tory MP: he is a "self-serving c**nt". It strikes me as the sort of overly ambitious self-promotion that could potentially kill a career.

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Yeah if there's one thing you should know about Sadiq Khan is that he is beloved amongst elderly people in the 'hinterlands'.

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Am I the only one who doesn't really care that Green had porn on his computer? Especially when compared to the very serious allegations with actual victims, it seems a bit of a hit job.

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Both Priti Patel and Boris Johnson are in serious trouble atm. The former for trying to distribute aid money to the Israeli military to fund operations in the Golan Heights after meeting in secret with Israeli figures; the latter for contradicting the defence team of a British citizen imprisoned in Iran and potentially jeopardising her freedom. It's almost as if having a Foreign Secretary who views his job as a sort of midlife gap year is a bad idea or something.

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ideology doesn't matter miles. Only political anoraks care whether somebody is left or right or centre.

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true, but that's more cause of Chuka in particular. I could certainly imagine a "moderate" leader winning a majority, just as much a a Corbynite; but that moderate wouldn't be Chuka Ummuna or Tristram Hunt, RIP, or whatever.

ideology doesn't matter miles. Only political anoraks care whether somebody is left or right or centre.

True, but policies do and if the change is quite radical from the status quo usually things have to be really bad before people will go for that.  I think the real question is with all the Tory mess up how come Labour cannot pull more than a few points ahead.  That suggests there is something with them that a sizeable contingent is not comfortable with.

personally I feel it's Corbyn's personality, rather than his policies. I'll admit he surprised me, but I still feel there's something a bit off about him that makes people feel he can't be PM.

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I think we shouldn't get mixed up between people who are moderate in temperament and those who are moderate in ideology.  I guess too many moderates are caught up in a mould that is deeply old hat: the slick confident Blairite; or else they swallow their own hype as a technocratic drone. This doesn't have to be true. Somebody like Paul Keating, for instance was on the right of his party and yet never strayed into such lame stereotypes. I think a Keating or a Denis Healey could do well in such an environment, not that it really matters. Maybe in a hilarious other timeline a bruiser like Tom Watson is currently leader, and Al is very happy.

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The SV used in Mayoral elections is literally the worst election system ever devised, short of bloc votes in multi member constituencies.

Personally I feel AV would help, certainly in Northern Ireland. Would definitely screw over the SNP though.

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took me an embarrassing amount of time trying to work out what minor socialists were being represented by "SPK"

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Brokenshire has resigned on health grounds. Can't imagine man want to take up his brief (Northern Ireland) in a hurry.

McLaughlin fired as Tory chair (understandably given his 2017 campaign) and Liddington moves from Justice to De Facto Deputy PM (replacing Damain "wanker" Green).

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UKIP are apparently going to have to pay for the settlements in the Jane Collins MEP libel case, which may cause the party to declare bankruptcy. (They have £300,000 in their coffers and they could be obliged to pay up to double that)

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It's clear (and always has been) to me that Corbyn is not an ideal leader for a large number of reasons, and the smug "PWNED BLAIRITES!" rhetoric from his side since the election is beyond annoying and complacent (if understandable); but it's even more clear that the strategy of the Right to his rise has been vapid, moronic and really betrays the long term collapse in the post-Blair Right's mode of thinking.

Basically both assumptions of the two sides - either that there is a huge mine of TRUE LEFT untapped voters who are longing for pure socialism (and with it the endless wankery about frivolous issues like Trident and Palestine) or the median voter theorem (that all swing voters are Rational Centrists TM or, even more laughable, that they are "fiscal conservatives but social liberals") - are both bunkum. Most voters don't give two hoots about political theory or whatever factional guff the Labour Party finds itself in; nor do they care about Twitter drama: they care about "issues" and optics. And although the public at large seeem to find Corbyn weird, unstatesmanlike and obsessed with fringe matters the perception of his internal opponents is that they are superficial and career focused, something which would not be helped by your diagnosis of "INSERT YOUNG CHARISMATIC INDIVIDUAL HERE". I like Sadiq, but the idea that he is the one to save the key seats in the Midlands is beyond foolish.

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Conservatives won very well in 2017 locals a month before the election, then lost seats in the generals, falling back to only 55 more than Corbyn's Labour versus a lead of almost 100 against Miliband.

Thanks for this breaking news

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Could McDonnell run? He would undoubtedly become a Corbyn stand in, although I guess if Corbs wants to pass the baton to a younger generation he might pass.

Doubt Khan would run, he would risk alienating the Left and therefore his re-election; plus I've never really got the vibe he wants it.