UK General Discussion: 2017 and onwards, Mayhem

[Filuwaúrdjan]

All constituencies in Wales (whether Labour held or not) are smaller than average. This is a boost of a handful of seats at most. In England and Scotland (hey we can type that again) there's no particular correlation between the size of constituency and who typically wins it. Actually some of the largest constituencies in the country - typically inner urban areas with young populations or university towns - are Labour.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Grenfell fire is increasingly looking like housing and London's own Aberfan. Completely horrific. If some of the things that have been suggested - and by responsible people please note - are true then there's a decent chance of criminal prosecutions.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Seven more towers have been shown as having structures similar to Grenfell Tower.

I think you'll find that rather more than seven tower blocks in London are the productions of 1960s/70s system building...

The story is that X number of tower blocks have recently been fitted with similar exterior cladding to Grenfell Tower; not the same thing as structure...

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How the Hell would it be a problem for Khan?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

He's Mayor of London, rightly or wrongly voters might blame him too.

Housing is a matter for the borough councils, not the Mayor. This isn't New York. Even were that not the case he's only been in office a year.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Wilson was from the Left himself originally - one issue he always had with sections of the PLP was that he had always been viewed by them as a factionalist schemer - and so were all of his real allies in Cabinet (Crossman, Castle, Greenwood, Thomas, etc) which complicates matters. But the Left of the 70s was quite different from the Left of the 50s - there had been a massive radicalisation in response to Heath's initially quite right-wing domestic agenda - and he didn't have firm links to them. But it was a lot easier for him than any alternative Leader to cheerfully accept the stridently Left programme adopted in opposition as the Manifesto and to promote it with apparent enthusiasm. Before, naturally, junking much of it in government with the difficult parliamentary position acting as a pretext.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But its an error to conflate 'the Labour Left' with 'the political Left in general' and arguments like this start heading into No True Socialist territory pretty much immediately. Labour fought the 1997 election on a radical programme and implemented almost all of it in power; that it was not as radical as the programmes previous Labour governments had come to power on (which is true) does not mean it was not radical. E.g. although no attempt was made to renationalise the privatised utilities (on cost grounds mostly) a windfall tax on profits made during the privatisation process was imposed and was used to fund public services. The 1997 landslide was a backlash against the policies of the Thatcher/Major years more than it was anything else; really the whole point of New Labour was to make that happening as likely as possible by making Labour as fundamentally unthreatening as possible.

I think this all gets a bit confusing in part because the New Labour government was in power for a long time and was thoroughly captured by Whitehall managerialist mentalities (before then it was strongly influenced by Outside Experts, which was hilariously Wilsonian in retrospect), especially from the start of the second term onwards. Of course it serves the political agendas of both the harder Left and the soggiest parts of the political Centre to remember things differently. But e.g it is telling that Mr Tony - who has moved quite firmly rightwards in his politics in recent years - now disapproves of much of what his government did in its first term...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What people forget is that, taken together, Labour voters are the section of the electorate least interested in Brexit.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Party leaders always dream of having a really memorable Conference Speech - the absolute Dream remains Gaitskell declaring that he would fight and fight and fight again to save the Party he loved etc. - but it rarely happens. They're usually fundamentally unmemorable occasions. One feels that this will prove an exception, but not in a good way...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Otherwise a more moderate one might be able to win back constituencies like Copeland, Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, Stoke on Trent South, Walsall North, Nuneaton, Mansfield, Derbyshire North East...

Most of these constituencies have very little in common.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I mean I can't see a single Labour MP from the right of the party who would be able to win seats like Copeland.

Are there many constituencies in which the main employer is a nuclear reprocessing station? O/c the seat would have been held absent the by-election and was nearly taken back anyway...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Nonetheless that is the problem I was mentioning with Corbyn and seems to be a problem with progressive parties in many countries.  Do well in the urban cores but struggle in the hinterlands

This was very much the narrative heavily promoted in the media and by most professional Political Scientists before the General Election. But this is literally not what happened: Labour saw substantial increases in support in most postindustrial constituencies (in most cases following on from similar increases in support in 2015, which is why the increases were smaller than average if still substantial; note that in South Wales - where results were poor in 2015 - there were some of the largest increases in support nationally that were not linked with the general youth surge etc. In the Britain of 2017 can you get more hinterland than Merthyr Tydfil?), with the exception of a very particular part of the East Midlands where there were local factors - immigration being the main one - at play. And even there it was a case of small increases rather than a loss of support.

It's also worth noting that one of the most striking features of recent British elections had been the collapse of the Labour Party's old rural working class vote; even the demise of the Liberal Democrats (where many of those votes had headed) in 2015 did not reverse this. 2017 saw a dramatic turnaround on this front, with much of that horrendous electoral damage suddenly healed (at least for the moment). In practical terms - given FPTP and the fact that most of these seats wouldn't even be close in a national Labour landslide! - the main impact of this is just to boost Labour's national vote share, but I mention it here because few facts about the last General Election contradict #thenarrative more than that one.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

and bits of the North East

Note that the North East saw a much larger than average swing to Labour in 2015. I.e. it has no place in this #narrative.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I know that Labour's candidate was fiercely pro-Sellafield (if that was the name of it?), as she was married to an employer and seemed to spend a lot of energy talking about it. But Ofc that was drowned out by unpopularity of Corbyn back then.

Sellafield is why it was lost (and badly) - the usual by-election gain afterglow why it wasn't taken back. But it's a very strange constituency; one of the highest average incomes outside the South East. Also important to remember that on present boundaries it would have been lost in 1983 and 1987 even with Jack Cunningham's substantial personal following.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Carl Sargeant, AM for Alyn & Deeside since 2003 and a longserving minister in various capacities until a few days ago, has committed suicide. He was the subject of a number of accusations in the ongoing sexual harassment story (details not yet know I believe) and as a result had been sacked as a minister and had his Party membership suspended. He was 49.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Apparently Patel has been conducting her own private foreign policy in other countries as well?!? All of this is such a howlingly clear breach of the ministerial code: how could anyone be that stupid?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

With the additional detail that Iran is extremely paranoid about British influence in a way that very few countries are these days. Which means the risk of British citizens in such situations there being mistreated is...

Why hasn't he resigned. Like on honour grounds? Jesus.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Also, neither Watson nor Healey are exactly Progress types - so touting them as moderates already says something about where the party has moved

I think we've reached the point where we can maybe consider deleting 'Old'/'Traditional' in front of Right, because for the most part that's all that's left. The original Labour Right of dear old Arthur Henderson.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Your beloved Theresa May appointed Alan Duncan - an odious antisemite of the old school right-wing Arabist variety - to a ministerial post at the Foreign Office, which he continues to hold. Alas, the JC doesn't kick up a fuss about this (though actually it should) because its editor is almost as much of a hack for the Tories here as he is for Likud in an Israeli context. It's unfortunate.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yes, it wasn't an institutionally anti-semitic party until a few years ago. No argument there. Now it is.

Most parties have an an anti-semite or five lurking in their ranks, and they're not always expelled, unfortunately. Only one party has dozens that always get reinstated and even promoted, no matter how vile they may be.

(The libdems have a signficant problem too, but it's mostly the old guard there, not the recruits.)

You're just demonstrating that you don't understand how British political parties function. The Labour Party presently has a membership of about 570,000. Most of these people are not politicians, most of these people are not even political activists. The Party is organised locally - at Constituency and Branch levels - but disciplinary proceedings are handled centrally. The Party is not particularly flush with cash and the total number of employees is rather tiny compared to the total number of members; I believe the Compliance Unit (which investigates all claims of abusive behavior) has a staff of about three. The Labour Party - as befits a political outgrowth of trade unionism - has a rather legalistic mindset and disciplinary proceedings are byzantine with multiple avenues to appeal (in fact appeals can be taken all the way up to the National Executive Committee itself). The process tends to take a long time, and factional considerations mean that things can get messy and paranoid.* But people who act badly and post racist or abusive stuff online are generally kicked out; Labour is actually better at doing this than other parties. The problem is that the process is as described which is not ideal from a PR perspective in an internet age. Generally speaking if the offense is not particularly serious the offending individual will eventually be readmitted if they've given some indication of having Changed Their Ways (this is the case with all parties, not just Labour, and over all issues).

Selections for candidates for local elections are handled locally. Some local parties are disasters; factionalist messes of one hue or another, or hotbeds of incestuousness. In such circumstances blind eyes are often turned to all kinds of things (this applies to all parties). Additionally local parties are usually welcome when anyone wants to run for anything and vetting is not exactly strenuous (and given the limited financial resources available strenuous vetting is not possible most of the time anyway). There is an additional issue - again not just a Labour Party one - in that sometimes additional blind eyes are turned to candidates from minority communities, though this isn't even always intentional (if you aren't part of the community in question you won't know where to search for stuff to vet often anyway). There are, for instance, as I type multiple Labour councillors who are outspoken supporters of the BJP.

Labour has an issue with antisemitism because British society does in general - this is a country in which the leading satirical paper runs a regular cartoon strip about the publishing industry called 'Snipcock & Tweed' and no one bats an eyelid - but I do think it's perfectly acceptable to hold Labour to a higher standard than average. One unique issue it does have - and this is where attitudes do need to change - is that there's a widespread sentiment that Good Comrades Cannot Be Racists and therefore always an urge from some to find excuses for others, particularly if they're longstanding members. The present Party Leader in particular often displayed that attitude in the past, which is another problem in itself, needless to say. Another unique issue it has is that media outlets hostile to Labour regularly comb through social media to try to find instances of bad behavior; they actually have more resources to do this than the aforementioned Compliance Unit.

Of course an odd issue with antisemitism in Labour is that the general tone is different to wider society, even if the problem is an outgrowth of it. A lot of the most common forms of antisemitism aren't really found in the Labour membership. The main forms, though, are:

1. Basically well intentioned people who are so severely White that they have allowed sympathy for the Palestinian cause to degenerate into something rather ugly. In most cases they don't even realise (because 'severely White') and react badly when called out (after all they could not be racists, the are anti-racist you know). This is largely a consequence of ignorance and a bad habit to treat conflicts as football matches in which one picks a team and roots for it - the tendency in student Labour Societies for views on the Middle East to be used as a proxy for factional alignment is a major contributing factor - and is presumably the easiest to deal with, at least so long as the journey down the rabbit hole hasn't been too far.

2. Certain Muslim members who take a partisan stance over the Middle East for a different set of reasons and who lack the inherited guilt over European antisemitism that usually acts as a block on really nasty overt sh!t. This is actually an issue wrt the Muslim members of all parties; in Bradford, for instance, quite a few Conservative members have been caught sounding off alarmingly in this direction over the years. Dealing with this is presumably somewhat beyond the Labour Party's remit.

3. Certain Far Left morons with no real loyalty or interest in the Labour Party as an institution but who joined to vote for Corbyn. Disproportionately prone to abusive behavior online, typically very into what Bebel correctly termed the 'Socialism of Fools' variety of antisemitism, generally vile. Generally not Party activists, generally not even particularly politically active (except on twitter). I don't think much can be done here other than to expel them whenever they out themselves. It's also rather obviously absurd to blame the Party as an institution for these people.

_{*I tend to think that the current processes are not suitable for the age of the internet and social media, in which the ordinary citizen has a much more visible public profile and in which claims can be checked and confirmed/rejected with vastly greater speed.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Up until now everything has been posture and performance though... we shall see, I guess.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ahahaha. A heartwarming story that one.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

An odd feature of the 2017 locals was that the tone of commentary was set by the first few results in - which were indeed appalling for Labour - and not by what then followed, which was a much more complex picture. An telling feature of them was the unusual attention given to Wales before the results came in and pretty much zero attention given to Wales the following day. An amusing detail was Laura von Kuenssberg briefing that Labour was likely to lose its majority in Durham - in the event the majority was quite comfortable - after having obviously had a very quick check at the results website and not noticed that pretty much all the divisions left to declare were coalfield ones.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Edward Pearce has died (78). An unusually perceptive political journalist of a type that no longer really exists now - as in he was an intelligent man with a wide cultural hinterland who could write coherent sentences - and an occasional Labour parliamentary candidate (1966 and 1974). Unfortunately also prone to occasional bouts of extremely tedious contrarianism, but, as I often say, consistency is overrated. He was also a very fine obituarist.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's definitely a notable age-issue in voting preferences at the moment, but a degree of caution needs to be used when combining with the ABCDE figures - they're bad enough in themselves (outdated and often perverse), but there are additional problems in this context: i.e. most pensioners are categorised as DE because polling firms are lazy.