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UK Politics: Who Pays the Andyman?


Tywin Manderly

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re: Corbyn. I'm sorry, but I'm not open to excuses about the press giving him a hard time. The job of a Labour leader, and particularly his team, is partly to find ways around that: Corbyn knows that, his team knows that, and they all knew it from day one. They know very well how past leaders were treated. But they seem to think it's beneath them in some way to tackle that bit of the job, that the purity and obvious correctness of their message is enough. Having the right beliefs is one thing. Having the right policies is another. But being able to persuade people is a huge part of being a politician, and being able to persuade people in the face of a hostile press is the lot of any progressive politician. If he can't do it, he's failing at his job. That may be harsh but that's politics for you.

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6 minutes ago, mormont said:

re: Corbyn. I'm sorry, but I'm not open to excuses about the press giving him a hard time. The job of a Labour leader, and particularly his team, is partly to find ways around that: Corbyn knows that, his team knows that, and they all knew it from day one. They know very well how past leaders were treated. But they seem to think it's beneath them in some way to tackle that bit of the job, that the purity and obvious correctness of their message is enough. Having the right beliefs is one thing. Having the right policies is another. But being able to persuade people is a huge part of being a politician, and being able to persuade people in the face of a hostile press is the lot of any progressive politician. If he can't do it, he's failing at his job. That may be harsh but that's politics for you.

What he said. 

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The right is so practiced at selling poison to the people and convincing them it's a health supplement that it is just better at marketing themselves than the left. If you can convince the workers that unions are bad you can convince the masses of anything. 

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2 hours ago, mormont said:

re: Corbyn. I'm sorry, but I'm not open to excuses about the press giving him a hard time. The job of a Labour leader, and particularly his team, is partly to find ways around that: Corbyn knows that, his team knows that, and they all knew it from day one. They know very well how past leaders were treated. But they seem to think it's beneath them in some way to tackle that bit of the job, that the purity and obvious correctness of their message is enough. Having the right beliefs is one thing. Having the right policies is another. But being able to persuade people is a huge part of being a politician, and being able to persuade people in the face of a hostile press is the lot of any progressive politician. If he can't do it, he's failing at his job. That may be harsh but that's politics for you.

This seems to ignore the principle problem of the modern British media, which is overwhelmingly right-wing. The only way Blair was able to win them over was to join them: he got Murdoch on-side, watered the actual left-wing elements out of his policies to the point of evaporation and courted the right-wing media and voters by essentially ensuring that New Labour's policies were nothing offensive to them.

Corbyn's agenda is far more legitimately left-wing and the fact of the matter is that the right-wing press will not accept that for any reason whatsoever, hence the hysterical scaremongering and fearmongering, and why things Corbyn may have said or not said or not done thirty years ago are seized out and exploited whilst things that Johnson has said and done this week are completely ignored.

The only way for Corbyn to get the press on side would be to pretty much surrender his principles and policies and turn into Blair 2.0, which he is not going to do and is not healthy for our democracy.

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The interim UKIP leader makes a Freudian slip when asked about Tommy Robinson, when stating that UKIP is “different from other racist parties”

https://mobile.twitter.com/chrisrickett/status/1201478949240528896

They don’t have a black candidate but she thinks they might have an Indian one. /facepalm

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41 minutes ago, Werthead said:

This seems to ignore the principle problem of the modern British media, which is overwhelmingly right-wing.

Not sure where you get that idea, because I explicitly recognised that problem.

My point is, Corbyn and every Labour leader before him knows that. They knew it when they took the job. Labour leaders are perforce required to have a plan to deal with it and get their message across despite it: and complaining about it is not a plan.

You can tell me that nothing Corbyn could do can possibly work, if you like, but that just suggests that indeed, he should quit. Because you're really saying that nothing will be achieved by him staying.

FWIW I do believe he could find a way. Others have. Corbyn himself did OK last time out. But, whisper this: maybe the problem isn't entirely the hostile media. Maybe the problem is that Corbyn is a proud, prickly man who cannot get his own party, let alone the media, onside: and yeah, that is also part of his job and again he has signally failed to do it. And again, blaming the rest of the party might have some grounds, but ultimately won't do. Part of being a leader is that you don't get to blame everyone else for not making your job easy. It's the leader's job to overcome problems. Corbyn is bad at that.

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Really, this election should be a gimme for Labour. The fact that it isn't has to be mostly Labour's fault, and only partly the media landscape mostly working against them.

There has also never been a better time in history to speak directly to the people on a fairly modest budget. So if the left can't overcome the establishment media bias now without having to compromise on their policies I don't know when they will ever be able to. 

Or as one (left) youtuber says, maybe when Boris' dad said the lower classes are a bunch of thickos, he's more correct than good people care to believe. Though maybe rather than "thick" it's lack of education. With higher education comes greater tendency towards supporting left policies, right?

But also, perhaps for places like England, a scene from Downton Abbey springs to mind. Daisy (kitchen maid) says how X character is opposed to the unions, and Mr Carson (The Butler) says "and rightly so!" Was that a prevailing attitude among the upper-level servant classes who were very devoted to their, mostly Tory, aristocratic masters? And does that attitude still persist to some extent today? You don't vote for people from the same [lower] class as you, because what do they know about running the country? The upper classes know how to run the country, so you vote for them, even if their arseholes, at least they know what they're doing (which is true, they know what they're doing, but that doesn't mean they know how to run a country well, and probably they know that they are doing exactly the opposite). Probably not relevant at all, since in fairly class-free societies there are still a lot of lower socio-economic people who vote right-wing. 

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Could somebody tell me what happened to the plan to reduce the number of MPs down from 650 to 600?

A brief history of what I already know: David Cameron in 2010 wanted to reduce the number of MPs to 600 because he complained (possibly rightfully so) of how the Tories had to win by larger margins of the vote share compared to Labour in order to achieve an overall majority. When he got in coalition with the Liberal Democrats under Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems forced the reform to be postponed to 2018 due to Conservative efforts to prevent creating an elected House of Lords.

This came to my head because I was wondering why nobody was in recent weeks talking about the reduction of seats influencing the outcome of the election. When I looked at the Wikipedia page for the 2019 election, there are still 650 seats to win.

The redrawing of the electoral map was due last year. What happened?

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While I'm on the subject of crap opposition leaders, Jo Swinson is shaping up to be no better. She started by basically voiding her party's main policy by declaring that she would not work with Jeremy Corbyn under any circumstances and so would never be able to deliver it: now she's talking about how she won't support any of Labour's renationalisation plans because apparently nationalised provision is 'not the way to deliver good public services'. So she's pro-privatisation? Are the Lib Dems now just Tories from the 90s? And she has been terrible in any debate or interview I've seen. Certainly, she's failed to offer any solid reason to vote Lib Dem. 

Lest there be any doubt, either Swinson or Corbyn, terrible, awful, and deeply crap politicians though they are, are still preferable to the repugnant, vain, lazy, incompetent, self-serving, bigoted, unprincipled habitual liar that leads the Tory party. Every time you think the Tories cannot pick a worse leader, they do. 

I'm just saying, the choice on offer to voters (at least in England) is appalling. 

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1 hour ago, Ordos said:

Could somebody tell me what happened to the plan to reduce the number of MPs down from 650 to 600?

Current plan is Brexit, then Scottish independence (650 => 591), and Irish reunification (591 => 573).

Added advantage that Scots and Northern Irish don't really vote conservative, so that's 64 fewer opposition MPs, at a cost of only 13 conservatives

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My constituency’s  previous election result was 37,000 to Tories, 9000 Labour, 6000 Lib Dem. I’m torn to be honest, I would vote Labour all things being equal but maybe I give the Greens the infinitesimally tiny bragging rights to a ‘yea but if it was proportionally represented’ line for after the election. Difficult to feel that excited to be honest.

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10 hours ago, Ordos said:

Could somebody tell me what happened to the plan to reduce the number of MPs down from 650 to 600?

A brief history of what I already know: David Cameron in 2010 wanted to reduce the number of MPs to 600 because he complained (possibly rightfully so) of how the Tories had to win by larger margins of the vote share compared to Labour in order to achieve an overall majority. When he got in coalition with the Liberal Democrats under Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems forced the reform to be postponed to 2018 due to Conservative efforts to prevent creating an elected House of Lords.

This came to my head because I was wondering why nobody was in recent weeks talking about the reduction of seats influencing the outcome of the election. When I looked at the Wikipedia page for the 2019 election, there are still 650 seats to win.

The redrawing of the electoral map was due last year. What happened?

I seem to vaguely remember the new boundaries were drawn up but needed MPs to approve them and there was some opposition from those that would lose out from the changes. I'm not sure they ever actually voted on it.

Maybe it might come back if Boris wins a big majority?

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10 hours ago, mormont said:

While I'm on the subject of crap opposition leaders, Jo Swinson is shaping up to be no better. She started by basically voiding her party's main policy by declaring that she would not work with Jeremy Corbyn under any circumstances and so would never be able to deliver it: now she's talking about how she won't support any of Labour's renationalisation plans because apparently nationalised provision is 'not the way to deliver good public services'. So she's pro-privatisation? Are the Lib Dems now just Tories from the 90s? And she has been terrible in any debate or interview I've seen. Certainly, she's failed to offer any solid reason to vote Lib Dem. 

Lest there be any doubt, either Swinson or Corbyn, terrible, awful, and deeply crap politicians though they are, are still preferable to the repugnant, vain, lazy, incompetent, self-serving, bigoted, unprincipled habitual liar that leads the Tory party. Every time you think the Tories cannot pick a worse leader, they do. 

I'm just saying, the choice on offer to voters (at least in England) is appalling. 

So that is likely to depress voter turn out. Because while people may not wan't to vote for the Cons, for various reasons, but including Brexit for many, they can't see any party that appeals in any way. So, cold and damp/snowy/otherwise miserable time of year to go out and vote, and nothing exciting to vote for = stay at home and Netflix and chill (in the good way). Advantage Cons? Reduced voter turn out usually advantages the right, right?

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53 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I seem to vaguely remember the new boundaries were drawn up but needed MPs to approve them and there was some opposition from those that would lose out from the changes. I'm not sure they ever actually voted on it.

Maybe it might come back if Boris wins a big majority?

MPs should never be put in charge of voting themselves out of a job. They should pass a law specifyin ghe number of seats, and then let an independent commission redraw the boundaries.

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3 hours ago, Chaircat Meow said:

It is not looking much like Jezzmas ...

YouGov have 42/33 and ComRes have 42/32.

Very grim. 

I can't quite believe myself the Tories will have a 10 point lead in polling day but we will see I suppose. 

If people who might vote for anyone other than the Cons are just blah (or worse) about all the alternatives it could be much more than 10% on the day.

Lack of an attractive alternative in the eyes of millions of voters who don't like Boris and what he's selling is just mind-boggling. The people who should be in govt don't want to touch it. The people who want to be in govt shouldn't be allowed anywhere near it. There are exceptions, but only a few.

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Well, at least no-one ever accused Pasty Cockwomble of having any morality, or love of accountability: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-shuts-down-press-21024829


Boris Johnson abruptly ends press conference after being questioned about NHS
It came just minutes after the Donald Trump cancelled his press conference - as the row over NHS drug prices escalated

Boris Johnson abruptly shut down a press conference after being asked if he had spoken to Donald Trump about ruling the NHS out of a  future US/UK trade deal.

Asked by the Independent if he had made it "crystal clear" to Donald Trump that "neither the NHS or pharmaceuticals" should be part of future trade negotiations, the PM threw a bit of a huff and said he wouldn't answer any more questions.

Article Continues...

I'm sorry, but we've reached the stage where any vote for the conservatives is a vote actively in favour of moral bankruptcy and against the interests of 99.9% of the country

 

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Ah, but it's OK because if you vote for Johnson, you'll get massive increases in public spending and tax cuts at the same moment he splits us from our biggest trading partners and we're running a larger than expected deficit.

No responsible government would go through with Brexit. Johnson's solution is clear: vote for an irresponsible one!

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7 minutes ago, mormont said:

Ah, but it's OK because if you vote for Johnson, you'll get massive increases in public spending and tax cuts at the same moment he splits us from our biggest trading partners and we're running a larger than expected deficit.

No responsible government would go through with Brexit. Johnson's solution is clear: vote for an irresponsible one!

Not to mention a manifesto pledge to do whatever he likes regardless of legality

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