Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Richard Hakluyt]

The Express has a circulation of only 320k nowadays btw; so I'm not sure how important their misinformation is. I think most voters get their information from facebook or twitter ........much of it of dubious provenance of course.

[Josquius]

It isn't just the express which gets up to that sort of thing. I think the mail has the biggest circulation? And its even worse....
But yeah. Social media nonsense is a bigger issue these days

[Sheilbh]

I think it's the Metro, the Sun (), the Mail () and the Mirror.

Of the tabloids, the Express is, from memory, behind the Daily Star

[Zanza]

Tesla Gigafactory Europe to be built in Germany, not UK, as Elon Musk blames Brexit uncertainty

Brexit Dividend! 

[Zoupa]

It's the gift that keeps on giving.

[Sheilbh]

Johnson meets the people of Yorkshire (an area he needs votes) after the floods:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-50402483/pm-boris-johnson-heckled-in-flood-hit-south-yorkshire
https://twitter.com/ITVNewsPolitics/status/1194628421982158850?s=20

This is the one thing I like about monarchy. All the "respect the office" nonsense tends to go to the Royals and people very much view the PM as a public servant and don't mind confronting him.

I also feel like potential for flooding/blizzards/some other weather issue is another of the myriad of reasons no government normally goes for a winter election.

One other slightly interesting story for what it says about the press. They briefed to the Sun about Johnson's speech today and it included a line accusing Labour of Brexit "onanism". The Sun as you'd expect went with a story about him calling Corbyn a wanker.

Then causes a bit of a furore with lots of people criticising it as a bit crass, not serious, public schoolboy etc (if it wasn't briefed I think it probably would have worked - not enough people know what onanism means). My guess is the Tories had some focus groups and it went down like a lead balloon so it was removed by the speech.

So the Sun journalist asks what happened to the speech he saw. Johnson responds "A stray early draft seems to have somehow found its way into your otherwise peerless copy by a process I don't pretend to understand." Now it seems like that journalist (Chief Political Correspondent) is a little pissed off and everyone else is talking about the story.

[Tamas]

I briefly caught some north englander hairdresser lady on some BBC report the other day. She explained she supports Johnson because he is the right man for the job. She said that's because he is a liar, which makes him real and so he can be trusted with Brexit as not to have an obscure secret agenda with it.

I didn't stick around to see any pro-Labour gleaming lights of pro-universal voting rights beacons, but I kid you not that was the gist of what she said.

[Sheilbh]

One other interesting point, quite a lot of moderate Tories who were purged either running as independents or, like Nick Boles, saying they'll vote Lib Dem. Like in the Spanish thread I wonder if that might have an impact - that sort of elite signal from respectable, hitherto mainstream Toryism that it's okay to vote Lib Dem.

Edit: I do feel like the vox pops this election have been a bit more expressive/frustrated than normal
https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1180755149473615872?s=20

Edit: Also interesting read on some of the eyebrow-raising candidate selections by Labour lately:

Jeremy Corbyn hates fixing Labour selections. So why is he doing it?
The answer is in the opinion polls.
By
Stephen Bush

Manipulating parliamentary selections to secure constituencies for the party leadership is a trick so old that it may well have been in existence longer than the Labour Party itself. Although journalists often talk about favoured candidates being "parachuted" into place, with the local party membership cut out of the process, in practice both major parties prefer managed democracy to autocratic imposition.

As one old Labour fixer, long since rewarded for their efforts with a seat in the House of Lords, once put it to me: the most effective way to get your people in was to present local party members with a choice between "five donkeys and a horse". No one can say that the winning candidate has not been subject to a democratic election – it's just a contest that they had little prospect of losing.

It was easier in the 1970s, when one mechanism for securing the election of favoured sons was to put them up against well-qualified female candidates, safe in the knowledge that a culture of engrained sexism in local party branches would ensure the man was elected. Now, party leaders have to be more subtle in the way they remove obstacles for the chosen few: the "Goldenballs", as one Corbynsceptic MP is fond of dubbing a much-praised group of Labour right-wingers first elected in 2010. But the approach that Jeremy Corbyn has taken in getting his people selected as candidates is one that Harold Wilson, Clement Attlee and perhaps even Keir Hardie, the party's founder, would recognise, and one of which Boris Johnson has made use.

The Conservative leader, whether in or out of Downing Street, has a greater level of autonomy than even the most hegemonic of Labour leaders. Parliamentary selections are a rare exception. The usual approach, particularly when Labour is in office, is for the leader gently to suggest that a loyal veteran might prefer to change the green benches of the Commons for the plusher surroundings of the Lords.

An unexpected retirement can help. The surprise resignation of Tom Watson, Labour's deputy leader, freed up his constituency of West Bromwich East, which was given to Ibrahim Dogus, owner of Troia Southbank, a Mediterranean restaurant whose popular food is one of the few unifying forces in Labour politics.

But for the most part, even a Labour leader like Corbyn, who controls every lever of power within the party, tends to avoid imposing too many candidates without a vote, preferring the horse-and-donkeys method.

There are, however, problems with that approach. When it is done too obviously, local party activists revolt, opting for the donkey ahead of the thoroughbred. Party leaders – or their allies – can sometimes let their ideological differences with a candidate to blind them to their qualities, and allow a good contender slip away.

It was "ideological blindness" that Corbynites blamed for the recent triumphs of Florence Eshalomi and Sally Gimson, two prominent Corbynsceptics who were selected for the safe seats of Vauxhall and Bassetlaw respectively. Eshalomi and Gimson were, one trade unionist told me, "obviously too good", and should therefore have been removed at the shortlisting stage. Instead, they were allowed through, after both wowed members with strong performances in the hustings.

So far, so predictable. Every party leader does it, and every party leader is, from time to time, rebuffed. What was different is what happened next: Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC) voted to strip Gimson of the nomination and instead to hand it to Keir Morrison, an Ashfield councillor who had been rejected by Bassetlaw's members. The pretext was Gimson's conduct in local party meetings in London, though more than 20 members of her local party were prevented from making statements in support of her. The double standard is all the more evident given the largesse extended to candidates thought to be broadly "on side" with the leadership.

The behaviour is a departure in terms of scale and risk, given that Bassetlaw, while historically a safe seat, has a majority of less than 5,000, and upsetting local party members might end up costing Labour the constituency. But it is also par for the course, and any previous Labour leader would recognise it. What differentiates Corbyn from his predecessors is that he ran for the leadership pledging to put party members first, and now he is engaging in the same dark arts as his predecessors.

The Labour leader recognises his inconsistency. The parliamentary party's Corbynite wing has hardly grown under Corbyn because of his reluctance to use the powers of his office to get his people in. In both of the safe seats to fall vacant in this parliament, local members were given a genuinely free choice – and as a result in the ensuing by-elections candidates from Labour's centre, rather than its left, entered parliament. But in the marginal seats that the party must win to form a government, almost all of the candidates are loyal Corbynites.

So why has Corbyn abandoned his old opposition to internal fixes? The answer is in the opinion polls, which put Johnson on average 10 points ahead. Labour is financing an ambitious campaign as far as its target seats go, and some of Corbyn's loyal allies sincerely believe that the one-on-one television debates will turn things around for their man. But in truth, the Labour leader has acceded to those who favour the autocratic approach because he knows this may be his last chance to leave an enduring mark on the Parliamentary Labour Party. For all that Corbyn hopes for victory, his embrace of the old Labour methods of fix and control show he is really preparing for defeat.

Stephen Bush is political editor of the New Statesman. His daily briefing, Morning Call, provides a quick and essential guide to domestic and global politics.

[Josquius]

Interesting it's blaming Corbyn.
Does he really have much to do with that sort of day to day thing?
Most I've read on this sort of shennanigan points the finger at senior momentum organisers.
It's not so much that corbyn being defeated is expected, even if he is he may still hang on, the poisoned chalice of brexit may yet loom, but his age.

I briefly caught some north englander hairdresser lady on some BBC report the other day. She explained she supports Johnson because he is the right man for the job. She said that's because he is a liar, which makes him real and so he can be trusted with Brexit as not to have an obscure secret agenda with it.

I didn't stick around to see any pro-Labour gleaming lights of pro-universal voting rights beacons, but I kid you not that was the gist of what she said.

To be fair the brexit broadcasting corporation could be interviewing people on the streets of Gibraltar (remember them? They still exist. They've fell off the brexit map...) and find an ardent brexiter.

Sounds like a special breed of moron there though.

[alfred russel]

I briefly caught some north englander hairdresser lady on some BBC report the other day. She explained she supports Johnson because he is the right man for the job. She said that's because he is a liar, which makes him real and so he can be trusted with Brexit as not to have an obscure secret agenda with it.

I didn't stick around to see any pro-Labour gleaming lights of pro-universal voting rights beacons, but I kid you not that was the gist of what she said.

I remember in college a discussion in the run up to the gulf war. I overheard two girls were discussing...one had apparently completely swallowed the peacenik idea that the war was 100% about getting Iraq's oil. However, her conclusion was, "and that is why this war is so important. We need to secure Iraq's oil for our economy." 

[Valmy]

Again on the 2017 v 2019 view - not convinced Johnson is a wildly better campaigner than May:


Interestingly all the polls have Labour around sort of 28-31%.  The range on the Tory vote is crazy: 35%-42%.

So no-one has any idea.

Come on Libdems! You only have roughly 22 points to make up!

[Sheilbh]

Bless you, Valmy.

[Josquius]

typical bbc reporter trolling for gammon up North gets what for

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/bbc-bishop-auckland-interview-on-brexit-and-boris-johnson-1-6372792



That accent....so old school and odd. Half what I'm used to but half something else.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Quite a lot of Yorkshire in his accent; not sure if that is standard for Bishop Auckland or not 

I thought he made some good points of course 

[Sheilbh]

So the Monster Raving Loony Party copyrighted the name "Lord Buckethead" meaning Lord Buckethead is not able to run. However, he is now running against Johnson as Count Binface. His reasoning: "Why am I back? Because I predicted Brexit would be a #shitshow and so it proved.
Will I bring back Ceefax? Obvs.
Why the sexy rebrand? Because I decided I could not remain in that bucket and so like Chuka Umunna, Anna Soubry, Dominic Grieve and Chuka again, I chose pastures new."