Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Zanza]

[The Minsky Moment]

It's looking like brexit is going to work out exactly the way I expected and lexiters are proven fools

In other news the sun rose and set and what goes up must come down.

[Zanza]

[Josquius]

I'm getting a heavy sense of deja-vu here. But an encouraging sub-title to this headline, the bulk of those registering are under 34

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-news-latest-general-election-voter-registration-applications-a9174526.html

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally because we are moving to an election I though Glen O'Hara's lists of why Johnson might not do as well as they're hoping rings true:

Really think the Tories are in the midst of the most terrible error. Huge risks in a GE. (1) Remainers' last chance - they may well coalesce around Labour, and vote tactically. /THREAD
(2) Corbyn the campaigner. Just like in 2017, they're riding to his rescue when he's at his lowest ebb. He wants to get out and give speeches about austerity. It will re-energise him. They've got him hemmed in, and they're about to let him out of his box.
(3) SNP and Lib Dem risk. Tories may do better in Scotland than they fear, but they're going to lose at least 5, maybe up to 10/11 seats there - and c15-20 in suburban London/ England to the LDs.
(4) Sticky Labour voters. As soon as the GE is announced, Lab numbers will rise as d/k and won't vote return 'home'. And are the people of Wrexham, Blackpool, Grimsby really going to compensate BoJo for losing 30 seats to SNP/ LD? I doubt it.
(5) Labour campaigning. The public like nationalisation and the abolition of tuition fees. Yes #Brexit election, but those policies will now get another airing. And 400k+ members will make a splash.
(6) Huge uncertainty. Look at any proper evidence, and it says 'the public don't know what to think'. Massive % of don't know. You're about to force them to decide. I'm willing to bet that a pretty detested ten-year-old govt won't come off well.
This is the *classic* bully's error - overconfidence, sloppiness, lack of empathy, failure to prepare, big picture guff. I have to say that I don't give the Tories more than a 30%, 40% chance of holding on. /END

To this I'd add a few points. For a good majority the Tories need to be winning 40+ seats - on their target lists that includes Darlington, Scunthorpe, Bury North. Which seems unlikely. Johnson is behind May in the polls before she called a "Brexit" election.

Also there are normally stories of an NHS crisis over the winter - so December seems like a bold time for a Tory government associated with austerity to have an election. Finally there's the line of an anonymous cabinet Minister: "who is going to leave the house on a dark, rainy winter morning to vote for the government"

Luckily for the leavers the provisional Remain campaign is in a mess:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/peoples-vote-leaked-report-bullying-cronyism

A Leaked Report Reveals People's Vote Was Told It Needed A "Clean Slate" Of Key Staff To End A "Culture Of Mistrust"
The analysis, commissioned by the campaign, criticised its leadership and strategy, and called for proper processes to deal with cronyism, bullying and harassment.
Posted on October 28, 2019, at 9:28 p.m.
Alex Wickham
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Alberto Nardelli
BuzzFeed News Europe Editor

An independent report commissioned by the People's Vote campaign last month found that it needed "a clean slate on key roles" to end a "culture of mistrust", "patronage" and "cronyism" at the organisation, with "repeat offenders" accused of being "continually disruptive and eroding trust".

People's Vote descended into a full-blown public civil war on Monday after its chairman Roland Rudd dismissed its campaign director James McGrory and head of communications Tom Baldwin. In an interview on Sky News, Baldwin claimed he was the victim of a "boardroom coup" at the hands of Rudd, who in turn called the suggestion "absurd".

But a confidential report seen by BuzzFeed News delivered a scathing assessment of the campaign's current management and leadership. It echoed the concerns raised by Rudd on the airwaves this morning about the need for People's Vote to be restructured if it is to achieve its core objectives.

The 83-page report, titled "Project Root", dated September 3 and marked "do not circulate", was carried out externally by a consultant at the firm OC&C Strategy, who was hired by the campaign.

It was tasked with establishing how best to ensure that People's Vote could win a future referendum for Remain, conducting one-on-one interviews with People's Vote staff and other stakeholders and analysing campaign spending and materials.

The report was highly critical of People's Vote's management under McGrory and Baldwin, and the toxic culture fostered on the campaign by its extreme factional infighting.

It also found that the campaign was hampered by a "culture of mistrust" and did not have appropriate processes in place to properly deal with bullying and harassment. It recommended: "Decisive action to deal with "Repeat offenders" who have been continually disruptive and eroded trust".

"Proper disciplinary processes should be established for underperformance, inappropriate behaviour, bullying, harassment etc and communicated to staff," the report said.

The analysis used a traffic light system to compare People's Vote's performance on various governance, management and culture criteria to the successful Vote Leave campaign of the 2016 referendum. Out of 18 criteria, Vote Leave scored 13 green lights, meaning "strong evidence" in favour of that specific competence. People's Vote scored 12 red lights, meaning "strong evidence against" and 6 amber lights for "mixed evidence". It scored zero green lights.

The report also criticised the campaign's "chaotic governance" under the chairmanship of Rudd, warning that there was a potential for a conflict of interest between him being in charge of both People's Vote and Open Britain, the principal pro-Remain campaign group.

It found that "the current governance model, team and culture within PV" would need "a fundamental reboot in order to win a second referendum".

"The right campaign strategy is futile without the right governance, organisation and culture," the report said, warning: "There is a consistent formula to successful campaign management that PV does not yet possess."

Following the report's findings, Rudd announced earlier this month that he would be stepping down as chair of Open Britain.

Among a litany of criticisms concerning the running of the People's Vote campaign, the report found: "PV has been beset with warring personalities and uncooperative behaviour," creating a climate where a "culture of patronage... undermines individual empowerment and encourages cronyism." People's Vote "operates within a culture of patronage where the executive is ultimately subordinated to the patron," it states.

"Corrective measures to stop a "culture of patronage" may require a clean slate on key roles with proper hiring and interview process," it went on to say.

"Recent factionalism and strategic drift has been culturally debilitating," the report said, noting: "PV has suffered from cloak-and-dagger factionalism and staff have reported feeling excluded from decision making and confused by governance and strategic decisions". "Factionalism has further engendered a culture of suspicion," it added.

BuzzFeed News has previously reported on how People's Vote was split on whether or not it should campaign on whether to remain in the EU, or simply secure another referendum.

The report was damning of the campaign's day-to-day direction under McGrory and Baldwin's leadership.

"PV's weak and chaotic reporting lines reduce accountability from the top down," it found, adding: "PV does not appear to have processes for resolving conflicts and making decisions", "PV does not appear to write job descriptions or operate formal interview processes" and "has failed to introduce needs-based hiring".

It found the digital campaign content produced by People's Vote lacking: "Remain lags firmly behind Leave in the online messaging proxy war. Although on an upward trajectory, Remain digital content lags Leave for impact and share-ability". It concluded: "We cannot afford to continue to lose on digital – we must invest in the fundamental assets and capabilities immediately."

The report was also highly critical of the campaign's messaging and communications. "Currently, the PV campaign falls short of best practice on messaging," it said, finding there was "limited evidence behind messaging", "too few messengers and too few messages, too focused on high-level air war and existing supporters".

In what will be seen as an implicit criticism of Baldwin and McGrory, the report found that People's Vote was over-reliant on the use of politicians to communicate the campaign's messages.

"There is no obvious 'big beast' to champion Remain today – most politicians are unpopular or unknown beyond their core support," the report claimed. New Labour politicians Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, supporters of Baldwin and his People's Vote ally Alastair Campbell, were seen as some of the least popular pro-Remain politicians.

The most popular Remain campaigners were Labour MPs Liz Kendall and Jess Phillips,the Green Party's Caroline Lucas, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson and Ruth Davidson, the former leader of the Scottish Conservatives, according to analysis by the report's authors.

Former Conservative chancellor George Osborne was the second least popular Remain campaigner with voters, trailing only Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams.

A spokesperson for the People's Vote campaign said: "The Project Root report was commissioned by us to discover what has gone wrong in 2016 and how far we had learnt lessons since.

It rightly criticises messaging and strategy from StrongerIN, acknowledges that some smaller groups who have since left the campaign has created difficulties, and that a pro-referendum message is inevitably different from one to persuade people to back Remain.

This early draft of the report also contains criticism of different pro-referendum campaigns that were removed after the authors decided they were unfair or inaccurate."

There are some of the rag reports in the link. But my favourite is this, showing that only actual terrorist Gerry Adams is less popular than George Osborne 


It's difficult to believe this sort of report about a culture of incompetent cronyism given the strong defence of McGrory and Baldwin I saw from son of former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, failed Labour Parliamentary Candidate, and leader of the failed Stronger In Remain campaign, Will Straw.

[Sheilbh]

I'm getting a heavy sense of deja-vu here. But an encouraging sub-title to this headline, the bulk of those registering are under 34

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-news-latest-general-election-voter-registration-applications-a9174526.html

Really good piece by John Harris on how housing is central to all of this.

And very interesting report by Resolution Foundation on how we're polarising on age-lines, which is the driving division in our politics now. It's a better indicator of how you'll vote than class was back in the 70s
https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/ageing-fast-and-slow/

[The Larch]

Sheilbh, I feel like you have to dumb down your posts about 40% to be able to get some sort of debate going. At the very least provide an executive summary for a non-Brit audience. 

[Tamas]

Well it is kind of pointless anyway, because Labour does not want an election (they are the Opposition, after all) :p

Unless Johnson brings back the WA for debate now that there is time, nothing will happen until roughly 10th of January.

[Josquius]

That is a horrible graph.

But yes, the age thing is there. It explains how former strongly labour seats like Darlington are wavering: all the remotely driven and intelligent young people have lefteavknf behind their uncaring, unvoting former class mates, and the old.

A problem is however that by their very nature the young tend to cluster whilst the old want to spread out and get far from humanity. This could give us a few massive labour wins whilst the Tories win more modestly but across more seats.

[Richard Hakluyt]

The "impoverished thickies in left behind areas vote tory and brexit" is essentially false. We are in this shit principally because of propsperous and successfull people in the South of England.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2017/results

[garbon]

The "impoverished thickies in left behind areas vote tory and brexit" is essentially false. We are in this shit principally because of propsperous and successfull people in the South of England.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2017/results

That's not what the Brexit referendum map looked like.

[Richard Hakluyt]

True https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36616028

[Josquius]

The right wing southerners are of course actively to blame.
However where things are going so weird is that the north was not there to counter balance them. Where we should have been moderately remain leaving at the least we were instead moderately leave leaning.
And if you look at recent elections.... The right are doing disturbingly well in some places. Shielbhs article mentioned Darlington which I had to check: the Tories really are narrowly behind labour there.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Yes, a fair amount of dupes, I meet a lot of them when I go to Seaham; though to be fair the most important issue for them is how are Sunderland getting on in the league.

Darlington is a relatively prosperous town and has been marginal for quite a while though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darlington_(UK_Parliament_constituency). I think the town is small enough to include rural areas in the constituency which also helps the tory tendency. Preston is a bigger town so the constituency doesn't even reach most of the suburbs,that, plus a university, makes the place solid Labour.

It is unfortunate that so many people have been duped into voting against their interests in the referendum; I'm not inclined to scapegoat them though; that is my main point.

[Josquius]

I'm actually passing through Darlington in 10 mins. I've never gotten off the train there though everyone who has anything to say on it tells me it's a hole.
Someday I should go check the train museum there.

With brexit for sure there were a lot of people just swallowing the misinformation or finally gaining some class consciousness and completely directing it the wrong way.

Now with the election though...
I can understand a lot of it. There is a lot of anger against Labour up here. We have voted for them forever and things haven't really gotten much better. There's a big feeling that they just take us for granted.
The problem comes where they make a leap of logic that since the party that wants to help the poor has done a bad job (let's just pretend that's valid) we should instead vote for parties that want us dead.