Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[garbon]

Sad.

[Sheilbh]

So there is a striking debate in Labour. Apparently they are reluctant to go in too hard on lobbying. Their concern is around the status of unions because they keep a record of meetings and the Labour leadership, obviously, takes a huge amount of meetings with union leaders. Very often they will be talking about policies and the fear is that I think the employee of a company can't lobby loophole also benefits the trade unions - because they also don't need to pay external third party lobbyists to get a meeting with Labour leaders - or a Labour government.

On the one hand - which I think I agree with - one side is saying that transparency is worth as a point of principle and that people will be understanding of the Labour Party meeting with trade union leaders. On the other it would be a nightmare for a Labour government and even now I imagine that certain policy announcements could be matched with meeting the leader of x union which would lead to calls for the minutes to be released etc. But also, politically, it creates the risk of it presenting an image of stronger union influence than actually exists - it risks looking a bit beer and butties in Nr 10.

[Josquius]

I can see the potential for political trouble given the media are at labours throat if they so much as blink a bit funny... .

But the government forced to actually speak to workers? Oh dear what a shame.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Union leaders are not perceived as workers, they are part of "them".

[Tamas]

So there is a striking debate in Labour. Apparently they are reluctant to go in too hard on lobbying. Their concern is around the status of unions because they keep a record of meetings and the Labour leadership, obviously, takes a huge amount of meetings with union leaders. Very often they will be talking about policies and the fear is that I think the employee of a company can't lobby loophole also benefits the trade unions - because they also don't need to pay external third party lobbyists to get a meeting with Labour leaders - or a Labour government.

On the one hand - which I think I agree with - one side is saying that transparency is worth as a point of principle and that people will be understanding of the Labour Party meeting with trade union leaders. On the other it would be a nightmare for a Labour government and even now I imagine that certain policy announcements could be matched with meeting the leader of x union which would lead to calls for the minutes to be released etc. But also, politically, it creates the risk of it presenting an image of stronger union influence than actually exists - it risks looking a bit beer and butties in Nr 10.

Plus they do want to form a government eventually, why tie their own private hands in advance?

[Sheilbh]

Pointed out by Alexander Clarkson that it's very striking how much time Westminster journalists are spending on the by-election in Hartlepool - which is likely to go Tory - rather than Scottish elections which are likely to return a pro-indy majority.

This isn't a surprise really. I've mentioned before but UK media political coverage is very focused on Westminster and basically blind to/ignorant of local politics or the politics of the other nations. In general I think this actually helps the SNP because Nicola Sturgeon is reported on as if she's Angela Merkel, or some other international leader because she's not in Westminster, rather than as a really important political player in our national politics. This has been an issue since devolution - it's one of those things that has been exacerbated by the SNP's victories. While it was a problem in 1999-2011, there was an argument that the Labour Party was the prism to see the politics of the Scottish government - so the Westminster reporting was inadequate but it captured something of it. Now it's just ridiculous (obviously BBC Scotland/ITV Scotland etc do very good reporting of the Scottish Parliament - but it's perceived to be of purely local interest rather than interacting with the UK's politics).

Separately - excellent piece by Rafael Behr:

Labour keeps pushing the 'same old Tories' line – but voters have moved on
Rafael Behr
Keir Starmer is trying to ignite flames of public indignation by blowing on 25-year-old embers. It's a redundant strategy
Tue 4 May 2021 16.29 BST

It is exactly 16 years since Labour last won a general election – an anniversary the party does not celebrate. On 5 May 2005, Tony Blair beat Michael Howard.

The Conservatives responded by listening (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) to David Cameron's gospel of brand decontamination. By electing Cameron as Howard's successor, the Tories showed they had understood what Theresa May first told them in a party conference speech back in 2002 – that they were seen as the nasty party. Cameron's modernisation project was neither thorough nor profound, but it worked well enough to require a shift in electoral strategy from Labour. The challenge goes unmet to this day.

Labour still campaigns against the "nasty party" because it is the one they can beat. There have been many lines of attack against a parade of Conservative leaders, but the underlying message is consistent: same old Tories. That is the background music when Keir Starmer challenges Boris Johnson over mystery donations that funded the Downing Street makeover. In the Commons last week, Starmer called the prime minister "Major Sleaze". The allusion reaches back to the Tories' mid-90s slide into rancid disrepute and out of office.

It is right for the opposition to hold the government to account over corruption, but there is a nostalgic inflection in the way Labour hammers at the word "sleaze" – and it speaks of insecurity. Starmer is trying to ignite flames of public indignation by blowing on 25-year-old embers.

Local and devolved elections on Thursday might show that the message is getting through, but Labour MPs and activists who have been knocking on doors in marginal areas are not optimistic. They say the rotten smell has reached the public nose but is not overpowering. It does not beat the prospect of restored local and national esteem that many former Labour voters heard two years ago in Johnson's invitation to "get Brexit done", and which resonates even though the UK has left the EU.

It doesn't help that Labour is also battling a perception in its former heartlands that the party has been captured by snooty metropolitans, far-left fanatics or both.

That cohort of angry ex-loyalists does not feature on Labour's old mental map of Conservative voters. The standard model depicts the Tories as a machine for servicing the rich at the expense of the needy; hardwired for cruelty. When Tories show a compassionate streak, the automatic left response is to dismiss it as a cynical feint. When Conservative governments flirt with egalitarian policy – as when Johnson speaks of "levelling up" – the left predicts failure through ideological rigidity. Callous free-market capitalism is too deeply ingrained, it is said, and the Tory imagination is closed to social justice.

There is enough truth in that picture for the opposition to avoid dwelling on the gaps. But it is not the whole truth, which is why Britain keeps electing Conservative prime ministers. The left can account for those results without enduring the psychological trauma of admitting that good people have sincere reasons to reject a Labour leader. Aggressive media bias is the most reassuring explanation. That, too, is true enough. It satisfies anyone who would rather not interrogate the causes of opposition failure for too long. You can point to rightwing tabloid hysteria and call off the search.

But blaming the media slips easily into blaming the electorate for being too stupid to see past the headlines. Labour does not endear itself to voters by treating the ballot paper as an exam and tutting when people give the wrong answer. A strategy based on telling voters to look again, look harder, because they missed the point last time is doomed, as anyone involved in the campaign for a second Brexit referendum can attest.

A variant of the same problem is the habit of pointing at Tory prime ministers and claiming their "mask is slipping". Starmer used that line against Johnson over nurses' pay in March. It is what Ed Miliband used to say of Cameron. The mask metaphor is how opposition leaders say "I told you so" to voters. (Never an attractive look.) Calling out the slippage implies that Labour, in its superior wisdom, knows truths that lie hidden from the credulous electorate.

A newer source of Labour denial is to exaggerate Johnson's charisma. The prime minister is imbued with ineffable mesmerism that hypnotises voters into forgetting their horror of the Tory brand. Once again, true enough. Without the extra spark of the "Boris" persona, the 2019 election might have been closer.

But that doesn't explain how Conservatives won the Tees Valley and West Midlands mayoralties in 2017, when May fought a weird, self-sabotaging campaign reminding voters of Tory nastiness more efficiently than Labour could. Little noticed amid the fallout from May's implosion in that election were the increased Conservative vote shares in northern English seats Johnson would go on to win two years later. The shift in Britain's electoral geography predates the "Boris effect".

Johnson's shtick will wear thin eventually, and that will be an opportunity for Labour. But lost voters will not snap out of a trance, wonder by what witchcraft they were seduced into being Tories, and pick up their old ancestral allegiance.

In over a decade of opposition, Labour has offered many policies that it thinks voters should like, buttressed with solid reasons to reject the Tories. It hasn't worked. One thing no leader has attempted is a candid, humble explanation for why the party keeps losing, complete with a credible display of understanding why voters switched sides. It doesn't come easily. The left is conditioned to doubt that any decent human being could be a Tory. That is the barrier to empathy across which no minds are changed. The alternative is to keep running the same old campaign against the same old Tories, and to keep on losing because Britain doesn't have the same old politics, or the same old voters.

    Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

This strikes me as somewhat connected to the issues around Scotland. There's strong reports that the Tories are going to absolutely trounce home to re-elected Metro Mayors in the Tees Valley and West Midlands - probably with an increased vote compared to 2017. The key fact of the past 10 years of Scottish (and, in my view, British) politics is the collapse of Scottish Labour. I think to a large extent the story of the "Red Wall" is the collapse of Labour in other historic heartlands and for similar reasons. I expect lots of "we get the message, we've heard you" kind of statements, as we've heard in Scotland. I think as in Scotland there'll be a lot of patronising about these misguided, deluded voters who didn't *really* mean to vote Tory/SNP - and while that's going on those voters will get used to voting Tory.

I worry Labour is too far from honestly looking at itself and its role and what it can or should do in response.

In similar devolved news there's been a series of polls (of GB voters) about whether the British public would support or oppose various independence referendums (or re-unification in NI). And the basically people don't mind - I find the contrast with Spain really striking here. In relation to Northern Ireland it's Patrick Maguire's old line that the UK has "No strategic or selfish interest. Or indeed any interest at all."

But - Northern Ireland:

Would Britons support or oppose a referendum in Northern Ireland regarding its status being held in the next year?

Support: 34%
Neither: 30%
Oppose: 23%

42% of 2019 Labour voters would support, while 34% of Conservative voters would oppose.

Which side do the British think would win if a referendum were held in Northern Ireland regarding its status?

The 'Stay in the UK' side: 39%
The 'Join the Republic of Ireland' side: 21%
Don't know: 40%

Wales:

Would Britons support or oppose a Welsh independence referendum being held in the next year?

Oppose: 30%
Support: 29%
Neither: 29%

Which side do the British think would win in a Welsh independence referendum?

The 'Pro-United Kingdom' side: 44%
The 'Pro-Independence' side: 18%
Don't know: 38%

A majority (53%) of 2019 Conservative voters expect the pro-UK side would win.

Scotland:

Would the British public support or oppose a Scottish referendum on independence being held in the next year?

Support: 36%
Oppose: 33%

A plurality of 2019 Conservative voters (48%) would oppose, while a plurality of Labour voters (44%) would support.

Which side do Britons think would win if there were a Scottish independence referendum?

The Pro-UK side: 35%
The Pro-Independence side: 29%
Don't know: 36%

A plurality of 2019 Labour voters (35%) voters would expect the Pro-Independence side would win.

People are impressively indifferent/equanimous about the dissolution of their country

[Josquius]

Isn't neutral the best answer on whether you support a Scottish independence referendum if you don't live in Scotland?
It's up to them, not me.


Teeside metro mayor will be tory again. He has a while to run yet. Some cracks are beginning to appear in the populist fascade and the various trickery he uses to give the appearance of transparency whilst being anything but (shifty stuff with the airport) , however it'll be another few years before these open at the least

But blaming the media slips easily into blaming the electorate for being too stupid to see past the headlines. Labour does not endear itself to voters by treating the ballot paper as an exam and tutting when people give the wrong answer. A strategy based on telling voters to look again, look harder, because they missed the point last time is doomed, as anyone involved in the campaign for a second Brexit referendum can attest.

OK, this article loses it here. Seemed to be getting towards valid points but then it repeats this old fallacy.

I disagree that seeking to regain voters lost to Facebook news should be labours priority. Much of that demographic is gone and its futile to chase them. Rather labour should be focussing on getting younger people to care.

[Tamas]

Isn't neutral the best answer on whether you support a Scottish independence referendum if you don't live in Scotland?
It's up to them, not me.

Depends. If you consider British to be a nationality and primary identity then it is perfectly fine to have an opinion. If you are neutral then in effect you consider Scotts foreigners already.

[Sheilbh]

Depends. If you consider British to be a nationality and primary identity then it is perfectly fine to have an opinion. If you are neutral then in effect you consider Scotts foreigners already.

Yeah I mean the UK is a nation made of nations so I think it's entirely right and justified for Scotland to be able to decide its own future - and I think if the pro-indy side wins a majority they have a democratic mandate to demand a referendum. But if they didn't then I think they wouldn't and I'd oppose a new referendum.

And as this impacts the UK and Britishness, I think it's fine to have an opinion and mine is pro-union. Though I totally get the attraction of independence - I think had I gone back to Scotland for university and stayed there I would probably vote for independence. I also think the practical difficulties of Brexit would be nothing compared to the practical difficulties of independence - that's not enough on its own but it is relevant.

[Josquius]

Isn't neutral the best answer on whether you support a Scottish independence referendum if you don't live in Scotland?
It's up to them, not me.

Depends. If you consider British to be a nationality and primary identity then it is perfectly fine to have an opinion. If you are neutral then in effect you consider Scotts foreigners already.

I'm British. I'm not Scottish.
I don't expect a say on Scottish politics anymore than I do Northern Irish or London.
It's completely up to any given part of the country whether it remains part of the country or not.
I can be sad if they do break off, but it's not my place to stop them deciding their own fate.


Incidentally I increasingly think if I do end up living in Scotland when an independence referendum comes around I'd vote leave.
Looks less and less likely that I'll ever be in this position though.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Depends. If you consider British to be a nationality and primary identity then it is perfectly fine to have an opinion. If you are neutral then in effect you consider Scotts foreigners already.

Yeah I mean the UK is a nation made of nations so I think it's entirely right and justified for Scotland to be able to decide its own future - and I think if the pro-indy side wins a majority they have a democratic mandate to demand a referendum. But if they didn't then I think they wouldn't and I'd oppose a new referendum.

And as this impacts the UK and Britishness, I think it's fine to have an opinion and mine is pro-union. Though I totally get the attraction of independence - I think had I gone back to Scotland for university and stayed there I would probably vote for independence. I also think the practical difficulties of Brexit would be nothing compared to the practical difficulties of independence - that's not enough on its own but it is relevant.

There is a problem though. If Scotland has a referendum every 10 years, and only needs to get 50%+1 to leave, an asymmetry is created. Votes to remain being merely provisional whereas a vote to leave is permanent. It is not really Scotland deciding its own future when a tiny majority to leave occurs on a single date shortly after brexit and while the UK is being run by a shapeshifting creep.

[Sheilbh]

There is a problem though. If Scotland has a referendum every 10 years, and only needs to get 50%+1 to leave, an asymmetry is created. Votes to remain being merely provisional whereas a vote to leave is permanent. It is not really Scotland deciding its own future when a tiny majority to leave occurs on a single date shortly after brexit and while the UK is being run by a shapeshifting creep.

That's true - but doesn't it just create an asymmetry in favour of the status quo (which already has a lot of advantages)? Because you're right but on that basis I can't really see how you could ever have a vote to leave without repeated confirmatory referendums or super majorities, which we don't have any history of in this country so it would be unique and unprecedented to stymie Scottish independence (except, ironically, for the 1970s devolution settlement - which went well ) and ultimately we would be compelling a majority of Scots - however narrow- to remain governed by a constitutional framework and a nation which they no longer consented to.

I'm not sure it is going to be an every 10 year thing. I think if we'd voted Remain then it would be very difficult for the SNP to argue that there had been a material change to the situation in 2014 and I also think the Scottish public would have very little time for another referendum. But as it is I think the situation has changed materially and the referendum or not has been the key issue in this election - so it's not like it's a surprise to voters - and if they return a pro-indy majority then it feels to me like that's in large part because they want a referendum.

Of course it's probably not politically possible because the SNP won't want one (having campaigned for one on Brexit) and the UK government won't want to give one (having opposed one on Brexit) but I think there probably should be a confirmatory referendum. So this one is on the principle and the second one will be on independence once the practicalities have been arranged with the UK government (allocation of national debt, pensions, possibly temporary arrangements for common defence, currency etc).

[Richard Hakluyt]

Your third paragraph makes excellent sense...so there is no way it will be the method used 

[Josquius]

50%+1 has to be fixed some time.
It's sad to see a lot of hypocrisy from Scottish independence supporters that it's fine for their vote purely because it now advantages them.

A two stage referendum would be the smart way to go. Though yeah, can't see it happening. You saw how people completely failed to grasp that with brexit. Though there I suspect the powers that be had primed the population against it with the silly story of Lisbon redos being so widely believed.

[alfred russel]

Pointed out by Alexander Clarkson that it's very striking how much time Westminster journalists are spending on the by-election in Hartlepool - which is likely to go Tory - rather than Scottish elections which are likely to return a pro-indy majority.

The problem with "pro-indy" majorities or minorities being really a sign of anything is that they are political parties with full agendas. Opinion polling the past month seems to indicate that "no" has a slight edge, even if "yes" parties will clean up tomorrow.

Labour in Scotland seems to be collapsing/have collapsed and Green seems to be surging. That is in line with European trends of traditional center left parties really struggling right now and Greens doing much better. I'm not sure there is actually a connection to independence.