Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

For AR - some constituency polling!

Britain Elects
@BritainElects
Batley & Spen, constituency voting intention:
CON: 47% (+11)
LAB: 41% (-2)
WPGB: 6% (+6)
LDEM: 3% (-2)

No Local Ind Grp (-12) and Brex (-3) as prev.

via @Survation
, 09 - 17 Jun
Chgs. w/ GE2019

WPGB is George Galloway () who is carving out quite a weird niche. As you'd expect a lot of focus on Kashmir and Gaza, but then also very anti-cancel culture, old school socialist, unionist, Lexiteer, tough on crime - it's an interesting niche that is positioning him a little differently than I think he was in the 2000s (but, perhaps, the pitch you'd expect from someone with a show on Russia Today).

[Sheilbh]

Just seen a clip of the winning candidate's speech which was a little underwhelming:
"This result shows that no matter where you live, no matter how "safe" a seat is - if you want a Liberal Democrat MP, you can have a Liberal Democrat MP."

[alfred russel]

For AR - some constituency polling!

Britain Elects
@BritainElects
Batley & Spen, constituency voting intention:
CON: 47% (+11)
LAB: 41% (-2)
WPGB: 6% (+6)
LDEM: 3% (-2)

No Local Ind Grp (-12) and Brex (-3) as prev.

via @Survation
, 09 - 17 Jun
Chgs. w/ GE2019

WPGB is George Galloway () who is carving out quite a weird niche. As you'd expect a lot of focus on Kashmir and Gaza, but then also very anti-cancel culture, old school socialist, unionist, Lexiteer, tough on crime - it's an interesting niche that is positioning him a little differently than I think he was in the 2000s (but, perhaps, the pitch you'd expect from someone with a show on Russia Today).

Sadness is in my heart and soul....🙁 I put just over $100 on labour at 17.5%...probably in a loss position with that poll.

[Josquius]

I don't think I'd see Plaid or SNP as necessarily on the left. Also I find the current writing up about Plaid and Welsh independence a bit weird - I think it's just because of Scotland and because there's only recently polling on it - but Plaid have been on about 20% for the last ten years and normally coming third behind Labour and the Tories; in the first ten years of devolution they were winning far more votes and were normally the main opposition.

There's certainly a fair case they're nationalists first and the left wing stuff is merely to win support for what they're really about. Regardless they are fighting for the same voters and the SNP at least is usually clumped in the progressive coalition talk.

I'm not sure they're that much more tribal than Labour's vote to be honest.

Really disagree there. By nature conservative voters tend to be, well, conservative. I vote tory because I've always voted tory is far more of a problem than the same for Labour as much as its the latter gets talked about more.
A big reason for this being the tories are better at presenting a united front and the lack of competition for the moderate right wing voter.

Yeah - I think when it came down to the choice of never Brexit v never Corbyn a lot of voters who were very unhappy with Johnson and the Tories went for never Corbyn.

Which was depressing as hell.
As much as Corbyn was a bit shit it's just insane how much he was blown up into this pantomime communist who was going to execute the queen or whatever.
I still maintain labour had the best brexit policy. The trouble was their messaging was awful and it was just one good policy amidst a scattergun of others vs. "we are all sick of it. Let's get brexit over with".

[quote

I think that's the triumph of hope over experience - but then I am very anti-Lib Dem
[/quote]

I don't know too many lib dems to comment really. But I do think brexit remains at the top of their agenda.

But that's the big challenge for Labour.

If Labour goes for PR then the party is over - they will split. As we've both noted the factions in Labour are, at the minute, more interested in fighting each other than anything else and if it wasn't for FPTP I have no doubt they would have just separated. That might be better for the left overall as an electoral force (though looking at the rest of Europe with PR - I'm not so sure) but I think PR is more of an existential threat for Labour than it is the Tories. And, of course, they'd need a massive landslide to pass electoral reform because the SNP are huge beneficiaries of FPTP and there is no way they'd abolish it, it would destroy their leverage; right now they won 45% of the vote in Scotland but got almost 50 of 59 seats. Plus as a regionalist party they have quite a low ceiling with PR so there's no way they'd be the third party in Westminster with PR. Doing the right thing = destroying the party and possibly ending up like PASOK or PS or PD in European countries.

Here though I would say this isn't football. We aren't playing a strategy game as labour. Look back at labours history and the entire reason it exists as a party and to me an end to labour with the different factions being able to make their views heard without needing to be part of a big tent organisation would be mission accomplished.

The trouble of course undoubtedly lies within the party machinery with those who have built their career on labour and do see it in very tribal terms where the party is important. These people have their hands on the controls and will be hard to budge.

I think PR or a better system will be better for labours goals than the tories goals. Just look at the last election, the Tories formed a majority with 42% of the vote. And this was one where the tories did exceptionally well.
Giving the far left a voice whilst maintaining distance from the centre left will be great for stopping things time after time getting worse.

   

And doing a deal with the SNP or Plaid opens up the issues of the union - there are lots of English voters who think that England subsidises Scotland and Wales and any deal would just mean more spending, which is probably right as part of any deal. But also Labour would need a way to get around English Votes for English Laws - it's only a standing order so a Labour government could just get rid of it, but I think passing legislation that only affects England (as is the case for a lot of Westminster legislation) depending on SNP and Welsh votes would be very unpopular. It happened during the 2005 Parliament when Labour, partly led by a Scottish MP relied on the votes of Scottish Labour MPs to pass legislation that only affected England which caused a lot of resentment because it raised the West Lothian question in very real form. But short of devolution to an English parliament with Westminster as a federal government, that's what would happen - and to win a majority of English votes Labour need a huge landslide, I think they could have governed in 1945, 1997 and 2001 but that's it.

Yes, this is the tricky one. I do remember last election a lot of talk about how voting Corbyn was voting for Scottish independence. This definitely swayed some gammon. With brexit gone this can become a key issue.

An English parliament is one thing that could get me contemplating a vote for the tories. I oppose this vehemently :p

Scottish independence without voting reform would be a disaster for sure. Really sets England (🤢) on a dark path.

[Tamas]

I don't think Corbyn needed much to be exaggerated about him. He routinely sided with people engaging in violence against British civilians, had vocabulary and agenda straight out of the 70s, and clearly was not very bright.

[Josquius]

I don't think Corbyn needed much to be exaggerated about him. He routinely sided with people engaging in violence against British civilians, had vocabulary and agenda straight out of the 70s, and clearly was not very bright.

He didn't side with terrorists. This is a misrepresentation of his let's talk about things whilst I put my foot in my mouth style.

He was definitely stuck in the 70s and was rubbish at his job. Though one good thing about him that a lot of people really didn't get was that he ran the party democratically. Labours manifesto wasn't his manifesto, it came from the centre of the party and included a bunch of things he himself objected to.
Yet you consistently heard this talk going around that he was a dictator. Just bizzare.
He was shit. But for totally different reasons to what people thought.
On Brexit for instance he was awful for being pro brexit and then refusing to recognise it as an issue but so many had this idea he was against it.

[Sheilbh]

Really disagree there. By nature conservative voters tend to be, well, conservative. I vote tory because I've always voted tory is far more of a problem than the same for Labour as much as its the latter gets talked about more.
A big reason for this being the tories are better at presenting a united front and the lack of competition for the moderate right wing voter.

But the Tories are very good at change while Labour is very small-c conservative and quite bad at adapting to new realities. I've never heard anyone reporting from a conservative seat say "my dad/mum/grandad will be spinning in their grave because I'm not voting Conservative" that is something that you do hear with people moving from Labour.

I think there was a strong and actively policed social view of "we vote Labour" that has broken down in the last 20 years. I don't think there's ever really been anything as strong in Tory seats.

I think both parties probably have a floor of about 28-30% support - which is where Labour are now and where the Tories were under Hague/IDS.

I think PR or a better system will be better for labours goals than the tories goals. Just look at the last election, the Tories formed a majority with 42% of the vote. And this was one where the tories did exceptionally well.

Yeah - I mean they were closer to 44%. They got slightly more of the vote than Blair in 1997 and he had a majority of over 150.

I have less of an issue with FPTP when, as in the last two election, the two main parties are getting around 80% of the vote. But I think that's unlikely to continue and votes will fragment. FPTP is crazy when you have, for example, Blair in 2005 with 35% and Howard with 32% but Blair has a majority over 65 votes.

An English parliament is one thing that could get me contemplating a vote for the tories. I oppose this vehemently :p

England is the only nation in the UK with a democratic voice or democratic self-government. And we can't complain about the British government or British unionism being so Anglo-centric when British politics is in fact the only space for English politics.

Scottish independence without voting reform would be a disaster for sure. Really sets England (🤢) on a dark path.

Even with voting reform - the Tories got about 47% of the vote in England alone at the last election.

He didn't side with terrorists. This is a misrepresentation of his let's talk about things whilst I put my foot in my mouth style.

That's an incredibly kind and generous reading of his conduct over his entire career. I don't think you or anyone else would be so kind about a Tory MP who routinely spoke with UVF or UDA leaders during the Troubles. We'd see that for what it is and we should with Corbyn too. If your goal is peace and you just want to talk about things - I think you need to talk to more than the most violent groups on one side of a conflict. He'd personally said less incendiary things than McDonnell (who in the 2000s praised the IRAs "bullets and bombs" for bringing the British state to the negotiating table - this was at the point when the peace process was on life support over the IRA failure to decommission their weapons), but he has a deeper history of being involved with lots of these groups.

I mean even if we ignore the IRA or being present but not participating in Black September commemorations (again - imagine the Tory equivalent of an MP present at some international commemoration of Islamophobic terrorism), he was President of Stop the War Coalition. Like Stand Up To Racism, they are a SWP front who inevitably had to scrub their online archives as soon as he got elected to remove, for example, the pieces they published supporting Iraqi insurgents killing British troops.

Edit: Also Angela Rayner may be on manouevres for a Labour leadership race but seems to have both pro and anti-Corbyn people going after her at the minute.

[The Larch]

England is the only nation in the UK with a democratic voice or democratic self-government.

I assume you meant without. 

[Sheilbh]

England is the only nation in the UK with a democratic voice or democratic self-government.

I assume you meant without. 

Sorry - yes

We can't complain about the English or Englishness dominating UK/British institutions if those institutions are the only ones that actually govern England because there's no English Parliament, English First Minister etc.

[garbon]

Bercow is now with Labour?

[Sheilbh]

I thought he already had. I swear Labour were going to appoint him as a Labour member of the House of Lords 

Not an enormous surprise - but still quite the journey for someone who was the leader of a student conservative group that was so extreme that Norman Tebbit shut it down

Edit: Unrelated but reports in the Times that Blair is planning a comeback

[Tonitrus]

That'd take an overdose of Hubris I think...especially as I had the impression that he is pretty much politically toxic to all sides.

[Sheilbh]

He probably should be in my view - I imagine Labour won't be exactly overjoyed at this news announced by Bercow through an interview with a Sunday paper. My guess is he'd like some attention.

[Grey Fox]

Blair should come back. By modern standard, he should have a good 2 mandates before him.

[Zanza]

England is the only nation in the UK with a democratic voice or democratic self-government.

I assume you meant without. 

Sorry - yes

We can't complain about the English or Englishness dominating UK/British institutions if those institutions are the only ones that actually govern England because there's no English Parliament, English First Minister etc.

As the English are de facto making all the decisions and also decided against English or regional devolved institutions, it is fair to blame them for the dysfunctional British federalism with its skewed political institutions and unclear constitutional power share.