Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Translation, please?

He doesn't want his son to become a posho, but instead keep him grounded in working class culture without accidentally adopting working class political mores like voting Tory/UKIP

My guess is that Tyr's son will want to rebel at some point and, Tyr being Tyr, that may well take the form of joining the red trousers and Barbour brigade

[Sheilbh]

I like Angela Rayner - and I get that the Deputy Leader is normally the attack dog but I'm not convinced this line (reported by the Mirror at the Labour conference fringe) is really going to help:

Rayner: "I'm sick of shouting from the sidelines, and i bet youse lot are too. We cannot get any worse than a bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, mysoginistic, absolute pile ...of banana republic...Etonian...piece of scum...and I held back a little...that I have ever seen in my life"

Not least because it allows a (mixed race) Tory minister to respond with:

James CleverlyFlag of United Kingdom
@JamesCleverly
United Kingdom government official
I'm sure this went down well in the room but when voters look at the party that has had both female PMs, with half of the great offices of state filled by women, half by BAME, most diverse government,  more gay ministers than Labour ever had etc

They'll know she's talking crap.

But generally I just don't think the Tory scum/Tories are evil/never kissed a Tory line works anywhere outside of a Labour Party conference - or a group that is already probably voting Labour. And I know that Labour loves to pin its hopes on non-voters (who they assume are all secret socialists - which I'm doubtful of given that last time a huge block of non-voters turned out we got Brexit), but their best hope of actually winning is convincing people who have, in the past, voted Tory and tactical voting from the Lib Dems and Greens (like in 1997).

I also think it distracts attention from Rayner's speech which seemed to be quite good - and from Rayner's press in advance of her speech which was very good.

[Zanza]

So 5000 visa until Christmas is what will solve the structural shortage of truck drivers? It's all performative, isn't it?

[Tamas]

The racist bit was politically unfortunate coming from a party with a snow white leadership toward a party with near-all skin colours in their upper echelons.

But in terms of policies and supporters it still applies, enough to think of Brexit.

Otherwise though, what's the point of being polite and reserved with this extremely damaging and incompetent government? For me it's clear if Labour says "well we are slightly different but kinda' the same, we won't rattle the boat" then they'll lose because the slightly different bit, namely less xenophobic and less mean, is what voters would rather keep if all else is the same.

[Tamas]

Also on the EU being a better market for truckers than the UK not being an issue because the visa waiver is for the world: is the UK blanket-recognising driving licences of the world or is there a limit to how much the gravitational pull of the largest market of the globe right next door to us is a non-issue?

[Josquius]

My girlfriend forced me to panic buy petrol today.
It's as bad as said. Went by half a dozen petrol stations till I found one that had petrol.
Two possible explanations here....

1: I live in the south east of the city, quite densely inhabited on all sides with no way out to the south. Where I eventually found something was towards the northern fringe.
2: I live in a working class area on the fringe of a notorious non working class area. The same kind of demographics that lead to a shortsighted selfish attitude that gave us brexit.
I suspect aspects of both at work.

[Tamas]

If you expect you'll need more fuel than you have in the very near future it's not panic buying. If you barely use your car and you queue for half an hour blocking a road because you only have half a tank, that's panic buying.

[Sheilbh]

So 5000 visa until Christmas is what will solve the structural shortage of truck drivers? It's all performative, isn't it?

I think it's an attempt to avoid bad headlines up to Christmas rather than fix anything structural. It's not a solution, but a plaster. I still, personally think it's the wrong decision but there we are.

Also on the EU being a better market for truckers than the UK not being an issue because the visa waiver is for the world: is the UK blanket-recognising driving licences of the world or is there a limit to how much the gravitational pull of the largest market of the globe right next door to us is a non-issue?

I have no idea on driving licences. I suppose my point is that I agree it's unlikely EU drivers are going to want to come to the UK because it's a hassle - but it isn't solely a visa scheme for the EU, so if instead it's mainly accepted by Ukrainians, Moroccans, Turks, Bosnians that's also it working.

Whether the cost of admin, signing on bonuses and higher wages (the last two are good things) is worth it for companies in the industry I don't know.

The racist bit was politically unfortunate coming from a party with a snow white leadership toward a party with near-all skin colours in their upper echelons.

Also the misogynist bit doesn't land from the only major party in British politics to have never had a woman leader. Or the homophobic bit when same-sex marriage was legalised under a Tory government and Johnson personally has a history of rebelling to vote for gay rights when that wasn't the party line (unlike, say, David Cameron - athough George Osborne rebelled too) and I think was the first Tory politician to go to a pride parade - but on that note literally yesterday the gay Tory West Midlands Metro Mayor was at Birmingham Pride. I don't think those lines work unless you already believe them.

I think it's another impact of American influence - too many people on the left basically think they're running against the GOP, which isn't really what actual existing conservatism looks like in this country. And it just lets the Tories play identity politics of their own - as Cleverly does.

Otherwise though, what's the point of being polite and reserved with this extremely damaging and incompetent government? For me it's clear if Labour says "well we are slightly different but kinda' the same, we won't rattle the boat" then they'll lose because the slightly different bit, namely less xenophobic and less mean, is what voters would rather keep if all else is the same.

I mean the Corbyn years weren't an example of Labour being polite and reserved or "kinda' the same". I don't think it's fair to position that as kind of the road not taken because it very much was - and Corbyn or McDonnell's very strong attacks would be clipped and put on social media where they'd do great numbers before going to an election and getting Labour's worst result since the 30s.

And we've had this argument running for years - Tory activists being spat on when they had their conference in Manchester, the annual fracas over "never kissed a Tory" etc. I sort of think there's something to Gabriel Milland's comment that Labour just shouldn't do their conference in Liverpool or Brighton - politically both are extremely unusual and have more than the average share of Trots and cranks respectively. It'd be like if the Tories only ever had their conference in Royal Tunbridge Wells and Virginia Water

But there's a reason Tory MPs were retweeting her speech last night. It doesn't work - it's counter-productive to sit there and just shout that the other side are scum (which Rayner now presumably meant jovially "Let me contextualise it. It's a phrase that you would hear very often in northern working class town ... we'd even say it jovially to other people." ). Similarly Paul Mason's defence that "scum" "reflects exactly how working class people talk" which is patronising bullshit - I think it's sort of a very middle class view of the working class.

The big issue I have with it has two parts. One is that 48% of working class voters voted Tory, nationally about 44% of the country voted Tory in the last election - the only plausible route to victory for Labour (so excluding the possibility of the deeply socialist masses who don't vote turning out) is by winning Tory voters. That's difficult if your rhetoric around the Tory government they support is that they're just racist, misogynist, homophobic scum - because what does that make their supporters who you're trying to win over? And if you just think they're scum how can you possibly understand why people voted for them or how you can convince those voters to support you instead?

The other issue is that it's lazy. It's just outrage/passion which is fine but not enough (it's all about Rik Mayall in the Young Ones) and it's talking to the converted. If you want to win you need to have dividing lines on policy/values (which is difficult in covid times) and be making an argument, you also always need to be talking more to the people who don't agree with you than the people who do.

It's a bit like with Nye Bevan's line on Tories that "so far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin." Young Conservatives  started wearing "vermin" badges, Tories set up "Vermin Clubs" to talk about conservative ideas/organise - I imagine we'll see the same thing at Tory conference with "Scum" t-shirts up for sale. When Labour lost the next election many leaders including Herbert Morrison and Harold Laski said that speech cost them two million votes. Though at the time Attlee just wrote to Bevan that it was "singularly ill-timed", "has drawn attention away from the excellent work you have done" and advised him to "please be a bit more careful, in your own interest."

[Tamas]

For sure, of all the shit the government has been doing wrong, focusing on racism which isn't really racism per se more like general xenophobia, is stupid.

They asked Rayner if she's going to apologise (which she shouldn't) she said, yes once Johnson apologises for his racist comments. I mean come on, how about the 200k+ Covid deaths, how about the goods and fuel shortage? How about gas prices, how about the Brexit mess and the NI scumbaggery, how about all the sleaze?

No, they take their currently full-white led party and choose racism to bring up against a government with Patel and Sunak in it just to name two. Yes, they cater to racism and xenophobia and it's more complex than white vs. others (what's with plenty of non-white Brits not wanting East Europeans coming in etc), but FFS. It seems like they want to lose the next election on purpose.

[The Brain]

It seems like they want to lose the next election on purpose.

If you're governing you can't remain Pure, and decisions actually start to have consequences. Both are scary af to Labour.

[Sheilbh]

They asked Rayner if she's going to apologise (which she shouldn't) she said, yes once Johnson apologises for his racist comments. I mean come on, how about the 200k+ Covid deaths, how about the goods and fuel shortage? How about gas prices, how about the Brexit mess and the NI scumbaggery, how about all the sleaze?

No, they take their currently full-white led party and choose racism to bring up against a government with Patel and Sunak in it just to name two. Yes, they cater to racism and xenophobia and it's more complex than white vs. others (what's with plenty of non-white Brits not wanting East Europeans coming in etc), but FFS. It seems like they want to lose the next election on purpose.

Linked to mine and Syt's meme posts about the Labour Party's self-involvement is that I think a vast amount of Labour's issues - and the left in the UK in general - is that it primarily wants to feel good about itself. So everything you've said is right, but it feels good. They're able to vent - it's what I think Blair used to describe as the comfort zone of opposition.

It's kind of nice if the other side are just scum and you don't have to make any difficult decisions or compromises (because you have no power) and you get to keep your hands clean and agree with  other people about how awful everything is. I also think that's why they're honing in on racism, homophobia and misogyny because they are sort of modern sins - and again if the other side are just racists then you don't have to listen to them and you're good because you're fighting racism. It's great - except for the people who are actually affected and living the consequences of this government.

I don't see much sign that Labour's at a point where it wants to move out of the comfort zone yet

As an aside I would just quibble that Lisa Nandy is mixed race and in one of the top four jobs - her father, Dipak Nandy, was from Bengal and moved to the UK where he became a leading academic on equal opportunities/race relations, he advised on all sorts of equality legislation, Roy Jenkins' Home Office and helped set up the Runnymede Trust (the UK's first/lead race equality think tank).

[Sheilbh]

It seems like they want to lose the next election on purpose.

If you're governing you can't remain Pure, and decisions actually start to have consequences. Both are scary af to Labour.

Yep

[Tamas]

Drove past like 10 petrol stations today, no big queue at any of them (yesterday's Shell was still pretty busy though), except for the BP-M&S one along the main road in Windsor, there was absolute traffic-blocking-in-both-direction madness, while 2-3 miles away a similarly sized station was near-empty.  That was an Esso though, it might be considered substandard to British Petrol.

[Sheilbh]

Honest question as a driver - do people have opinions on superiority/standard of petrol at different petrol stations? I'd have guessed it's purely price (unless you're near Tebay in which case, obviously, you should visit the Rivendell of service stations).

[Tamas]

Honest question as a driver - do people have opinions on superiority/standard of petrol at different petrol stations? I'd have guessed it's purely price (unless you're near Tebay in which case, obviously, you should visit the Rivendell of service stations).

I am not 100% convinced but I think there's a difference. Once I refilled at a Sainsburys didn't think nothing of it but after a while noticed my car was noisier and stuff. Allegedly, these supermarkets buy up the cheap "clearance" stock on the spot market so quality can differ wildly.

I have filled up since then a couple of times at some "noname" (I never heard of) station in the middle of Slough and didn't notice anything dramatic, and I was using a Tesco station quite regularly for a while. Now that you mention it though, I wonder if periods were I noticed the car being a little sluggish was after I filled up with the cheap stuff.

But between big brands like Esso and BP I for certain wouldn't care which one I use.