Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[garbon]

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/led-by-donkeys-met-police-christmas-party-305144/

WATCH: Led by Donkeys 'help' Met Police by parking No 10 Xmas party evidence outside Scotland Yard

A new video has hit out at the Metropolitan Police for declaring they would not be investigating allegations of a Downing Street Christmas party last year.

In the footage, played outside Scotland Yard, Led By Donkeys claimed it was bringing the Met the evidence it needs to prosecute government officials and their guests.

It comes after police explained their decision to not hold an inquiry by saying that there is "an absence of evidence" – but the campaign group argued "the whole purpose of a police inquiry is to gather evidence".

Evidence of Downing Street Christmas party
The video started by quoting the law from December 2020, which said no one was allowed to participate in a gathering in a Tier 3 area, consisting of two or more people, in any indoor space. It then also showed government guidance prohibiting work Christmas parties, "where that is a primarily social activity".

Led By Donkeys then reminded the Met Police of the time they shut down a wedding a day before the Downing Street event, telling the public mixing indoors was not allowed, and of their current prosecution of people allegedly attending a party in Ilford on the same night as No 10 staff allegedly enjoyed a Christmas bash.

"Nobody denies an event took place at 10 Downing Street. The issue is a simple one. Was it – as No 10 claims – a work meeting, or was it a party?," the video asks.

The group then presented the evidence: "It's now been established that invitations were sent out by the press team three weeks before the event and that invitees included people who don't work in Downing Street. The invitation said food and wine would be served and there would be an exchange of gifts.

"Some people wore Christmas jumpers to the event, while others brought Secret Santa presents. According to one person who was there – you might call them a 'witness' – quote: 'Everyone was packed shoulder to shoulder. If it looks like a party, sounds like a party, stinks of booze and goes on until 2am, it's a f***ing party."

It added: "That is no work meeting. And of course even Downing Street staff called the event a party.

"We know this because four days later they held a mock press conference, footage of which has now been leaked, where they explicitly described it as a party, accepted it would be controversial because it was held during lockdown and discussed ways to present it to the public as a "business meeting".

Led By Donkeys also said that people attending the party, including those who did not work at Downing Street, would have given their names to a Met Police officer upon entering the premises – suggesting that should give police some of the evidence it needs.

But it concluded: "Scotland Yard is refusing to investigate. Why? When did we stop caring about truth and accountability?

"The police serve the public. We do so without fear or favour and we do so to the letter of the law, the letter. Our leaders partied while families were separated and our citizens died in their thousands. Jesus, Mary and Joseph led by the wee donkey, who exactly does the Metropolitan police work for, ma'am? Our citizens or Boris Johson?"

Link has the video

[Sheilbh]

Reports of another party - this time in the first lockdown - and that Johnson definitely joined it. At that point people were restricted to meeting one other person from another household outside only.

This is one where I had a degree of sympathy because they were working in person in Whitehall in the first wave. And I can see if you're in that stressful environment with people all day working how you grab some booze for an after work drink with colleagues who you are already mixing with all the time anyway. But my patience then evaporates because apparently there were external guests/invitees too

[Sheilbh]

Also great piece ahead of today's byelection - if I was Tory I'd be very worried how much this echoes the pieces you'd read about Labour heartlands from say 2010-2019

The battle for North Shropshire
The by-election is a referendum on Boris Johnson's leadership
BY Tanya Gold
Tanya Gold is a freelance journalist.
TanyaGold1
December 15, 2021

Uncle Peter's Fudge Shop in Oswestry, North Shropshire, sags under rain. A man sucks his pipe and tells his tale: he voted Conservative for 60 years until 2015 [when Brexit repelled him] but no more.

"I was sent out as a child to go and canvas for the Conservatives," he says. "I was sent out to get money and you would come back with half a crown if you were lucky and a load of abuse." He removes his pipe, replaces it, and sucks on it again. "I done my little bit, and these are not the people I grew up with. These are not the people I voted for. When I grew up there was an old lady down the road. The thing she used to say, it stuck with me all my life: 'You can hide from a thief. You can't do anything with a liar'. And he [Boris Johnson] is. He wouldn't know the truth if he fell over it."

North Shropshire is farm land, dotted with medieval wool towns and small villages connected by pot-holed roads on which expensive buses run infrequently and late. The landed class is wealthy and well-established; the working class is white, conservative, un-unionised and earns less than the average wage. The largest minority is Bulgarian.

This constituency never sought to be a referendum on Boris Johnson's leadership, but fate said otherwise when Owen Paterson, MP for 24 years, resigned for breaking lobbying rules, and the Prime Minster allowed his advisors to break lockdown rules and feast as people died alone. Paterson's majority in 2019 was an enormous 22,949: 62.7% of the vote on a turnout of 67.9%. It seemed an insurmountable wall of blue, but then Boris Johnson came with chaos in hand.

The electorate here is raging, and combustible; party loyalty no longer matters, as voters behave like consumers. In May, they turned the council of Oswestry – the largest town in the constituency – Green, because, I am told, the Greens worked hard and the Conservatives neglected the constituency, because it is so safe. (There isn't a Labour or Liberal Democrat councillor in the whole of North Shropshire.) Even so, the Liberal Democrats think they can benefit from protest and repeat their victory in Chesham and Amersham. They are, as they always do, busing in activists from all over the country, and painting the constituency orange. Doormats are buried under their campaign literature. They phonebank ferociously, "trying," says the Green candidate Duncan Kerr, "to create a tidal wave of perception that it is going their way". If they behave like Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction, driving in and cleaning up, it is working. They are now the bookies' favourite.

Meanwhile Labour, which came second in six of the last eight General Elections and took twice the number of Liberal Democrat votes in 2019, is wielding a local candidate in the manner of a magical object: like Excalibur. He was born in Oswestry itself. "I'm Ben Wood," he tells my Dictaphone because he is young, "I'm Labour's local candidate in the North Shropshire by-election. I'm fighting a local campaign on local issues and the big message we are getting across is that our towns have grown but our public services are shrinking."

The ambulance station in Oswestry just closed, he says, alongside ambulance stations in Market Drayton and Whitchurch. (People wait eight hours for an ambulance here.) There are fewer police on the streets and the school receives less funding than the national average, he adds; this election, like all rural elections, is about centralisation at heart. "I've got skin in the game," he says. "I want to be a local champion and get people to buy, sell and make more locally." For emphasis, we stop at a bread stall to buy bread made in Wrexham. "Strong trade here?" Wood asks the bread-seller. "It is a good market," says the man, "[from] years of building it up. It's like any market. You can't flit in and flit out and expect the trade to be there."

Wood is campaigning with Daniel Zeichner, the shadow minister for food, farming and fisheries; they walk together, with a local activist taking their photographs for social media. "Labour is reconnecting with the whole country," Zeichner says. "What we are finding is that we are absolutely back in the game and people are really pleased to see a genuine alternative."

Are they an alternative here: in a by-election, which is different from a general election?  The Liberal Democrats call themselves the opposition based on the undeniable truth that angry Tories are more likely to vote Liberal Democrat than Labour. The Liberal Democrats are both a brand and a bath of protest; you step in, lie down, and get out when you wish. Then there is their deceptive graph, which shows a "two horse race": the Liberal Democrats closing in on the Conservatives.

The graph is based on the May Shropshire council elections (North Shropshire wards) in which, thanks to the Greens standing aside in many wards, they took second place for vote share, and lost their only seat in North Shropshire: in Wem.

Labour's other problem is that their former candidate, Graham Currie, who stood for parliament three times, was prevented from standing this time for over-enthusiastic and unsanctioned Corbynism and posted a furious missive on Facebook: "These Stalinist tactics of the NEC flies in the face of the calls for unity within the Labour Party. I am now an outsider in my own party where I have campaigned and fought for many years alongside my fellow party members for a more equal, socially just and non-discriminatory society. Labour has a corruption in its soul." Many local activists are staying home in protest, and some Labour voters might too.

So the opposition is divided. But the anger is not. I meet the landlady at the Bailey Head pub, opposite the town museum, which tells me that Barbara Pym and Wilfred Owen were born in Oswestry, and she says the Tories are now considered indecent; barely Tories at all. And if they aren't Tories, you can abandon them, and remain a better Tory.

"This is a traditional community," she says. "You have to be honest and decent in a small community because you will get found out. You can't lie to people and deceive people and expect to get away with it. It's really quite offensive to people who live like this, where everyone knows each other, we all know what's going on, and people do look out for each other, to then realise someone you trusted has been so deceitful". She repeats the party's line on Paterson, bitterly: "He broke the rules, we will change the rules to suit him." And then on the parties in Downing Street: "There wasn't a party, or maybe there was, or we don't know." She continues, sounding astonished: "You are dealing with people who have faced losing their business or they had relatives die in hospital who they couldn't be with and meanwhile Boris's friends have had a party, and they are lying about it and they are laughing. There are people who have voted Conservative their whole life, now saying, 'I can't support that, I haven't been able to see my kids'. And they have been taking the mickey out of us. There is a real sense of rage".

One friend, she says, a man in his 70s, has always voted Tory but is now voting Liberal Democrat, "because he wants to give them a bloody nose". She pauses and says with absolute conviction: "They can lose 20,000 votes here in a heartbeat."  Many, she says, will stay home. Others are going to the Right: to Reform and Reclaim.

I cannot find Neil Shastri-Hurst, a barrister, for the Conservatives, but I am used to it: in four by-elections I have not met a single live Conservative candidate. They are shy, semi-mythical beings ever in peril of being chased into cupboards by Newsnight reporters. To appear in public is an opportunity to err. Shastri-Hurst is from Birmingham, which shares few issues with rural North Shropshire; he is a victim of the famous Conservative Party Central Office map, which pronounced that a farmer should stand in Hartlepool of all places. Shastri-Hurst's enemies say he is from Birmingham in the same tone as you might say he is from France, or Iran. (One man suggested it was "dog-whistling".) In any case, the Conservatives do not help themselves. During a flying visit to Oswestry, Boris Johnson called him Neil Shastri-Hughes [sic] and later, "Dr Neil". "I've had much worse," said the candidate, phlegmatically; and there was worse. "Very positive day campaigning in Wem for the North Staffs [sic] by-election," tweeted Eddie Hughes MP.

There are novelty candidates too, of course: Russell Dean of The Party Party, who was born in Chester, is now a yacht broker living in Monaco and promises to fight sleaze and engage young people in politics. (His nephew is in charge on the ground.)

Then there is Earl Jesse for the Freedom Alliance standing for "political truth, medical freedom and individual prosperity" and bouncing around near Sainsbury's in a flat cap hugging people with his party leader Jonathan Tilt. The problem with the Freedom Alliance is two-fold. First, they are too small to be a meaningful alliance. Second, though they have some good instincts — why close small shops in lockdown, when supermarkets stay open? — they rapidly sound completely insane. But they do hug you.

I find Boris Been-Bunged – also known as Faux Bojo — for the Rejoin EU Party in Oswestry by a yellow Mini that says Bollocks to Brexit ("vote tactically, we will be back"). He is a comedian and a Boris Johnson impersonator, who once pole danced with strippers as Faux Bojo in Secrets the nightclub and has burned his scalp from bleaching his hair blonde. His real name is Drew Galdron.  He believes that Westminster "isn't a democracy, it's theatre" and he would know. The resemblance is uncanny. He amuses passers-by (he takes on the voice, which is nothing like his own) and he seems, as is usual for a comic, far more at ease as the man he despises than as himself. "People imagine I get a lot of stick," he says. "Actually, what annoys me far more has been the sheer amount of sycophancy I've seen from a lot of people who like him". Later, he is heckled by a drunk woman, who calls him a cunt, which clearly dismays him. He takes refuge in the Liar Liar coffee shop, but some lads spot him through the window. "It's Boris!" they scream, giving thumbs up but sideways; a half thumbs up, then. But I sense the love still: for his courage – it is a mad kind of courage. I wonder if they will vote for Faux Bojo because they think he is Boris Johnson, and this has all been a terrible mistake.

Laurence Fox is here too with his candidate Martin Daubney, a former journalist. They spend a lot of time in the Fox Inn, tweeting about living in a one-party state, and how Covid is just like a cold.

I meet Duncan Kerr for the Greens. "This place is similar to many places in England," he says. "It's been Tory for so long that they've got very complacent. They don't listen to people. They haven't got a plan. There is an awful lot of Cake-ism [in the campaign literature]. We will fix the potholes; we will fix the ambulance service; everything is promised".

In Whitchurch, another fine medieval town with a pinkish Baroque church, I find hope for the Conservatives: if you can call ennui hope. The landlord at the Bulls Head pub says no one is discussing sleaze "and we have been quite busy. There doesn't seem to be any take-up for it really. Everybody thinks its crazy; everybody does the same thing. I think people are fed up with it."

But not all: "I'm appalled," says one woman, formerly a lifelong Conservative, of the "party business. I felt really let down. He should be good and stay good." But she twinkles at the thought of him, and in that twinkle is, potentially, his salvation. "Tell him."

They still talk about him as if he were a naughty child; and they still believe in his redemption, which they think has a universal meaning: the king and the land are one. "I do like Boris," says another in Costa Coffee. "I don't know why. I'm not going to let him down now. He's trying." The relationship Johnson has formed with the voters is not broken yet. But it hangs by a thread.

It is easy to assume the Conservatives will win with a greatly reduced majority. Superficially at least, the Liberal Democrats have a harder task than in Chesham and Amersham, where the Conservative majority in 2019 was much smaller than it is here (16,223 or 55.4% of the vote) and Labour barely campaigned. There was almost a levity to the protest vote in Buckinghamshire. But here people feel more betrayed; their objection is less trivial, and more heartfelt. In Old Bexley and Sidcup, the by-election held this month after James Brokenshire died, the Tories lost more than 18,000 votes – though they won. Brokenshire was liked and admired. Paterson is not; and the electorate has never been more volatile.

Not everyone agrees. I meet a man whose job is to decide if Christmas lights can be hung on medieval houses in Whitchurch. He stares at them, holding a clipboard, pondering.  "Even if the Prime Minister came here and said he would sacrifice their first-born child they would still vote Conservative," he says. He turns and looks at the line of medieval houses, thrilling in their irregularity, wondering which, if any, are sturdy enough to bear light.

[Sheilbh]

Amazing result in North Shropshire. The Lib Dems won a seat the Tories have held since basically the Great Reform Act of 1832 - so for almost 200 years. It's also, apparently, the 7th biggest swing ever.

At the last election the Tories were on over 60% and, unlike Chesham and Amersham, this was also about a 60% leave seat (I'm wondering if we read that wrong - too much on the Blue Wall and not enough on the revival of the Lib Dems as masters of local campaigning/byelections and being seen as an anti-Tory party again). It's also a seat with lots of homeowners, not got loads of graduates and not many minorities - it's 95% white British. This is proper, Tory, deep England territory.

Anyway 2019 results: Tories won 35,500 votes/62.7%; Labour won 12,500/22%; the Lib Dems won 5,500/10%.

Tonight:

Britain Elects
@BritainElects
North Shropshire, parliamentary by-election result:

LDEM: 47.2% (+37.2)
CON: 31.6% (-31.1)
LAB: 9.7% (-12.4)
GRN: 4.6% (+1.4)
REFUK: 3.8% (+3.8)

LDem GAIN from Con.

And the Lib Dems (who will probably still lose this seat at the next election) even have a not bad majority:

Lewis Goodall
@lewis_goodall
NEW: LIB DEMS OVERTURN 23000 TORY MAJ AND WIN NORTH SHROPSHIRE BY A BIG MAJORITY
Lib Dems: 17957
Con: 12032
Labour: 3686
Reform: 1427
Green: 1738

Maj: 5925

The smart/non-partisan predictions I saw yesterday were that it would probably be close within 2% either way and at the start of the count both Lib Dems and Tories were spinning that they'd probably lost

I've seen pieces saying that the Tories think if they need to change leader they need to do it by the summer recess so the new leader has at least a year to start their own agenda/establish themelves with voters. So this may be wrong but it feels like we are probably in Johnson's last six months.

Edit: And, incidentally, the wider context is that we're in the largest covid wave yet. There's substantial Tory rebellions over covid restrictions, something that actually has more support among Tory (old, at risk) voters than Labour (young, lower risk) voters. If we now see - which we will - Tory politicking. There'll be letters going into the 1922 and lots of inward looking stuff.

That is a gift for Labour who can go in hard on the Tories playing politics at a time of crisis. I think it would absolutely wipe out the Tory's reputation in a really damaging way - I also don't know that they're quite aware of that risk.

Separately my favourite line from one of the pieces reporting on North Shropshire is the voter who said "no disrespect to Boris, but he's a buffoon" lol:

[Richard Hakluyt]

In the words of Mrs Thatcher, "Rejoice!!" 


This is good news for the country. A very brexity constituency has elected a staunch remainer because of the reprehensible behaviuor of our current government. I think that shows that there is a very large centre-ground that can be wooed by any of the main parties. It looks like it will not be possible for UK wannabees to fully use the US Republican playbook.

[Sheilbh]

This is good news for the country. A very brexity constituency has elected a staunch remainer because of the reprehensible behaviuor of our current government. I think that shows that there is a very large centre-ground that can be wooed by any of the main parties. It looks like it will not be possible for UK wannabees to fully use the US Republican playbook.

Yeah - I mean at the minute a majority of leave voters disapprove of the government. I think the other point is this feels back to the 90s of Lib Dem and Labour voters voting tactically and because both parties are perceived as having moderate leaderships that gives permission for dissatisfied Tory voters to shift too. And voters are being pragmatic - it became clear pretty early that the Lib Dems had the best chance here and Labour voters moved.

I've never thought Johnson was like Trump in terms of breaking politics. Too many of the normal rules just kept on going - falling out with the Treasury, powerful other ministers (especially the Chancellor), scandals having an impact on polling, most of the right-wing press still caring more about a scoop/story than protecting the government.

Also I think Brexit won't matter very much in British politics by, if not the next election, the one after. There'll be policy issues around trade and Europe but I don't think it's going to be a defining issue. I think it dissolved party loyalties/ties and creates space for re-alignment/transition but that still requires actual work by politicians and delivery - a re-alignment won't just happen by magic or in one election.

Edit: And polling various issues - especially cultural issues - shows there's basically a very broad middle ground in UK opinion. It's nowhere near as polarised as the US on every issue.

[Josquius]

Very happy to see a large number of the Labour baseline tactical voting.

But yes. Strange result. Proper vicar of dibley territory. Not quite the educated right here.

[Tamas]

Owen Paterson would have completed his 30-day suspension and spent the past week back in Parliament if MPs had approved standards report

This is just pure gold. That "sentence" was laughably lenient considering the proper thing would have been criminal charges, seeing how he was influence peddling, But no they couldn't abide by that, they had to step in.

All of this just shows that Johnson is indeed, after all, just a talentless hack. He managed to find the string that struck a chord with British zeitgeist, much like Trump in America, but much like him, that's all there is to the man.

[Sheilbh]

This is just pure gold. That "sentence" was laughably lenient considering the proper thing would have been criminal charges, seeing how he was influence peddling, But no they couldn't abide by that, they had to step in.

Well also - perhaps more importantly - it's not been shown that he's broken the law (or what that law would be).

It is funny though. It was all so avoidable - though I suspect there'd still be a byelection because there's a recall petition on MPs who are suspended for more than ten days and I think it given what's clearly the mood in North Shropshire that would have been successful. Which is relevant because I suspect Kawczynski who's the MP in the next door constituency will also be suspended and quite possibly recalled

My favourite thing about the Lib Dems re-discovering their knack for winning local elections is their weirdly literal celebrations (and their enduring love of those little orange signs). So after the blue wall:


They're now "bursting Boris's bubble":

https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1471791050842857480?s=20

[Tamas]

I'd be so happy if they weren't a bunch of NIMBYs. Still better than the Tories, though.

[Sheilbh]

I'd be so happy if they weren't a bunch of NIMBYs. Still better than the Tories, though.

Oh I still hate the Lib Dems - they're as responsible for austerity as the Tories, none of which would have passed with Lib Dem votes. And not only are they NIMBY they're just utterly shameless - which is why they're very good at byelections and local council elections. So their national policy is of course to support building, but if they need to oppose it to win a local election then that's fine.

While if you're a Labour or a Tory candidate you're kind of expected to follow (and will be questioned about) the party line, while the Lib Dems are just opportunists at every turn.

Plus obviously the massive hypocrisy of spending 15 years with campaigning against student tuition fees as your signature policy, only to vote to triple them in government

Edit: One interesting point on this v Bexley where Labour disappointed (though different circumstances) is that I think the Lib Dems are very comfortable with the idea that they need to convince soft Tory voters to support them, while Labour struggles to imagine why anyone would ever vote Tory and goes through cycles of imagining that it can win an election without convincing any swing voters by mobilising the young/non-voters.

Edit: Incidentally on "woke" trade agreements - the Australia text has now been released and Sam Lowe and a trade researcher noted this:

Sam Lowe
@SamuelMarcLowe
The UK-Australia commitments on labour and environment appear to be subject to dispute settlement, with possibility of benefits being withdrawn in event of a breach. Which is a change in approach from EU FTAs, where the commitments are subject to weaker enforcement mechanisms.

Nacho Arroniz
@Nacho_arroniz
Those are good news! Definitely stronger enforcement than in the latest EU FTAs, although the climate commitments are equally weak - nothing near as strong as in the EU-UK agreement.

Again I don't think we're heading for the deregulated Singapore-on-Thames many Leave campaigners dreamed of

[Josquius]

The lib dems are what the tories should be.
Disagreeable rather than detestable.

[ulmont]

Nah. But going through a name change like I did last year really highlight on how many occasions it matters what your identity is, and your ability to prove it.

I'm going to ask a dumb question here...isn't that what your passport does?

For sure but that's (rightly) isn't mandatory to have.

I mean, fine, but if you're in a position where you think it might be critical to be able to prove up your right to be in the UK then a passport might be the thing to get?

I had a similar conversation with a relatively light-skinned black man who was concerned about Middle Eastern or Hispanic confusion and our ultimate conclusion was that a passport card (driver's license / credit card sized US ID card from the federal government, can on some but not many occasions be used to cross the border) was probably the single best citizenship + identity document to carry every day in the US.

[Tamas]

Nah. But going through a name change like I did last year really highlight on how many occasions it matters what your identity is, and your ability to prove it.

I'm going to ask a dumb question here...isn't that what your passport does?

For sure but that's (rightly) isn't mandatory to have.

I mean, fine, but if you're in a position where you think it might be critical to be able to prove up your right to be in the UK then a passport might be the thing to get?

I had a similar conversation with a relatively light-skinned black man who was concerned about Middle Eastern or Hispanic confusion and our ultimate conclusion was that a passport card (driver's license / credit card sized US ID card from the federal government, can on some but not many occasions be used to cross the border) was probably the single best citizenship + identity document to carry every day in the US.
[/quote]

Yeah that's fine and I have not one but two passports now, but my main point is that there should be an official mandatory document (not necessarily to have it on your person at all times, but mandatory in the sense that everyone should have one and the state should ensure everyone has one) to prove your identity and along with that your rights in the country. A passport is not the best instrument for that, as there might be legit reasons why the state wants to revoke that from an individual to prevent them from leaving the country. A national ID should be un-revocable the same way citizenship should be un-revocable.

[ulmont]

Yeah that's fine and I have not one but two passports now, but my main point is that there should be an official mandatory document (not necessarily to have it on your person at all times, but mandatory in the sense that everyone should have one and the state should ensure everyone has one) to prove your identity and along with that your rights in the country. A passport is not the best instrument for that, as there might be legit reasons why the state wants to revoke that from an individual to prevent them from leaving the country. A national ID should be un-revocable the same way citizenship should be un-revocable.

Just have that be the passport with a "No Foreign Travel" tag in the database.  Sorta like the No-Fly list.