Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

It's all identity politics, same technique American conservatives have been using since reagen.

Who cares if the economy is on fire, whatabout support our troops and black people plotting to enslave the whites and gays converting our kids.

This sort of appeal to the heart stuff is really hard to crack. Read a piece not too long ago (was it posted here?) on labours problem being that they rely heavily on systemic thinking whilst the tories can just go with direct see a nail, whack it with a hammer and problem definitely solved.

[Sheilbh]

I am disappointed that tory support is not even lower. This is the most disgraceful government we have had in my lifetime, by far.

I think it's the electoral system - under FPTP I don't think either of the big parties will ever really go much below 30% unless there's a re-alignment going on and they're being replaced. Like Liberals and Labour or the sudden rise of the SDP.

At this point there is no other right-wing party really. Reform are polling at below 5%, so everyone who is broadly on the right or just anti-Labour only really has the Tories to go for and I think about 30% is as low as that group can go. If there was a Clegg-ish Lib Dems or a Cameron era UKIP or maybe even Change UK () looming in the wings then they might fall below 30% - a bit like the European parliament election just before May went when the Brexit Party won 30%, the Lib Dems 20%, Labour 15%, the Greens 12% and the Tories were on 9%.

For the future I am hoping for electoral reform. I would like this to be the last government with a huge majority that is essentially a faction within a party that only got 43% of the total votes cast.

I am entirely partisan on this and obviously support electoral reform - but if given the choice between a minority Labour government plus electoral reform, or a Labour majority I'd always choose a Labour majority

If we were back to 2005 and Labour getting a majority of 50 on 35% of the vote while the Tories won 33%, I would be absolutely fine with that forever

It's all identity politics, same technique American conservatives have been using since reagen.

I think it's identity politics but more in that I think there's probably about a third of the country who are on the right or just hate Labour and vice-versa. They'll distribute amont parties on the right/left but it will just vary depending on who the alternatives are and the electoral system.

But I think that is basically the core of those votes. And I think you also need to look at it from the other side - two thirds in the polls right now are with anti-government parties (which roughly tracks with the percent of people who think Johnson lied about this - 75% - or should resign - 65%). I think it's really difficult to imagine the scenario where more than 65-70% of the public have turned on a government/party.

This sort of appeal to the heart stuff is really hard to crack. Read a piece not too long ago (was it posted here?) on labours problem being that they rely heavily on systemic thinking whilst the tories can just go with direct see a nail, whack it with a hammer and problem definitely solved.

This sounds like something that is a very flattering description of why Labour have failed for the last 12 years. "We were just too rational/systematic in our approach"

Especially given that I think the last 12 years have mainly been marked by Labour taking quite an emotional approach to politics. It's been high on moral outrage and "how do you sleep at night Prime Minister", "Tories are literal murderers" etc. I don't fully buy that Labour ("a moral crusade or nothing else") has been too rational and systematic in their thinking - if anything I think the opposite. They lost their head a bit and were only talking to people who already agreed with them. I remember the arguments about how Labour shouldn't even try to win any Tory voters

Edit: Or basically - all the stuff about Johnson permanently re-aligning politics, or normal rules not applying, or he's hacked politics I don't think are true. Similarly that there's too much insouciance/indifference/"lol nothing matters" is also not really true. This is really unusual (can't think of any other PM who's gone so low) - but also what you'd expect:

[Sheilbh]

Think there's an awful lot to this by Sam Freedman on the warning from Australia:

A Warning from Oz
A flashing red light should be going off in Downing Street after Scott Morrison's loss
Sam Freedman
May 24   

A conservative leader so heavily disliked they can't even be featured in campaign literature; seen as lacking integrity; unclear about strategy in the face of a cost of living crisis; and unpopular with women and liberal graduates for his culture war posturing. An election campaign where his party tried to push "wedge issues", including small boats and trans-rights, supported strongly by the right-wing press and particularly the Murdoch papers. A Labor leader seen as uninspiring but solid – a "safe change" – but one that the electorate aren't overly excited about...

Australia's election, won by Labor this last weekend, felt uncannily familiar to followers of UK politics. It may be on the other side of the world but no other country has such similar politics. In part this is due to our shared cultural past. Recently though it has been magnified due to the influence of conservative Australian strategists Lynton Crosby and Mark Textor, and their proteges. Between them they have run all the Australian Liberal Party's campaigns since 1996, where Crosby made his name via four successive victories for John Howard, and been involved in all UK Conservative campaigns since 2005.

In 2019 Crosby-Textor strategist Isaac Levido went straight from masterminding a shock win for Australian PM Scott Morrison to running Boris Johnson's successful election campaign. Their basic model is very simple. Strip all complications (like policy) out of a campaign – they call it "getting the barnacles off the boat"; focus on a tightly constructed set of core messages, nearly always accompanied by a memorable three-word slogan ("stop the boats", "strong and stable", "get Brexit done"); and pick a few wedge issues to help focus the attention of friendly media outlets.

It hasn't always worked – see Zac Goldsmith's campaign for the London mayoralty – but it's been pretty effective over the years. Boris Johnson's new No 10 adviser, David Canzini, is another Crosby protégé, who is unsubtly returning the UK Government to the same strategy.

No one ever accused the Crosby-Textor gang of being overly innovative, and they make liberal use of the same ideas between countries. The Rwanda deportation policy is a straight lift from the Liberals "Operation Sovereign Borders" (Morrison was the Minister who delivered it under Tony Abbot). The Tory assault on "red wall" seats here was mirrored by a similar attempt to take seats traditionally held by Labor in mining areas.

This strategy comprehensively failed the Liberals last weekend – and it was the same strategy even down to highlighting a small boat full of immigrants that had been stopped on the last day of the campaign. While there are some important differences between the UK and Australia, which we'll explore shortly, this should act as a flashing red warning light for the Tories.

The Liberals went backwards in Labor's working class seats, partly because Labor refused to get sucked into pointless battles on the Liberals chosen wedge issues. But critically they also got squeezed horribly in their traditional seats – losing six to the so-called "teal" independents in the wealthy suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. This group of loosely affiliated independents were backed by the wealthy businessman Simon Holmes à Court, and campaigned primarily on integrity on politics and climate change. Notably they were all professional women from outside politics running against Liberal men. The Morrison administration has been widely criticised for its handling of sexual misconduct allegations in Parliament last year.

These "teals" and the three existing independent MPs who were backed by the same campaign, represented a rebellion against the vulgarity, lack of empathy, and lack of interest in the climate demonstrated by the Liberals. The seats won this time had nearly all been Liberal for their entire existence, or as good as. They include some of the wealthiest places in Australia and contain large numbers of professional graduates. Meanwhile Brisbane has gone Green – they picked up at last two seats there, with one more still to be decided, giving them at least four overall, their largest ever grouping on their largest ever vote. Labor picked up some seats too, particularly in Western Australia where they achieved huge swings largely due to the popularity of the Labor state Premier. He was seen as having protected the state against covid, by implementing even more rigorous safeguards than the national government, and was criticised by Morrison for doing so.

The relevance of all this is obvious to the UK context. The local elections showed the Tories were in deep trouble in exactly those kind of wealthier, graduate, seats that the "teals" and Greens won. I'm still not sure they've realised how much trouble they're in. If you look at the polls, and applied a simple uniform swing, they'd just lose a few seats, like Esher and Wimbledon. But if you look at the underlying data from the locals they could lose many more on the kind of swings we saw in North Sydney and Melbourne. These include previously rock solid Tory seats like Jeremy Hunt's in South West Surrey, or Grant Shapps' in Welyn Hatfield. It cannot be emphasised enough that the Tories could hold every single seat they have in the "red wall" and still lose their majority in London, the South-East, Scotland and Wales alone. And without a majority they will find themselves out of Government with no plausible partners.

Now for the differences. Australia has a preferential voting system which means in each constituency voters rank all candidates in order (and they have to rank *all* the candidates or their vote is invalid). This means that you avoid the problem of First Past the Post where a right-wing candidate can win if the larger left-wing vote is split, or vice versa. (NB: this is not a proportional system – the Greens, for instance, still win far fewer seats than votes – no single seat constituency system can be proportional).

In both Australia and England the "progressive" vote has splintered. Labor's first preferences went down in this election while the Greens and independents went up. Likewise here in the local elections Labour kept roughly the same number of seats in England, outside London, as last time but the Liberal Democrats and Greens saw big gains. Under a preferential system this isn't a problem – the aligned majority will win one way or the other. Here it requires tactical voting. There is some debate amongst progressives as to whether a formal pact between UK progressive parties would be desirable. My view is that it wouldn't, many voters would not like to see their choices limited, and the transferability of their preference taken for granted. The current approach of informal deals to target certain seats seems better. But it's certainly less efficient than the Australia system and could save the Tories a fair few seats.

Another big difference is the more direct impact of climate change in Australia. The terrible bushfires in 2019/20 were a trigger for heightened public concern and it doesn't seem coincidental that the Greens' big wins were in Brisbane given the flooding there earlier this year. Australia is also one of the highest emitters of carbon dioxide in the world. Here climate change has been slowly creeping up the priority list – it's now the fifth highest priority on the MORI "issue tracker" – and of course we have had major floods. But it's not quite such an immediate threat to life and property for most of the population.

So for these and other reasons we cannot, of course, assume that the UK will follow Australia. But I do think if the Tories continue on their current path of a standard Crosby-Textor run-in to the next election they will struggle badly in commuter-land around London and other major cities. The revolt of the gradate professionals is causing problems for the right everywhere and they don't seem to have figured out how to respond.

Worth noting that not only would the Tories do badly enough to lose in traditional seats like Esher, but they did worse than the national average in certain red wall areas too (not clear why so badly in some and not others - for example the North-East seems far less swing-y now than the North-West and Midlands).

I think looking at the local elections and current polling - they're at the level where they start getting clobbered everywhere, especially once you take into account tactical voting and the FPTP squeeze on small parties.

The wider thought that the other foot is starting to drop now - after two decades where the big story in British (and European) politics has been traditional working class areas moving away from their historic support for centre left parties, we may be in a new cycle of broadly liberal upper-middle class professionals moving away from their historic support for centre-right parties. It seems like the areas that care most about identity politics issues now are in Tory constituencies - in a way that is not helpful for them - while in the red wall and other areas they're getting smashed on the economy.

[Josquius]

This sounds like something that is a very flattering description of why Labour have failed for the last 12 years. "We were just too rational/systematic in our approach"

Especially given that I think the last 12 years have mainly been marked by Labour taking quite an emotional approach to politics. It's been high on moral outrage and "how do you sleep at night Prime Minister", "Tories are literal murderers" etc. I don't fully buy that Labour ("a moral crusade or nothing else") has been too rational and systematic in their thinking - if anything I think the opposite. They lost their head a bit and were only talking to people who already agreed with them. I remember the arguments about how Labour shouldn't even try to win any Tory voters

Edit: Or basically - all the stuff about Johnson permanently re-aligning politics, or normal rules not applying, or he's hacked politics I don't think are true. Similarly that there's too much insouciance/indifference/"lol nothing matters" is also not really true. This is really unusual (can't think of any other PM who's gone so low) - but also what you'd expect:

Oh labour have had other issues too for certain. To blame it entirely on "we just too smart!" is wishful thinking.
But I do think this is a key part of the realignment going on. It definitely lines up to look and say labours sensible brexit policy vs the tories screaming to just get it done.

I wouldn't agree labour go for the heart overly much. Though some on the left certainly do. Badly.

[Sheilbh]

Extraordinary use of the passive voice here

George Osborne
@George_Osborne
Wonderful to see the Elizabeth line open today. One of the first decisions in the Coalition 12 years ago was to build it - it was a close run thing: when budgets were being cut, it would have been easy to shelve something that hadn't been built. But long term thinking prevailed

In fairness to Osborne he did decide to keep HS2 and Crossrail when lots of Tory MPs wanted them cancelled; on the other hand he cancelled every other bit of capital spending so....

[Josquius]

On crossrail this triggered some concerns I have.

https://www.ft.com/content/4ccaa4a3-9b0c-4374-8433-f19fe8fd380a

I hope the headline is wrong. But there is a lot of political gains to be made there. False economies rule when it comes to appealing to voters

[Tamas]

Independent report on Partygate submitted to target of the report's investigation, who will decide if and when it gets published. Democracy and transparency at work.

[Sheilbh]

It's not an independent report.

But I think they have committed to publishing it (subject to redacting the names/personal data of staffers and civil servants). Given the six months of this story I don't think there is a chance that they could fiddle with or suppress the report without that fact and a full unredacted report leaking before the evening news

[Sheilbh]

And it was published an hour after Downing Street got it - doesn't look like there are any redactions (which makes sense - Sue Gray is known for being able to avoid freedom of information requests so I think she'd be pretty good at keeping GDPR issues out of her work). Johnson is, apparently, "humbled" and they have "learned our lesson", as the scorpion told the frog.

[Tamas]

And it was published an hour after Downing Street got it - doesn't look like there are any redactions (which makes sense - Sue Gray is known for being able to avoid freedom of information requests so I think she'd be pretty good at keeping GDPR issues out of her work). Johnson is, apparently, "humbled" and they have "learned our lesson", as the scorpion told the frog.

Good, we can finally put this behind us and continue into the challenges of this year with Boris at the helm.

[Sheilbh]

Via one journalist - perhaps the funniest:

Boris Johnson's PPS, Martin Reynolds, text to a special advisor the day after he organised garden drinks for 200 colleagues in May 2020 lockdown: "Best of luck - a complete non story but better than them focusing on our drinks (which we seem to have got away with)."

Really not helpful for the argument that they thought they were following the rules - especially because Reynolds was the guy who apparently decided for all internal events where they were allowed/compliant or not. Basically he was the clearing house because rules changed regularly, so everyone went to him for a ruling in Downing Street.

Of course Reynolds is a career civil servant so very difficult to fire. He's returned from Downing Street to the Foreign Office and is, reportedly, in line for an ambassadorship (he was previously deputy high commissioner to South Africa and ambassador to Libya). From what I've read he might be going as ambassador to Saudi. Although given this report and that he is in a senior leadership position I think it would probably be worth the civil service having a look at whether it's appropriate that he carries on in senior positions.

The karaoke party sounds big:

Karaoke party outside Simon Case's office on 18/06/20: "The event lasted for a number of hours. There was excessive alcohol consumption. By some individuals. One individual was sick. There was a minor altercation between two other individuals."

The last partygoer left at 3.13am

And - which makes me furious - there's this:

Gray made aware of "multiple examples of a lack of respect and poor treatment of security and cleaning staff. This was unacceptable."

There have been reports in the last day or two of security and cleaning staff telling people that what they were doing wasn't allowed and being mocked which is absolutely unacceptable and I don't care how junior they are anyone who did that should be fired. It's disgraceful.

And this from Gray seems pretty clear:

"The senior leadership at the centre, both political and official, must bear responsibility for this culture."

[Sheilbh]

Good, we can finally put this behind us and continue into the challenges of this year with Boris at the helm.

Maybe. My guess is still that's unlikely. I think Tory MPs will get the mood in their constituencies over the weekend - which won't be great - and unless they are thick as mince will realise this isn't over and even when it is over there'll be something else.

Not least because I still don't think it's over. The photos that have leaked over the last few days are not in the Gray report - so there are likely to be more leaks.

But also the Gray report didn't investigate the Abba party in the Downing Street flat after Cummings was fired, because it was in the private residence not the office bits of Downing Street. I don't think we've heard the last of this.

I also think the mistreating/disrespecting cleaning and security staff is something that is going to explode. It's not been a big part of the story so far - only reported in last couple of days - but now it's been reported I think that will get a lot of attention. You can sense that they're aware that's an issue because they've already said that in addition to Johnson will personally apologise to the cleaning and security teams. I think they're aware that strand hasn't been much discussed yet but could be really toxic.

Edit: And this is just off the photos that were published in the last couple of days, not the report - the public have made up their mind:

That 70% who think Johnson is breaking the rules includes a majority of Tory voters too. 

I think if Tory MPs think tis won't happen again, or it's all over, or the public have got over it - they're deluding themselves. And that may well be the case. They might stick with him until the autumn at which point it's probably too close to an election to change leader - but I've seen nothing in the polls to indicate that the public won't punish them heavily for that decision.

[Sheilbh]

Also apparently Sunak's announcing billions more spending for cost of living and a windfall tax on energy companies (both pushhed by Labour and resisted by the government for weeks). From Twitter it seems like this was Starmer's first question at PMQs: "What is it about the Sue Gray report that first attracted him to a U-turn this week?"

Edit: A clip:https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1529422444578185216?s=20&t=O3KGMVKMSpKDKuODGbgkgg

[Gups]

The photos that have leaked over the last few days are not in the Gray report

Thye are (the ITV ones anyway - I haven't seen others)

[Tamas]

On the topic of Britain fighting the battles of American politics, we have this front-page opinion peace on the Guardian:
"George Floyd's murder should have been a watershed, but Britain has learned nothing"

I mean, there's plenty of racism in the UK which should be addressed, but we do NOT have police officers gunning down black people as a matter of daily routine, and racism in Britain is of a different composition than the US, especially considering the sizeable Asian population. It feels like we should fight and address Britain-specific racism before we go and solve America's for them.