Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[mongers]

Shelf, what's you take on last night's 'leadership' debate, I recorded it, tried to watch it, gave up after 5 minutes went Truss started spouting some bullshit and though I have better things to do with my time. :-)

[Sheilbh]

Yeah. I think the BBC is pro-Tory has mainly been a lot of cope from the left. But I worry that the BBC is now getting attacked from both sides for not being "impartial" enough for them.

I agree on woke - especially with the cost of living crisis and I think there's a Tory MP/commentator bubble online that is going to hurt them in the long run.

And actually whether it's anti-lockdown, backing Johnson to the end or the push for Truss I'm really struck at how little impact the Mail and Telegraph are having. Always been a question of how much the press influence their readers v reflecting them - and at the minute those papers don't seem to be doing either.

[Sheilbh]

Shelf, what's you take on last night's 'leadership' debate, I recorded it, tried to watch it, gave up after 5 minutes went Truss started spouting some bullshit and though I have better things to do with my time. :-)

Didn't watch it. I was in Luton airport waiting for a very delayed flight watching the reaction online which was really divided/no consensus which is interesting.

My sense from the comments though was Mordaunt increased the worry that she's just a bit empty/pure PR (Johnson with good hair). Truss seemed to have a very, very bad night. Badenoch seemed to do okay - she's done what she set out to in this campaign I think. And Tugendhat did well but is a no hoper.

So I think, by process of elimination it was probably good for Sunak?

[Josquius]

It's very true.

In the US it's not true for CNN, MSNBC, all three networks, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post.  In the UK it's not true for the BBC, the Guardian, the Economist, and I imagine several more outlets that are not Murdoch owned.

Isn't Fox News the most viewed news station in the US by far? Murdoch's media is not the only one around, of course, but it's extremely well watched and read everywhere, and thus exerts plenty of influence over society. And it covers both high and low brow media, it owns at the same time The NY Post and the Wall Street Journal in the US, and The Sun and The Times in the UK. There's not really an equivalent on the other side of the spectrum.

As for the UK, please Brits correct me if I'm wrong, but the BBC has become much more pro-Tory in recent years, with some very partisan people in top jobs there. As for The Guardian and the Economist, they might be influential but they have more prestige than circulation.

Yep. Economist is tiny, not mainstream press at all and the BBC is moderately pro-conservative- at the very least one must admit their falling into the false equivalency trap favours the right far more often than it does the left- .
The Guardian and the Mirror are the only 2 left leaning papers left and they're vastly outnumbered in sales by the Murdoch press.

[Sheilbh]

I think that's really out of date and based on them as newspapers - most of those papers don't even report circulation figures any more because they're really bad and they'd all say the core business is digital now. We're in the early days of what that looks like.

The Guardian, Economist and FT(because of work digital subscriptions) are absolutely huge players - either because they have a lot of online subscribers, or because they've stuck with an open web model. Just look at this thread - I'd be willing to bet something like 95% of the articles are from the Guardian because it's not got a paywall. The Guardian is one of the most visited English language sites in the world and I think internally they probably see their competitors as the Wash Post and NYT, not the Telegraph and Times.

I think if anything our media discourse has started and is drifting left because the Guardian doesn't have a paywall while the Times and Telegraph do, it is easier to share more widely. I think it also plays into perceptions and discourse of people outside looking at the UK.

Plus the failure of the right wing press on covid, Johnson and Truss. I think their influence is vastly overestimated - but it's overestimated by other people in the media and in politics (perhaps especially Johnson) so it has an outsized influence that does not align (yet) with its more diminished popularity/ability to form public opinion.

[Gups]

I'd say the Times leans left. Certainly very anti-Tory. Not the Sunday Times though.

[Tamas]

What would be good for Labour to do is to ignore all the "anti-woke" nonsense being (and will be) spouted -assuming it remains nonsensical ramblings and won't be leaning toward action to reduce rights of course - and focus on cost of living and the state of the economy. I know that's a bit difficult because we pretend the B word never happened, but still should be doable. Creating imaginary battlefields where they can self-declare victory is a prime tool of populists so let's not give them the gift of enabling that.

[Josquius]

What would be good for Labour to do is to ignore all the "anti-woke" nonsense being (and will be) spouted -assuming it remains nonsensical ramblings and won't be leaning toward action to reduce rights of course - and focus on cost of living and the state of the economy. I know that's a bit difficult because we pretend the B word never happened, but still should be doable. Creating imaginary battlefields where they can self-declare victory is a prime tool of populists so let's not give them the gift of enabling that.

Agreed. Engaging on this shit is letting the tories chose the battlefield.
The trouble is when questions around this stuff gets sprung on labour and its hard to just weasel out and talk about the economy. A lot of it is easier said than done.

I think that's really out of date and based on them as newspapers - most of those papers don't even report circulation figures any more because they're really bad and they'd all say the core business is digital now. We're in the early days of what that looks like.

The Guardian, Economist and FT(because of work digital subscriptions) are absolutely huge players - either because they have a lot of online subscribers, or because they've stuck with an open web model. Just look at this thread - I'd be willing to bet something like 95% of the articles are from the Guardian because it's not got a paywall. The Guardian is one of the most visited English language sites in the world and I think internally they probably see their competitors as the Wash Post and NYT, not the Telegraph and Times.

I think if anything our media discourse has started and is drifting left because the Guardian doesn't have a paywall while the Times and Telegraph do, it is easier to share more widely. I think it also plays into perceptions and discourse of people outside looking at the UK.

Plus the failure of the right wing press on covid, Johnson and Truss. I think their influence is vastly overestimated - but it's overestimated by other people in the media and in politics (perhaps especially Johnson) so it has an outsized influence that does not align (yet) with its more diminished popularity/ability to form public opinion.

I would agree if things stay as they are the guardian with its open model will gain dominance.
Though very debatable whether they'll be able to keep going like so.

But I don't think we are there yet. Large numbers of papers are still sold to older people, the groups more likely to vote, thus they have an outsized influence.

Also worth considering social media as well as the mainstream media. A LOT of right wing radicalisation is going on out there. Practically any local fb group around the country is a haven for it.

[Sheilbh]

Maybe but practically the right wing press were really lockdown/covid restriction sceptics - the public weren't (and the most supportive were older people likely to buy those papers and vote Tory). The papers were very keen to "move on"/trivialise the parties story - and had no impact. They pushed a "what on earth are they doing line" about the Johnson ouster but 60%+ of the public and 50%+ of Tory voters supported it. Similarly they are trying to make Truss a thing and failing.

I think any conversation about the role of the media has to account for their pretty catastrophic failures in shifting public opinion even among readers in recent years - though they still influence other elites (like MPs, the media etc) who think they matter.

[Admiral Yi]

Yep. Economist is tiny, not mainstream press at all and the BBC is moderately pro-conservative- at the very least one must admit their falling into the false equivalency trap favours the right far more often than it does the left- .
The Guardian and the Mirror are the only 2 left leaning papers left and they're vastly outnumbered in sales by the Murdoch press.

"Moderately pro conservative," in addition to being disputed, is not equivalent to "owned by conservative oligarchs."

@Larch: Fox brags about being the #1 *cable news network.* That doesn't make it most of on air media.

[Gups]

Maybe but practically the right wing press were really lockdown/covid restriction sceptics - the public weren't (and the most supportive were older people likely to buy those papers and vote Tory). The papers were very keen to "move on"/trivialise the parties story - and had no impact. They pushed a "what on earth are they doing line" about the Johnson ouster but 60%+ of the public and 50%+ of Tory voters supported it. Similarly they are trying to make Truss a thing and failing.

I think any conversation about the role of the media has to account for their pretty catastrophic failures in shifting public opinion even among readers in recent years - though they still influence other elites (like MPs, the media etc) who think they matter.

The press retain a useful role in providing an explanation for liberals for why lots of people disagree with them even though they are so obviously right.

[Jacob]

"Moderately pro conservative," in addition to being disputed, is not equivalent to "owned by conservative oligarchs."

Okay, point conceded.

[Sheilbh]

In relation to Josq and Sheilbh being totally meh about the prospect of Scottish independence: I am listening to the Rest of History podcast on the ACW, with 3 British historians being absolutely flabbergasted at why the North didn't just let the South go.

I basically agree with Jake - it's fine to force a part of your country to stay if they're leaving to do slavery. But if people don't want to be part of a country, I can't see why you'd otherwise force them - let them go 

Broadly my view for UK, Canada, Spain, China, Denmark and wherever else.

[garbon]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/17/give-me-a-pale-male-prime-minister-with-great-policies-over-diverse-one-reinforcing-inequality

Give me a pale male PM with great policies over a 'diverse' one reinforcing inequality

...

What is striking about the Tory change is that it has turned the normal diversity pyramid on its head. In most organisations, minorities are concentrated at the bottom, and get increasingly rarer the further up the organisational ladder we look, until at the very top diversity is almost nonexistent.

Not so with the Tories. The top echelon of the party – the cabinet – contains a far higher proportion of minorities than the lower rungs. Tory voters are disproportionately white – just 20% of minorities voted Conservative in 2019 and 97% of its membership is white, as are 94% of its MPs. Yet until the recent mass resignations, seven out of 32 cabinet posts were held by ethnic minorities.

More than 20 years ago, the political scientist Shamit Saggar told a BBC documentary that the Labour party had "fostered a mentality that black and Asian candidates are only suitable ... in such inner city areas containing large numbers of minority voters". Many, though certainly not all, minority Labour MPs had won their spurs as "community leaders", and many were beholden to machine politics for their success.

Saggar feared that this would lead to the view that "same-ethnicity candidates are by definition a good thing. That whites will be represented by whites and non-whites by non-white voters." Where, he asked, "does that then leave the aspiring black or Asian candidate who seeks to represent constituencies that are predominantly white in terms of their social makeup?"

For some, the answer has been in the Tory party. Many Tory minority MPs represent largely white rural constituencies or small towns: Rishi Sunak in Richmond, Yorkshire; Kemi Badenoch in Saffron Walden, Essex; Priti Patel in Witham, Essex; Nadhim Zahawi in Stratford-on-Avon. Racism, especially hostility to Muslims, is still an issue within the Tory party; nevertheless the relationship between black and Asian Tory MPs and party members and Tory voters has been forged as much through class and ideology as through race and ethnicity.

For many on the left, part of the shock at the number of Tory minority candidates derives from a sense of affront that black or Asian people should be drawn to such a party. "The very concept" of "a black or Asian person leading the Conservative party" was for many, the journalist Nadine White suggested, "diametrically opposed to the party's core values".

It's a claim not just about the core values of the Tory party but also about what should be the values of black and Asian people, a sense that for minorities to join the ranks of the Tories, let alone to lead the party, is almost to betray their identity.

Yet, black and Asian communities are as diverse as white communities, and as the nation. Sunak or Badenoch are no more betraying "their" communities than Boris Johnson or Penny Mordaunt are betraying the "white" community. It has been one of the major problems of the left to view values too often through the lens of identity.

If the diversity debate reveals the degree to which Britain has changed (as well as the degree to which some seem blind to those changes), it reveals, too, the problem with too great an obsession with diversity. Too often, diversity has become an end in itself rather than a snapshot that might tell us something about the direction in which a society is going.

It is good that national institutions reflect the diversity of the nation. Yet the focus on ethnic and gender diversity often obscures the fact that there is little diversity when it comes to class. Our understanding of "diversity" is itself not very diverse.

And while a black or Asian prime minister would be a historic first, and symbolic of a more relaxed, liberal society, I would rather have a pale, male prime minister who I knew would jettison austerity policies, create a fairer tax system, defend abortion rights, restore trade union power, abandon the Rwanda deportation scheme, take a robust stance on free speech and have a decent plan for social care than someone who might enlarge the diversity spectrum but would rehash the same policies that have helped create the Britain we have today – stalked by stagnation and inequality.

It is the policies that matter, whoever delivers them.

[Sheilbh]

Interesting piece and lots I agree with, similarly I think there's good points here:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/15/next-pm-ethnic-minority-labour-keir-starmer?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Particularly in relation to Labour which is where most of my frustration is. I think there are things to learn from the Tories on this - sad as that is.