The dominance of the Corbynites on the Labour party's National Executive Committee (NEC), achieved this week, and the already-begun expected (at least by some of us) purge of what are termed 'moderates', are leading to the party's ultimate demise.
What I have read was an 11% vote for Jon Lansman (head of the Corbyn-supporting Momentum organisation) and two other 'Corbynistas' has resulted in their faction now running the NEC – and indeed purging of anyone who is not of their mind has already started from at least one key position, just a day later.
None of this comes as any surprise, as it has been easy to see where the party has been heading for some time. I might hold the record for being the first to predict all of this, which I have been doing ever since Ed{ward} Miliband became the Labour leader almost two-thirds of a decade ago. Back then, I initially predicted that within half a decade or so, the party would reach a point from which it could never return, and it would start to become more obvious to all that it was on its way to extinction within a few years after that.
To the political geeks who would listen, I also disclosed that the psychology and structural make-up of the party meant that this was inevitable, and the point of no return had effectively been reached at that time. I don't think they believed me…
Actually, by last March, even The Guardian had learned of a plot by Momentum and the UNITE union to take over control of Labour.
The present situation has been made comparatively easy by what appears to have been almost complete inaction on the part of the so-called 'moderates' within the party, including and most especially its elected members in the House of Commons – its MPs. It is now being suggested by concerned people that they leave the Labour party and stand as Independents at the next election. They are just about certain to be de-selected as candidates anyway – something that has this week been threatened, and that we really knew would happen if we were honest with ourselves.
This, though, would fragment them into non-entities without a party machine to campaign for them, so they'd be unlikely to win the seats and there'd be no full-on manifesto to give them even an election campaign firm foundation. They could form a new party or similar but less formalised entity with common goals and its own manifesto, but that could be difficult to achieve and it'd need to establish its credentials over a period of years.
I have a better idea. When we had a not dissimilar situation in the country around thirty years ago, when Militant were trying to dominate Labour, a 'gang of four' broke away from the party and set up the centrist Social Democrat Party (SDP) which many disaffected Labour members joined and supported for many years. Some went with it in the subsequent merger with the Liberal Party when the Liberal Democrats were formed, a (much) smaller number stayed with an ongoing SDP.
Interestingly, a similar phenomenon to that divide occurred with the old Tory Party in the 19th century when it officially ceased to exist upon the formation of the Conservative Party – but some of the party faithful kept it going for decades.
Similarly, the SDP is still around, and seems to have been quietly waiting in the wings for a suitable time for its re-emergence. It is strongly pro-Brexit, so would certainly seem to be an ideal new home for Leave-favouring displaced Labour MPs, councillors and ordinary members. Remainers might not be so keen, depending on how their feelings weigh up between Brexit and having a Commons presence.
I suspect that there are enough Labour moderates to make such a move to this new home work – just as it did to a considerable degree last time round. The advantage this time is that there would be fewer seats to contest, rather that the SDP's full slate approach back in the 'eighties. At that time they were winning almost as many votes as Labour, but getting only a small fraction of their number of seats as the SDP vote was too thinly spread – something that afflicts the successor Lib Dems to this day.
For the next General Election, the campaigning would be limited to (probably) around 250 seats, which should be sufficient to tip the balance even the first time (presumably May 2022) and get at least some of the SDP candidates elected. It might not be very many on that occasion, but it would be a much greater success story than (say) UKIP and the Greens have ever had, and perhaps better than the Lib Dems' wins on that day.
I think it could work!
Showing posts with label labour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label labour. Show all posts
Wednesday, 17 January 2018
Sunday, 24 September 2017
Uber going Unter?
The current controversy in London regarding the new ban of the Uber taxi service stems from a complex scenario that isn't as black-and-white as might be convenient to some.
It has become evident over the years that there are some taxi drivers who commit serious criminal acts against their passengers, particularly (it seems) if they are lone females, especially younger ones. The exact distribution and intensity of these across the various service providers is multi-dimensional, so it is very easy for someone with a specific agenda to select the statistics that suit that person't argument.
Overall, though, the app-based Uber service has been shown to be more reliable, trackable and documented in a way that reduces the risks in a way that other such service providers do not and (currently) cannot equal. Does this make it infallible? No: but it is reportedly a lot better than the alternatives. It has a solid user-base of several million customers.
The seemingly sudden ban by London (Labour) Mayor Sadiq Khan on continuing Uber's licence to operate in London turns out to be a poor response to what has (I am informed by those in the know) become a significantly improved reputation by Uber. In other words: "You're getter better, better than the others in fact, so now we are going to ban you!"
Is this because Sadiq Khan wishes to pander to lower quality and hates the raising of standards? Well, that's possible – but it now seems almost certain that this was a mainly (if not entirely) political and self-serving move by the London mayor, as he is significantly dependent upon the Black Cab fraternity and their votes, as well as those of their supporting Trades Union. A number of reputable commentators have already looked into this and come to that very same conclusion.
Now, as a non-user of Uber myself, even when I am in London (e.g. at my late father's house), and without having the necessary smart 'phone to be able to access Uber, I have no personal axe to grind on this issue. Therefore I present just some aspects of this that are troubling. There are others as well, that I have not covered here, but the above is the crux, I believe.
It has become evident over the years that there are some taxi drivers who commit serious criminal acts against their passengers, particularly (it seems) if they are lone females, especially younger ones. The exact distribution and intensity of these across the various service providers is multi-dimensional, so it is very easy for someone with a specific agenda to select the statistics that suit that person't argument.
Overall, though, the app-based Uber service has been shown to be more reliable, trackable and documented in a way that reduces the risks in a way that other such service providers do not and (currently) cannot equal. Does this make it infallible? No: but it is reportedly a lot better than the alternatives. It has a solid user-base of several million customers.
The seemingly sudden ban by London (Labour) Mayor Sadiq Khan on continuing Uber's licence to operate in London turns out to be a poor response to what has (I am informed by those in the know) become a significantly improved reputation by Uber. In other words: "You're getter better, better than the others in fact, so now we are going to ban you!"
Is this because Sadiq Khan wishes to pander to lower quality and hates the raising of standards? Well, that's possible – but it now seems almost certain that this was a mainly (if not entirely) political and self-serving move by the London mayor, as he is significantly dependent upon the Black Cab fraternity and their votes, as well as those of their supporting Trades Union. A number of reputable commentators have already looked into this and come to that very same conclusion.
Now, as a non-user of Uber myself, even when I am in London (e.g. at my late father's house), and without having the necessary smart 'phone to be able to access Uber, I have no personal axe to grind on this issue. Therefore I present just some aspects of this that are troubling. There are others as well, that I have not covered here, but the above is the crux, I believe.
Friday, 30 June 2017
Licensed Violence
The removal of the 'non-violence' rule by the Corbyn/Labour-supporting Momentum political movement is just the (predictable) next stage in what I have long thought was their always-intended move
toward totalitarianism.
Students of twentieth-century history will be aware of the route taken in various other countries toward 'socialist revolution' and its eventual destination, and will no doubt spot the parallels. Those readers who have been following my writings here and elsewhere will also be aware that I have been expecting all of this – and worse to come – for quite a few years now, long preceding the advent of Momentum. They are just the vehicle: the plan has been there all along.
Indeed, I am surprised it took them this long to become sufficiently bold and confident that they felt they could now make this change to their rules: they no longer need the veneer of apparent respectability, as their support is large enough and solid enough. Not that the rule would ever stopped them anyway, one might surmise from media reports and other factors, but I can well imagine that they had to at least appear to be a peaceful movement while they were still building up their numbers.
Now the gloves can come off formally: they have effectively licensed violence.
Students of twentieth-century history will be aware of the route taken in various other countries toward 'socialist revolution' and its eventual destination, and will no doubt spot the parallels. Those readers who have been following my writings here and elsewhere will also be aware that I have been expecting all of this – and worse to come – for quite a few years now, long preceding the advent of Momentum. They are just the vehicle: the plan has been there all along.
Indeed, I am surprised it took them this long to become sufficiently bold and confident that they felt they could now make this change to their rules: they no longer need the veneer of apparent respectability, as their support is large enough and solid enough. Not that the rule would ever stopped them anyway, one might surmise from media reports and other factors, but I can well imagine that they had to at least appear to be a peaceful movement while they were still building up their numbers.
Now the gloves can come off formally: they have effectively licensed violence.
The exact timing of this rule change is significant, though, inasmuch as it almost
immediately precedes their next 'street action' which I gather is
planned for this coming weekend – so expect an upping of the ante on
this occasion. I am anticipating the most severe rioting we have
seen in this country for many a year, unless the police have devised (and can implement) a clever
enough strategy to be able to nip it all in the bud on the day.
From here on in it all escalates in the now near-desperate effort to foment sufficient civil unrest to achieve the next steps along the road to ultimate totalitarianism here in Britain: civil war and the introduction of martial law in order to subdue and control the population.
From here on in it all escalates in the now near-desperate effort to foment sufficient civil unrest to achieve the next steps along the road to ultimate totalitarianism here in Britain: civil war and the introduction of martial law in order to subdue and control the population.
Sunday, 11 June 2017
It's All About The Sales Pitch
Although, in this General Election, I hadn't expected such a large chunk of the UKIP vote to switch to Labour (thus defeating their own professed key policy's safety), especially in the south, the outcome wasn't something I had not foreseen as a – hopefully remote – possibility. The strong mobilisation of the so-called 'youth vote' was another factor that shifted the dynamics significantly.
As ever, Labour were largely reliant on the 'freebies for the many' bribery technique that has long served them so well when dealing with the (sadly) gullible masses – and millions fell for it, as they always do. This is the 'sales pitch' that a Labour government will give you all that you seek in life, gladly handed out free of charge by the State. As long as someone else is described as paying for it (even though that is nearly always a falsehood) they are happy to go along with it.
Of course it's all nonsense; but that doesn't register with those millions of voters, either now or ever in the past. That is why the technique is still prevalent with the Labour party in particular: it works!
It is, nevertheless, salutary to note that despite all of this, and despite a poorly-devised Conservative manifesto and a lacklustre campaign, Labour still lost this election and ended up a long way short of a majority. Indeed, the Conservative vote count went up significantly since two years ago, even though it didn't translate ideally into seats in this starkly two-party election in which every other party fell by the wayside as essentially irrelevant.
As usual, my longer-term prediction is that our new path will converge on where we would have been anyway, some fifteen years hence. It will just be a much more bumpy ride than it needed to be…
As ever, Labour were largely reliant on the 'freebies for the many' bribery technique that has long served them so well when dealing with the (sadly) gullible masses – and millions fell for it, as they always do. This is the 'sales pitch' that a Labour government will give you all that you seek in life, gladly handed out free of charge by the State. As long as someone else is described as paying for it (even though that is nearly always a falsehood) they are happy to go along with it.
Of course it's all nonsense; but that doesn't register with those millions of voters, either now or ever in the past. That is why the technique is still prevalent with the Labour party in particular: it works!
It is, nevertheless, salutary to note that despite all of this, and despite a poorly-devised Conservative manifesto and a lacklustre campaign, Labour still lost this election and ended up a long way short of a majority. Indeed, the Conservative vote count went up significantly since two years ago, even though it didn't translate ideally into seats in this starkly two-party election in which every other party fell by the wayside as essentially irrelevant.
As usual, my longer-term prediction is that our new path will converge on where we would have been anyway, some fifteen years hence. It will just be a much more bumpy ride than it needed to be…
Sunday, 14 May 2017
Local Diversity Representation
Phew! That's a bit of a mouthful; but the other title I came up with was probably too jokey: "Diversity isn't where a Welsh poet lives" (Dai Verse city.)
Anyway, the purpose of this post is to look at my local elected Council and see how it measures up in regards to gender mix and ethnic diversity. It's only because Labour have for years attempted to 'weaponise' these topics – as we have all witnessed when they fling labels around such as 'sexist!' and 'racist!' (the exclamation marks have in effect part of the word) – so I wondered how the party groups were doing in these two respects, partly as a break from all the current General Election activity. In particular: have Labour put their money where their mouth is, so to speak?
Because we have had so many changes over the years, including several party defections and a few by-elections – even since the last local elections just two years ago – the only sensible way to tackle this is to look at the state of the party groups as they are today (there are no Independents) which means just Conservatives, Labour and UKIP. I found this council web-page useful for reference.
First, the gender mix: here are the numbers of male (M) and female (F) councillors in each party group, followed in each case by the percentage female…
Conservatives (38) – 28 (M); 10 (F); 26% F
Labour (15) – 9 (M); 6 (F); 40% F
UKIP (2) – 2 (M); 0 (F); 0% F
Overall (55) – 39 (M); 16 (F); 29% F
Okay: that's not bad for Labour, actually, and okay for the Conservatives – though those who are avid 'equality' freaks will no doubt be less pleased. Personally, I have never been concerned about these matters – which is probably why it has taken me so many years to post about this! It was actually inspired by something I read about Emmanuel Macron's mostly-white campaign team just minutes before I started writing this; also because of the 'diversity' theme of tonight's Eurovision Song Contest – which was presented by three white males, by the way…
Right: on to ethnic mix now. It's the same style of tabulation for this, with (W) meaning 'white' and (E) standing for 'ethnic', as these are the preferred terms, as I understand the thinking to be this week. No doubt it will change soon enough(!)
Conservatives (38) – 33 (W); 5 (E); 13% E
Labour (15) – 14 (W); 1 (E); 7% E
UKIP (2) – 2 (W); 0 (E); 0% E
Overall (55) – 49 (W); 6 (E); 11% E
Poor UKIP really don't have enough members to do much about their participation in this diversity exercise – and to be fair to them, when they did have three members (up until several months ago) the third was at least female. Labour, though, are sadly lacking here – and they are the ones who kick up a fuss about these things. Next time they do so, feel free to fling this back at them!
Though there isn't any completely up-to-date census data on this, I think the overall figure is roughly proportional to the mix in our local population of some quarter of a million souls, perhaps a fraction high if anything.
Whether this exercise will prove to have been of any value or not remains to be seen – but at least we have the information on record in a form that might come in handy for future reference purposes.
Anyway, the purpose of this post is to look at my local elected Council and see how it measures up in regards to gender mix and ethnic diversity. It's only because Labour have for years attempted to 'weaponise' these topics – as we have all witnessed when they fling labels around such as 'sexist!' and 'racist!' (the exclamation marks have in effect part of the word) – so I wondered how the party groups were doing in these two respects, partly as a break from all the current General Election activity. In particular: have Labour put their money where their mouth is, so to speak?
Because we have had so many changes over the years, including several party defections and a few by-elections – even since the last local elections just two years ago – the only sensible way to tackle this is to look at the state of the party groups as they are today (there are no Independents) which means just Conservatives, Labour and UKIP. I found this council web-page useful for reference.
First, the gender mix: here are the numbers of male (M) and female (F) councillors in each party group, followed in each case by the percentage female…
Conservatives (38) – 28 (M); 10 (F); 26% F
Labour (15) – 9 (M); 6 (F); 40% F
UKIP (2) – 2 (M); 0 (F); 0% F
Overall (55) – 39 (M); 16 (F); 29% F
Okay: that's not bad for Labour, actually, and okay for the Conservatives – though those who are avid 'equality' freaks will no doubt be less pleased. Personally, I have never been concerned about these matters – which is probably why it has taken me so many years to post about this! It was actually inspired by something I read about Emmanuel Macron's mostly-white campaign team just minutes before I started writing this; also because of the 'diversity' theme of tonight's Eurovision Song Contest – which was presented by three white males, by the way…
Right: on to ethnic mix now. It's the same style of tabulation for this, with (W) meaning 'white' and (E) standing for 'ethnic', as these are the preferred terms, as I understand the thinking to be this week. No doubt it will change soon enough(!)
Conservatives (38) – 33 (W); 5 (E); 13% E
Labour (15) – 14 (W); 1 (E); 7% E
UKIP (2) – 2 (W); 0 (E); 0% E
Overall (55) – 49 (W); 6 (E); 11% E
Poor UKIP really don't have enough members to do much about their participation in this diversity exercise – and to be fair to them, when they did have three members (up until several months ago) the third was at least female. Labour, though, are sadly lacking here – and they are the ones who kick up a fuss about these things. Next time they do so, feel free to fling this back at them!
Though there isn't any completely up-to-date census data on this, I think the overall figure is roughly proportional to the mix in our local population of some quarter of a million souls, perhaps a fraction high if anything.
Whether this exercise will prove to have been of any value or not remains to be seen – but at least we have the information on record in a form that might come in handy for future reference purposes.
Friday, 12 May 2017
Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
As many of those folk who have known me for a long time, and especially in close-up, will already know, I am a very strong believer in a healthy democracy. This needs at least two (but hopefully not too many) political parties with credible policies and a reasonable hope of being elected to government.
We have increasingly lacked that proper structure here in Britain, which is why I have (as many readers will be aware) been playing a small part in trying to fix the issue. For the past nearly seven years this has meant trying to find a replacement main opposition party to the Conservatives – whose ongoing tenure in government seemed to me assured for many years to come – in the knowledge that Labour were going to more or less destroy themselves in about half a dozen years.
As I told people in the second half of 2010 and later, I knew that Labour had set themselves upon an irreversible path to their own demise once they had installed Ed[ward] Miliband as their party leader – though I doubt any of them believed me back then. The party was turning to the left, and then some. Now, of course, those people perhaps understand at least something of why I made that bold claim, and with such conviction.
Fast-forward to today and what do we find?
Labour continued to turn leftward, eventually and inevitably installing the real party-killer (Ed-M was just the catalyst that made it not only possible, but just about unavoidable) Jeremy Corbyn. It had to happen. Equally predictably, this move allowed the ever-lurking out-and-out Communists to infiltrate and dominate the party, using the movement they created called Momentum. Their long-awaited day had come!
Thus today's Labour party has become the wolf in sheep's clothing, and is busy transforming the party from within. The parliamentary party has, as they'd have expected, become a serious problem, because of all those pesky 'moderate', 'Blairite' or 'blue Labour' MPs as the current leadership (and especially Momentum) brands them.
Thus we are seeing a number of more 'suitable' candidates for the upcoming General Election being parachuted in to safe Labour seats, while the less safe seats are becoming more marginal in the present political climate so will probably be voted out of office anyway – not a significant issue, then.
The Labour party manifesto for this election reads like something that wouldn't have gone amiss in former Communist East Germany – and its supposedly draft version was leaked to two news outlets so that it became in effect de facto policy. As I posted on social media less than a day ago, the idea was to make it effectively impossible for the party to materially change anything – and indeed at the meeting to discuss any such changes that was held later in the day, it was reported as just 'tinkering' and making no substantive alterations.
Thus the Corbynite faction have what they have sought all along: the leader they wanted, the now-official policies they wanted, and their own/preferred people forming a majority of their parliamentary party a month from now.
This was the real reason they embraced the 'snap' election so readily: not to win it (they knew that wasn't possible) but to transform Labour into a genuine Communist Party disguised as something else, even if the camouflage isn't exactly fooling most people. Still, they have enough supporters for their needs, considerable evidence of which I continually find in various places.
Such a wolf can never again be a suitable alternative party to the Conservatives. As I said seven years ago, Labour had set itself upon a one-way street to destruction: there can be no way back. Perhaps, as some have surmised, they will split as they once did when the SDP was formed by 'the Gang of Four' more than a generation ago. If so, though, it will be for the same actual reason (i.e. not the public face) which will be currently-elected members seeking to avoid losing their seats – self-interest, in other words, so this would not make a breakaway party trustworthy.
With UKIP now losing support hugely, the party falling apart internally (which has been going on for some time now) and rapidly becoming a 'dead end', as I labelled them a few years back; the Greens continuing to fool nobody so with barely three percent support; and a slowly resurgent Liberal Democrat party as the only other even vaguely realistic alternatives; it is the last of these that – for all its faults – looks like being the only conceivable future opposition party out of those currently in existence.
What about possible new parties, though?
The wealthy UKIP financial supporter Arron Banks has been rumoured to be creating a new party, a kind of UKIP Mk 2 that is provisionally being called "The Patriotic Alliance" – but all has gone very quiet on that front for the past two months; i.e. from well before the snap election was called, so the current hiatus wasn't caused by that.
So, in conclusion, what we expect to happen in the next few months? Theresa May's Conservatives look set for a landslide win in next month's General Election. After that, Labour might or might not split, Arron Banks' new party might or might not be launched, and the Lib Dems might or might not continue to climb up the pecking order. It looks like interesting times ahead!
We have increasingly lacked that proper structure here in Britain, which is why I have (as many readers will be aware) been playing a small part in trying to fix the issue. For the past nearly seven years this has meant trying to find a replacement main opposition party to the Conservatives – whose ongoing tenure in government seemed to me assured for many years to come – in the knowledge that Labour were going to more or less destroy themselves in about half a dozen years.
As I told people in the second half of 2010 and later, I knew that Labour had set themselves upon an irreversible path to their own demise once they had installed Ed[ward] Miliband as their party leader – though I doubt any of them believed me back then. The party was turning to the left, and then some. Now, of course, those people perhaps understand at least something of why I made that bold claim, and with such conviction.
Fast-forward to today and what do we find?
Labour continued to turn leftward, eventually and inevitably installing the real party-killer (Ed-M was just the catalyst that made it not only possible, but just about unavoidable) Jeremy Corbyn. It had to happen. Equally predictably, this move allowed the ever-lurking out-and-out Communists to infiltrate and dominate the party, using the movement they created called Momentum. Their long-awaited day had come!
Thus today's Labour party has become the wolf in sheep's clothing, and is busy transforming the party from within. The parliamentary party has, as they'd have expected, become a serious problem, because of all those pesky 'moderate', 'Blairite' or 'blue Labour' MPs as the current leadership (and especially Momentum) brands them.
Thus we are seeing a number of more 'suitable' candidates for the upcoming General Election being parachuted in to safe Labour seats, while the less safe seats are becoming more marginal in the present political climate so will probably be voted out of office anyway – not a significant issue, then.
The Labour party manifesto for this election reads like something that wouldn't have gone amiss in former Communist East Germany – and its supposedly draft version was leaked to two news outlets so that it became in effect de facto policy. As I posted on social media less than a day ago, the idea was to make it effectively impossible for the party to materially change anything – and indeed at the meeting to discuss any such changes that was held later in the day, it was reported as just 'tinkering' and making no substantive alterations.
Thus the Corbynite faction have what they have sought all along: the leader they wanted, the now-official policies they wanted, and their own/preferred people forming a majority of their parliamentary party a month from now.
This was the real reason they embraced the 'snap' election so readily: not to win it (they knew that wasn't possible) but to transform Labour into a genuine Communist Party disguised as something else, even if the camouflage isn't exactly fooling most people. Still, they have enough supporters for their needs, considerable evidence of which I continually find in various places.
Such a wolf can never again be a suitable alternative party to the Conservatives. As I said seven years ago, Labour had set itself upon a one-way street to destruction: there can be no way back. Perhaps, as some have surmised, they will split as they once did when the SDP was formed by 'the Gang of Four' more than a generation ago. If so, though, it will be for the same actual reason (i.e. not the public face) which will be currently-elected members seeking to avoid losing their seats – self-interest, in other words, so this would not make a breakaway party trustworthy.
With UKIP now losing support hugely, the party falling apart internally (which has been going on for some time now) and rapidly becoming a 'dead end', as I labelled them a few years back; the Greens continuing to fool nobody so with barely three percent support; and a slowly resurgent Liberal Democrat party as the only other even vaguely realistic alternatives; it is the last of these that – for all its faults – looks like being the only conceivable future opposition party out of those currently in existence.
What about possible new parties, though?
The wealthy UKIP financial supporter Arron Banks has been rumoured to be creating a new party, a kind of UKIP Mk 2 that is provisionally being called "The Patriotic Alliance" – but all has gone very quiet on that front for the past two months; i.e. from well before the snap election was called, so the current hiatus wasn't caused by that.
So, in conclusion, what we expect to happen in the next few months? Theresa May's Conservatives look set for a landslide win in next month's General Election. After that, Labour might or might not split, Arron Banks' new party might or might not be launched, and the Lib Dems might or might not continue to climb up the pecking order. It looks like interesting times ahead!
Saturday, 4 March 2017
Social Engineering Revisited
This post augments the one I wrote on this topic a few weeks ago, and re-iterates part of that post, leading onto a third part soon...
One oddity in my locality is a council ward currently called Rochester East. Part of this was formerly the smaller ward of Troy Town, and it is there that the uncharacteristic proliferation of social housing is to be found. This view from Google Maps shows where much of this is situated.
The main chunks are the two paired long blocks running between Cossack Street and Princes Street (Glovers Mill and Burritt Mews) and the 'chunky' blocks between them (Hussar House and Lancer House), also much of John Street and Hoopers Road. There are a lot of Labour voters living in those places, unsurprisingly when one looks at their nature and pays attention when passing through – which I have done many times.
The origin of all this goes back primarily to the 1980s when the then council leadership (Labour at the time) arranged for all this to be built, in order to skew the demographics of what was an essentially Conservative-supporting area. It does seem very much out of place in that part of the world – but it did work.It gave Labour a permanent and highly strategic foothold in urban Rochester.
When I was first elected to Medway Council nearly seventeen years ago, Troy Town was indeed represented by Labour councillors, even though other parts of Rochester were Conservative. Now, it wasn't always quite as clear-cut as that, for historic reasons from before I moved to Kent and which I have never been able to get to the heart of dependably, only conflicting anecdotal material being offered; so I am now sticking with the period I know personally.
Anyway, even with ward boundary changes a few years after the Unitary Authority came into being, what then became part of Rochester East ward has consistently swung it for Labour, even when other seats they held in the wider Rochester & Strood parliamentary constituency area came and went (in Strood North and Strood South wards, for example) – and they are now the only two Labour-held seats out of the twenty-two in that constituency.
That is highly significant. Without the social engineering of some three decades ago, they wouldn't even have those two council seats. The demographic slant also helped them at parliamentary election level, though never enough to make an actual switch: it was only Tony Blair winning (and John Major losing) in 1997 that ensured that the Medway area had three Labour Members of Parliament from that time.
Actually, it is just two-and-a-half MPs, as one of the constituencies (Chatham & Aylesford) was and is only half in the Medway council area.
Anyway, this does show what goes on in politics and why it is done (because it works!) Any party can do this when it has the power to do so; but it is only Labour who drag whole areas downward for their own power-lust purposes, as is of course a very old story nationally. I think the practice first came to public attention back in the mid 'sixties, though I was too young at the time to fully appreciate what was going on.
The modern-day context is Labour's 'Refugees welcome' initiative, which leads into a whole new story for which the background information in this post will aid understanding. It is, though, a separate story, which I intend to tackle here soon...
One oddity in my locality is a council ward currently called Rochester East. Part of this was formerly the smaller ward of Troy Town, and it is there that the uncharacteristic proliferation of social housing is to be found. This view from Google Maps shows where much of this is situated.
The main chunks are the two paired long blocks running between Cossack Street and Princes Street (Glovers Mill and Burritt Mews) and the 'chunky' blocks between them (Hussar House and Lancer House), also much of John Street and Hoopers Road. There are a lot of Labour voters living in those places, unsurprisingly when one looks at their nature and pays attention when passing through – which I have done many times.
The origin of all this goes back primarily to the 1980s when the then council leadership (Labour at the time) arranged for all this to be built, in order to skew the demographics of what was an essentially Conservative-supporting area. It does seem very much out of place in that part of the world – but it did work.It gave Labour a permanent and highly strategic foothold in urban Rochester.
When I was first elected to Medway Council nearly seventeen years ago, Troy Town was indeed represented by Labour councillors, even though other parts of Rochester were Conservative. Now, it wasn't always quite as clear-cut as that, for historic reasons from before I moved to Kent and which I have never been able to get to the heart of dependably, only conflicting anecdotal material being offered; so I am now sticking with the period I know personally.
Anyway, even with ward boundary changes a few years after the Unitary Authority came into being, what then became part of Rochester East ward has consistently swung it for Labour, even when other seats they held in the wider Rochester & Strood parliamentary constituency area came and went (in Strood North and Strood South wards, for example) – and they are now the only two Labour-held seats out of the twenty-two in that constituency.
That is highly significant. Without the social engineering of some three decades ago, they wouldn't even have those two council seats. The demographic slant also helped them at parliamentary election level, though never enough to make an actual switch: it was only Tony Blair winning (and John Major losing) in 1997 that ensured that the Medway area had three Labour Members of Parliament from that time.
Actually, it is just two-and-a-half MPs, as one of the constituencies (Chatham & Aylesford) was and is only half in the Medway council area.
Anyway, this does show what goes on in politics and why it is done (because it works!) Any party can do this when it has the power to do so; but it is only Labour who drag whole areas downward for their own power-lust purposes, as is of course a very old story nationally. I think the practice first came to public attention back in the mid 'sixties, though I was too young at the time to fully appreciate what was going on.
The modern-day context is Labour's 'Refugees welcome' initiative, which leads into a whole new story for which the background information in this post will aid understanding. It is, though, a separate story, which I intend to tackle here soon...
Sunday, 15 January 2017
How to 'Jezz' It Up – or not!
Labour party leader Jeremy 'Jezza' Corbyn has been almost invisible for several weeks as I write this, reappearing just a day or so ago with what at least one of his spokesmen has suggested is to be a 'Trump-style' re-launch. This immediately struck me as another big step on the road to Labour's seemingly inevitable oblivion, at least as a credible political party seeking election to national government.
His (or his aides') thinking has probably been along the lines of: "It obviously worked for Trump, so those same lines should do it for me [or "him"] too!"
Wrong! The USA has been suffering all manner of issues during the Obama years, some of which came to wide public realisation and understanding during the second such term. It has certainly become widespread knowledge during the last couple of years or so, thanks to trusted sources outside the mainstream media – sources such as Drudge Report, Breitbart and of course InfoWars & Prison Planet.
Also the alleged attempted rigging of the presidential election in favour of Hillary Clinton has been widely reported on those and other sites, as have other related matters.
Thus Trump's messages to the voters of America were not only appropriate, but resonated with them He is also very much non-Establishment, which is something else the voters lapped up, as they were sick of being conned by the Establishment – which in the States is more-or-less a two-headed beast, near enough running both significant political parties there.
To transfer those same messages (nearly verbatim) into our political arena just doesn't work, as the quoted snippets in this piece illustrate. The full speech is a lot more telling, though I haven't (so far) found a video of it online.
It doesn't take a genius to see why those Trump-like lines don't work when transplanted to our country and even to our politics. Oh yes, we too have an Establishment, and their aims, objectives and methods are at least similar to those in the USA in some regards. However, although they are supporting the Left primarily, exactly as in the States, they are also trying to control the Right – with very mixed success.
Thus this particular re-launch seems almost certain to backfire, as is discussed here.
Meanwhile, Labour's fortunes are sinking, not only in opinion polls but also in by-election results and especially regarding council seats. The Liberal Democrats are making hay while the sunshine switches away from Labour, even taking seats in Labour heartlands via huge swings.
Here's one such result from a council by-election just this past week...
Just look at the size of that swing away from (mainly) Labour to the Lib Dems! Sunderland is, unsurprisingly, a traditional Labour heartland – but perhaps no longer.
This and other results over the past year might well be giving an indication that Labour's seat losses in the next General Election could be even more severe than commentators and psephologists have already been saying, and closer to my own prediction (which I originally made nearly a year ago, and haven't changed) of 120 to 130 Labour seats come May 2020.
His (or his aides') thinking has probably been along the lines of: "It obviously worked for Trump, so those same lines should do it for me [or "him"] too!"
Wrong! The USA has been suffering all manner of issues during the Obama years, some of which came to wide public realisation and understanding during the second such term. It has certainly become widespread knowledge during the last couple of years or so, thanks to trusted sources outside the mainstream media – sources such as Drudge Report, Breitbart and of course InfoWars & Prison Planet.
Also the alleged attempted rigging of the presidential election in favour of Hillary Clinton has been widely reported on those and other sites, as have other related matters.
Thus Trump's messages to the voters of America were not only appropriate, but resonated with them He is also very much non-Establishment, which is something else the voters lapped up, as they were sick of being conned by the Establishment – which in the States is more-or-less a two-headed beast, near enough running both significant political parties there.
To transfer those same messages (nearly verbatim) into our political arena just doesn't work, as the quoted snippets in this piece illustrate. The full speech is a lot more telling, though I haven't (so far) found a video of it online.
It doesn't take a genius to see why those Trump-like lines don't work when transplanted to our country and even to our politics. Oh yes, we too have an Establishment, and their aims, objectives and methods are at least similar to those in the USA in some regards. However, although they are supporting the Left primarily, exactly as in the States, they are also trying to control the Right – with very mixed success.
Thus this particular re-launch seems almost certain to backfire, as is discussed here.
Meanwhile, Labour's fortunes are sinking, not only in opinion polls but also in by-election results and especially regarding council seats. The Liberal Democrats are making hay while the sunshine switches away from Labour, even taking seats in Labour heartlands via huge swings.
Here's one such result from a council by-election just this past week...
Sandhill (Sunderland) result, council by-election on 12-01-2017:
LDEM: 45.0% (+41.5)
LAB: 25.0% (-29.9)
UKIP: 18.7% (-7.2)
CON: 10.0% (-5.7)
GRN: 1.3% (+1.3)
Just look at the size of that swing away from (mainly) Labour to the Lib Dems! Sunderland is, unsurprisingly, a traditional Labour heartland – but perhaps no longer.
This and other results over the past year might well be giving an indication that Labour's seat losses in the next General Election could be even more severe than commentators and psephologists have already been saying, and closer to my own prediction (which I originally made nearly a year ago, and haven't changed) of 120 to 130 Labour seats come May 2020.
Monday, 24 October 2016
Strood South By-election
Edited to correct a misleading part taken from a Medway Labour tweet and scans
It is no secret that I have considerable affection for the Strood South ward of Medway Council, so it will come as no surprise that I took an interest in last Thursday's by-election. That event was caused by the resignation of UKIP councillor Catriona Reckless-Brown who will soon be moving to Wales where her husband (former Rochester & Strood MP Mark Reckless) has been selected to stand for the Welsh Assembly, also for UKIP.
The three Council seats in Strood South were at that time held by UKIP, Conservative (John Avey) and an Independent (Mark Joy, who had been elected as UKIP but then left the party) so very mixed – in fact the only ward of Medway Council's 22 to be a three-way split. There were six candidates in the by-election, including the two (one Conservative, Josie Iles, and one Labour, Isaac Igwe) who had lost their seats to the then two UKIP candidates.
The results of the by-election were thus, in descending order of number of votes cast:
Also note the wide gulf between them and the winner – more than 200 votes. It is to be noted that I predicted this outcome, and told a couple of people my forecast, though forgot to make it public until the morning of last Thursday, i.e. polling day! My exact prediction was "a comfortable Conservative win, with Labour and UKIP close together in second and third place, either way round." (It's on my Facebook page.)
The turnout was low, sadly, at 16·74% – just one in six eligible voters participated. By-elections tend to have significantly lower turnouts than full elections, and last year's council elections here were boosted by coinciding with the General Election. Indeed, back in May 2000, at the full council elections that year Luton (a Labour safe ward) had a turnout of just 17·37% – hardly any higher than this mere by-election.
EDIT: The Council leader, Alan Jarrett (Conservative), has today been reported in the local newspaper (not online, unfortunately) as saying that UKIP lost the seat because their councillors had been "ineffectual" since being elected some 17 months ago; and UKIP group leader Roy Freshwater is also quoted as saying they lost the seat (a) because of the weather and (b) because they don't have the 'party machine' that the two traditional big parties have. Medway Labour has selectively scanned parts of the relevant page from the 'paper. This they misrepresented, but this edit corrects what I wrote here before, having taken the Medway Labour claim as correct. I really must learn that they can NEVER be trusted!
I certainly agree that the UKIP councillors have been, frankly, a waste of space, and have done as little work as their counterparts in (say) the European Parliament, who are known to be 'the laziest party group' throughout the entire Parliament – though very good at taking as much (public) money as they can, including the occasional 'fiddle' that comes to light (Janice Atkinson's restaurant bill that was in the news around a year ago) – and who knows how much there might be as yet unrevealed?
Anyway, keeping to their usual practice, and as their own fellow has now publicly stated, the 'Kippers on our Council really do seem to have done nothing of any consequence to represent those who elected them in what was, after all, just a national 'anti-establishment' mood swing at the time – May 2015. That of course has faded since then, as I predicted it would, and UKIP Cllr Roy Freshwater's own claim of a lack of a big 'machine' would indeed have hampered their chances of holding the seat at this time. The weather affects all parties equally, and no doubt contributed toward the low turn-out.
Even so, the best they could have done would have been to come second, and I think just 150 votes or so behind the winner: it could have been a slightly closer contest, and they'd have been the runners-up rather than Labour. However, the bigger issue for voters was the lack of activity by UKIP in the ward and elsewhere in Medway for that matter. These things are noticed and the word gets around. It was no doubt what lost the three we had before May 2015 their seats (Messrs Irvine, Mason and Rodberg, all of whom re-stood but lost.)
To me it seems obvious that another of my (longer-standing this time) predictions – that there will be no UKIP councillors at Medway after the next all-out elections – will also come to pass.
And whose fault will that be? Theirs alone!
It is no secret that I have considerable affection for the Strood South ward of Medway Council, so it will come as no surprise that I took an interest in last Thursday's by-election. That event was caused by the resignation of UKIP councillor Catriona Reckless-Brown who will soon be moving to Wales where her husband (former Rochester & Strood MP Mark Reckless) has been selected to stand for the Welsh Assembly, also for UKIP.
The three Council seats in Strood South were at that time held by UKIP, Conservative (John Avey) and an Independent (Mark Joy, who had been elected as UKIP but then left the party) so very mixed – in fact the only ward of Medway Council's 22 to be a three-way split. There were six candidates in the by-election, including the two (one Conservative, Josie Iles, and one Labour, Isaac Igwe) who had lost their seats to the then two UKIP candidates.
The results of the by-election were thus, in descending order of number of votes cast:
- Josie Iles (Con) – 724
- Isaac Igwe (Lab) – 521
- Karl Weller (UKIP – 480
- Steve Dyke (Green) – 74
- Isabelle Cherry (LD) – 62
- Mike Russell (Eng Dem) – 23
Also note the wide gulf between them and the winner – more than 200 votes. It is to be noted that I predicted this outcome, and told a couple of people my forecast, though forgot to make it public until the morning of last Thursday, i.e. polling day! My exact prediction was "a comfortable Conservative win, with Labour and UKIP close together in second and third place, either way round." (It's on my Facebook page.)
The turnout was low, sadly, at 16·74% – just one in six eligible voters participated. By-elections tend to have significantly lower turnouts than full elections, and last year's council elections here were boosted by coinciding with the General Election. Indeed, back in May 2000, at the full council elections that year Luton (a Labour safe ward) had a turnout of just 17·37% – hardly any higher than this mere by-election.
EDIT: The Council leader, Alan Jarrett (Conservative), has today been reported in the local newspaper (not online, unfortunately) as saying that UKIP lost the seat because their councillors had been "ineffectual" since being elected some 17 months ago; and UKIP group leader Roy Freshwater is also quoted as saying they lost the seat (a) because of the weather and (b) because they don't have the 'party machine' that the two traditional big parties have. Medway Labour has selectively scanned parts of the relevant page from the 'paper. This they misrepresented, but this edit corrects what I wrote here before, having taken the Medway Labour claim as correct. I really must learn that they can NEVER be trusted!
I certainly agree that the UKIP councillors have been, frankly, a waste of space, and have done as little work as their counterparts in (say) the European Parliament, who are known to be 'the laziest party group' throughout the entire Parliament – though very good at taking as much (public) money as they can, including the occasional 'fiddle' that comes to light (Janice Atkinson's restaurant bill that was in the news around a year ago) – and who knows how much there might be as yet unrevealed?
Anyway, keeping to their usual practice, and as their own fellow has now publicly stated, the 'Kippers on our Council really do seem to have done nothing of any consequence to represent those who elected them in what was, after all, just a national 'anti-establishment' mood swing at the time – May 2015. That of course has faded since then, as I predicted it would, and UKIP Cllr Roy Freshwater's own claim of a lack of a big 'machine' would indeed have hampered their chances of holding the seat at this time. The weather affects all parties equally, and no doubt contributed toward the low turn-out.
Even so, the best they could have done would have been to come second, and I think just 150 votes or so behind the winner: it could have been a slightly closer contest, and they'd have been the runners-up rather than Labour. However, the bigger issue for voters was the lack of activity by UKIP in the ward and elsewhere in Medway for that matter. These things are noticed and the word gets around. It was no doubt what lost the three we had before May 2015 their seats (Messrs Irvine, Mason and Rodberg, all of whom re-stood but lost.)
To me it seems obvious that another of my (longer-standing this time) predictions – that there will be no UKIP councillors at Medway after the next all-out elections – will also come to pass.
And whose fault will that be? Theirs alone!
Sunday, 7 February 2016
Socially Engineered
In London, Zac Goldsmith has an uphill battle ahead of him to win the London Mayoralty this coming May. Labour's Sadiq Khan is widely tipped to win instead, a few think by quite a margin.
Why? Is it because Sadiq is better for the job than Zac would be? No: the exact opposite is the case – though Zac doesn't have the charisma of the incumbent, Boris Johnson. He'd still be vastly better for London, especially in the upcoming years, but it will take a lot for him to win. It is definitely possible, but far from easy.
Why should this be? It's down to the social engineering of London during the Labour years in government, especially the vast influx of immigrants from what were known would be Labour-favourable (one way or another) origins. The scale of that situation has been reported in a few places in recent months, and there are a number of associated aspects of all of that which show just bad that purely politically-motivated policy has been – most notably for the newcomers themselves.
We here in Medway have also witnessed social engineering at work in places such as Troy Town, which is an area within Rochester. Back in the 'eighties, the then Labour-run predecessor council to today's Unitary Authority arranged for a lot of social housing to be built in Troy Town. If you were to wander around that area, you'd no doubt be surprised at just how much of this ill-fitting 'square peg in round hole' accommodation there is there. It isn't vast, but there is a fair amount of it, and of course it's generally high-density – so there are a lot of votes embedded in those quarters.
A former mayor, who has lived here much longer than I have, gave me the low-down on this, including names and dates. It explains why that ward (when it was a separate ward) was the only part of Rochester to have Labour councillors even after the Unitary Authority came into being, and even after the following local elections when Labour lost its other Rochester seats. They are still there today, though not very well liked – and that is a whole 'nother story, which is very interesting in itself but doesn't concern us today.
Interestingly, because there was already a fair amount of social housing and similar in neighbouring Strood, and Labour seemed to think they had those seats by default, perhaps too much of their effort went into the 'Troy Town project' – and there are still signs of that going on today, I notice whenever I pass through there. The consequence seems to have been that the good folks of urban Strood (the rural part is a separate entity) saw what was going on in other places that had Conservative representation and grew ever more marginal in their voting at each successive local election.
By the year 2003 they had switched over (grown up?) and elected five out of six Conservative councillors, with Fred Bacon holding on in what was by then called Strood South ward only because of his strong personal vote. Since then, Labour has held only one or none of the three seats in each of Strood North and Strood South wards, and now has no seats there at all.
Other Labour 'safe' territory on our council also had the odd seat lost to Conservatives last May: Twydall, and Luton &Wayfield. No longer do they have any safe seats on Medway Council, despite all they have done to try to wangle things (including their ward boundary changes that were accepted by the Local Government Commission, taking effect in 2003).
The overall lesson in all of this is to at least be aware of any such political manipulations in the local community and nearby. Even if there is little if anything any of us as ordinary citizens can do about such social engineering, at least we ought to know of it and realise what is really going on.
Of course, this could equally well be done the other way around by Conservatives or other elected representatives on the political right, but my experience has been that this is rarely done for political reasons and in most instances is done just to improve the quality of an area – which is surely what those they are representing would wish them to do. I have seen this from the inside: different motivation, different goal in view; so let us not be misled on that.
Meanwhile, Labour here are fighting a losing battle – and I have seen a number of signs that, behind the public face, they do realise this – especially since the advent of the Corbyn & company party leadership, which makes an already bad situation for them even worse. The rest of us here in Medway, though, have to live with the fallout from their manipulations from years past – just as Londoners are having to cope with a raft of acute and in some cases severe consequences of the last Labour government's self-serving policies that ripped apart our Capital's core being and transformed it entirely.
At least it never got anywhere near that extent here...
Why? Is it because Sadiq is better for the job than Zac would be? No: the exact opposite is the case – though Zac doesn't have the charisma of the incumbent, Boris Johnson. He'd still be vastly better for London, especially in the upcoming years, but it will take a lot for him to win. It is definitely possible, but far from easy.
Why should this be? It's down to the social engineering of London during the Labour years in government, especially the vast influx of immigrants from what were known would be Labour-favourable (one way or another) origins. The scale of that situation has been reported in a few places in recent months, and there are a number of associated aspects of all of that which show just bad that purely politically-motivated policy has been – most notably for the newcomers themselves.
We here in Medway have also witnessed social engineering at work in places such as Troy Town, which is an area within Rochester. Back in the 'eighties, the then Labour-run predecessor council to today's Unitary Authority arranged for a lot of social housing to be built in Troy Town. If you were to wander around that area, you'd no doubt be surprised at just how much of this ill-fitting 'square peg in round hole' accommodation there is there. It isn't vast, but there is a fair amount of it, and of course it's generally high-density – so there are a lot of votes embedded in those quarters.
A former mayor, who has lived here much longer than I have, gave me the low-down on this, including names and dates. It explains why that ward (when it was a separate ward) was the only part of Rochester to have Labour councillors even after the Unitary Authority came into being, and even after the following local elections when Labour lost its other Rochester seats. They are still there today, though not very well liked – and that is a whole 'nother story, which is very interesting in itself but doesn't concern us today.
Interestingly, because there was already a fair amount of social housing and similar in neighbouring Strood, and Labour seemed to think they had those seats by default, perhaps too much of their effort went into the 'Troy Town project' – and there are still signs of that going on today, I notice whenever I pass through there. The consequence seems to have been that the good folks of urban Strood (the rural part is a separate entity) saw what was going on in other places that had Conservative representation and grew ever more marginal in their voting at each successive local election.
By the year 2003 they had switched over (grown up?) and elected five out of six Conservative councillors, with Fred Bacon holding on in what was by then called Strood South ward only because of his strong personal vote. Since then, Labour has held only one or none of the three seats in each of Strood North and Strood South wards, and now has no seats there at all.
Other Labour 'safe' territory on our council also had the odd seat lost to Conservatives last May: Twydall, and Luton &Wayfield. No longer do they have any safe seats on Medway Council, despite all they have done to try to wangle things (including their ward boundary changes that were accepted by the Local Government Commission, taking effect in 2003).
The overall lesson in all of this is to at least be aware of any such political manipulations in the local community and nearby. Even if there is little if anything any of us as ordinary citizens can do about such social engineering, at least we ought to know of it and realise what is really going on.
Of course, this could equally well be done the other way around by Conservatives or other elected representatives on the political right, but my experience has been that this is rarely done for political reasons and in most instances is done just to improve the quality of an area – which is surely what those they are representing would wish them to do. I have seen this from the inside: different motivation, different goal in view; so let us not be misled on that.
Meanwhile, Labour here are fighting a losing battle – and I have seen a number of signs that, behind the public face, they do realise this – especially since the advent of the Corbyn & company party leadership, which makes an already bad situation for them even worse. The rest of us here in Medway, though, have to live with the fallout from their manipulations from years past – just as Londoners are having to cope with a raft of acute and in some cases severe consequences of the last Labour government's self-serving policies that ripped apart our Capital's core being and transformed it entirely.
At least it never got anywhere near that extent here...
Thursday, 28 January 2016
Who Is In Poll Position – January 2016
Indicative of the general trend, here are some interesting polling results from Ipsos MORI that are out today, kindly shared by the 'Britain Elects' Twitter account...
https://twitter.com/britainelects
1.
The party which 'has the best team of leaders to deal with the country's problems':
CON: 43%
LAB: 16%
UKIP: 4%
LDEM: 2%
2.
The party which 'has the best policies for the country as a whole':
CON: 35%
LAB: 25%
UKIP: 6%
LDEM: 4%
3.
The party which 'would be best at looking after the interests of people like you':
CON: 33%
LAB: 29%
UKIP: 8%
LDEM: 5%
The last has Labour closer to the Conservatives than with the other questions, but still behind by several percentage points.
We can also see that (as I predicted) UKIP support has really fallen away, as more and more people see them as (a) not as credible as many once thought, and (b) a dead end, going nowhere. None of this is surprising, of course, and merely continues a trend that became well-established several months ago.
Indeed, UKIP has become irrelevant (as I had predicted for some time) and the Lib Dems still are, leaving us with the very real prospect of no proper opposition party before much longer. As I have indicated before, including recently, that is not a good thing.
The only prospect I foresee is the one I have been anticipating for several years (as some reading this will be aware) which is that the Lib Dems will need to get their act together and be prepared to take on that task within the next three or four years. No-one else is set to do it!
https://twitter.com/britainelects
1.
The party which 'has the best team of leaders to deal with the country's problems':
CON: 43%
LAB: 16%
UKIP: 4%
LDEM: 2%
2.
The party which 'has the best policies for the country as a whole':
CON: 35%
LAB: 25%
UKIP: 6%
LDEM: 4%
3.
The party which 'would be best at looking after the interests of people like you':
CON: 33%
LAB: 29%
UKIP: 8%
LDEM: 5%
The last has Labour closer to the Conservatives than with the other questions, but still behind by several percentage points.
We can also see that (as I predicted) UKIP support has really fallen away, as more and more people see them as (a) not as credible as many once thought, and (b) a dead end, going nowhere. None of this is surprising, of course, and merely continues a trend that became well-established several months ago.
Indeed, UKIP has become irrelevant (as I had predicted for some time) and the Lib Dems still are, leaving us with the very real prospect of no proper opposition party before much longer. As I have indicated before, including recently, that is not a good thing.
The only prospect I foresee is the one I have been anticipating for several years (as some reading this will be aware) which is that the Lib Dems will need to get their act together and be prepared to take on that task within the next three or four years. No-one else is set to do it!
Tuesday, 5 January 2016
Re-arranging the Deckchairs
Three months or so after Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn appointed his initial Shadow Cabinet, already an upheaval is under way as that entity is being reshuffled at this very moment.Some has already happened, no doubt more is to come. A running 'blog is being run here.
As many expected, this has become an exercise in removing at least some of those who voted against the Dear Leader's wishes in the free vote (i.e. not Whipped) on military intervention in Syria – although the initial perceived threat to Hilary Benn (who made the strongest case for intervention, from the Labour side of the Commons) was later dismissed but has today re-appeared.
My feeling is that he has to go if the Corbyn leadership stance is not to be weakened, especially during this reshuffle. We shall find out this afternoon!
Barnsley East MP Michael Dugher has written about what he and others have termed a 'revenge reshuffle', calling it neither good politics nor the supposed Corbyn 'new politics'. He is right – and in fact his piece is (perhaps surprisingly) well worth a read, though one does need to grit one's teeth when reading the predictable references to the supposedly 'wicked Tories' and just ride over all of that.
However, the point of it was – as Dan Hodges has long been aware, and has written about – for Corbyn to stamp his personal authority on his leadership of the party, and in the process eliminate most if not all of the significant dissent that had been occurring in recent times. It is useful to read Dan's piece to realise just how effective this has been.
This is not to say that the whole was handled well, especially by 'Jez' himself – unless his intention was to produce the exact side-effects that Iain Martin documents here. As one sometimes finds when looking at something sideways-on, there might have been a deliberate purpose to handling all this the way he has done, camouflaged by the broad perception that he was botching it as usual. Perhaps yes, perhaps no...
Overall, this is a moment in the Labour party's long history that will be marked as a turning point, one way or another, and whether it survives as a viable influence could very well be being determined right now. That old saying about 're-arranging the deckchairs on The Titanic' springs to mind: whatever is done on the inside, without regard to the world beyond, will make no difference to the party's sinking below the political waves.
As many expected, this has become an exercise in removing at least some of those who voted against the Dear Leader's wishes in the free vote (i.e. not Whipped) on military intervention in Syria – although the initial perceived threat to Hilary Benn (who made the strongest case for intervention, from the Labour side of the Commons) was later dismissed but has today re-appeared.
My feeling is that he has to go if the Corbyn leadership stance is not to be weakened, especially during this reshuffle. We shall find out this afternoon!
Barnsley East MP Michael Dugher has written about what he and others have termed a 'revenge reshuffle', calling it neither good politics nor the supposed Corbyn 'new politics'. He is right – and in fact his piece is (perhaps surprisingly) well worth a read, though one does need to grit one's teeth when reading the predictable references to the supposedly 'wicked Tories' and just ride over all of that.
However, the point of it was – as Dan Hodges has long been aware, and has written about – for Corbyn to stamp his personal authority on his leadership of the party, and in the process eliminate most if not all of the significant dissent that had been occurring in recent times. It is useful to read Dan's piece to realise just how effective this has been.
This is not to say that the whole was handled well, especially by 'Jez' himself – unless his intention was to produce the exact side-effects that Iain Martin documents here. As one sometimes finds when looking at something sideways-on, there might have been a deliberate purpose to handling all this the way he has done, camouflaged by the broad perception that he was botching it as usual. Perhaps yes, perhaps no...
Overall, this is a moment in the Labour party's long history that will be marked as a turning point, one way or another, and whether it survives as a viable influence could very well be being determined right now. That old saying about 're-arranging the deckchairs on The Titanic' springs to mind: whatever is done on the inside, without regard to the world beyond, will make no difference to the party's sinking below the political waves.
Monday, 28 December 2015
Divide and Not Rule
Further to the Corbyn/Labour situation, this short item at Political
Betting shows how dire things already are. Bearing in mind that it was
the public who overwhelmingly selected Corbyn to be the new party
leader, not Labour MPs, and it is that same pool of people who are polled for both
leader approval polling and voting intention surveys, this makes it
even worse than could otherwise have been the case. That initial broad support in August/September is no longer there.
Though, as it says at the linked post, "things can happen", and there is a long time to go until the next scheduled General Election in May 2020, the conclusion at the end is unambiguous: another Conservative majority seems almost certain.
In fact, it might not work out that way, but unless there is a drastic change to Labour, they at least look set to become either the third or possibly even fourth largest party group in the House of Commons after that election.
It is unlikely that Labour will regain any of their former seats in Scotland, which is a crucial factor; indeed the SNP might well take the remaining three seats north of the border, making them possibly the third largest group in the Commons, with UKIP (if they are still around by then) gaining a large number of frankly undeserved seats via the back door, as the only remaining perceived to be non-establishment Britain-wide party.
I hear that UKIP are doing particularly well in Wales at the moment, so watch out for signs of this growing over the months and years to come. I personally think that their tactics there will continue to bring dividends for a while, but will falter after next May if they can't turn that into seats anywhere, or in subsequent years as more and more council seats in Wales come up for re-election.
An alternative scenario – and the one I have been anticipating for a while now as being the more likely, despite what some insiders are saying right now – is an SDP-like split and a new party being formed. My thinking is that this is most likely to occur soon after next May's council and police & crime commissioner elections if (as expected) Labour do at all badly.
This new party would probably hold most of the seats that the immediate defection takes with it, come May 2020, and could pick up a number of the remaining Labour MPs' seats as well, reducing the latter group to a very small number of members. This would be a healthy thing for British politics, both national and local, as again a Communist totalitarian-tendency movement will be marginalised, just as has always happened in the past – and that is what they are looking set to become exclusively.
Okay, the whole of Labour is essentially 'mild Marxist', tempered and slowed by its long-standing Fabian practices, but has generally been manageable and has never quite completely wrecked our nation – though it has been close once or twice, including just a very few years ago. A Corbyn-led (and, essentially, selected) set of Labour-labelled candidates is a very different proposition!
Interestingly, all of what has been happening with Labour has been more-or-less inevitable from the moment the Conservatives formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, back in May 2010.
A very few people around these parts might remember that I have been smiling as I told them in years gone by something of what I expected to follow over the period ahead; and most of that has now panned out – actually slightly better than I had predicted back then.
It was so easy to predict, simply because of the underlying nature of the Labour party, its rules, and both its higher echelons and the ordinary and Union-based members – and there is much more yet to come, equally predictable!
Though, as it says at the linked post, "things can happen", and there is a long time to go until the next scheduled General Election in May 2020, the conclusion at the end is unambiguous: another Conservative majority seems almost certain.
In fact, it might not work out that way, but unless there is a drastic change to Labour, they at least look set to become either the third or possibly even fourth largest party group in the House of Commons after that election.
It is unlikely that Labour will regain any of their former seats in Scotland, which is a crucial factor; indeed the SNP might well take the remaining three seats north of the border, making them possibly the third largest group in the Commons, with UKIP (if they are still around by then) gaining a large number of frankly undeserved seats via the back door, as the only remaining perceived to be non-establishment Britain-wide party.
I hear that UKIP are doing particularly well in Wales at the moment, so watch out for signs of this growing over the months and years to come. I personally think that their tactics there will continue to bring dividends for a while, but will falter after next May if they can't turn that into seats anywhere, or in subsequent years as more and more council seats in Wales come up for re-election.
An alternative scenario – and the one I have been anticipating for a while now as being the more likely, despite what some insiders are saying right now – is an SDP-like split and a new party being formed. My thinking is that this is most likely to occur soon after next May's council and police & crime commissioner elections if (as expected) Labour do at all badly.
This new party would probably hold most of the seats that the immediate defection takes with it, come May 2020, and could pick up a number of the remaining Labour MPs' seats as well, reducing the latter group to a very small number of members. This would be a healthy thing for British politics, both national and local, as again a Communist totalitarian-tendency movement will be marginalised, just as has always happened in the past – and that is what they are looking set to become exclusively.
Okay, the whole of Labour is essentially 'mild Marxist', tempered and slowed by its long-standing Fabian practices, but has generally been manageable and has never quite completely wrecked our nation – though it has been close once or twice, including just a very few years ago. A Corbyn-led (and, essentially, selected) set of Labour-labelled candidates is a very different proposition!
Interestingly, all of what has been happening with Labour has been more-or-less inevitable from the moment the Conservatives formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, back in May 2010.
A very few people around these parts might remember that I have been smiling as I told them in years gone by something of what I expected to follow over the period ahead; and most of that has now panned out – actually slightly better than I had predicted back then.
It was so easy to predict, simply because of the underlying nature of the Labour party, its rules, and both its higher echelons and the ordinary and Union-based members – and there is much more yet to come, equally predictable!
Sunday, 29 November 2015
Tipping Point
Even a Lefty writing in The Independent has this weekend indicated that Jeremy Corbyn needs 'to be got rid of' as the headline puts it.
The trouble is that it can't be done. Anyone who knows how the Labour Party constitution and procedures operate will already be well aware that it is virtually impossible to topple the party leader. The leader has to step down, realistically, and that generally happens only after a General Election failure – as Ed[ward] Miliband did after his such failure just six months ago.
On top of that, with the huge support the current Dear Leader received when elected to that position – and still receives even today, if not to quite the same degree – both among the Labour party membership and around the country, it would not go down well if anyone were even to attempt to oust him, whether or not it succeeded.
Indeed, the mere attempt would not only impact Labour's support and votes in future elections, it would almost certainly lead to an unrecoverable split and the party breaking into two – something like what the 'Gang of Four' did some thirty years ago when they too broke away from Labour and created the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
This would split the existing Labour vote even more than if Mr Corbyn were to be left in place and his leadership never challenged, and make neither resulting party a strong parliamentary force, as each would have only a few dozen MPs at best – and those would no doubt be representing their own party's heartlands almost exclusively (there might be the odd fluke win for one or the other) so not representative of the majority of the electorate.
There are several other bad things that will probably happen, but that will be the overriding consideration, I can well imagine.
Perversely, therefore, it is probably best for the party to leave things as they are, grit their teeth and wait it out until the next General Election in May 2020. They are simply going to write that one off in advance – and I suspect that privately many have already done so.
They can meanwhile, in the shadows, and starting right now, be devising and creating mechanisms that they can simply drop into place immediately there is a change, ready to begin re-building the party's electoral (and perhaps other!) fortunes immediately after that almost certain total disaster, rather than losing months during the leadership election that will follow. Remember: it took more than four months to elect Jeremy Corbyn.
They must therefore hope that, after the 2020 election, Corbyn will then do what Ed-M did earlier this year and step down of his own volition (or perhaps with encouragement from party colleagues and others) as soon as the scale of the inevitable rout becomes clear, and certainly once the Conservatives pass the finishing line (326 seats) in the election results.
It is the only way they can now proceed, realistically, in a kind of damage limitation exercise that will last some 54 months.
They made their bed – no-one else imposed it on them – and now they must lie in it!
Tuesday, 17 November 2015
Through at Two
Again I am saying 'months' here, and once more looking at Jeremy Corbyn's career (such as it will turn out to be) as Labour party leader.
It is now two months since he became the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition party, and with a struggle has now even become a member of the Privy Council – which he is required to be in his position, but avoided once (on a flimsy pretext) and apparently didn't conform fully to the accepted protocols on the second occasion – but got away with that.
Rather than present a catalogue of causes of his upcoming (and necessary) departure from his new position, I think this by Iain Martin covers most of the bases, and is thus useful reading.
In practice, there is no reason to believe that Mr Corbyn will either step down from his party leadership position any time soon, or be successfully ousted. It could drag on for years, helped by the Labour party's own rules and procedures. Nevertheless, it should be noted that this was the month when his position became permanently untenable and he was now clearly an irreversible detraction from Labour's electoral and broader public standing.
The longer he remains, the more the public will learn of the true nature of Labour, usually hidden beneath a veneer of apparent respectability, so I am hoping it really does take years to oust him.
It is now two months since he became the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition party, and with a struggle has now even become a member of the Privy Council – which he is required to be in his position, but avoided once (on a flimsy pretext) and apparently didn't conform fully to the accepted protocols on the second occasion – but got away with that.
Rather than present a catalogue of causes of his upcoming (and necessary) departure from his new position, I think this by Iain Martin covers most of the bases, and is thus useful reading.
In practice, there is no reason to believe that Mr Corbyn will either step down from his party leadership position any time soon, or be successfully ousted. It could drag on for years, helped by the Labour party's own rules and procedures. Nevertheless, it should be noted that this was the month when his position became permanently untenable and he was now clearly an irreversible detraction from Labour's electoral and broader public standing.
The longer he remains, the more the public will learn of the true nature of Labour, usually hidden beneath a veneer of apparent respectability, so I am hoping it really does take years to oust him.
Tuesday, 13 October 2015
Fun at One
One month, that is.
A month ago I wrote about what I foresaw as possible consequences of the Corbyn leadership of the British Labour party. One month in, much of what I anticipated has come to pass, other aspects are obviously on the way but currently still to come, and one or two items might not happen exactly as I thought they were most likely to go.
Already, the new leadership and its campaign team have moved to try to make the party the more-or-less revolutionary Marxist body I have been quietly expecting, with ways to deselect moderate sitting MPs and replacing them with out-and-out Lefties as candidates at future elections. The leadership's approach to the party's sitting MPs has been disastrous, as last night's meeting of the Parliamentary Party – well-reported in various places – demonstrated very clearly, helped by members tweeting their views from within the meeting room.
The MPs are not happy, especially with policy U-turns and other impositions by the Dear Leader and his staunch supporter, the new shadow chancellor John McDonnell. So far they seem to be sticking with the party, rather than (as yet) forming a breakaway new party, SDP style. I think that will have to come in due course, most likely in the second quarter of next year by my (typically complicated but thorough) reckoning.
Frankly, the parliamentary party is tearing itself apart, as several of its members have openly admitted via social media in particular – and the broader party nationwide isn't faring much better.
This is fine in some regards, as it is what many of us anticipated and it could prove valuable to the Labour party if they bother to learn the lessons. Some will, but I suspect that many others will not, and the party's future viability is thus threatened if they don't fix this in the false belief that either all is well, or that it cannot be mended.
In the final analysis the fading away of Labour would be a good thing for Britain – but not if it leaves a vacuum where there should be a credible Official Opposition party (Labour can probably never again be a party of government, by the way) and there are no other viable contenders at the present time. I wish there were.
Labour have a long-standing track record of putting themselves through periods such as this, but always coming back from the brink. It genuinely might not happen this time, but it is not impossible. The next month should be even more telling than these past few weeks have been...
A month ago I wrote about what I foresaw as possible consequences of the Corbyn leadership of the British Labour party. One month in, much of what I anticipated has come to pass, other aspects are obviously on the way but currently still to come, and one or two items might not happen exactly as I thought they were most likely to go.
Already, the new leadership and its campaign team have moved to try to make the party the more-or-less revolutionary Marxist body I have been quietly expecting, with ways to deselect moderate sitting MPs and replacing them with out-and-out Lefties as candidates at future elections. The leadership's approach to the party's sitting MPs has been disastrous, as last night's meeting of the Parliamentary Party – well-reported in various places – demonstrated very clearly, helped by members tweeting their views from within the meeting room.
The MPs are not happy, especially with policy U-turns and other impositions by the Dear Leader and his staunch supporter, the new shadow chancellor John McDonnell. So far they seem to be sticking with the party, rather than (as yet) forming a breakaway new party, SDP style. I think that will have to come in due course, most likely in the second quarter of next year by my (typically complicated but thorough) reckoning.
Frankly, the parliamentary party is tearing itself apart, as several of its members have openly admitted via social media in particular – and the broader party nationwide isn't faring much better.
This is fine in some regards, as it is what many of us anticipated and it could prove valuable to the Labour party if they bother to learn the lessons. Some will, but I suspect that many others will not, and the party's future viability is thus threatened if they don't fix this in the false belief that either all is well, or that it cannot be mended.
In the final analysis the fading away of Labour would be a good thing for Britain – but not if it leaves a vacuum where there should be a credible Official Opposition party (Labour can probably never again be a party of government, by the way) and there are no other viable contenders at the present time. I wish there were.
Labour have a long-standing track record of putting themselves through periods such as this, but always coming back from the brink. It genuinely might not happen this time, but it is not impossible. The next month should be even more telling than these past few weeks have been...
Saturday, 12 September 2015
And Now The Fun Begins!
So, as expected, Jeremy Corbyn has become the new Labour party leader today, and Tom Watson the new deputy to replace Harriet Harman, who had also been standing-in as leader during the leadership contest.
This largely predictable outcome (firmed-up by Andy Burnham's woefully poor campaign and multiple flip-flops over various policies) now sets Labour on a path they haven't seen for three decades. Already half a dozen shadow cabinet members have resigned from those positions, and a number of others (including Ed Miliband) have publicly stated that they will not serve in Corbyn's shadow cabinet.
Some are saying these are principled decisions, rather than self-interest – but anyone can see what being associated with Corbyn's extreme-Left outlook and direction for his party would do to their longer-term careers, so for my money they are in fact doing this out of self-interest.
Actually, it will be the eventual shape of the new shadow cabinet that should give us our best clue as to where the Labour party is now going to be heading. If Jeremy Corbyn stuffs it with his hard-Left comrades then it will generate splits within the party, possibly resulting in a faction going off to form a new party, as the 'Gang of Four' did back in the 'eighties to form the SDP, no doubt later possibly at least considering joining forces with the Lib Dems.
History would be repeating itself, and for similar reasons.
Another interesting ingredient is the part that the new deputy leader could well play to keep the party together under trying circumstances. Tom Watson is capable of doing that, though even he would struggle to deal with the sheer magnitude of the issue. I'd give it a two year life-span – more of a delay than an avoidance – and then it really would be 'crunch time' for the party.
Incidentally, 'big beast' Tom W has a strong reputation within the party regarding his skills and abilities in matters of this ilk, and has gained a lot of personal stature with his strong handling of the 'phone hacking scandal, though that was intended to harm the party's media deserters, specifically Rupert Murdoch, not to deal with the topic. Some of us saw through that, and noted the 'ouch!' factor when The Mirror was shown to have been at least as guilty.
Tom was also one of the small group of Damian McBride's smear campaigners who were targeting (among others) Sam Cameron, the Prime Minister's wife. Remember that? McBride had to resign his own position at the time.
Despite all of this, Tom W could keep most if not all of the party together for a while, but eventually the only way it will find to survive as a significant and credible political movement will be for Corbyn to step down, probably in 2018 by my calculations. I don't think he will head-up Labour's General Election campaign in 2020, and will wish to give his replacement time to get established and to re-jig the party's manifesto.
Some are saying that Tom himself might become the successor to 'Jez' – but with all his baggage he would be an easy target for the Conservatives, so I don't recommend this. I wouldn't put it past him to try, though. The problem for Labour is that they have so little political talent that isn't already very publicly tarnished beyond being a serious contender.
The only exception of whom I am aware is the currently inexperienced Dan Jarvis. If he were to be wise enough to look ahead and prepare himself for that opening, starting right now, he could be Labour's last hope to avoid all those pitfalls and become a genuinely valuable leader of the main opposition party in British politics. I don't know of any others who could pull it off.
This largely predictable outcome (firmed-up by Andy Burnham's woefully poor campaign and multiple flip-flops over various policies) now sets Labour on a path they haven't seen for three decades. Already half a dozen shadow cabinet members have resigned from those positions, and a number of others (including Ed Miliband) have publicly stated that they will not serve in Corbyn's shadow cabinet.
Some are saying these are principled decisions, rather than self-interest – but anyone can see what being associated with Corbyn's extreme-Left outlook and direction for his party would do to their longer-term careers, so for my money they are in fact doing this out of self-interest.
Actually, it will be the eventual shape of the new shadow cabinet that should give us our best clue as to where the Labour party is now going to be heading. If Jeremy Corbyn stuffs it with his hard-Left comrades then it will generate splits within the party, possibly resulting in a faction going off to form a new party, as the 'Gang of Four' did back in the 'eighties to form the SDP, no doubt later possibly at least considering joining forces with the Lib Dems.
History would be repeating itself, and for similar reasons.
Another interesting ingredient is the part that the new deputy leader could well play to keep the party together under trying circumstances. Tom Watson is capable of doing that, though even he would struggle to deal with the sheer magnitude of the issue. I'd give it a two year life-span – more of a delay than an avoidance – and then it really would be 'crunch time' for the party.
Incidentally, 'big beast' Tom W has a strong reputation within the party regarding his skills and abilities in matters of this ilk, and has gained a lot of personal stature with his strong handling of the 'phone hacking scandal, though that was intended to harm the party's media deserters, specifically Rupert Murdoch, not to deal with the topic. Some of us saw through that, and noted the 'ouch!' factor when The Mirror was shown to have been at least as guilty.
Tom was also one of the small group of Damian McBride's smear campaigners who were targeting (among others) Sam Cameron, the Prime Minister's wife. Remember that? McBride had to resign his own position at the time.
Despite all of this, Tom W could keep most if not all of the party together for a while, but eventually the only way it will find to survive as a significant and credible political movement will be for Corbyn to step down, probably in 2018 by my calculations. I don't think he will head-up Labour's General Election campaign in 2020, and will wish to give his replacement time to get established and to re-jig the party's manifesto.
Some are saying that Tom himself might become the successor to 'Jez' – but with all his baggage he would be an easy target for the Conservatives, so I don't recommend this. I wouldn't put it past him to try, though. The problem for Labour is that they have so little political talent that isn't already very publicly tarnished beyond being a serious contender.
The only exception of whom I am aware is the currently inexperienced Dan Jarvis. If he were to be wise enough to look ahead and prepare himself for that opening, starting right now, he could be Labour's last hope to avoid all those pitfalls and become a genuinely valuable leader of the main opposition party in British politics. I don't know of any others who could pull it off.
Friday, 4 September 2015
On the Jez
(The title of this post is based on something B. A. Baracus said in the very first A-Team TV episode)
Well, that was the last of the Labour leadership televised hustings, just a few hours ago now. Did it help anyone?
Yes, it helped Jeremy Corbyn, who seems to have come across as more genuine than the others, the proverbial 'breath of fresh air'. Although there is an element of illusion in that seemingly very widely-held assessment, there is no denying its power.
It now seems to be almost certain that 'Jez' will become the new Labour party leader. Is this what I was originally predicting?
No. I was at first expecting Andy Burnham to win – but the Burnham campaign has been so poor, and the candidate himself has flip-flopped so many times (and been caught at it, and exposed on a number of occasions) on various policy questions, that his credibility has dropped quite significantly, even among Labour supporters themselves, who tend largely to be gullible and easily led by the nose.
I was also part-expecting a real show-stopper of a revelation or a gaffe by Corbyn – and that could still happen – though this was only a statistical judgment based on the sheer length of the campaign and the tendency of such things to happen during such extended periods in a party leadership context. It is now probably too late as, I suspect, the considerable majority of ballots have by now been cast.
I consider this to be somewhat unfortunate for Labour. Not that I am a Burnham fan, or anything like, but at least he could have handled the 'leader of H.M. official opposition' job tolerably well, whereas the likes of Corbyn and Yvette Cooper would, I think, be very poor. Liz Kendall isn't really in the running now, looking to come a distant fourth in the contest.
Thus we look set to have an unhealthy political scenario up ahead, with its inevitable tendency to draw the Conservative Government toward the centre, and easing-up on their more strongly principled policy stances because it will thus be so easy to attract disillusioned and disenfranchised Labour voters. This is one of the reasons why a good, mainstream opposition is vital for a healthy democracy.
Fortunately, the silver lining to this dark cloud is that it cannot last long. As Jeremy Corbyn will be unable to secure the support of many of his party's MPs on a number of his policies, sooner or later he will find his position is untenable – probably visibly around two years from now (actually much sooner, but it won't necessarily show outwardly for some time).
Although there is no certainly that the party's so-called selectorate will have grown up sufficiently by then, at least there is the possibility that they will choose a more acceptable leader next time. Perhaps there will be no too-lefty candidates from which to choose on that future occasion – though I suspect that 'bumbling Burnham', regardless of what he says about it today, will return to have yet another unsuccessful crack at it!
Well, that was the last of the Labour leadership televised hustings, just a few hours ago now. Did it help anyone?
Yes, it helped Jeremy Corbyn, who seems to have come across as more genuine than the others, the proverbial 'breath of fresh air'. Although there is an element of illusion in that seemingly very widely-held assessment, there is no denying its power.
It now seems to be almost certain that 'Jez' will become the new Labour party leader. Is this what I was originally predicting?
No. I was at first expecting Andy Burnham to win – but the Burnham campaign has been so poor, and the candidate himself has flip-flopped so many times (and been caught at it, and exposed on a number of occasions) on various policy questions, that his credibility has dropped quite significantly, even among Labour supporters themselves, who tend largely to be gullible and easily led by the nose.
I was also part-expecting a real show-stopper of a revelation or a gaffe by Corbyn – and that could still happen – though this was only a statistical judgment based on the sheer length of the campaign and the tendency of such things to happen during such extended periods in a party leadership context. It is now probably too late as, I suspect, the considerable majority of ballots have by now been cast.
I consider this to be somewhat unfortunate for Labour. Not that I am a Burnham fan, or anything like, but at least he could have handled the 'leader of H.M. official opposition' job tolerably well, whereas the likes of Corbyn and Yvette Cooper would, I think, be very poor. Liz Kendall isn't really in the running now, looking to come a distant fourth in the contest.
Thus we look set to have an unhealthy political scenario up ahead, with its inevitable tendency to draw the Conservative Government toward the centre, and easing-up on their more strongly principled policy stances because it will thus be so easy to attract disillusioned and disenfranchised Labour voters. This is one of the reasons why a good, mainstream opposition is vital for a healthy democracy.
Fortunately, the silver lining to this dark cloud is that it cannot last long. As Jeremy Corbyn will be unable to secure the support of many of his party's MPs on a number of his policies, sooner or later he will find his position is untenable – probably visibly around two years from now (actually much sooner, but it won't necessarily show outwardly for some time).
Although there is no certainly that the party's so-called selectorate will have grown up sufficiently by then, at least there is the possibility that they will choose a more acceptable leader next time. Perhaps there will be no too-lefty candidates from which to choose on that future occasion – though I suspect that 'bumbling Burnham', regardless of what he says about it today, will return to have yet another unsuccessful crack at it!
Thursday, 20 August 2015
Cor-bynned Votes
It is interesting to read this...
https://twitter.com/Jareth_Labour/status/634297455169900544
I quote:
https://twitter.com/Jareth_Labour/status/634297455169900544
I quote:
"Friend who is lifelong Labour voter was rejected AFTER voting for @jeremycorbyn and @stellacreasy with no explanation. Worrying #LabourPurge"
Now, this could, as has already been suggested in response to that
tweet, have been a mistake – but why are ballots being rejected after
the vote, and how are their origins being identified? (Several others have come to public notice during today, so the above isn't an isolated instance.) That isn't
how properly-run elections work – although I imagine it is easier to do with
online voting than with ballot papers, which would have to be opened by the
party.
Whenever I have been involved in such a ballot, the paper, sealed in an inner envelope, was addressed to an independent electoral society, not the (Conservative) party. It was all done by them, so there was no scope for rigging by the party or otherwise manipulating the result.
The whole Labour procedure, including the Miliband changes, reeks of typical Labour incompetence, because anyone with a reasonably functioning brain could have foreseen much if not most (or even all) of what has now happened, especially when they look back into their own party history. They have brought it on themselves: nobody did it to them, so the blame lies within the party.
It must now be assumed that this Labour party leadership election is effectively invalid and its outcomes will not be able to be assumed 'safe'. Perhaps those who were already calling for its suspension are now being given the ammunition to actually achieve that end.
Whenever I have been involved in such a ballot, the paper, sealed in an inner envelope, was addressed to an independent electoral society, not the (Conservative) party. It was all done by them, so there was no scope for rigging by the party or otherwise manipulating the result.
The whole Labour procedure, including the Miliband changes, reeks of typical Labour incompetence, because anyone with a reasonably functioning brain could have foreseen much if not most (or even all) of what has now happened, especially when they look back into their own party history. They have brought it on themselves: nobody did it to them, so the blame lies within the party.
It must now be assumed that this Labour party leadership election is effectively invalid and its outcomes will not be able to be assumed 'safe'. Perhaps those who were already calling for its suspension are now being given the ammunition to actually achieve that end.
Friday, 24 July 2015
Patchy on the Patch
It's good to see that Labour councillors are still occasionally
getting things done on their patch. It's now seemingly such a rare
occurrence that they almost make a song and dance out of it, publicising it in unexpected places, as here. Not that there is any harm in this, by the way, but those of us who are doers have so much going on (as I have done for most of the past fifteen years, for example) that we'd hardly make a point of highlighting one of those – unless it were the only one, I suppose(!)
As some reading this will know, I was doing this sort of thing all the time, more-or-less single handed for years, when I was on the Council here; and have continued to do so since moving to this largely-neglected (for many years) Labour-held ward over five years ago.
As some reading this will know, I was doing this sort of thing all the time, more-or-less single handed for years, when I was on the Council here; and have continued to do so since moving to this largely-neglected (for many years) Labour-held ward over five years ago.
That has been not only here, but in other wards as well, which also
usually turn out to have Labour councillors, and even a UKIP activist in
one such area who had been active on such matters there while a Conservative, so I provided a tip-off, but then defected and didn't pursue it. I did, later, after asking whether it had even been reported in before. It had not.
I did have a post with half a dozen 'before and after' photos on my 'blog a few years ago, but deleted it last year when my image space use was nearing the limit and I cleared out a lot of older posts. I still have all the images, details and council reference numbers in my own records, of course, and might re-post them here again if there is any interest shown, as the space allocation has since been increased.
On a couple of occasions, instead of dealing with something myself, I have experimentally tried another approach, which was to publicise my findings either here or elsewhere in public view. The theory was that the councillors concerned would in effect be embarrassed into bothering for a change. Whether or not that was the reason for this method's apparent success, it is interesting to note that both those issues were fixed within months of my having splashed them about publicly.
Overall, it has been of great benefit to the residents of our borough in a number of places, and it has also helped inform me of who are the doers and who are merely posturers on our elected Council. Although it isn't precisely a party-based divide, it's fairly close, notwithstanding the (rare) exceptions.
Even in the case here, though, the same councillors have been elected for the ward that includes Ropemakers Court for over four years, and their party for well over the 'decade' that Cllr Osborne refers to as 'when it should be have been done' in the linked post. Why is it only now that any one of the three is attending to this?
I did have a post with half a dozen 'before and after' photos on my 'blog a few years ago, but deleted it last year when my image space use was nearing the limit and I cleared out a lot of older posts. I still have all the images, details and council reference numbers in my own records, of course, and might re-post them here again if there is any interest shown, as the space allocation has since been increased.
On a couple of occasions, instead of dealing with something myself, I have experimentally tried another approach, which was to publicise my findings either here or elsewhere in public view. The theory was that the councillors concerned would in effect be embarrassed into bothering for a change. Whether or not that was the reason for this method's apparent success, it is interesting to note that both those issues were fixed within months of my having splashed them about publicly.
Overall, it has been of great benefit to the residents of our borough in a number of places, and it has also helped inform me of who are the doers and who are merely posturers on our elected Council. Although it isn't precisely a party-based divide, it's fairly close, notwithstanding the (rare) exceptions.
Even in the case here, though, the same councillors have been elected for the ward that includes Ropemakers Court for over four years, and their party for well over the 'decade' that Cllr Osborne refers to as 'when it should be have been done' in the linked post. Why is it only now that any one of the three is attending to this?
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