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The Number 10 lockdown bandit plans to tough it out – politicalbetting.com
The Number 10 lockdown bandit plans to tough it out – politicalbetting.com
Given that the latest poll over the weekend has LAB with an 11% lead You would have thought that Johnson would at least recognise that he needs be contrite in a little way. There s a lot of strong feeling out there from the 80% plus of people who strictly followed the lockdown rules and after being fined you would expect Johnson not to ignore this.
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/04/17/boris-johnson-accused-instigating-downing-street-lockdown-party/
Couple of years he will have the same infamous haircut too.
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
Somehow, the internal workings of the Conservative Party managed to promote all the bad eggs and weed out all the decent souls. The opposite of what political parties ought to strive for.
There is a long list of reasons why that is appalling value, but surely a new reason to add to the list is inflation. Say he does by some miracle get the job in, say, 8 years time, your tenner would have earnt you a measly 40 quid. But that’s a spring 2022 forty quid. It’d be a 2030 twenty quid.
All distant-event bets tend to be poor value for punters and terrific earners for bookmakers, but inflation has just distorted the market even further in the interests of the bad guys.
Opinion polling shows the large number of Don’t Knows breaking to the No side. However, if Finland joins that’s a game changer.
It is fascinating to see Sweden following Finnish affairs so closely. The country that was formerly simply eastern Sweden does not usually figure highly in modern Swedes’ consciousness. Mumins, party boats and homely tv shows in.quaint archaic dialects are about the sum of Finnish contribution to Swedish popular culture.
It’s not just a phase.
By Jonathan Haidt"
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
Brings to mind Sean’s very public mental breakdown. A seemingly permanent, ugly a feature of this blog. Yesterday’s tirades against imaginary enemies was a case study in psychological projection.
I wouldn’t mind so much if the outrage was genuine, but it is so self-evidently synthetic. Manufactured for the entertainment of simpletons. But drug- and alcohol-induced rants lose their entertainment value after a couple of decades. Throw-away comedy has transmogrified into profound tragedy. Is *anyone* still laughing?
Comments from 72 per cent of respondents were negative, more than four times the proportion of positive responses (16 per cent). The most common word used was “liar”.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/defiant-boris-johnson-insists-he-didnt-break-covid-rules-8k5m6d73r
https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-easter-offensive?s=r
… Havel was the author of a famous secular east European statement about risk in politics. He wrote "Power of the Powerless" in communist Czechoslovakia, three decades before that debate, under the shadow of the death of the philosopher Jan Patocka, who had died after police interrogation. In that essay, Havel maintained that one takes risks for one's own truths, not because punishment brings some meaning, but because risk inheres in truth. To "live in truth" means accepting a measure of existential danger.
The Soviet Ukrainian dissident Myroslav Marynovych, who admired Havel, said something similar. The risks that he and others took as human rights activists in the Soviet Ukraine of the 1970s were not a deliberate provocation of the state. They were just an inseparable element of what Myronovych called a "normal Ukrainian life." In the Soviet Union, one could be punished for singing Ukrainian songs or speaking of Ukrainian history. One should do such normal things not to court punishment, but rather because not doing so would compromise the self. …
"I'm starting to understand that those saying that talking to [🇷🇺 leadership] is a waste of time have a point"
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1515857670129000449
“These two extreme groups [far left and far right] are similar in surprising ways. They are the whitest and richest of the seven groups, which suggests that America is being torn apart by a battle between two subsets of the elite who are not representative of the broader society”
Following the American commentary on the Musk/Twitter saga over the past week has been enlightening, with people changing positions 180º based purely on whether Musk or Agrawal ends up running the company.
I think this is wrong, Mike.
Johnson needed to show contrition, and instead has shown contempt, both for his own laws, and for the rest of us.
It’s long past the time when he could convincingly simulate contrition.
It’s Easter, and no doubt some will say repentance is always possible. I’d agree - but only should he step down as PM.
However, I suppose Sunak's plunge might make Johnson's position more, not less, perilous. If previously Sunak was a shoo-in for the top job there wasn't a lot of point anyone else jockeying for position.
Now that a race would be wide open it means more contenders could be building up their support. All of which adds to the threat Johnson faces.
I still don't believe they will have the courage to oust Johnson and that it will be left to the voters to do the job at the General Election but I don't think he's out of the woods. This week is an important one.
Which Malone loses by 21,566 votes.
To Mark Euuuuwwwww Oaten.
Reality is what the electorate says it is, Boris. You can't game that by denial.
Imagine Winchester on a national scale. I can.
I find it notable that Johnson appears, on 'Partygate' anyway, to have lost the support of the Telegraph. I accept that Nick Timothy seems to like the Rwanda deal, but if Sir Herbert Gusset has serious doubts about a Tory PM, then I suspect the end of his days can't be far away.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
What people who call for a "fair" voting system really mean is they don't like the results and want those who aren't getting enough votes to still get elected anyway, rather than convincing more voters to vote for them.
* “fair” is a value judgement. I believe that it is right that a local area chooses someone to represent their interests. The person with most votes gets picked. What could be fairer than that?
Now he is in place, it's going to be much harder to remove him; we've already seen several cycles of the insufficiently loyal being cast into the outer darkness.
We know from history that when terrible regimes take power, a lot of normal decent people keep their heads down, hope that someone else will make it blow over, and very softly collaborate. Fortunately, few of us have been put in such a stark position.
Now Boris isn't comparable with those great monsters of history, thank goodness. But there's a similar human dynamic, I suspect. So whilst Conservatives who tolerate this are a lot less patriotic than their self-image, I can't quite condemn them, and I feel a bit guilty about voting against them next month.
Single Transferrable Vote in Multi-Member Constituencies please. Fair. Proportionate. Constituency link maintained but you can choose which MP to take on your issue.
Some of that is down to Starmer being a better politician than many credit him for, but also the Momentum takeover was never that complete.
The Conservatives might just wake up from this nightmare, in the way that Spain collectively but wordlessly decided to just ignore Franco's plans as soon as he was dead. But it looks harder for the Conservatives.
Some long time ago my professional body introduced PR..... our council had seven members elected each year for a three year term. Before it's introduction the Council was dominated by one section of the profession; admittedly a large sector, but one which was decreasing. After PR came in, within a few years we had a much more representative, and, in my opinion anyway, a very good Council, with excellent relations with the DoH and other health professions. Then a small group of 'conservative' members campaigned for the re-introduction of the tradition "British' system; top seven candidates in the list elected.
Over the next three years the Council was 'captured' by a small but vociferous group, and relations with the DoH deteriorated sadly, to the point where we lost many of our powers.
It's arguable that the last might have happened anyway, and, of course, that the electors had a choice but the change was very noticeable.
I would like to see a similar system UK wide.
Remember that in any election its not just about how your side votes, its about how the other side does too. All we need to get the liar out of office is enough Tory voters going "naah mate" and sitting on their hands. They don't even have to vote Labour for scores of seats to flip. And in the south the LibDem threat is starting to be recognised by pollsters, with the yellow pox breaking out like a rash on some prediction models.
So to HY and his friends - think what you want. But it really isn't about what you think, its about what the voters think. And apparently they are less stupid than you hope they are. Your problem is that by openly associating yourself with the man the voters know to be a liar and a crook, you yourselves are just as tarnished. Why will they listen to you again?
You watched Boris get fired 2x for lying, lie constantly about Brexit, illegally shut Parliament, use death threats against MPs, party in lockdown,
And you backed him THROUGHOUT.
After decades of this...
Imagine having the NERVE to try & distance yourself now?
https://twitter.com/Femi_Sorry/status/1515793895065587718
https://twitter.com/ChristabelCoops/status/1515624147925319686?t=o4IpuwwLGaY2zKeRBh0UEA&s=19
It might be a pragmatic power grab. But "fair"???
You’re celebrating what you see as a lack of principle. I hope you’re wrong.
I’d much prefer STV with multi member seats, based on county borders.
https://twitter.com/AVMikhailova
Edit: possibly also PC (In coalition) - memory is dim. And the LDs in 2010 of course.
It's only a fair system because the party you want to win generally wins, 1997 to 2010 notwithstanding.
P.S. It worked OK between 2010 and 2015.
Except that it's a reserved power to HMG in London.
However, for some strange reason the Tories don't want to change the voting system ...
For the first time it would free people to vote for who they actually want.
This is not a party point.
The fact we still have buffoons like Dorris, Rees-Mog and Patel in government sort of sums up where the party is nowadays.
Blair should have introduced it. He probably didn't because he thought it would disadvantage Labour, so one of his smaller failures.
It's hard to say who it would advantage most now, probably the LDs but that could change. No matter. If it's a better system, it should be introduced regardless.
FPTP is a dinosaur.
Ultimately, however, it seems to me that the ability of an utterly compromised prime minister to retain the confidence of his colleagues, in spite of his losing the support of the public and becoming a deadweight drag on his party’s popularity, must involve a degree of magical thinking.
Indeed, I would argue that like Churchill and Thatcher before him, Johnson has become what we might call a talismanic leader, one who, possessed by powers that sometimes seem superhuman, even supernatural, to his friends and foes alike will, whatever the current evidence to the contrary, supposedly see their party through the very worst of times and into the sunlit uplands.
A word of warning, however. As Churchill and Thatcher themselves learned the hard way, magic wears off.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/17/just-what-exactly-is-keeping-boris-johnson-in-power?CMP=share_btn_tw
I don't think it is likely, because I think the Tories will get rid of him in time to avert a catastrophic meltdown, but it is possible if they delay too long, or he just won't go.
For the avoiance of doubt, I do not think it would be a good thing for the Nation and its political system if we saw a 'Winchester on a national scale'.
He is basically saying the Met are wrong. So why is he not fighting it in court?
Simples.
Repeated public denials of guilt
+
Multiple false defence statements served
+
Late guilty plea in the face of overwhelming evidence
+
Reverting to denying the offence after admitting it
=
Unimpressed sentencing court
https://twitter.com/BarristerSecret/status/1515954365487538178
Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong.
Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised.
And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
But the thing that was decisive for me was living in places like Cambridge and Lewisham. It's not right that Conservative minded voters in places like that can only influence the results of elections by choosing between a defiant but pointless vote for what they want (but will come third) or choosing the lesser of two evils. Same goes for Labour voters bin other parts of the country. It's also pretty silly that where your voters live matters more for the outcome than how numerous they are.
The larger counties could be sub divided.
As for the smaller ones maybe they would merge into natural groups. Hereford with Worcester for example.
Second to Taz - d'Hondt is the international standard, because it does produce pretty exactly a reflection of public opinion, which STV doesn't (STV is still better for larger parties, and it introduces a bias to "transfer-friendly" parties). Yes, it can produce no overall majority, but if there isn't a national consensus in favour of party X, then X shouldn't have a huge majority as delivered bvy FPTP. Scotland shows it's possible to win a majority anyway. One can make it a bit more likely with a threshold (5% in Germany, 4% in Sweden, 2% in Denmark), which avoids clogging up Parliament with individual eccentrics as tends to happen in Israel.
The case for d'Hondt has been strengthened by the increasingly erratic mood of parts of the electorate. If Trump, Le Pen, and Corbyn can all get close to majorities, it shows that the temptation to give radical change a spin is increasing. As a leftie I'm not necessarily against that if it produces a PM like Corbyn, but I recognise that it's not viable if it's happened because of quirks of constituency boundaries, and radical change needs either to have close to an actual majority or it needs to be tempered by coalition with less radical parties.
The Biden advice on grief here is so good. This is lovely, whatever your politics.
https://twitter.com/StigAbell/status/1515610698893639680
I think a pure PR across the four nations at Westminster could be a bit of a trap. My feeling is that the loss of seats, in line with population, will increase the political alienation of Scotland from Westminster. Though I suppose it could increase the plurality of Scottish parties at Westminster, which might give Scottish politicians more involvement in national politics. However, the loss of representation could easily be spun the SNP as a further sidelining of Scotland. I think PR would have to be weighted somehow.
Once you weight it, however, the P in PR is doing a lot of work. The answer? A tricameral legislature, where the delegates are elected by PR by Nation to the third house, voting as national delegations. The third house would be a blocking chamber, requiring majorities in 3/4 delegations to block legislation. This would allow for an alternative expression of national will in Parliament and increase representation of the devolved nations. My belief is that this system would balance democracy with the interests of the devolved nations and help keep the United Kingdom together.
There are no guarantees that your favourite parts of the manifesto of the party you voted for gets through.
Of course, manifestos are often not worth the paper they are written on.
Now Scotland is an exception, as a single issue party has captured the vote. But I think that is indivdual circumstances there.
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/jonathan-haidt-on-social-medias-havoc
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The downside is that it is difficult to explain to anyone so has virtually zero chance of being implemented.
I'm not sure what the best system would be for us, or what would be acceptable, but just about anything would be preferable to FPTP which is long past its sell-by date.
I agree, broadly, but still think FPTP has so many serious downsides that almost any kind of replacement would be an improvement.
He's the exact opposite of a political activist, and that's his only saving grace. At least, he won't be exhorting others to glue their heads to pipelines in an effort to blackmail normal people. And when did the electorate gain this sense of self-importance?
Seriously, I would quite like a politician who admits he doesn't know everything. We're on a journey of exploration in a changing world, and we need to be free to change our minds. Unfortunately, we end up with a Boris, or a fool who thinks he knows all the answers.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
https://twitter.com/tarhuwa/status/1515798190054084608?s=21&t=I7IgPC6gwadBftSqJkmXWA
Or do you mean only ONE that gets meaningful numbers of votes?
"I didn't think she meant it when she said "no". It was a genuine error so I carried on regardless". Case dismissed, or a ten year custodial sentence?
There is a lot of anger about a lot of things, and it’s being focussed on the wrong thing.
Right now the nhs needs help. At a minimum I’d like to see hepa filter units in every ward of the nhs. I’d like a nightingale style plan for how to empty the hospitals of those who are ready for discharge but have nowhere to go without social care. I’d like substantial bonuses paid to nhs staff who are still working incredibly hard.
I think the government needs to show how it will deal with the CoL crisis if prices don’t come down for power.
I don’t give a fig for partygate. I know many of you see scrupulous in your observance of the rules. I tried my best but I was not perfect. A coffee at a colleagues house when dropping stuff off. My parents bubble including everyone from the family.
I think people want Johnson gone and they see this as the way to do it.