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Here’s the moment Jo Brand had to explain to the #HIGNFY panel that they should take sexual harassment seriously. pic.twitter.com/4cc4J3ocOw
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Oh and excellent piece.
Let’s hope it doesn’t happen.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/04/uk-has-conceded-over-cut-off-date-for-eu-nationals-brussels-brexit-rights
That said, it could have been worse - it could have been, 'questions to answer on Chris Rennard's handling.'
Two overriding reasons. 1. His disloyalty to all previous leaders 2. He has the weakest shadow cabinet this country has ever seen including some who are literally morons (possibly with an IQ even lower than the SNP Westminster branch)
That's a grotesque and unworthy, even defamatory remark. What have elephants ever done to you that you are so unkind to them?!!
On the subject of North Korea, this is rather an interesting article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/north-korea-defector-trump/544769/
The Conservative EUnionists, by contrast, would have to work with Corbyn to have any effect, who is at best an unenthusiastic remainer and is also a self- described Socialist with a very dodgy past and two self-declared Marxists in his top team. No way will that happen. There is no common ground to exploit.
If Cooper had been elected leader, things might be very different. The sheer insanity of Labour's self-indulgence during its depression at losing an election it complacently assumed it had won doesn't look any better just because Corbyn suffered a very bad defeat rather than a truly cataclysmic one.
Incidentally, I don’t think the LD’s are likely to go into coalition with Labour. I suspect their 2010-15 experience will put them off coalitions for a while, especially when compared with the C&S of the late 70’s.
That is absolutely unthinkable in the current climate (including via the Liberal Democrats, incidentally) and all that would be achieved is a tiny splinter group that, by depriving the government of its majority, might let an extremely dangerous government in under Corbyn at a difficult time politically and economically. Such a move would be neither forgotten nor forgiven and that is why it won't happen.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-41867466
In some respects this is a mirror image of ISIS - a religious cult turned into a vast criminal organisation.. In this case a vast criminal organisation inspires a religious cult...
Thousands of families are now engaged in this illegal activity.
The new business has inspired its own subculture and saint, "The Infant Huachicolero", to whom locals pray and make offerings in the hope of receiving protection and prosperity....
On topic:
This doesn't feel like the nineties to me politically. The Tory disarray is worse, with fighting in cabinet not just the backbenches.
I think Corbyn is the Tory Nemesis, following on from Hubris. The Tories are unelectable and incompetent. They will not get the vote out next time while Labour will.
Which is one reason she'll never become leader. Thank goodness.
Bluntly Cable hasn't looked the same politician since he was caught in that newspaper sting a few years back. It's almost as though he's lost confidence in his own ability.
I can think of dozens of reasons why she won't be leader but standing up to sleazy sexists shouldn't be one.
Tories would benefit from Cable
Lib Dems would benefit from Corbyn
Labour would finally have a female leader.
We badly needed a leadership debate as a threshing process, and didn't get one. Cable is yesterdays man and tainted too much by tuition fees.
Meanwhile Labour are looking more serious. Even Jezza is managing to combine antiestablishment chic with a certain polish and professionalism. With a couple of exceptions the shadow cabinet is doing surprisingly well. If he promote more of the new intake over the next few years he will be set for government.
Either the government will shortly collapse, and be even more unelectable, or Jezzas team will get more professional and have a serious plan for government in 4 years.
Either way the Tories are doomed.
The death of the Lib Dems continues to be the most remarkable and underexplored feature of politics. Anaemic and uninteresting. Enabled Brexit, Corbyn.
What are we the global hub for now? Predator politicians? An economy that proclaims higher ever employment whilst the government demands the self employed cease trading and become unemployed? A suicidal threat to expell ourselves from the single market into the abyss because we support free trade?
I don't think a new leader is a cure-all for the Tories. They are as broken morally and ideologically as they are politically. Sex scandals are de jure, but scandals of how the government has broken people on the wheel of Universal Credit are around the corner- 'how can they treat people like That's won't just be an MP being "handsy". Let's say they bin the zombie and select someone else. What changes? Still the palace of sleaze. Still hopelessly divided about the Hard Brexit ELE.
But that's not to say "Labour win the next election". If that's 2022 I have no idea what the country will look like. Its not the mid 90s with a dynamic Labour party offering a bright future. We have no clear future beyong March 19. With mass upheaval comes shifting of tectonic plates. I cannot see how we do not get a new political party of significant size competing in that election. And that being the case analogies of Tories vs Labour feel redundant
Methinks you contradict yourself.
I withdraw the words worst kind but saying AL will never be leader because she has Whistle Blown Gallons unacceptable behaviour!!
Seriously how is that not victim blaming.
It does feel rather terminal: after the general election debacle Mrs May was described as mortally wounded, yet she has soldiered on, propped up by a band of loyal MPs. Their loyalty was sorely tested on Thursday and their morale knocked further still. How their anger will manifest remains to be seen.
But what is clear is that party management just got a lot harder. The backbenchers could well mete out their punishment on Mrs May - and their disdain for the meteoric rise of the former chief whip - in the House of Commons.
http://news.sky.com/story/theresa-mays-missed-opportunity-sparks-fresh-questions-over-her-future-11111955
On a cheerier note, a reiteration of some early F1 bets I made yesterday (all Ladbrokes, each way for the 2018 title, with odds boost [which, oddly, did work for EW bets]).
The key to the season is whether the Renault engine is up to snuff. If it isn't, Bottas for the title at 16 (fifth the odds for top 3) is a very good bet because the title race will be Mercedes-Ferrari, and we've seen by how much Bottas excelled Raikkonen this year.
If the Renault engine is good enough then McLaren's odds offer far better value than Red Bull's. Alonso is 12, but should the engine be good enough he should be more like 5 or shorter. Vandoorne at 81 offers good value for the each way aspect, equating to 16/1 to be top 3.
Something else I considered was the first race. Australia has typically favoured McLaren, so if they achieve good results anywhere it'll be places like Oz (also, Russia, Singapore, Monaco).
Verstappen is a fantastic driver but his odds are far too short to tempt.
Their brand is trash. Large sections of the population detest them, including the great majority of the under 45s (even under 65s?).
And there is no way back with Brexit hanging about like a dead albatross.
We need either a Brexit "everyone" can unite behind - an opportunity May has squandered grotesquely with her horrible rhetoric and cowardly inaction - or a Remain "everyone" can unite behind, the lineaments of which I don't think I've seen anyone spell out anywhere.
It needs huge political imagination.
There is certainly nobody in the current leadership of any party that comes close.
Our best bet is a coup by Conservative Young Turks who are untarnished by the irresponsibility, selfishness, and moral turpitude of the current squad. But the new leadership - whoever they are - would have to repudiate the existing adminstration.
Like then both parties have been divided by a major referendum on Europe, like then (as we no now) there is plenty of sexual impropriety about, the unions are flexing their muscles, inflation is rising and like then both parties are entrenched on around 40% of the vote.
Indeed there were an astonishing 4 general elections in the 1970s, all of which were reasonably close and 1 of which produced a hung parliament where the largest party even lost the popular vote. The 2010s may be heading for similar.
I'm sorry, HYUFD - it's over.
But let's be honest. The only reason the Tories are anywhere near this is that they have swallowed much of the Kipper Hard Brexit or Die voters. Who having won the referendum realised the next battle was to secure the hardest of hard Brexit possible.
Tories should be worried about the impact their basic immorality is having on their appeal to anyone who is younger than 50 / not sociopathic / not obsessed about Brexit. In an election you can't just point at the opposition and say "they're worse". Because if that's all you've got, one day, you will be worse.
And then you're done
Fear of Corbyn is what is holding the Tory share up.
As for 'over' absurd the fact is not one poll currently has Corbyn anywhere near a majority let alone a 1990s style landslide.
The Leave/Remain divide is largely artificial. Boris, it should be recalled, wavered hugely before coming down for Leave; likewise many others on either side. May was an extremely reluctant Remainer. Most MPs - certainly most Remain MPs - had no great loyalty to that cause and took it on out of pragmatism: it was the least-worst option and (or in some cases no doubt, a bigger 'or'), happened to be the leadership's stance. The people having spoken and the leadership having changed, there are precious few Remainers who'll die in a ditch. This is why talk of a new centrist party is for the birds. If defections were going to happen over Brexit, they'd have done so already. (This too is a contrast to the 90s, where three Tory MPs defected, one to Labour and two to the Lib Dems, not counting resignations or withdrawals of the whip or last-minute strops).
No, while there undoubtedly are divisions of opinion on the type of Brexit that should be sought, they're relatively slight; the bigger divisions on the topic are (1) how far to push it if push comes to shove - does the UK ultimately walk away or sign if the EU doesn't offer what the government can easily live with, and (2) about the level of enthusiasm for Brexit, between the true believers and the pragmatists.
Even so, those divisions are either bridgeable or for the future.
The problems in party management are in fact far more mundane. In the absence of a central driving focus to the government, ministers are lacking an esprit de corps, ambitions are running beyond ability and jockeying for position is undermining collective endeavour. The whole thing is drifting because apart from Brexit and some fine words about inclusion and opportunity - not yet translated into meaningful policy - the government itself doesn't seem to be sure what it's for. Keeping Corbyn out is far from sufficient. The result is that it's constantly reacting to events and on the defensive, lacks ideas or a recognisable philosophy that voters and activists will buy into and would appear weak even if it wasn't prone to periodically lapsing into infighting. To that extent, it is the 90s again, other than 'keeping Corbyn out' is something large parts of the country will accept as a valid cause, if an uninspiring one. But of itself, it won't be enough: the Tories need a message, a vision and the clear means to deliver it.
Now the leaders may be older but not 1 was a SPAD and we have some genuine ideological disagreements between them.
The problem for Labour is that hatred of New Labour within the party means that no leader, even one with a clear transformative left-wing programme that turned the last manifesto from a wishlist into something serious, can retain the support of the Corbynite activist left if they're seen as a Jezpostate. Plus, some of the more outlandish policies now act as unexploded bombs. Anyone with a passing acquaintance with the public finances can tell you that abolishing tuition fees (with money you won't get in corporation tax, no less) is possibly the silliest policy you could adopt if you want to focus resources on the poorest, mend hard-pushed public services and build new infrastructure. Yet any potential Labour leader who even suggests reforming the system and a big cut will be pilloried for treachery, effectively for not offering a big middle-class tax cut. Absurd - and I'd benefit nicely from it (if on past fees, which in the end for fairness would be inevitable).
What a mess we're in. Two parties tied to bad policy, including the worst (Brexit), and with no way and no one, seemingly capable of changing course.
And I make the point again about morality. Universal Credit is the latest in a series of policies that are purposefully cruel and dehumanising at the same time as being more expensive and counterproductive vs the system they replaced. You can get away with treating people cruelly if it does a specific job ("Yes it hurt. Yes it worked"). But cruel AND stupid? Doesn't wash. The job centre being given orders to sanction the self employed to force them onto the dole is the latest insanity
But the fact was that, of the six local government byelections that took place, the Liberal Democrats won three of the seats from the Conservatives. They are still a force to be reckoned with, certainly in some places, if not everywhere.
Basically they didn't get it - "it" being that the voters are not up for buying a pup. They've tried that - Blair, Cameron - and didn't like it, thank you very much.
Of course, they aren't liking experience much either, when it is the front and back of a wide-of-the-mark me-me-me election campaign; a retread Red Robbo (RIP) from the seventies; or a retread from the time when the LibDems could still ride two horses going in opposite directions...
Second the Tories will get a deal, it will just be a Canada style FTA and of course even Corbyn has agreed the UK must leave the single market ultimately to end free movement, so in actual fact he is close to May's position on Brexit, certainly closer than a few rebel Europhile pro single market MPs like Soubry and Umunna on the Tory and Labour benches.
Finally of course Universal Credit will replace the immorality left by Labour where you could lose all your benefits by working more than 16 hours a week.
What, apart from Brexit, are they trying to achieve? In a short time we will have another budget but it will be delivered by a Chancellor in whom the PM seems to have no confidence and to whom she is reluctant to even give a headline. The Cameron/Osborne team made mistakes of course but they gave their government a sense of direction and purpose which was not in doubt. Blair/Brown did the same until they both went insane in their different ways.
A Chancellor working closely with a PM is essential for effective government. This schism is much more important than disagreements about Brexit.
The LibDems tried changing course on Brexit in June. Trouble is, voters said "nope, we told you what we wanted. We wanted what the Tories and Labour were offering. Brexit"....
Hold the champagne on the news of Carl Sargeant's sacking. He's been replaced by Alun Davies.
This Alun Davies, who was forced to resign for using a previous ministerial position to try and dig up dirt on his political opponents.
I know him personally. The chief difference between him and Boris Johnson is that Johnson is much more intelligent and loyal; he chief difference between him and John Macdonnell is that Macdonnell is much more polite and less thuggish; the chief difference between him and Jeffrey Archer...nah, that's going a tiny bit far.
Labour desperately, desperately need a spell in opposition in Wales. They've completely lost it.
Blair added about ten points to Labour's lead. That boost might not have carried right through to election day: there were methodological issues with mid-90s polling and the dynamics of politics mean that other factors will eventually drag on a boost or hit. Still, even if only half Blair's bonus remained through to 1997, that'd given Smith a 7.5% win rather than a 12.5% one, and probably a majority (without crunching the numbers) of around 100 rather than near 180.
And then we have Labour, who are having to do this - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5048787/Scale-anti-semitism-Labour-party-revealed.html
Ah well, off to the gym....
Blair didn't really understand governing until after 2001, by which time he was obsessed with the bogey of Islamic terrorism and Middle Eastern instability rather than meaningful bread and butter policies at home. It's striking to reflect that insofar as he was interested in such things he spent much of the time undoing his previous work.
It’s debatable whether the centre has been abandoned or just shifted leftwards.
The Tories are talking energy caps, workers reps on boards, going after the wealth of the elderly to fund social care, borrowing to pay for building etc...
They then crashed to their worst general election result in terms of votes-per-candidate since 1886, and but for the Tory collapse during the campaign, which had nothing to do with Farron, could have been wiped out outside Scotland.
The message to take about LD local by-elections is that LDs care more than most parties about local by-elections.
It is quite remarkable that no UK PM has died in office in over 150 years, when you think about the number of near-misses.
Campbell-Bannerman was obviously one near miss and Churchill was ill for much of the last two years of his premiership. But who else were you thinking of? Even allowing for the advanced ages of Salisbury, Gladstone and Disraeli they weren't seen as close to death at the time they left office.