Many politcial commentators have made the point that outsdide London remarkably little power changed hands in the UK this week, and that, superficially, is true. We appear to be stuck in a moment. In politics such situations never last. There will be a disruption, and a period of change, come what may.
I suggest that against expectation this will not come from Labour. Jeremy Corbyn is in office to stay right now and nothing that has happened, including the result in Scotland will change that for the time being, and quite probably until 2020. It is the Conservatives who are likely to provide the disruption. There are at least four reasons.
First, the myth of Crosby is over. The Goldsmith campaign was dire and will provoke a backlash in the party.
Second, the referendum will cause severe disruption for the Conservatives, whatever the result.
Third, Cameron is going come what may and people resent prime ministers who assume office without an election. They have a poor track record whilst leaving trails of dispute in their own party far too close to any election that follows for an easy recovery to take place.
And then there is the minor issue of corruption in the last Conservative election campaign. Ten seats, at least, are being investigated. People would not like by elections beacuse the marginally elected incumbent reached office as a result of fraud.
May 2016 was not destined to be a disruptive moment. But ione is on its way, soemwhere, somehow, soon.
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Oh – I soooo hope you’re right Richard. It’s about time their dastardly plan started to unravel.
According to the bookies, though, Labour will have to wait at least 15 years before standing a chance of re-entering government (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tories-will-be-in-power-for-the-next-15-years-say-bookies-a7016771.html).
Scotland, more than Corbyn, is the thorn in their flesh, isn’t it? And there seems to be no easy answer to that.
On a more positive note, I hope you & the family are now comfortably settled into your new home. Good health, good fortune and, as they say on the other side, ‘bonne continuation’.
According to bookies we now have a hung parliament
Considering all the attempts within the right wing of the PLP to undermine Corbyn and his political agenda, the results could be seen as a partial success. Just think what a united Labour Party could achieve if only those who still fail to see successful politics as a team game were to play ball.
I’m assuming that’s what the left wing of the PLP did at the time of the Blair/Brown ascendancy (I don’t know as I wasn’t there or interested in politics at the time). Under FPTP it seems the party that is the most united team (and also in tune with the public mood at the time) which gains most political momentum leading up to a general election.
So it would seem to be time for all the political primadonna’s to take a back seat or exit the stage, so that the team can become united and stand a chance of winning again.
Yes….
Before 2010 we had a press that at least tried to be sort-of fair…
Now we have an almost united right-wing press that suppresses news, backed-up by a rather gutless BBC, which seems to be the political broadcasting wing of the conservative party.
Or perhaps people did not note that the rather startling news of, at least, a liberal attitude to party funding (or corruption..) was extremely under-reported prior to the local elections?
Maybe people just do not care that schools are (or were, we shall see) going to be given away to commercial enterprises, which employ an increasingly under-qualified teaching staff?
Maybe they have not noticed that hospitals give contracts to commercial concerns, who then fail to deliver, run out of money, and hand the job back to the NHS?
Maybe they do not care that hospitals are increasingly allocating more beds to paying “customers”?
Or maybe, just maybe, the people who are supposed to be looking at these events, and telling us, are being told not to?
Yes….
Before 2010 we had a press that at least tried to be sort-of fair…
Now we have an almost united right-wing press that suppresses news, backed-up by a rather gutless BBC, which seems to be the political broadcasting wing of the conservative party.
Or perhaps people did not note that the rather startling news of, at least, a liberal attitude to party funding (or corruption..) was extremely under-reported prior to the local elections?
Maybe people just do not care that schools are (or were, we shall see) going to be given away to commercial enterprises, which employ an increasingly under-qualified teaching staff?
Maybe they have not noticed that hospitals give contracts to commercial concerns, who then fail to deliver, run out of money, and hand the job back to the NHS?
Maybe they do not care that hospitals are increasingly allocating more beds to paying “customers”?
Or maybe, just maybe, the people who are supposed to be looking at these events, and telling us, are being told not to?
So now parts of London, but not The City, have a mayor who may work for the people, as opposed to a mayor who was only ever working for himself.
But he has a hard job…up against an incredibly captured press and media…and the money..
@Keith Fletcher
Keith, Paul Mason appears to agree with you about the prima donnas – indeed, he effectively believes they should exit the Party.
See his proposals 2 on this and 3 on federalism (to pick up on a related theme from another post) combined with the idea of a progressive alliance.
https://medium.com/mosquito-ridge/elections-2016-the-scottish-earthquake-continues-f829864192b5#.uq8b29u6c
There is only one strategy that could help Labour gain ground in Scotland. It is to accept that left of centre voters there want independence. The Tories have effectively captured the union vote. There will never again be a 44 seat block vote of Scottish Labour in the UK parliament. But in a Federal assembly Scottish Labour could work with English, Welsh and the SDLP labour parties. Pro-independence Scottish Labour could break the SNP alliance of left and right wing nationalists.
I don’t think it’s that simple for Scottish Labour. Voters are split, close to 50/50, between unionists and nationalists. There are left- and right-wing voters in both camps. Whichever way Labour go (unionist or nationalist), they are alienating part of the left-wing vote.
I think that is the issue in Scotland
There is no room for a unionist left of centre party
Although Labour helped create that situation
This video from the Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2016/may/06/plymouth-politics-labour-conservatives-video
about the work being done at a local level by Labour in Plymouth. New jobs new housing and quite a lot of investment, and yet some of the local people they spoke to had no idea who was responsible for the improvements. This coupled with a difficult media landscape and a leadership seemingly struggling to widely deliver it’s message, times are still very difficult for Labour. I’d very much like to get all the dissenting Labour MPs in a room and ask them exactly why they seem determined to prolong the reign of the neoliberal.
As a lurker on Conservative Home, it is clear that many of the blue activists would totally agree with your assessment Richard. They are almost uniformly disapproving of the Lynton Crosby style of electioneering but it does not just stem from the 2016 Zac Goldsmith campaign. There have been many voices over the last year rejecting a Crosby re-run of 2015 in 2020.
There is also great uncertainty about how the party will come back together again following the referendum. No love is lost for Cameron or Osborne. Gove is well-liked but understood to be unpopular amongst the electorate. There are calls to skip a generation for someone like Dominic Raab… but there is no obvious successor that the commentators would back… Boris included. Many suggest that Cameron will go sooner rather than 2017/18, and immediately if there is a Leave win.
In addition, I am very surprised at how much anger, discontent and dismay is expressed over the handling of the junior doctors, forced academisation, Universal Credit debacle, Osborne’s tax cuts for the wealthy and so on… and as for the nefarious goings-on with the Battle bus, tales of bullying and now the election expenses!
Not only should we look to the Conservatives to supply the trouble ahead, but it may be the Conservative grassroots who trigger the revolt.
I tend to agree
I often do with you
I was looking at a map of the country earlier (from ‘Inequality Briefing’) and it revealed that the UK has nine of the ten poorest regions in Northern Europe (West Wales, Cornwall, Durham and Tees Valley, Lincolnshire, South Yorkshire, Shropshire and Staffordshire, Lancashire, Northern Ireland, East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire). This is surely certain to get worse as the metropols suck up ever more of the country’s production (and by the way become – at least in the case of Manchester where I live – ever more soulless) and given the expected financial crisis.
I wonder what would Richard advocate for alleviating this situation, both in terms of new productive work for people to do and the means of paying for it.
I have to say another depressing feature of the Mayoral election was the rhetoric around ‘London keeping more of what it produces’. After the bank bailouts – essentially a transfer from the regions to the capital – and the vastly disproportionate amount of capital spending that goes on in London, I would have thought it was time to put the idea of the capital getting anymore from the public purse to bed. Any thoughts on that RM?
My education lecturer told us last week that the higher education policy confounds this matter also – sucking talent into the cities and living the rural areas depleted.
I have already done so
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