The Tories are apparently in relatively confident mood at present. They think Sunak is working well for them, even if the low bar for comparison was set by Truss and Johnson.
The Tories suggest that a Budget that did not crash, a small boats policy that has not sunk (as yet) and a successful Northern Ireland deal that was always available to them but which had previously been refused are the evidence of that success.
They apparently want to ignore the cost of living crisis that is getting worse; pay disputes to which they have no answers; the crises in public services and most especially the NHS; the chaos on our borders; the stench of corruption from within their own ranks and their failure to address basic issues like constitutional reform that leave them alienated from millions.
But are they right? Might people forgive the Tories their failings for the sake of a law that says it stops law boats, even if it does not in practice, and because they are being asked for more tax when public services are failing? A poll:
Are the Tories bouncing back as a result of their recent policy wins, as they would describe them?
- Don’t be daft; this is a worn out government past its use by date (55%, 406 Votes)
- I don’t know, but show me the answers anyway (27%, 204 Votes)
- No: there have been no policy wins (11%, 82 Votes)
- Yes: people want many more years of Rishi Sunak (5%, 35 Votes)
- Yes; people will never vote for Labour again after 2019 (2%, 17 Votes)
Total Voters: 744
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‘Man’s struggle against power is that of memory against forgetting’ Milan Kundera – Czech writer.
We can forget the injustices (the bedroom tax, fitness for work interviews for people dying of cancer).
We can forget the promises that have not come true (privatisation will make everything cheaper through choice/BREXIT will make us stronger).
We can forget the lies and the liars (the ‘funding’ of the NHS, the ‘protective ring’ around care homes, Johnson, Hancock etc).
We can forget all of these things over time – as we have forgotten a lot of things over time , like why the social security system was created.
But the Tories do not have enough time. So they will help us to forget by using fascist politic science by offering new threats to occupy our minds and disrupt our memories – new things to hate and fear or that pander to the darker parts of our humanity.
Added to that, the pure vacuity of Laboured’s policy and how they are not that much different – a lack of choice, a lack of genuine new or better old ideas that should not have been forgotten has to be put in the mix.
Could the Tories bounce back?
Yes – there is a huge risk that they will and that they can because not only are they good at getting into power (it’s all they’re good at actually because they have no scruples whatsoever) but that possibility is also deeply embedded in our society who will be the enablers in the end – consciously or not.
Why? Because people will be misled, guided by their inherent biases, made frightened or angry, divided in opinion about our ills. That’s what passes for politics these days – manipulation and exploitation. Wickedness.
Sad isn’t it?
Sadly your post is a statement of the reality of the mass psychology of the ‘English’ as a whole, I deliberately didn’t include the Celtic nations. In real terms I don’t think there has been any real change in mindset for centuries. There is still a begrudging acceptance of control by the public school/toffs.
What is the alternative facing the mass – seeing reality means taking responsibility for their own lives, refusing to accept the status quo and horror of horrors – taking action.
I live in France and via all the UK TV news I saw the deliberate misrepresentation of the gilet jaune movement which saw the ordinary French mobilising themselves. The shock of the French Establishment when it realised – they had no leaders. I have seen the same thing again with the unrelenting action of so many different sections of French society against the pension reforms. Wouldn’t it be good to see UK TV reporters talking to the French and asking them to speak directly to the English – why didn’t you take to the streets when the elite raised the pension age in your country? It might just shock some of the English to look at their passive mentality.
Mick Lynch was and is so totally ‘unEnglish’ he has been a bigger shock to others in the trade union movement
than even the establishment. He doesn’t defend, he attacks mercilessly these same TV reporters that spout the establishment line and he attacks with undeniable facts.
I was in my twenties when I walked away from my union and politics because I just couldn’t stomach the peasant mentality that pervades so much of life in the UK. Nothing has changed, indeed with the onslaught of consumerist addiction and brainwashing it has only got far worse.
At the next corrupt FPTP election the Nasties will use the same tactics they always have and why not it’s always worked in the past with one exception, that was when the mass got conned by Tony the Liar and Gorden Gekko. If they had been genuine, they could have changed the mindset of so many, permanently.
I believe that when the mass realised they had been conned was when so many gave up any hope of real change. If George Orwell had been alive then he would have written a sequel to Animal Farm and 1984.
Quite correct – you’ve put your finger on the real problem of the English – they’ll take anything from ‘the toffs’. ‘The rape of the commons’ – why did that not show them just how unjust the ‘system,’ dating from as far back as the late seventeenth century, could be? And Cromwell, of course, wasn’t a true game-changer – he put in as harsh and tyrannical laws as any of the Tudors and Stuarts (both families of Celtic origin) against the ordinary people.
I suspect that it all comes down to the Norman Conquest, and the castles built to dominate the landscapes among which the peasantry worked. And although Cromwell ‘slighted’ quite a few of those, they’re still there festering.
But, you will say, look at the castles in Wales, built by the Normans and still nearly intact. They didn’t need to be slighted, they were already impotent against a certain ‘I’ll be damned if I’ll accept that!’ flame of rebellion that seems still to be strong among the Celtic nations. Richard has it, so do you, Stuart, as a Scot, and I (Welsh but with an infuriating reluctance from my other, English, inheritance), when the chips are down and the fight becomes impossible to avoid.
I sympathises with Mr Crawford, but cannot follow the sentimental Celticising of Scotland, which is frankly too common and patently absurd. For most of Scotland’s history it was internally divided; ironically, broadly on the Highland Fault Line. The Crown’s authority beyond the line was at best fragile. The great court poet of James IV, Wlliam Dunbar considered the Celts quite alien, and mocked the culture; the division was like two tectonic plates grinding together, with Scotland in the middle; it really is inappropriate to pretend suddenly both it, and the predominant central authority of Court, Parliament, Law and systematised education (all effectively bypassing Celtic cultural norms), never existed. The division persisted into the eighteenth, nineteenth and even into the twentieth centuries, especially after the end of Jacobitism (although the Stuarts as Romantic Celts is risible; they would use anyone to exploit the persisting improbability of a Hanoverian as a unifying Scottish monarch). Over the same period the dominant authority of Presbyterianism made a fist of extirpating the Gaelic language altogether, through the expansion of its post-1746 Churches and Schools in the Highlands; and let the clearances to the colonies do the rest.
There is little uplifting about this; but there is littleu plifting about most of Britain’s early modern history, which is part of our bigger problem today. We cannot face our past, yet we are quick to insist that everyone else; France, Germany, USA faces theirs. This is the origin of the tasteless vularity of modern British exceptionalism.
Always good to be reminded of that fundamentally important quote from Milan Kundera.
Somebody should make a complete list of all the major Thatcherite promises and what really happened.
For me two of the most important are:
We will make British Industry great again – They destroyed it.
Products and Services will be hugely improved by competition – Everywhere you look our economy is dominated by monopolistic practices. Products and service are worse because when you are a monopoly people have to take what they are given. Honest businesses struggle to compete against unregulated crooks.
The small channel boats and barges asylum shambles will backfire on the Tories, Labour is now discredited with the ridiculous; libelous Sunak advert, and the SNP with deep problems. Therefore the only beneficiaries at the next local elections on May 4th will be the Greens and LDs and failing any other dramatic changes onto the general election in 2024.
Not sure how to vote, as I think the media can spin this any way they choose to influence an election, and there are plenty of people who seem willing to vote against their own interests. And there is no alternative, a labour vote is also a vote for the status quo. FPTP, the media, Neoliberalism, are really ensuring our collective doom.
Rishi Sunak is a far off politician of whom little is cared, politics is its usual froth of presentation over substance, the Opposition looks out of touch and past its use-by date. I find myself wondering about your remarks from a bird sanctuary some months ago, about your contemporaries’ contentment in prosperity being an anchor to the way things are, and teeter on despair.
The trouble is that it is relative. All the things you mention as regards the Tories having no answers to – cost of living, strikes, immigration and so on – these are or would be serious problems for them if…the Labour party, seen by virtually all English voters and most Scots and Welsh as the only “Opposition” was actually taking a stand against the Tories with different ideas. But here’s Starmer with his “attack” ads, plus there’s a picture of him surrounded by so many Union flags he’s nearly crowded out, plus demands that Sunak “do more” or be more effective on all those things not solve them or stop doing what he’s doing. So can the Tories bounce back a bit from this? Well if Starmer is looking to win on the basis most people want rid of the Tories whoever does it (and he probably will) then Sunak could conceivably do a bit better for the Tories by the time of the GE, simply because Starmer is letting him do so.
Yes, they will bounce back… but not far enough to prevent a majority Labour government, Ihope. [I leave aside discussion about what a Labour Government might actually do…. but it IS better than a Tory Government].
They will bounce back because, Sunak has had some “wins” – particularly seen from a Tory perspective. Truss seems a distant memory and he has a year or so more to run and “something may turn up”. Now, I suspect that the “something” will be a nasty recession… but it could be something else (as well?). Besides, from an electoral point of view most Tory MPs are not that interested in whether they govern or not – and all expect not – but will they keep their own seat? That is what they are playing for…. and they will play hard!
Local elections are the next test of real opinion but Labour and LibDems should beware reading too much into them.
First, only the dedicated turn out and these are the type of people that will have voter ID. How that pans out in a General election remains to be seen.
Second, “granularity” in local elections means that the “Labour vote piles high in cities… and is ‘wasted'” problem will not be tested.
Labour should still win a GE….. but there are still significant risks of a “Kinnock election”.
I agree
“Labour should still win a GE….. but there are still significant risks of a ‘Kinnock election’.”
Here is the nub of the problem. Following the last thirteen catastrophic years of disastrous mis-Government, the Conservatives should not only by now be finished as a Government, shuffling out the door with an apology for blowing everyon’e future; but the Conservative Party itself should be beyond repair; an embarrassment the British people have finally rejected, and are trying hard to forget they ever believed.
Yet, hear you are, worrying whether you can actually defeat the Conservatives in the next election. If Labour, or anyone else had delivered the last thirteen years of misery, failure, decline and falling living standards to which the Conservatives have blithely subjected the British people, with swaggering, entitled bravado claiming disaster is a triumph; that Party would be finished, forever.
What do you think all that is telling you about the values of the British people? It is telling you what the values people actually have are; and these values are not the values they claim to possess, or wish others to believe they have, or bluff they do have; while voting for something completely different?
I suspect that the current administration’s problems are the consequence of a very long period of gestation, and the resulting tidal wave of dislike and distrust will not be easily turned.
Under the shiny surface of political theatre, the “person in the street” has been observing what’s being said and what’s going on around him/her – and noticing the discontinuities.
The vast ocean of information available online is getting tested against actual experience, and much of it is not proving credible.
In the past few months, I’ve seen & heard more sensible, grounded comments from ordinary people with very different views and backgrounds than I can ever remember.
Looking back through history, I’m told that when the printing press made cheap news sheets available for the first time, Europe went through a period where crazy conspiracy theories abounded – witchcraft in that case – but with time, people realised that they were being “had” and the moment passed. I suspect we’ll see the same thing happen again, hopefully much more quickly.
That’s what will bring the tide of populism to an end, and the current Tory Party will be washed away with it, I hope. It’s what they deserve.
Do not be surprised if Sunak remains head of a minority buttressed by right wing parties and the trimming LibDems again. FPTP, gerrymandering, the loathsome Starmer, and the media are all potential factors.
“Trimming Lib Dems” is a lazy insult.
All parties shift, sometimes on the good grounds of better policy, more often sadly to fit in with where the votes they need lie. Look at how the Conservatives have shifted onto UKIP/Brexit territory, Labour onto neoliberal socially conservative ground to fight for the red wall, the Greens onto socially liberal issues at the expense of widening support for the green agenda.
The best antidote to this is electoral reform, which is why Lib Dems, the Greens and Labour membership are campaigning vigorously: it’s a bit of a forlorn hope, given the Labour hierarchy’s reluctance to do the right thing, so that it requires just the right balance in a hung parliament, but one has to keep trying.
Electoral reform among many other things would encourage a more collaborative politics, which is desperately need if we are to respond adequately to climate change and the environmental crisis.
Meanwhile, for the reasons PSR outlines, it is still a possibility that this nasty shambles of a Conservative party will win the next GE.
Politico’s average of all the polls shows a gradual narrowing:
https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/
When Sunak came to power the gap was 27%, after almost 6 months it has gradually come down by a third to 18%. Another third and we are into hung parliament territory. Peter Kellner put together a useful graphic for what different leads would mean:
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/3fb0212cf3acc3b1f0d45ffbc5d76b7d6cb28216/0_0_1132_1064/master/1132.jpg?width=700&quality=45&dpr=2&s=none
As you have said several times, inflation is simply a comparison of the prices for one point in time with the prices one year earlier. For most of last year we were comparing prices during the war in Ukraine with prices before the war, but now we are comparing prices during the war with prices during the war, so inflation will inevitably come down. No doubt Sunak will take credit for the rapidly falling inflation that would be inevitable regardless. Then with falling inflation the BoE can reduce interest rates. Again, Sunak will take the credit. The media will push the narrative: Sunak made the tough but necessary decisions and now inflation and interest rates are falling so don’t let Labour in or they will mess it all up and give us soaring inflation – trust Sunak, he has shown he knows what he is doing. A lot of people will buy this. Will it be enough to get us a hung parliament? Maybe.
I feel really uncomfortable for hoping this works and for supporting a Tory revival to the point where Labour can only get in with the backing of the Lib Dems and SNP, but that’s what we get with first past the post.
With the FPTP system operating, and the redrawing of constituency boundaries in the Tories’ favour, and the new requirements of voter identification, it is quite possible that in the next general election, Labour will poll substantially more votes, while the Tories win more seats, sufficient to have an absolute majority so that they can form a government. Or there will be such a tight finish that it will be up to Charley-Boy to choose whomsoever he imagines will be best next government, precipitating a constitutional crisis.
Of course the Conservatives can bounce back. Compared to six or twelve months ago, I think they are already bouncing back. But can that continue until the next general election? For all the distraction tactics, I think enough people are fed up with them.
The local elections will be an interesting test. The Conservatives did badly in 2019 under Theresa May, but Labour lost seats and councils then too and the swing was to the LibDems and Greens then. In part that was a reaction to 2015 when the Conservatives did well. So who knows.
I’d suggest that Yes the Tories are and can bounce back – partly on inflation / interest rates reducing (which they will claim is due to their actions) less so on their small boat policy but mainly because the longer Starmer is given public inspection the more useless and dislikable he becomes. The Tories are increasing in the polls I would suggest just because Labour is falling – because they have to be the the most useless opposition that ever existed. Not a Kinnock moment but one achieved entirely through their own utter uselessness.
I haven’t voted as I didn’t feel you had an option that summed up my perspective.
There is no doubt that as an election approaches the tories will open the hamper and goodies will appear. The lazy attack on Sunak (for something he had/has zero responsibility for) shows the pathetic state of the Liebore party under Starmer – they are unable to articulate (score into an open goal) issues that most people are concerned about (turds in most rivers being the most anodyne). Over the past week or three polls have shown that many (most?) people don’t like either the tories or liebore. This begs the question: what might emerge (not the lying-dems – who are unable – again – to articulate something that resonates with people). This is very very dangerous territory – no party able to offer anything that digs the Uk out of the (quasi literal) cess pit in which it sits……& sinks. Somebody needs to get a grip, or something will & it won’t be pretty – you have been warned.
Mr Parr,
I understand the grief, but the British people are not passers by in this cess-pit. It isn’t Netflix we are living through. Sufficient of them vote for Conservative, Labour (and the rest); they participate in them; they fund these Parties (well, I qualify that in the case of the Conservatives, whose ‘go-to’ suppliers include Russian oligarchs). Conservsative and Labour are more representative of the state of Britain than perhaps you think.
The ones you may excuse are not the ones you may think. Conservative and Labour rely on the real benefit of FPTP, which is what saves them from extinction in their current form. FPTP effectively disenfranchises those not interested in politics, or who despise the Parties and do not vote. They probably would not even register, if they were not threatened (by Government) with a fine. Effectively politics in Britain is decided by around 25% (or less) of those eligible to vote. What you have is what the system is desinged to produce – and the voters accept as the standard they want. Look at the politcs. Proprtional representation is scarcely even an issue. There is the reality.
The rest is window dressing.
I voted don’t know, but really think it’s impossible to tell. Politics is like a ping pong ball in a hurricane these days. A significant number of people won’t vote at all, many will do what the tabloids tell them. Principles, ideologies and meaningful discussion have very little to do with it. Nurses are super heroes one minute and making unrealistic demands the next. Public transport is crumbling due to profiteering and underinvestment, but the employees don’t deserve a reasonable salary. Whoever wins the next election it seems likely that most of us will be the losers. Apologies for the pessimism.
Justified pessimism
Thankfully.
Scotland has an alternative from the Red & Blue Tories
The Tory bounce back is most likely to happen where Labour is offering no compelling alternatives – and sadly, at present, Starmer et al are a positive asset to the Tories and will be the cause of their own downfall! Labour needs to acknowledge that radical solutions are required to reverse 13 years of destruction to our democracy, economy and society and needs to be prepared to say so out loud – worrying about upsetting the Tory press only plays into the governments hands!
Labour and Tory exist to give the impression of democracy whilst the whole system prevents actual democracy. The lockdown further established that the English (not sure about the Scots, Welsh and Irish) would mostly do as they were told (including clapping the NHS instead of demanding investment, including allowing massive corruption, etc) and the duopoly were emboldened to further gerrymander the boundaries, to introduce voter ID, pack the Lords with cronies, and so on.
It’s time to say “It’s designed to do what it does.” The crises in public services and the NHS are being engineered to soften them up for Americanisation. Unless there is a sustained revolt everyone will stay calm and carry on.
John S Warren,
from my saying “I don’t include the Celtic nations” you make some very arrogant assumptions. I’ll bet that I have a far greater knowledge of the Celteach – the family of Celtic tribes, where they originated, their pre Christian way of life and belief systems, why they made the journey to find ‘the great forest’ and when they abandoned this way and the consequences of getting conned into the various Christian cliques. It has always amazed me that the western Celts have no idea how weak they were which is why they were pushed so far west from the Celtic heartlands of what is now Austria,Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany and Switzerland. Indeed if the three tribes of Gallica (not gallois, that’s barstadised Latin) who shocked the Roman Latins when they raced across the peninsular and slaughtered the Romans at the battle of Wallia in 397 BC (if you believe in that b/s) had they pursued the remains of their army, slaughtered them and then surrounded the Palatine hill where the population retreated to and starved them to death then there would have been no Roman empire and we would be looking t a totally different Europe and indeed Western world today.
Your comment about the Highland divide fails to mention that the Highlanders were first and foremost Gaelic Celts, invaders from Erin (over population) infused with the blood of Norse Viking settlers on the western islands – clan Gun,Munro,Gregors, Ranald,Donald etc. Nor do you make any reference to the ‘men of the north’ who were Britonni (Welsh, a Jute Viking word) cut off by the invading and settler Saxons. Catholic and Protestant is a false reason for the animosity/hatred when it is really Gaelic v Britonni/Pict.
It is your innacurate version that is romantic, not mine – try reading ‘The Welsh’by J Davies.
Mr Crawford,
I rather think you missed my point; specifically the Scotland on the other side of the Highland Line that you have simply excluded. You do not mention it; as if it does not exist. I did not exclude the Celts, I merely presented the problem of the diviision, and eventually, the persecution. I made no moral claims, or defence of the history. I did not claim Lowland, Presbyterian Scotland was all that mattered, or had acted virtuously; I merely pointed out that it was there, and exercised the authority of the Scottish State, de jure (they wrote the law), and more importantly, de facto.
Talking about Scotland as ‘Celts’ simply begs the question; much of it wasn’t Celt, and from the Middle Ages it did not consider itself as predominantly a Celtic nation; and by the later 18th century Scotland was generally working to remove Gealic culture, language; and between wars, even the people. You can certainly claim the history of Scotland the Enlightenment wrote largley excluded and ignored the Celts, but the Lowland Scots historians and thinkers certainly described clearly the idea of the Scots they thought they were; and with the exception perhaps of the highlander Adam Ferguson (but chaplain to the Black Watch at one time, incidentally); it wasn’t Celt, and even for Ferguson it didn’t express your idea of a Celtic Scotland. Frankly you seem to me merely to be intent on rewriting history in much the same way as those you criticise; by exclusion of what doesn’t fit your thesis.
Call that arrogance if you will, although I think the criticism perhaps just a tad peevish; but ‘Romantic’? That is perhaps the first time anyone has ever described my writing on anything as ‘Romantic’! There I was scribbling away, trying to do something completely different!
I confess I have never thought of your writing here as romantic, but there’s a big range of opinion available