I liked this from Adam Payne at Politics Home this morning:
Many Conservative MPs will remember this "bleak" week as the moment when they truly gave up any hope of avoiding defeat to Labour at the next general election.
“Something has changed for me this week," said one veteran Conservative MP.
They added:
“We have done absolutely everything possible to lose the next election," they said. "We've gone nuclear.”
That seems about right.
Gove, Hester, Sunak, and total humiliation on all fronts. Their game is over.
We really do need a general election,
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
“We really do need a general election”
It is really undemocratic when the vast majority of the country wants a general election, but can do nothing to bring one about.
Agreed, it is very undemocratic that a GE is wanted by ‘The People’, but is not granted by an autocratic parliament.
Petitions.
A petition could used to remove this government. If a suitably worded petition, like:
“This government must resign now!” had 30 million petitioners or so they might get the message.
There have been petitions already, just not enough people signing it.
Petition 619781, 906,624 signatures!
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/619781
Brushed aside by the toryZ because not enough people signed it.
They could be gone in a week if people knew to just sign it.
I don’t really agree with this post.
It solves nothing and gives only temporary relief. Hester, Gove, Sunak – they know the game – setting them up as well paid foci for hate or blame means it just helps the politicians and their funders convince us of change taking place when there will be NO change.
One word: Continuity.
One Party to Deliver it: Labour.
One Political Objective: To meet the need of your private funders through policy.
There is a deeper game being played here that is pushing us backwards and we need to be careful of what we ask for.
Any non-Tory administration will be caretaker government.
Any party promising to break the link between private funding and winning elections will get my vote.
Which means two things: There won’t be and I will probably not vote again until the end of my days.
You could say that I’m just not that intelligent. But I’m not that stupid either to see what is really going on in our detestable self seeking politics. I want no part of it.
If you can find no one to vote for, I suggest you spoil your ballot. This signals that you are prepared to vote for someone if only you felt they were worth voting for. If enough people did this then the political parties would compete over their votes. Actions like this can make a difference. For instance the large uncommitted vote in Democratic primaries has made a difference to Biden’s stance over Gaza, albeit not as great as most of those voters would like.
And the Mail now has a headline “Plot to Place Mordaunt as PM” – a very, very scary thought.
However, the Tory plotters have to constantly look over their shoulder, as Sunak can press the election button at any time to quell moves against him.
Hopefully Mordaunt will lose her seat at the election anyway.
A problem not forseen here is that, if a general election takes place at the same time as council, district and mayoral elections, then smaller parties (like The Greens) loose their seats. General elections turn out is generally much higher than local elections and people tend to vote for the big parties because the media focuses on the Punch and Judy show going on hundreds of miles away!
Hence we get lumbered with the ‘our policies mean we can outgrow the economy better than yours’ nonsense that passes as intelligent political debate!
Any semblance left of properly scrutinised policy making would take a further dive if there are all-out elections on May 2nd.
Our city wide Democracy campaigners, wanting proportional voting, are meanwhile advocating streamlining local government by abandoning the present clunky system where just one of the three ward councillors are up for election each year over a four year cycle. It may make governance easier, but under our Belarus type ‘first past the post’ system more progressive ideas are crushed.
So when choosing when an election should take place…think carefully!
What is the half-life of moral decay?
At the risk of falling into “this time is different” I think there’s sufficient revulsion at Labour’s stance, or lack of it, in some issues – notably Gaza/Palestine, in areas with strong S Asian heritage British Muslim populations – that Labour may not get a landslide, although with FPTP they’re likely to gain and retain a lot of seats. It’ll depend on the quality of Green and independent/local candidates and their campaign resources, perhaps; and in some places, for other reasons, voters will swing from Tory to LibDem.
I dread the campaigning we will be subjected to for the next GE. I agree that Labour is completely lacking in any imagination or vision, but for the moment I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt because the Tories have to go. What scares me is the thought of all the funding that the Tories have for their campaign and the control they have over many media channels. And the lies they will tell, and the statistics they will manipulate. It’s not always a question of being clever or stupid, on this blog we are interested in looking under the carpet to see how things work and what is really going on. I’m retired, I have the time, but I didn’t in the past I just read the Guardian and listened to Radio 4. Richard – it’s your profession and thank goodness you are doing extra work and spending your spare time pushing this particular boat forward. The average Jo or Joanna working for low wages (and I include junior doctors and teachers as well as those on zero hours contracts, many with kids, many single parents) don’t have the time to investigate beyond a couple of clicks or the misinformation peddled by the Mail, the Express, the Telegraph, the Sun headlines if they read newspapers at all these days. We need to do something about how political campaigns are funded and have a system that can’t be messed about by the reigning government as done by the current one.
I agree
The something is to ban donations over £5,000 form anyone
But collective payments should be allowed, subject to proper monitoring.
I would sign a petition to set a threshold for political donations and ask as many people as possible to sign it.
There is a limit on what parties can spend:
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/party-spending-uk-parliamentary-general-election/spending-limit
It is around £33m if you contest every seat.
No doubt it is naïve to think parties don’t get round this.
This article by Labour Peer Prem Sikka is worth a read:
“If the government wants to tackle ‘extremism’ it should start with its own policies, leaders and donors” (15 Mar 2024)
https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/if-the-government-wants-to-tackle-extremism-it-should-start-with-its-own-policies-leaders-and-donors/
“In essence, the government wants to ban schools from using books which narrate the struggles of working class to secure vote, rights, better wages, welfare services and more. How long before the writings of George Orwell, Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf are banned from schools?”
I will never refuse a plug for my old friend, Prem, here.
It was Prem who introduced me to John christensen, and the rest of the tax justice movement was history, all as a consequence of his action.
You couldn’t make this up.
Turns out that Gove has just approved the “transfer” of £14.7m of public assets from the elected Labour Middlesbrough Council, to the unelected Middlesbrough Development Council (MDC). The council voted against it. How is this not theft?
“Mayor calls for assurances over asset transfers” (15 March 2024) @ BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nqd9914n3o
“Government approves transfer of council’s assets” (14 March 2024) @ BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2v9ngnxw55o
It is only not theft because a minister approved it
A million times this! Spoil your ballots, people! Don’t just be an apathetic non participant
Protest that is indistinguishable from inaction is no protest at all
Sorry, this was meant to be a reply to Bernard Hurley up-page…
The sentiment still stands, despite my incompetence 😉
Kemi Badenoch performed her well rehearsed righteous indignation response to the scandalous remarks made by Hester (we saw it all before over her fiasco at the despatch box over the Post Office; but it has been quickly forgotten because the conservatives are now one long, slow motion train crash, made up of multiple compounding incidents).
For once Badenoch was right to be indignant; but it has proved to be the hyper-ventialtion over nothing much, because there are no consequences. It comes as no great surprise that having ventilated her outrage, we are all now instantly to forget it. Why? There is £10m at stake. Money and Morals? No contest. The Conservatives, Kemi Badenoch instructs us, have “moved on”; “drawn a line” under it all. badenoch does not have opinions, she issues instructions.
Badenoch has satisfaction from the matter (how? Beats me, since nothing has happened, save a very cheap – nil cost – apology by the offending party, that is quite obviously substantively meaningless; it costs nobody anything at all to make it); but that should be sufficient for the whole country. There is no explanation given. Badenoch never explains anything. Ever. She Emotes. She decides. She doesn’t need to do anything else, she is special; Badenoch thus speaks in commandments, from some faux-Mount Olympus far away up in her own fantasy Cloud Cuckooland. Featherbedded by her fanbase. The self-appointed Rockstar of modern Conservatism.
Why the effective moral volte-face over a matter of principle? It was the sound-bite that grabbed the attention spotlight for a hungry politician. Badenoch has aspirations of leadership, and the one thing the Conservative Party can’t afford is to give up £10m it needs. This is the real Conservative bread ‘n butter politics; £10m worth of bread, and dripping butter. Try leading the Conservatives with no money. When Badenoch says the Conservatives have moved on; that means you; move on, or move out the way, and no slacking. Shape up, or ship out; everybody. Britain’s premier spokesperson for Moral Authority has now issued the authoritative, unchallengable decree; the line has been drawn. Cross it, cross her at your peril. No proof is required. You have your instructions.
You can see how a Badenoch premiership would look. It would probably finish the Party altogether.