Questions Of The Day (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

Our last chance to be wise before the event. Two features of the last day polls (seven all done on the 11th Dec)

1. Remarkable agreement between polls: 41-45 Tories, 32-35 Labour, all predict a lead of 9-11 %
2. Remarkable stability of polls: the above has held for two weeks.

The Liberals though are interesting. Their range 9-14 is large and may be the key to the ultimate out-turn if it reflects tactical voting i.e. 'who do you support?' as opposed to 'who will you vote for?' This is the first election I can recall in which the Liberals have run a campaign that was not either good or invisible. It has been bad. Greens have been invisible, Brexit/UKIP bad. Since these are the normal protest outlets it seems to point to an unusual (in modern times) Labour/Tory dominance.

Which of the two is this good for? Dunno, but if Brexit means the Red Belt in the north is going Tory but the Blue Belt in the south is not going Liberal, then presumably the Tories. Of course fifty Scot Nats and a dozen (now) anti-Tory Ulster fruitcakes still puts a hung parliament in play. God save us from that even if it will mean rationality. When will these dolts understand this is not a time for rationality.
 

[Mick Harper]

If Momentum hold their nerve they can still win in 2024. A lot of guff is talked about policy but the truth is that the Great British People are easily hornswaggled by a pretty face. Just as the Tories kept on choosing leaders on grounds of their attitude to Europe, so Labour kept choosing the lefter of the candidates on offer. When they should all have been choosing the prettiest face on offer. It’s called Wrong Milliband Syndrome.

It’s not that difficult either. As I pointed out at the time, if only Jo Swinson had taken on a voice coach and done some basic role play exercises we’d have a hung parliament by now. Momentum of course don't do pretty faces but there are plenty of glove puppets out there.

[Mick Harper]

The largest chicken that has come home to roost is the one I have been banging on about the most -- the fact that Labour kept pretending that the May (or Johnson) deal was a Tory deal and not in fact the only deal in town. If they had we would now be negotiating an EU deal that would have to be acceptable to the old (2017) hung parliament i.e. a soft(ish) Brexit.

The question therefore before us is what deal will this tooth-and-claw Tory administration now negotiate? It's going to be soft(ish). The Tories forget they've paid a price too. Just as Corbyn wasn't really a Remainer so Johnson isn't really a Brexiteer. He is what Margaret Thatcher used to call a 'wet'. Not the 'you could shoot snipe off him' type of wet but an old fashioned one-nation wet. And unlike Labour and Corbyn, the Tories are now saddled with someone they can't brook.

I predict quiet and moderately prosperous times ahead. But then I generally do. What is it AE-ists are always saying? Oh yes... the truth is always boring.

[Mick Harper]

Should the next leader of the Labour Party be a woman? Haven't they suffered enough?*

* You're right, it's double-barrelled.

[Mick Harper]

Did you see Rachel Wolf, author of the Conservative manifesto, on Newsnight? We must be one of the very few countries in the world that outsources its five-year legislation programme to someone even her mum has never heard of.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

They did the runners and riders on Newsnight. And they're doing it again! The obvious candidate, if electoral success is a priority, is Ken Clarke ... er ... I mean Keir Starmer. But just as Ken was passed over every time by the Tories for being a Europhile, so Sir Keir (he must be bitterly regretting taking that K now) will have to be passed over because he's a man. Whether he will be passed over next time as well (and surely it won't be too long) depends on whether the Labour Party opts for rotation or decides the glass ceiling has to be smashed multiple times before it is thoroughly broken.

For myself I am disgusted they are not going for Dianne Abbot and ticking two boxes with one fell swoop. Even if she is a heterosexual. With Jeremy Corbyn for a time but that is not now considered to be in her favour. Let us hope and pray that the double-barrelled Trotskyist candidate eventually gets the nod. What fun that will be. "Labour has recorded its worst result since 1381."

[Chad]

Long-Bailey is an Irish-Mancunian, born in Old Trafford, represents Salford...

So why don't I like the woman?

I think it's the face.

[Mick Harper]

Hatty and I had an argument about this. I maintained it was clear evidence of upperclassness (as most Hard Leftists are) but she said this no longer holds eg children taking both non-married parents names etc. You have mentioned four indicators that Hatty was correct on this occasion. Not including your woeful visual stereotyping. You wanna clock your own boat sometime.

[Chad]

She was born Rebecca Long, daughter of an Irish docker.

The 'hyphen Bailey' is the feminist thing, of tagging on the husband's surname.

[Chad]

[Hatty]

[Mick Harper]

I'm not having no Spaniard leading the party we love.

[Mick Harper]

Apart from Ed Milliband who was a Sephardi Jew. Is a Sephardi Jew, I suppose, though the 13.7% swing against him was the largest in the country so he is nearly a was. (No pun intended.) Also there were nine candidates standing in Doncaster North, thus breaking the record so recently announced for Kensington. So maybe the 13.7 will be beaten fairly soon too. I don't get a lot of help here at the AEL election desk. I wish I'd never stood now.

[Mick Harper]

Everyone agrees "the north has to be helped". The question is "Can the north be helped?" If you listened carefully, it all came down to 'improving transport links' and suchlike. And it's all very silly. You can't buck structural change. They tried it all back in the sixties (both parties). They went much further than anything being proposed now. For instance, basically, you couldn't set up any large industrial plant unless it was in the north. (Or Scotland or Wales or Ulster.) So Hillman Imps were built in Glasgow and Bedford vans in Liverpool.

And maybe, probably, car production started moving away from the UK to places where car bosses thought cars should be built. It wasn't even very important that cars could be built just as well and just as cheaply in, say, Nissan Sunderland, it's just car bosses don't like to be told. That's what structural change means: everyone suddenly wants to do one thing and not another. The idea that puny little governments with their puny little regional development budgets are going to stand in the way of geographic shifts that are so big nobody can understand them is just fanciful. We could have had cotton mills in Kent, we just didn't.

It's not that you can't do nothing, it's just you can't do very much. Unless (says AE) you try something new, and suck it and see. But people (says AE) always come down like a ton of bricks on anyone suggesting anything new. Singapore-on-Humber? I should cocoa. Scotland being given total financial devolution? Ya canna be serious, we need more money not less. So get used to long term decline, my little provincials, at least you've got proper houses to live in.