Questions Of The Day (Politics)

[Grant]

The working classes have woken up to the realisation that Labour is the party of immigration. Eventually they will realise that the Conservatives are also the party of immigration. That’s when history starts

[Mick Harper]

This is more true than anyone ever concedes. Low-paid natives always suffer from immigration of low-paid foreigners. How can they not? This is true irrespective of whether the country as a whole (including low-paid natives) benefits from immigration.

The racism angle is irrelevant in general but it does apply in one respect. If the immigrants are 'like' the natives (e.g. Poles), they become natives and will in time compete with all natives. If the immigrants are 'other' (e.g. West Indians), they tend to remain 'other', tend to remain in low paid jobs, and compete only with low-paid natives. It follows (however theoretically) that it pays non-low paid natives (e.g. middle class liberals) to prefer 'others'.

[Wile E. Coyote]

It seems to me that once the working class has largely rid itself of the illusion that some sort of utopian socialist society is going to be created, and advanced levels of universal healthcare and welfare provision have been achieved, a pro business, anti big government party is really a natural fit. Maybe both sides, working class, and conservatives, know exactly what they are doing?

[Mick Harper]

I have always believed this. My introduction to the academic study of politics -- first week, first term -- featured a lecturer (a Labour Nottingham councillor, though I didn't know it at the time) giving us the ‘Labour is for the working class' line. But I knew this was untrue for the simple reason that there was the Daily Mirror for Labour workers and the Daily Sketch for Tory ones. They were indistinguishable to my eyes – we took the News Chronicle as the liberal London shabby genteel had to do, the Guardian being a Manchester rag to our eyes.

The bloke with the gown and the mortar board said there were working class Tory voters but they did it out of something called 'deference'. I refused to believe you'd read the racing tips out of deference and I have never changed my mind by a single jot or tittle from that day to this. It’s one of my strengths.

[Wile E. Coyote]

I always got the Morning Star for Caytons racing tips. Only communist to ever redistribute wealth to the working class. Beech Road at 50-1 in the 1989 Champion Hurdle.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Wiley is incredibly slow at all this, he had hoped to meet to meet a Labour MP from a working class background, but it is probably a hopeless task. It gets worse, Wiley first noticed that most of the inspectors in his area were actually fast track graduate lefty liberals, doing everything they could not to bang up folks. There is also scant hope of meeting a vicar that actually believes in God. It's like looking for a white blackbird. Or should that be it is like looking for a black blackbird when you can only find white. Good luck with that one.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Wiley had hoped to meet a socialist leader of the Labour party, but that went wrong. Wiley should have of course, arranged to meet Jezza for a tin of baked beans, but delayed and he now discovers that Keir is not a socialist at all. He has just been condemned by the Haldane Society of Socialist lawyers as ‘demonstrably not a socialist’, for 'appalling policy positions', 'his behaviour over schools during the pandemic' and 'his inaction over abuse of transgender people'. The society wanted to expel him, but fortunately for him he was no longer a member. It was a bit like trying to impeach Trump after he was no longer POTUS and succeeding.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

AE Rule 1712: All arguments using the phrase 'working class' are to be disallowed until somebody produces a working definition.

[Grant]

Cayton was a brilliant tipster, specialising in long shots. I thought I’d worked out a successful system mostly using his tips but of course it failed in real life

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

I am truly disgusted by the treatment Nicola Sturgeon is getting. Let's not forget what she was faced with -- sexual allegations against her mentor, friend, predecessor, independence hero etc etc. It doesn't get much worse than that in politics and most people would have gone to pieces to some degree or other.

Yet the worst charge anyone can come up with is whether she first learned about it, in general terms, via an underling, or by Salmond himself three days later. She gained no advantage whichever it was so her much later recollection that it was the second and not the first is hardly 'misleading Parliament', even if she was downright lying. Which any fair-minded observer of her performance generally would have great difficulty believing.

The incompetence of the Scottish government in handling it all is a different matter. She can be slagged off for that in the ordinary political knockabout way till the cows come home i.e. until the next bit of knockabout hoves over the horizon. So, let's stick Salmond back in Barlinnie, Nicola back on her pedestal and get on with independence or not-independence. Nobody should ever vote for either Scottish Labour or the Scottish Tories again since they were prepared to destroy her just for a bit of party advantage.

[Wile E. Coyote]

You can feel sorry for all, but this is what happens when a governing party has no effective opposition, the party splits (Indy2 now/Indy 2 later) and politics becomes personalised, in this case over the Me Too issue, within the governing party. If you want to help Nicola, vote Tory or Labour, that will bring her troops into line behind her, if she is still there.

[Mick Harper]

Shrewd reasoning, if impractical advice. Scottish Tories have betrayed their heritage by not becoming pro-independence. The Tories are the oldest, and the most successful, political party in the world by stepping on bandwagons just as they are passing, thereby snatching the reins from the driver over-excitedly waving to the cheering crowds. They have been overlong tied to the Conservative and Unionist Part of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. (Note how they steered clear of the latter.)

The Labour Party, I think, has suffered historically from your 'having no effective opposition' in Scotland. When you gotta go, you gotta go big. We shall see how big generally from the Hartlepool by-election result.