Posts by Ben Austin
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Speaker: The Brexlection, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Luckily I don't? Anyway, the point was I literally went to a speech he made and my conclusion was that he is an amazing political performer, despite his many issues, which I hadn't really appreciated having not being in the UK during his premiership
Whatever some journalist thinks of that is up to them
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Well it's official, we are going to be at with with the EU by lunchtime, now that the PM's accused Brussels of interfering in the election. This being the one she called without necessity and the one everyone has known for months would deliver a handsome Conservative Majority on a bad day.
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Speaker: Britain: the crisis isn't…, in reply to Moz,
That sounds a lot like the bits of Scottish Labour that collapsed so thoroughly in recent years. I'm not sure how true is is London though, as I think the vast majority of central/middle London constituencies will have Labour 2000-4000 members each, with those numbers weakening the further out one gets. So one could assume that there is a reasonably active local democracy within many of those parties as it would be harder to exclude that. One also hears regular accounts of fighting at the Ward level too between various factions and groups.
By comparison other parties are much smaller, in terms of membership. Some of the London Lib Dem constituency parties are starting to get quite big now but they are coming from such a low base that it'll probably be a new local party in all but name. The biggest LD CP i've heard of has about 1300 members and they are not really running a proper race as the local MP, so they send their keen volunteers around to other constiuencies in their part of London
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Speaker: The Brexlection, in reply to Rich Lock,
Well there are a lot of people out there who want, desperately, to believe in a Labour politician / leader and Blair has obviously seen this opportunity of Brexit to try and remove some of the poison around his name.
He's really good though and this is what almost makes it worse. I went to his launch speech a couple of months back in London and it was really quite amazing to watch him in action. I didn't live in the UK during his era and so had only encountered him second hand, as it were, so I didn't really appreciate how he could hold a room.
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I recall talking to friends and reading accounts of the hustings in 2015 and how so many people felt so excited and hopeful for Corbyn, Twitter was abuzz with photos of suburban Labour meetings that had queues around the block. That's exciting for any Anglo political party these days and so one can see why he has retained some form of mass mandate.
But that excitement didn't bring along the solid core of the party, the councilors, the key activists and of course the Parliamentary party. How could it? Unlike the general membership, new supports or people generally, they all knew him or thought they did. They knew him as a a likeable but awkward backbencher who didn't follow the Party Line, an old school Bennite, someone who always seemed happiest in the furthest reaches of the loosely affiliated left. There is literally no way they were ever going to get on board with him heart and soul. They run local organisations, local councils, they try to win elections. They knew he had little for them and they had little for him.
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Speaker: The Brexlection, in reply to Neil,
Blair still gets a lot of stick, but I think it is almost accepted now that he’s somehow in the process of being rehabilitated. Probably due to Brexit. That process isn’t complete and won’t ever be complete for some people, but I have noticed in the last 6 months that a lot of people who probably always quite liked him but didn’t like to talk about it, now do openly. Same is true for Clegg though.
Turns out catastrophic defeat is cathartic, for the latter and for the former, he’s clearly still articulate and powerful and people were reminded of this by comparison to his successors (not just Corbyn).
Of course as long as we have the former MP for Bradford West trundling around the country showing his film about Blair I suspect Blair will always be slightly in fear of another attempt at a citizen’s arrest.
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Speaker: The Brexlection, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I would hope they don't drop below 200, but things are looking very weird. Recent polling puts them in with a shout in places like NE Wales. Their target seats list now seems vast and whilst they don't have the people to flood those seats, they might not have to.
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Speaker: The Brexlection, in reply to Tom Semmens,
I'm not sure you can draw too much from UK media's interpretation of French politics, but I would say that everyone who isn't a member of UKIP has been worried about Le Pen for a long time, even though we in the UK pay less attention to French politics than we should. It's been clear for a long time that she would make the second round and so almost all reasonable, e.g. not Daily Mail or the Express, newsmedia has been desperately talking up anyone who looked like they could beat her.
I'm also not a fan of inevitability. Far right authoritarianism is a real risk to many places, perhaps France in the near future but it doesn't have to happen. We don't have to accept that France needs its own Trump moment to somehow teach the populace as to why authoritarianism is shit.
Going back to Macron, I can't say I've met anyone who is super enthused by him in London, but he has campaigned here (what with London being about 5% French he would right?) and he has made some effort to reach out to UK news and affairs. As has Le Pen. Fillon made a bit of an effort too, perhaps due to his domestic familiarity with the country.
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Speaker: The Brexlection, in reply to linger,
The smacking one would be closest in my experience yes, although for different reasons and no one is going to call someone a traitor to NZ for being pro or anti smacking.
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The media culture of the country also makes a huge difference too, comparing NZ to the UK. Whilst Tom may rail against the Guardian's Comment Is Free pieces and the like post referendum as being evidence of anti democraticsour grapes, he should also draw his attention to the pieces being put on the front page of newspapers like the Mail, Express or the like. Remainers have literally been called Saboteurs within the last week on the Mail's front page. It should go without saying that the Mail/Express/Telegraph sell a hell of a lot more newspapers than the Guardian.
It's almost made me pine for the gentle moderation of Mike Hosking