NeilR
pfm Member
You can’t really say that because If it wasn’t for Brexit, there wouldn’t have been an election. the whole political landscape would be completely different - Cameron would still be in power!
Poll : Next Labour Leader.
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You can’t really say that because If it wasn’t for Brexit, there wouldn’t have been an election. the whole political landscape would be completely different - Cameron would still be in power!
Ponty
pfm Member
Yeah, of course they would. Johnny Vegas is hot favourite to be the next Pope as well.
notaclue
pfm Member
So now we are at the stage where we have an elaborate TV channel effectively taking on BBC and ITV? Big Len will need to dig deep. Still reckon Andrew Murray could afford it, though.
But I can imagine some of the shows. How's about "I'm a Centrist... Get Me Out of The Labour Party!". Or "Venezuela's Got Talent".
PS Are you sure you weren't advising Corbyn for the 2019 campaign?
Joe
pfm Member
That sentence is two separate statements that don't mean the same thing.
Yes Brown acted to support the banking system..to stop it collapsing but it was his ( and other counties ) hugely over lax financial oversight that led to the crisis in the first place.
Remamber mortgages of 5x or more your salary ?..remember being allowed to state what you salary was yourself with no checks ? Brown was happy to ride a boom economy based upon phony funny money but he well knew that the bill would come due.
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
Exactly the sort of replies I expected... the analysis of the whole thing shows otherwise though. A statistician had and article in The Guardian a day or two ago which showed how easy a victory for Labour this would have been if it was not for Brexit.
As unpopular as Corbyn is, so is BloJo. People liked Labours policies but this was in effect the second referendum on Brexit and unfortunately, as we see time and time again, the UK public are as thick as pig shit and are determined to shoot themselves in both feet if they have to swim through vomit to get the gun...
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
“The phrase Big Bang, used in reference to the sudden deregulation of financial markets, was coined to describe measures, including abolition of fixed commission charges and of the distinction between stockjobbers and stockbrokers on the London Stock Exchange and change from open-outcryto electronic, screen-based trading, effected by Margaret Thatcher in 1986.”
Ponty
pfm Member
I can only admire your persistence and stamina.
Tony L
Administrator
Remember any Tories arguing for increased regulation? No, me neither. If you scrutinise the current Tory party MPs and financial backers you won’t need to dig too deep to find folk right at the heart of the dodgy financial products and fraudulent behaviour that effectively collapsed global capitalism in 2008 requiring state bail-outs across the world. At no point did they ever argue for anything but more access to their feeding trough. At no point have they argued to fully repay the state for the losses their ilk caused either.
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
I'd agree with the above. And point out that Blairism meant they had *seen* that choosing a 'Labour' Government didn't help much. Hence my disagreement with Tony L about the idea that a 'middle of the road' 'Labour' Government wouldn't help if it simply followed the same old neoliberal approach which the wealthy demand if you want to avoid being monstered just to get into office ... but not into power.
So for me the real issue is why a genuine attempt to *actually* change things in a way that would benefit them was rejected. Which brings me back to the gulf between perception and policy, etc as discussed elsewhere.
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
Oh it's limitless when I'm right and all around me are wrong... a situation I'm very used to of course
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
From the evidence it seems clear it isn't that simple.
Firstly, the printed press continues for millions of people to set a large part of the 'mental agenda' of what 'everyone knows'. That targets a given demographic. This goes on day after day week after week and the Tories don't need to pay for it or organise it.
Secondly, we can now add 'social media' etc, where both the Tories and others who flock with them spend *millions* sending a flood of targetted material which can largely escape critical scutiny. The flood mean many more items of propaganda get out before you can respond to the previous ones. This goes for the demographics that don't read the 'Daily Bile'.
That doesn't reach everyone. But it does reach millions of people. So has an effect on people who already have seen that their lives have got crappier for decades.
So *any* big change can be hyped as something to go for, as maybe it will help.
Plus, if nothing else it might piss in the beer of someone who has been making profit from their misery. All you have to do there is hide the real exploiters from view and let the people who aren't like the ones who feel oppressed become the obvious targets.
You don't have to get everyone into that state. Just enough for the Tories and their backers to get their way.
gassor
There may be more posts after this.
Corbyn was indeed a liability. ".... after the exit poll came in many candidates said that on the doorstep it was his lack of popularity that cost them. Corbyn went into the campaign with the lowest net satisfaction ratings of any opposition leader since the late 1970s (Ipsos Mori). Among older voters, Labour campaigners said his past support for the Irish republican movement came up repeatedly on the doorsteps. In London, antisemitism and what people perceived as the absence of an apology appeared to be a key issue." (The Guardian). Indeed it was his handling of Brexit (not the result itself) that seriously undermined any chance of victory.
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
How many read the 'papers' on line, etc?
How often are those papers used a clubs used by TV/radio reporters to have a go at a Labour politician.
How often are the journalists who write for those papers on TV/radio putting the same views? (Chosen *because* they write in a 'national newspaper' which is really a vanity publication in direct financial terms.)
How often are the items appearing on the newspaper website linked to, referenced, tweeted about, etc, by others?
etc.
Don't assume the raw conventional circulation figures tell you all you need to know anout the influence gained.
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
...and the reason Blair got elected was that he didn't alarm those people who made hay before, during, and after the crash their behaviour led to. And they are doing it again right now, out of sight.
gavreid
Pretty Words...
I suggest that you just listen to yourself - appalling snobbery there
Tony L
Administrator
The key phrase in that paragraph is ‘got elected’. As I say, we are where we are and any radical socialist agenda stands zero chance in England due to the electoral system, our history (colonialism/exceptionalism etc), the general level of political education, the media etc. It just isn’t going to happen, English society just doesn’t have the right mindset. We are not Norwegians, more is the pity.
It is obvious by now that around 40% the population that can be bothered to turn out to vote are perfectly happy with the mentally ill dying in shop doorways, seeing billionaires like Arron Banks etc buy elections etc. They either don’t think or don’t care. I have to admit I’ve lost all optimism. England is just a nationalist shithole on the way down. There is no other conclusion given the evidence of Brexit, and the more self-indulgent navel gazing Labour do the faster that decline. The only hope in hell at this point is that they select someone like Starmer who at least has the intellectual acumen to hold the lying cheating Trumpian fraud firmly to account and to the letter of the law.
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
In spite of all this Labour would still have won if it wasn't all down to Brexit! Just look at how many votes the brexit party got! Although they thankfully failed to win any seats, a typical Tory win in a previously "Labour for ever area" was on the lines of:
Conservative- 20,000
Labour- 17,000
Brexit Party- 12,000
Lib Dems- 2000
If for now we ignore the logical paradox that if it wasn't for Brexit there would have been no Brexit Party... I think we can be reasonably sure that in places like Blythe Valley 80%+ of those Brexit Party votes would have gone to Labour and the Tories would have had maybe 30% less votes. It would have been a landslide for Labour as usual in Blythe Valley in spite of Corbyn! The "red wall" would be extant and Labour would likely have had a majority of say 20-30...
BloJo is also very unpopular and untrusted!
The Brexit Party are a single issue protest party at the end of the day... with no real policies, no MP's, no experience of governing! In spite of this they came second or third in many seats! This is proof that the turkeys were so eager to vote for xmas that they'd have voted for Santa himself if it brought them any closer to being an "oven ready Brexit" turkey!
With 20:20 hindsight it seems the idiot turkey vote had consolidated, there was no way Brexit was going to be stopped and maybe the least bad option was that Labour should have been staunchly pro Leave! The degree of devastation could have been limited by a soft Labour BRINO and we'd have a socialist gov in power! But that's hindsight for yer... In reality I think most here, myself included, would have said Corbyn should have got off the fence and been The Remain Candidate... but it seems that wouldn't have worked out well at all!
Which brings me back to the MSM! People who were kinda "EU? Haven't thought about it that much but I suppose I'll vote leave yeah" were turned into frothing at the mouth rabid Brexiteers by the Tory press and all the "Traitors!" and "Enemies of the people!" and "We'll fight for OUR Brexit together!" headlines. They tried to make it a conspiracy to "steal" "their Brexit", kept telling people that they (the papers) were their voice, the voice of the people, they were in it together and the papers would "speak truth to power" on their behalf.... If Corbyn got it in the eye off the papers then the concept of remaining, and anyone seen as being behind it, got it twice as bad!
tonerei
pfm Member
Yes the article does resonate a bit with Ragaman's position.
This is the general gist of it below. Glue holding society is melting etc etc etc. Very similar to what people are posting here and what was being posted prior to the election. But when you see people like Seanm who were involved in the campaign unable to realise that they (Labour) had lost the people. Unfortunately the Labour party were just too divided and have been for a good number of years. Tories I am sure can't believe their luck.
It’s Christmas, so let’s talk about the economics of love, human connection and trust. These are not concepts you associate with my game, yet they are central to the workings of any modern economy.
Although you might not appreciate them, you miss them when they are gone. I fear they are missing in large swathes of the UK.
The recrimination following the UK election and the divisiveness of the debate, all point to a bigger loss than Brexit or EU membership. Although Boris Johnson is talking the language of reconciliation – and who knows, he might perform a social miracle (he has been underestimated at every stage of this saga) – the omens are not good. The glue that holds UK society together is melting.
Anger is the energy of the impotent. It is how you feel when you are powerless, not powerful. The defining characteristic of this election has been anger on both the Right and the Left. Indeed, one of the most troublesome aspects of the Right/Left dichotomy is failure to capture what makes the economy tick.
Philosophically, both ideologies are based on a view of humanity which is profoundly inaccurate. Given that economics is a social science governed by the behaviour of the most social of all animals, any ideology that fails to grasp what drives humans is bound to be incomplete.
Philosophically, the Left is broadly based on the notion that humans are deeply altruistic. In this worldview, human vices such as avarice and greed are the products of a badly designed system. Therefore, if we redesign the system, humans will be liberated to be the altruistic, sharing, caring animals that we are naturally destined to be. This view is the catechism of philosophers as varied as Jesus Christ, Lenin and Rousseau.
In contrast, the traditional Right views humans as inherently self-interested, and says that if we leave people to pursue their own agendas, the market will sort things out. As Adam Smith dictated, an “invisible hand” will direct the society of individuals to achieve the best outcome for everyone.
Anyone who has observed the reality of humanity will appreciate that these two big ideas are too simple to have much practical validity. Humans are neither uniquely altruistic nor purely self-interested. We are, in the main, social and co-operative creatures.
Brexit Tories
Now think about the large swathes of northern England that voted Conservative. I like to call these people the Brexit Tories. Brexit Tories are to the UK what Reagan Democrats were to the USA. Brexit Tories are Labour voters who have shifted to voting Tory because of Brexit, following in the foot-steps of Reagan Democrats, traditional Democrats who jumped ship to Reagan after the 1982 recession.
They are a population decimated by the decline of British industry in the 1970s and 1980s, exacerbated by Margaret Thatcher’s policies which were explicitly based on a misunderstanding of human nature. In the 1990s they suffered another crippling recession and they also bore the brunt of post-2008 austerity.
At every turn, social capital in England was chipped away, trust undermined and, ultimately, reciprocity enfeebled by widening inequality. UK incomes have not risen for 10 years, productivity is low and as a result, so too are wages. You have only to walk into a supermarket in the UK to see how cheap things are compared with here. Things are cheap because the people are poor.
There has also been a drop in volunteering in the UK and this is more pronounced in poorer areas. A recent study at the University of Manchester showed a drop in volunteering across the UK since the 2008 crisis. Once you break the ties that bind communities together, trust falls and with it, so too does co-operation, rupturing the social network.
People become atomised and poverty amplifies this sense of isolation. Quickly hope turns to anger because reciprocity and the appearance of having a chance smash into the reality of income, and regional and social inequality. Anger diminishes understanding, affection, connection, co-operation and ultimately, love.
Rage becomes normalised, and the economy, which is sustained by collaboration seizes up. No one’s back is scratched and everyone is worse off.
The lesson for Ireland from England at this time of year, is that an economy is not just for Christmas. It’s a 365-day, 24-7 concept driven not by self-interest or even unique gestures of saintly kindness, but by collaboration and co-operation. It is strengthened by civil ties and social capital.
Reciprocity, love and fairness make co-operation conditional. Critically, the social network works with adaptive evolutionary cunning, and humans, armed with personal dignity, are at the centre of everything.
We mess with this at our peril.
It has nothing to do with snobbery. Level of education is an easy to establish fact and is strongly correlated with whether someone voted for leave or remain. It is stronger than age which is the one people usually mention. The more educated you are the more likely you are to be interested in, aware of and weight factual information compared to feelings. Weighing the relevant facts alone would lead almost everyone in the UK to vote remain.
I have spent quite a lot of time sitting in hospitals, ferrying relatives about and chatting over the last few weeks. My relatives are almost all midland/northern working class unlike myself an educated middle class liberal from the south/Europe. I have recently moved to a midlands industrial town where English is a second language for perhaps half the people in my street. The contrast with the well off area down south I moved from has been both striking and informative. Down south in my middle class, well off, well educated bubble I knew well almost nobody that voted leave and the result of the referendum was surprising and baffling. Around here things are rather different and the reasons not difficult to understand if you ask in a manner that allows people to give what they consider to be their reasons without provoking a defensive response. Their reasons given don't line up particularly well with those assigned by angry remainers both here and in the media for why they voted against their best interests. Racism is an unpleasant accusation. It exists but not to the extent being claimed by some here. Stupid is also too strong for people who have always voted more on feelings and loyalty to groups, leaders and ideas rather than a cold academic analysis of the relevant facts. We all do this to some extent and the Ohhh Jeremys here are another example of taking it too far to remain reasonably well grounded in reality.
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