tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54496778116906166082024-03-06T00:42:03.648+01:00Pluralist SpeaksViewpointsPluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.comBlogger2047125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-26000838114583588822023-12-20T03:18:00.001+01:002023-12-20T03:18:41.576+01:00Broadcasting Limitation<p> Channel 4 in the UK is hiding nothing. One documentary is about Aldi, a single retailer, known for being cheap, commissioning some sort of dessert, basically something when I bothered to look that appears like a female breast fake style. Well done Penny Lane bakery and what publicity, <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px;">and then other hopefuls include Wigston Deli, who pitch Pigs in Blankets Samosas; a festive themed steamed pudding from Worcestershire based The Pudding Shop, and Pigs in Blankets Ice Cream from Yorkshire dairy farm Yorvale</span>. It's all about Aldi, of course, cheap and yet sophisticated.</p><p>Another documentary is about McVities biscuits. They're producing a not quite so new white chocolate digestive. In the past ITV would have banned these documentaries as too close to commercial products. Too close?</p><p>Once upon a time cameras came with limitations and directors moved them about. Lights or strong reflected sun were needed. Nowadays you get saturated colour and pinpoint accuracy, and so cameras stay still. The focus is on individuals and what they wear, where they are placed, as they drone on. They can be in an office or go dogging - it doesn't matter.</p><p><br /></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-56543706151889524772023-12-09T16:49:00.002+01:002023-12-09T16:49:56.073+01:00Basic Liberal Religious Position<p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I came into religion through the liberal route, starting with sociology of religion research that showed the unawareness of theology by churchgoers, and that this was deliberate. Those intending for ministry learnt liberal Christian theology and then in general went on to ignore it as they went into pastoral ministry.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I was told by one Methodist minister that <i>Honest to God</i> from 1962 by Bishop J A T Robinson was "old hat" but then too dangerous to introduce. He was minister of one of the groups I studied using participant observation. I found a liberal Methodist minister to interview. He recommended I read Hans Kùng's 1973 brick called <i>On Being a Christian</i> and indeed I acquired my own copy. Kùng is an ecumenically-minded marginalised Roman Catholic theologian.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">My background was as an agnostic encountering the University of Essex chaplaincy in 1982. It's chaplain went on to be known for his Animal Theology and less so for his interesting treatment of Karl Barth - had he focussed on The Spirit as he had on Christ. His daughter Clair grew up to be a chip off the block as she promotes Animal Theology on liberation, ecological, and contextual theologies and her theologian of choice (comparative disappointment) was liberationist Leonardo Boff. Both father and daughter assume a trinitarian theology but run the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics concerning sentient animals on a multi-faiths basis.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Today's theological language has narrowed, so that people like the Linzeys, Colin Coward and even myself are counted as 'Progressive' despite huge differences between us. I would not count as Christian despite sharing many concerns and some methods of Christian progressives. I'm looking for a religious humanist theology, one that does extend to sentient animals.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Too much of revisionism is based on opposing literalists of the Bible. I don't really care about them. They are easy targets. So many American Deconstructionists come from one-time fundamentalists who've become secular and saddled with personal burdens of history. This has never been true for me. I'm more interested in why so few take on the likes of Rowan Williams and their sophisticated mythology. I recall Rowan Williams telling disc jockey Simon Mayo that the advent and Christian narratives are indeed historical, when Williams knew perfectly well that they are not. As Williams became Archbishop of Canterbury, the Virgin Birth increased in importance, whatever that meant. Williams gets so stuck in the detail that he forgets the detail of tradition is not the same as historical; it has historical expression but does not have an historical basis. In other words, he deals in lies rather than truths. I bought Williams's recent <i>Looking East in Winter</i> and read his methodology of getting stuck into comparative obscurity, as if being obscure passes a test of credibility. Well, it does not. Rules of communicating still apply and a purpose of writing and speaking is to be understood.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I'm as capable of doing Christian theology as anyone else. My preferred route is the more historical. The whole nativity matter is about when Jesus is apparently God acquiring humanity or a human becoming God. Some said or say it is at his resurrection, others that it was at his baptism by John, others at his birth, and then they are supposed to maintain that Christ was eternally divine (although John's Gospel refers to the beginning - this is not quite the same thing).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">John's Gospel is most explicit that Jesus had divinity, with all of the 'I Am' statements, although there are also God the Father only type statements. As for the other Synoptic Gospels, the most 'divine' is arguably Mark where others failed to understand Jesus's mission. However, Mark's possible divinity and Jesus as Messiah is in the context of a coming new reality that would eject Roman rule in place of the Son of Man, the King of the Jews, establishing the twelve tribes of Israel and the Kingdom of God within which even Gentiles would experience the benefits.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This is the important part: Jesus is not simply some ethical teacher and healer, even if this is all that can be extracted from him by today's sociology of knowledge: he was a supernaturalist and holder of eschatological beliefs we would find strange to hear.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Thus I do not follow Jesus, and see no reason to extract ethical beliefs from him in particular. I see the point of a life lived, and Jesus does it well, but the result here is a kind of league table without the necessary evidence. Where does Gandhi go, and what about Baha'u'llah of the Baha'is (as one digs down into a group that likes to control its own history inside its own vaults and rules of publishing). Where is the evidence of the dharma result of the Buddha's Middle Way?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Like Colin Coward I revise the ontological essence of God, God as ultimate being. I'm aware that this God my way is so high and so thin it barely exists at all. Much are signals of transcendence rather than transcendence itself - the quality of art, the beauty of equations. I can also use the language of Holy Spirit in the sense of this thin God doing things. I'm not a deist, not really, but I beware of anything beyond evolution's own cruel processes of adding complexity to life on earth.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I ally with those Christians wanting equality and justice. It's a better life. It's fairly simple stuff, this.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">In a serious behavioural way (attending, getting involved less or more) I have mixed with Methodists, Anglicans, Quakers, Western Buddhists and Baha'is. However, the main group has been Unitarians.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Let us be clear. The Unitarians are at a point of history where they are pretty much defunct. This means there are some congregations where they are actually doing well. There are paid ministers. There is still, just about, a General Assembly structure. But its numbers are so low (two and a half thousand in Great Britain) that it has had it. Locally, and like many, I fell out with the minister here, and the local congregation was wrecked by 'the man with a plan' and a bureaucrat with documents. It has hobbled on since with a handful, if that, with much </span><span style="font-family: arial;">more </span><span style="font-family: arial;">money than people, but the Methodists would have closed it down decades back. It went downwards when I was in it, and I observed no agreement over definitions local or national. There was no point or purpose, other than a choice of existence, for a creedless gathering for doing religion. Yes, there was a Puritan-Presbyterian communal memory, a long shadow, and all its developments institutionally embedded, and my experienced minister-led example showed a pathetic lack of substance in the New Age material.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Thus I remain fairly central in how I draw in material for being religious. Oddly, I'm less likely to be Buddhist, less likely to be purely secularist, but I am very marginal in religion. I give more attention to the left wing of the Reformation and East Europe as a place of early toleration. i am more religious than spiritual, still.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I am interested in the effects of Romanticism over rationality: rationality alone cannot exist in religion. Some tradition is invented but others are tramlines so far. Some confined theology, teaching and practice that enshrine prejudice, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and racism put me off associating with institutions of religion. Evangelical theology is pointless; radical Orthodoxy is an exercise in being uncommunicative. Creating a postmodern space for premodern content is another form of indulgence, a religious masturbation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I'm inactive. Resting is preferable. I'd still join with those who are part of today's sociology of knowledge. We think today along the lines of expecting technology to solve problems. Maths is pure thought but crucial as applied, followed by experimental physics, chemistry and biology, by deductive social science in Economics, politics and sociology, and inductive social anthropology, and then inductive but evidence-rules history, and on to the subjective arts like painting and creative writing. Religion should be less supernatural and slot into these ways of thinking and behaving.</span></p><p><br /></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-31526447351364105122023-12-09T16:19:00.000+01:002023-12-09T16:19:24.815+01:00Rare Blogging<p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;">I used to write blogs regularly. I had plenty to put in writing, so this is what I did. I recommend that, when there is nothing particularly to say, then don't state it. Someone will; let them.</span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;">I did get into video editing to add to my story-making skills. One was a criticism of <i>Outlander</i>, by Diana Gabaldon, especially the first four (of nine, a tenth to come) books and the first four television series, although I have watched five through. She's a highly imaginative, very popular author, but there is much in the novel construction open to negative criticism.</span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_UKQqT_ol0&pp=ygUPQWRyaWFuIFdvcnNmb2xk</span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;">Then I did an analysis of trams (on to trolleybuses), cars and trains all to do with optimistic travel claims of private transport back in 1963 between and into towns. We are still living with this rejection of the rationality of public transport provision.</span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;">I happen to be opposed to HS 2, the high speed rail line, but only because it's yesterday's solution today. We should be thinking of Maglev motion with rare regional stops and a basic extended letter H. Very expensive but of the highest speed. Then we should be having replacement rail and some out of town railway stops. If we can build bypass roads we can build bypass rails - or even use what is available, such as shortening and speeding up rail links going past (using Park and Ride) Swansea/ Abertawe. </span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfhZQm4sLYs&pp=ygUPQWRyaWFuIFdvcnNmb2xk</span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;">The blog was once about liberal religion, a real passion, but later was motivated by politics; and its collapse was my defence of staying in the European Union. All I wrote has been vindicated since but a defeat is simply that and its life again depends on new circumstances still to arise to bring back the relevance of its arguments.</span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;">Meanwhile I read the blogs of others, and one is by Colin Coward a campaigning Anglican of the progressive side. I largely agree with him except his view of evolution that reflects optimistic process theology - whereas I think evolution works via comparative death and is a cruel process. Evolution is a local chaotic series of comparative benefits, that then goes on to interact as a system in and across a locality. Improvements and complexity overall are at a cost of suffering.</span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;">I'm more likely to blog when the Tory party at last disintegrates, as it seems to be doing over its own policy and structural contradictions. We need a General Election. I remain a member but hardly an enthusiast for the Liberal Democrats.</span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;">Next along then is a statement of my current religious position.</span></p><p><span style="color: #6aa84f; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-44348905795500446042022-10-24T19:50:00.002+02:002022-10-24T19:50:34.824+02:00The Hindu to See the King<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> So the Conservatives have not made the same mistake twice. (See the previous entry.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Sunak has won among the MPs and that was good enough. He will present a more substantial leader for Keir Starmer and Ed Davey to tackle electorally, though at first glance Sunak lacks communication skills in front of a television camera.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">He could be - we'll have to see - at the Social Democratic end of the Conservative Party - a bit like Johnson, but Johnson also threw red meat tit bits to his right wingers and was a Nationalist with it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">He'll be a Hindu charged with deciding between two Church of England bishops for appointments.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">He is untested, of course, with the broad-brush management of ministers who are to do the specific delivery. Many Liz Truss 'yes people' will now be bundled out from the Cabinet.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Thus, regardless of public statements of best intentions, right wingers will add to those disgruntled. We remain at the end of a political cycle where the body politic is desperate for renewal that comes with a sea-change General Election. Pity that the opposition leaders lack charisma. Capable and tested ones are in devolved government. Unless Truss, who ignored them, Sunak would do well to call upon them in a positive manner.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-21218140981266722222022-10-24T05:24:00.002+02:002022-10-24T06:45:26.592+02:00Same Again?<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Johnson has gone. Whatever his reason, it's sensible from a Tory Party point of view. He became divisive. His 'time' will probably be to head up the opposition, if the Tories lose the next General Election.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">However, imagine the scenario now. Penny Mordaunt gets over a hundred MPs, many from Johnson, many anti-Sunak.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Two go to the membership. Sunak with the overwhelming backing of MPs again loses to the other one.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>It would be just like how Truss won</i>, the Tories' own Jeremy Corbyn, the ideologue who lacked the support of most MPs. (The difference is: he was genuine and she was fake, a recreation several times.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The Tory Party in the House of Commons would explode. They might even hold their own vote afterwards and have Sunak (almost) command a majority in the House of Commons.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Or, more likely, the Mordaunt faction would make Sunak unable to get legislation through.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">So, unless she backs down, the risk is that the Tory Party self-destructs.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-90122424261999864602022-10-22T20:04:00.001+02:002022-10-22T20:04:40.788+02:00Stupid Politics (Continued)<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> The Tory calculation is that Boris Johnson will prevent an electoral wipeout. The problem is that he will now divide opinion.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Yes, some electors will vote for him, but equally those anti-Johnson who are not attracted positively to 'Soporific Starmer' or 'Disappointing Davey' will be motivated to vote for who can remove their constituency Tory MP.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But, before we ever get there, imagine Sunak getting the vast majority of Conservative MPs only for it to go to the membership and find that they select Johnson. It'll be back to the same issue again, as with Truss.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Plus, if Johnson wins, several Conservative MPs will go independent or even join an opposition party.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Rely on the Conservatives to get it wrong again!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-72281741791602076202022-10-20T16:21:00.005+02:002022-10-20T16:21:51.584+02:00If Johnson Stands<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> If Boris Johnson wants to stand for Conservative Party leader, the Conservative Party will descend into chaos like the present chaos has been a little difficulty.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">He commands support and wishes to restore what was lost, but too many have learnt the lesson of his unsuitability as Prime Minister.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">So, far from there being a unity candidate, there'd be (with a week?) sharp division with massive infighting. A placed-in Prime Minister would not be able to command the House of Commons.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I'm not very good at predictions but I can see the trends and movements. My predictions sort of work their way through perhaps in a different way. I was right that Truss had lost authority, but she (for a while) decided to dig in. However, nothing she said had lasting power and so she has gone.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Some want Johnson in as the only charismatic leader to face a General Election. The price is huge.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The problem for others is that they would be a leader up to defeat at the polls and then would be replaced, especially after a bloodbath. If I was a Tory MP with leadership ambitions, I'd become leader in a period of coming opposition to have a manifesto and policy aims and identity. What's the point of a short period in office, when defeat is almost guaranteed?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The Tories cannot do a leadership stitch-up within a week if Boris Johnson stands.</span></p><p><br /></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-69398069673425708652022-10-17T20:11:00.003+02:002022-10-18T01:39:52.430+02:00She's Going (Or Not)<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: #fff2cc;">Update: Read below and I'm wrong. Prime Minister Liz Truss told Chris Mason, the BBC Political editor and part-time Comedian Correspondent, that she was leading the Conservatives into the next General Election. They will, of course, be delighted. What it means is rather than stand down and make things easy and organised, they will have to prise her out.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">So what was the very important business that kept Liz Truss from the House of Commons this afternoon? Why did Penny Maudant take her place.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Had Putin nuked Ukraine? No, she was talking to Sir Graham Brady. Surely the House of Commons and accountability takes priority? He's a party manager.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Then we hear she will have drinks with the cabinet this evening.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Journalists haven't said it, because they haven't been told. But let's speculate. They've discussed her succession and she will slip away quietly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">She turned up to hear Jeremy Hunt wipe away her policies and join her to the 'anti-growth coalition' - presumably her meeting with Sir Graham Brady had a satisfactory conclusion.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-4084419029977567042022-10-14T15:15:00.004+02:002022-10-14T15:15:30.400+02:00Jeremy Hunt? He Won't Last<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Jeremy Hunt is apparently the new Chancellor of the Exchequer before it's even been announced.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">He has no connection with Liz Truss, and the question has to be who would serve under her. Her authority is completely battered. Kwasi Kwarteng was her ideological soulmate and he did what they wanted to do. They lacked legitimacy to do it - who voted for them to suddenly do the other thing? - but Jeremy Hunt is no more than a safe pair of hands. He will be a short term chancellor only because when she falls he will fall. She's finished and her colleagues may as well get on with it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-9517002963902958142022-10-14T00:30:00.003+02:002022-10-14T15:09:15.319+02:00She's On Her Way<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #45818e; font-family: arial;"><i><b>Update</b>: Truss has sacked her ideological running mate, the Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng. Astonishing after all of 38 days. The chaos wasn't his doing, it was theirs. I don't see this is changing what I wrote below only yesterday. (Today is14th Ocotober 2022.)</i></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It's amazing how it works out. The Truss government never had legitimacy. The tiny selectorate could not be behind such a change of policy from centre-right Johnson to economic liberal (and reconstructed) right wing Truss.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">She's crap at her job and so is Kwarteng. You wouldn't think he was a hedge fund manager because he comes across as someone without experience. You wouldn't think she had been in the cabinet so long, but then as Foreign Secretary her legacy is having opportune photographs taken.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">You get that moment when suddenly authority drains away. After just a month in the job it's happening again, as it did with Johnson. This time, if there is no General Election, the Tory Party has to obey the rules of Parliamentary democracy and the Members of Parliament approve the people put in power.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Truss will not only not win a General Election; she will sink the Tory party ship. Maybe the Tories just have to accept that they are going to lose. The reason Patel did not stand for the leadership was because she knew the next leader would lose and be sacked. Better to be chosen as opposition leader, set out your stall and make the appeal to the voters.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">The non-Budget that was a Budget can be reversed in part or whole, but the damage is done. The idea that taxes should be cut when the NHS is flat on its back, the court system is disintegrating, and there is no improvement in productivity, and when so many people are sick, is madness. Growth comes from investment, not from fiscal measures that cause stricter and contradictory monetary measures. Johnson at least knew that money had to be spent.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">This has been a lesson in Jeremy Corbyn too: he did not have the support of MPs for his far-reaching radical project. It was sourced in the swollen Labour Party membership of that time. Liz Truss is a Jeremy Corbyn, and she is the wrong person at the wrong time with the wrong ideology.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Authority is slipping away and so goodbye. Bizarrely, the constitution is working.</span></span></p><p><br /></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-12869253909156833482022-09-03T23:23:00.006+02:002022-09-03T23:39:32.479+02:00Why So Nervous, Tories?<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>We can see that the Tory Party is ever so nervous about a Liz Truss win to become Prime Minister on Monday 5th September.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">This is what Ryan Shorthouse said, Chief Executive of the Bright Blue think tank:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“If she just surrounds herself with the Boris fan club, puts in place a continuity cabinet with the same old faces and uses the same arguments, policies and tactics as Johnson, she will lose the confidence of the parliamentary party rapidly. The public will feel nothing has changed.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But it will also because only a third of Tory MPs supported her, and she wasn't that all important second in the race until the last minute. She started in front among Tory supporters - so male, so elderly, so well off comparatively - and, if anything, she has lost ground in front. She has projected herself as this deliberately well-photographed 'Poundshop Thatcher' to appeal to that selectorate, but it's been utterly inappropriate to the concerns of the public.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">During Covid, Johnson acted like a Social Democrat because there was no other option. The State acted and redistributed cash, and it preserved jobs while paying people to do nothing. The energy price crisis and cost of living increases are such that Truss will have to do something similar; her 'solutions' have been condemned by her opponent Sunak as inflationary and inadequate.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Polls suggest that people expect her to do a bad job, before she has even started. The timing of the General Election and a temptation to go early for legitimacy could mean she is one of the shortest-serving Prime Ministers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Her gaffes and her wooden performances suggest she has all the political vacancies of Boris Johnson but none of the communication skills to get around her limitations.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But Johnson had so little in the way of political philosophy that he could be centrist and write cheques.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Truss appears to have a political philosophy - a clone of Thatcher - but she is actually several reconstructions. She wasn't just a Liberal Democrat but the President of them at Oxford. She was pro-European Union - kept her in with Cameron as Prime Minister - and then was Brexit reborn, keeping her in with Johnson.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I don't know if she'll be continuity Johnson or apply an irrelevant dogma: rather, I think she will be overwhelmed and make allies and supporters very irritated.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">She is yet another third-rate politician come to the top via some peculiar route.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Priti Patel didn't stand for the leadership because she surely calculated that the next Tory leader will be overwhelmed and short-lived. Better to do a bit of opposition and make an appeal, for people to elect their MPs when she stands as leader.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Truss begins her time in office after the government has been asleep at the wheel, as anxious worrying has increased among the public. She and Sunak have indulged in something that should have been sorted out quickly. So there'll be no 'honeymoon period' but a disgust with the delay. What she does early on will matter, but so far she has suggested policies in the realm of fantasy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">She may offer Sunak a role in government but, after all he has said, he couldn't stand up for policies he has said are reckless. She then has many favours to reward. Her government will likely be narrow in personnel. But if she does the other thing, as in what is necessary, she will look quickly like a liar.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But then Sir Keir Starmer was elected by a membership with many left wing promises, and has pretty much dropped the lot of them. The result - with support of his MPs even as 96,000 ended their Labour Party membership - is likely to be he wins the next General Election even with a minority government. He'll take many seats back and some, the Liberal Democrats will take others, and the Scottish Nationalists more or less keep theirs. Hello Liz Truss and, with good fortune, it will be goodbye soon.</span></p><p><br /></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-52312333373198689552022-08-06T04:45:00.005+02:002022-08-06T05:45:28.877+02:00Unless Self-Inflicted She Wins<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">So the MPs put Sunak first but will have to accept the membership's verdict should they, as expected, put Truss first. That is a core source of instability for the future, a lack of authority in the parliamentary system in which the Prime Minister exists on the basis of the approval of the House of Commons.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The Tory system among MPs was always to come at least second. The winner in terms of MPs support had to 'lend' votes to have a satisfactory second place person to then beat using the party membership. Sunak's people thought they had a better chance of beating Truss over Maudant. but now, as they seek future cabinet jobs, even Maudant (and indeed Tugendhat) has now approved of Truss over Sunak.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinJQlI9UZVw7CmoEKO16SNUNx6XhndqxGqaAG_xu3vTDWPKClizYdUszcLNfU_vm-uWotkdJHa_5kFE7lELWei05unndUTtXxWFE0EXoZJ_O2Ah1Omdd7i0X963vF0sCWU9WShRuitXLFHKGdy9AXJNB73Tj0hTc1ZzUsf0h3RReSmkbypa7XY7HTHQA/s2802/Truss.bmp" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2802" data-original-width="1953" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinJQlI9UZVw7CmoEKO16SNUNx6XhndqxGqaAG_xu3vTDWPKClizYdUszcLNfU_vm-uWotkdJHa_5kFE7lELWei05unndUTtXxWFE0EXoZJ_O2Ah1Omdd7i0X963vF0sCWU9WShRuitXLFHKGdy9AXJNB73Tj0hTc1ZzUsf0h3RReSmkbypa7XY7HTHQA/s320/Truss.bmp" width="223" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">What's wrong is that the Prime Minister created this way picks up privileged monarchial powers. The Monarch has none of these powers any more, as they go to the Prime Minister, but Parliament is unable to remove these powers unless the Prime Minister allows it. This is why a final decision by the membership is wrong.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Truss wanted regional pay boards. She says she was misrepresented, in her U turn of the policy. I'm not surprised she can U turn, because she has done it all the way along to such an extent that when in power and with these monarchial powers she can become anything she likes. Her policy is a fantasy of Tory-appealing tax cuts when there is a crying need for public services and dealing with poverty. She may well ignore all that she has said to them, rather as the Labour leader Keir Starmer has been doing to his own selectorate. He is currently dumping policy commitments as fast as he can.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The tragedy is that Starmer is so uncharismatic and so unable to score into an open goal that she might even win in a General Election. She is the attention seeker, in her disrespect for Nicola Sturgeon and Scottish democracy. Starmer is no attention seeker as he seems to be politically shy. Ed Davey has done his own policy disappearing act, meanwhile, when he could make a unique appeal to have a Single Market and Customs Union with the European Union to solve, rapidly, many of the cost-raising backlogs we face. Unique policy may well not attract everyone, but it will attract with enthusiasm and in a wish to reverse recent political stupidity a numerous block of voters and in key constituencies. We don't need two UK opposition parties where the public are clueless about their policies. Everyone knows what the SNP stands for, both regarding Scotland and the European Union.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-63571111340490855132022-07-27T17:09:00.003+02:002022-07-27T17:10:26.953+02:00Crick in the Political Neck<p> </p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I have a lot of time for Michael Crick, whom John Prescott once called, "Biggles from
Newsnight." He was speaking from Talk TV as a guest, the channel with one viewer at that point - me - only because Crick was already on.</span></p>
<div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span></span> </span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: medium;">He says the Tory leadership is over already, Truss being the
winner. She has positioned herself on the right but expects she'll govern nearer
the centre. I hope he's right. Certainly someone who has reconstructed herself over and again can do it again.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Someone else who did that, positioned on the left to win the party vote, is Sir Keir Starmer. He's been chucking all his winning commitments out of the pram.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span></span> </span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: medium;">Crick said he has no charisma and no one knows
what Labour stands for. They should be twenty points in front of the
Conservatives after all that has happened, so it is quite possible that Truss
will win the next General Election. Blair, Smith, Kinnock all were well ahead of
the Tories at this stage, and Labour is not there.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">'Beergate' was never anything, and Starmer survived the police enquiry fully intact. But it perhaps would have been better for Labour had he gone, for someone else with some charisma to take over. I'd favour someone like Wes Streeting. (Has to be from the right of the party, I'm afraid.)</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">He didn't mention Sir Ed Davey, leading the Liberal Democrats, and why would he? To my mind Davey has to be distinctive, and the one way he can do it is by promising to make moves to join the EU single market and customs union. We should be like Norway. Even Blair has abandoned this position, because we'd be rule-takers only. But he knows this is not true: the European Economic Area involves lobbying the EU and Norway makes its representations. Davey can offer solutions to our movement and travel, ending our trade disadvantages, and most of all secure Northern Ireland's peace inclusion in the UK and closeness to Ireland in the EU. Charles Kennedy made his stance on the Iraq war and was rewarded for it in terms of recognition. It's time that Ed Davey did the same, and (as a Lib Dem member, if largely inactive) it's about time he got on with it.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-4124976044861286612022-07-25T21:21:00.009+02:002022-07-26T03:44:51.237+02:00Institutional Church Trickery<p><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: large;">(See the update)</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: medium;">On religion (this blog was once all about religion): I no longer attend anywhere. When I lived in New Holland, North Lincolnshire, as from 1994, I first went to Hull Unitarians, and left at a time of (I alleged) mistreatment of a minister, and then I went to Barton Anglicans, a broad (at the time) Anglo-Catholic parish church. Despite my best efforts and even presenting to a theology group, in a liberal corner, I ran out of doctrinal steam and also could not justify the ethic of the wider institution. The Unitarians took me back, so to speak, and then it chose a new minister with disastrous results. After a few years people voted with their feet and left, one by one. I did too, after far too long. I went to the Quakers for over two years and realised they had a commitment to something special which I did not share. So I stopped, and that was it.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: medium;">So if I comment on anything, it is from the outside. I have no relationship with the Church of England, but boy is it suddenly in a desperate condition of institutional duplicity? After 14 years the Anglican Communion worldwide is to return to Lambeth (so to speak) for a get together of its hierarchy of bishops.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: medium;">It seems to have forgotten that the attempt to have an Anglican Covenant worldwide failed; the Church of England synod itself said no and that finished it. Rowan Williams from Wales was very annoyed, reminding the Church of England that it was led by bishops like him.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: medium;">And now there aren't even resolutions for this Anglican get together. No Covenant, no institutional unity. Except there are, by way of Calls, and these Calls can't be voted against - only 'yes' or 'yes but more work needed'. It's like there was a Covenant agreed after all.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: medium;">Now I thought Christianity was at least about honesty. Seeing as I don't believe it (all that credal stuff suggesting an alternative universe of divine-intervening events), the honest thing was to withdraw. Now I know people view these creeds an doctrines with elasticity, as I did myself, and theology rather demands it at times. So we expect some duplicity and nothing is perfect. But here we have something else - the Calls were introduced when not discussed quite as they appear, and the real brute is the one that wants to reaffirm the 1998 resolution excluding gay sexual relations as permissible and denying gay marriage as normal.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: medium;">It's a bit late in the day for that! The north Americans in two provinces, the Scottish Episcopal Church and the Church in Wales have become rather more inclusive institutionally since then. So how can this resolution, in a 'Yes - Affirm' or 'Yes - Needs More Discernment' voting system be the 'Mind of the Communion as a whole'?</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: medium;">Well, one way we know it isn't is the dishonest way it was all shoved forward at the last minute. Already same sex partners were excluded whilst the opposite sex spouses were invited along. This is evidence enough of being 'institutionally homophobic'. However, trying to resolve something as the Mind of the Communion when clearly it isn't could only be shoehorned in as a form of skullduggery that convinces no one - no one bar the Archbishops, presumably, who have driven this dishonesty.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: medium;">And what this shows is that, after the Unitarians, Quakers and Liberal Jews led the way, and after the United Reformed Church and Methodist Church have become inclusive, plus many tiny Churches of the trinitarian kind opened themselves to sexual partner diversity, the Church of England is not going to follow its Scottish and Welsh neighbours on the road of inclusivity.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: medium;">The small SEC and tiny CiW may well be motivated by being desperate for members and reach, but the C of E still deludes itself that evangelicals can bring in the numbers and money, and so cannot go the same way. And then there are the overseas Anglicans in parts of the world where these institutions encourage frightening bigotry within and without. The C of E is mother Church, fearful of being colonialist again, and so goes along with the bigotry via sleight of hand and institutional tricks.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: medium;">Not exactly ethical is it? I wouldn't touch the C of E with a bargepole. I don't know why some people still do.</span></p><p><b>Update</b></p><p>There has been a change. Yes, they've been found out pulling a fast one. (As if no one would notice!) Now the options are:</p><p><i>'This Call speaks for me. I add my voice to it and commit myself to take the action I can to implement it.'</i></p><p><i>'This Call requires further discernment. I commit my voice to the ongoing process.'</i></p><p><i>'This Call does not speak for me. I do not add my voice to this Call.'</i></p><p>Of course the Calls are still biased, the assumptions built into their presentations. They might tinker with the odd text. Do majority votes mean the 'Call' is made?</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-35783042156352135742022-07-25T07:06:00.004+02:002022-07-26T03:41:35.230+02:00Relaunch Fakery<p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">We've seen the end of Boris Johnson and by 5th September this year he'll be gone as Prime Minister. He's certainly a supporter of the Conservative Party as an institution, but principle-free to such an extent that he could be a centrist and encourage his own right wing at the same time. As a Covid Prime Minister he was a Social Democrat, but then was forced to chuck red meat at his right wing. He promoted the incapable on the basis of loyalty. A Chancellor of the Exchequer came from nowhere, and the Foreign Secretary was promoted after Johnson's predecessor demoted her. Sunak and Truss respectively turned out to be a smoothie in presentation and a reconstructor of political personality.</span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Sunak was fined for being present at a party, like Johnson. Sunak also had a Green Card, allowing him to bolthole to the United States along with his international wife even when Chancellor.</span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But Truss is the one who gets me hiding behind the sofa, like a child watching (or hiding from) Dr. Who. She has staggering form for political fakery.</span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">She trashes Roundhay School, Leeds, in public, but it got her to Oxford. Thus she started as a Liberal Democrat and anti-monarchy too (</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I am both)</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">, becoming its local President no less when at Oxford. This should reassure me. Of course it doesn't, not with the number of zig zag changes she's made.</span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">She had an affair and then became a Tory candidate, her marriage surviving but not the bloke's. She became a Cameroon, a moderniser of the Tory Party (that was vicious to those on benefits - and why I still criticise the Liberal Democrats for propping up the Tories for far too long). Part of this political climb was her robust defence of the European Union and our influence at the central table of its decision taking. She became Lord Chancellor, and was apparently no good at it, and was demoted by Theresa May. But she saw the direction of the political wind, and hitched herself to the Johnson wagon. She suddenly became a convinced Leaver of the EU, rather like Johnson himself had his two newspaper articles - one for in and one for out - and opted to come out. He promoted her from Chief Secretary to the Treasury (and crap at that too) to <span style="background-color: white;">Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade and then, even, </span>Foreign Secretary. Her incredible trade deals were, basically, EU deals we already had and now needed repeating bilaterally.</span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">As Foreign Secretary she did two connected things. One was have her photo taken wherever she went, and then in iconic Thatcher-appearing style. When she appeared in television debates, she was wooden, robotic and tried to look like Thatcher. She was appealing to the Tory Party demographic.</span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Don't look for the real Elizabeth Truss, because there isn't one. She is whatever suits at the time. She is no leader for a crisis, and her economic policy is crackers - borrowing when interest rates rise. For a long time money has been 'printed' on the basis of trying to tickle along more economic activity, in the risk that economic activity could release financial assets into price and wage inflation. This, along with war in Europe, has now happened. Monetary policy has to try and make the excess disappear, but her policy would create more and more money swilling around and, presumably, spent by consumers to stoke up demand. Capitalism has been in intensive care since 2008, and now it's about to fly off into contradictions every which way.</span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">She is not the woman to lead the country. Go back to the 1970s when things were bad, too, and at least we had leaders of depth - people who read history, people who argued worked-out positions. We have had decades now of third rate politicians. She is one of them, and for that matter so is Sunak.</span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Johnson says, "I'll be back," because he knows that his party's "herd instinct" gets fed up with under-performing leaders. He is sure of his greatness, and of appointing people well below him. They are all low level.</span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">None of the above. Mordaunt ran out of steam during her vacuous campaign, but in a system where the first task was to come second or above, it seems that Sunak's firepower was aimed at keeping the apparently popular Mordaunt out. Remember how little his vote went up before the final stage? Clever, but not clever enough, because it seems the Tory faithful rather like fakery and reconstruction, so just as Johnson (and Sunak) can communicate, Truss can turn herself into whatever she wants. Some people can be fooled all of the time.</span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-54502425893481622202022-01-11T20:23:00.005+01:002022-01-13T05:46:43.849+01:00He's Finished<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I was thinking of blogging again. The defeat - for this is what it was - by leaving the European Union - ended me having anything to say. It was up to those least divided and so taking a majority to carry out the will of the voting system.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The Northern Ireland Protocol is a kind of figleaf for the exit, to keep a borderless Ireland that has meant a border of sorts in the Irish Sea. The government now does not like its own handiwork. Lord Frost, negotiating it, hoped it would allow the UK to become a Singapore off Europe, being an economic liberal Tory.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">But economic liberalism has had nothing for the Covid pandemic, and why we have had a centrist and even social democratic government under Johnson. Johnson's centralism doesn't mean he doesn't care about the Conservative Party - his one big plan was to bring UKIP deserters back to the fold. But he cares little about anything else. Indeed a lot of what he does is about what Carrie Johnson wants, his highly political wife.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">He's a good communicator. Even charlatans have to be good communicators, otherwise they get nowhere to practise their craft.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">What does if for Johnson this time is that hiding behind the Sue Gray inquiry into parties won't work. It's too binary.<span style="color: #2b00fe;"> Either he (and his wife) were there, or they were not, and being there in that manner was illegal. </span>The inviting email is the gun that went off. This happened when people were suffering.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The replacements aren't too hopeful, right wingers again on the newer Cameron school, whereas Johnson is (I suggest) more of the Peter Walker school of Tory history. He's just so shabby, so without honour.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Carrie Johnson will want him to continue, and that's his personal motive to continue, otherwise he might just give up for more lucrative work. If he goes, she's got nothing, and will have to redesign her life to find political influence.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-29036323270855834562021-05-09T06:50:00.004+02:002021-05-09T06:55:53.935+02:00Back Again as the Nations Divide<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Time to resume the blog after a long gap when the political opposition to leaving the European Union was divided. The progressive left is still divided, but it is (after the devolution elections and local elections) more effective in the nations beyond England and some mayoral settings.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The Conservatives, forced to be centrist as a result of the pandemic, continue to stomp all over the political space. A terrible Brexit deal, although exposed over Ireland, and between Ireland and Britain, is yet to unravel in significant areas. (We're not going to go to war over Jersey, are we?) The divorce is a bureaucratic mess.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">But where it will go wrong is with the British nations. The West Lothian question has never quite gone away - in fact it has intensified. Mark Drakeford is able to save Labour in Wales because he had a practical and deliverable manifesto assisted by the recognition given to him with the Coronavirus pandemic. The Scottish National Party and not Alba, but definitely the Green Party, was able to continue to define politics and government in Scotland. Northern Ireland wants it both ways: different from Britain when it suits, but like Britain economically as it suits.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">If Ireland can produce the equivalent of the National Health Service, many northerners would vote for taking Northern Ireland into Ireland itself, and back into the European Union. Unionism is already different from the Democratic Unionist Party and its agenda: based on consent, the Alliance Party can be a place for parking Unionism and considering the future.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It is Scotland where the big change is coming. There seems to be a misunderstanding in the United Kingdom government (that increasingly legislates for England only in the details of life) that it decides the path to independence or otherwise. Previously, Cameron said yes to a Scottish Independence referendum, won it, and on the basis of that gambled again regarding the European Union in-out referendum, and thanks to Osbornes austerity and ignoring ordinary folk the government lost. Had the government lost the Scottish referendum, we would never have had an EU referendum.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">However, 'just saying no' this time won't work. The reason is this. The Union of Scotland with England, Ireland and Wales was based on a consent of equal nations. Scotland remains a nation - its own legal structure and religious settlement - and the union comes from the sovereignty of the people of that nation and the nations it joined (principally England). The Supreme Court of the UK has already shown that it is both the top of the tree of the Scottish system as well as the English plus system, and if it has to decide about the legitimacy of a referendum it is likely to delve into some very ancient bases indeed about how the Union is formed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Johnson then is in danger of making a huge error. He stayed away from Scotland in these elections to give the Scottish Conservatives a better outcome; his reach politically - his ability to win - has limitations.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The irony is that the West Lothian Question could well be sorted out via an EU style confederation. We could have a British Isles of independent nations coming together with a limited Parliament (like the EU Parliament) and a Council with national vetoes to decide matters of common interest. We could be a confederation, just like the EU, with some in it and some (one or two) not. The House of Commons ends up being English.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">As for the English Labour Party (if we can call it that), it is in a hell of a mess. It probably does have to change its leader - why sack the deputy when the boss has said he carries full responsibility? But there is no party ready to take over from it. The Liberal Democrats looked diminished after these 2021 elections, still damaged from the Coalition and destroyed immediately after by its partner party the Conservatives. It propped up the Conservatives so that they could take us out of the EU, precisely the opposite of Liberal Democrat political culture, and for a while the Conservatives alone in power attacked the poor again, until Johnson started winning 'poor' population seats and became centrist. Let's see how long this lasts, and when ordinary folk with short memories wake up and smell the Tory coffee.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The point is that if Labour are failing as the Liberals once did a hundred plus years ago, where is the political party to replace Labour? Once Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy built up the Liberal Democrats and they would have been ready - but Nick Clegg destroyed all their good work and the Liberal Democrats have gone into reverse to where they were.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And look at the Liberal Democrats in Scotland. They are at some islands (Scotland's further reaches) and a few fragments. They are a fragment in Wales. They are in retreat in Cornwall. If you are pro-EU in Scotland, you must support the SNP or the Greens because the leadership of the Lib Dems have gone into retreat on the EU and because it is a Unionist party by its own intention.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">My own view is we'll have to join the European Free Trade Area to have a simple and straightforward trading relationship with Europe, but to do this will need political change and I can't see it - except that the nations of the British Isles are likely to divide first and define politics. Scotland did offer this compromise and was, once again, ignored. So now Scotland is withdrawing its sovereign consent from the Union and this affects everything.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-73520782534404454392020-01-31T17:19:00.000+01:002020-01-31T17:19:03.997+01:00Sad Day<blockquote>
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Today is a very sad day. The United Kingdom withdraws from the European peace project based on sharing economic and political institutions.<br />
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What was working to bind us together, particularly free movement of people within the European Union, will no longer be available to us. Younger and aspirational people have been undermined by the UK moving out.<br />
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In the 1970s a realisation came about that government had capacity, and to be good and effective needed to be at different levels. So much government has been good, recently, because it has had a European level (including the principle of subsidiarity). Now, all those matters that were decided and organised there must come back here. Devolution also seems threatened in regards of returned and no longer shared powers.<br />
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This is why we must let them, the victors of focusing the 'no' vote, get on with government. They wanted it and they've got it, and already we wonder if the government has the numbers and time to do the job. So much must go in place in order to function. The Scots need to be canny in going for a pro-European independence, a start to making the UK more like the EU - a family of nations with consultative sharing political institutions.<br />
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The idea that removing from the EU will solve the Conservative Party's problem with Prime Ministers falling from the Europe question is for the birds. The closeness or otherwise to Europe will be the issue that torments them: they have the obsession in their blood supply.<br />
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Pro-Europeans have not gone away. But we were defeated by the voting system and now our task is to hand over the reins and watch. I don't care about their promises: I would not hold them to their promises. If they succeed - good. If they don't, well, moments come to hand back power.<br />
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Liberal Democrats need strategies to turn their votes into seats. Simple as that. Labour may or may not fail, but Lib Dems generally do not succeed when Labour fails. What I think will likely fail is left-Labour, and Labour may then wipe out, given its condition and make-up. Then the Lib Dems must do more. The aim has to be for the Lib Dems achieving government, and ready from when the Johnson success becomes the moment of failure - when the smile goes off the joke. We will need a new political landscape, in the end: one to take us back into Europe. That will take more than a decade.<br />
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In the meantime, the Europeans can organise their confederation. I wish it the best. The Europeans will be less chained by Anglo-Saxon triumphalism and liberal economism, and see that politics and people matter most. The European Dream continues to organise.<br />
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Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-2469440208684641882019-12-14T17:41:00.001+01:002019-12-14T17:48:30.571+01:00The Unsaid: Final Thoughts<blockquote>
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As reflection time takes place among some, I do have some final thoughts.<br />
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The General Election was conceded by the Scottish National Party and the Liberal Democrats, as no one then could get through a second referendum.<br />
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The Liberal Democrats assumed they would be a focus for remain, but failed on two counts: one was they had a lack of publicity, including thanks to Prince Andrew's legacy when they launched their manifesto. It wasn't particularly the revoke policy at fault - they simply failed to explain it properly, as they were forced to do when more realism kicked in and the second referendum was emphasised again. But it is usually fatal to make policy adjustments in an election campaign. We also discovered the inadequacy of the Jo Swinson leadership, with far too much emphasis on her face, her image and her performance instead of on a team. Imagine if Ed Davey had won (I supported him) - there would not have been that attempted cult of personality. She was an unknown entity and this was too much of a gamble.<br />
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We forget, too, that Jeremy Corbyn was a block to the Liberal Democrats as he was to Labour. The difference was Labour MPs suppressed their criticism, but the Liberal Democrats expressed it. So two parties that would have had a referendum could not get together, because of the man that the Labour electorate so roundly rejected. It doesn't matter if the press did it, or the Marxism did it, or the antisemisism did it. Labour and he knew very many months back that he was no good, but his belief in his own necessity - to give socialism just one more push - had support and simply backfired. But it backfired for the Liberal Democrats too. Swinson was forced to be anti-Corbyn, and rule out Labour, and this was all a distraction to the emphasis that should have been on policy.<br />
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(I was opposed to a second referendum as I was opposed to the first. The argument for revoke needed explanation regarding parliamentary democracy but it failed to be explained, as it should have been long before the actual campaign. Parliament - the House of Commons - was not at fault: it did its job. But we saw that the opposition was easily dispersed, and this came into the campaign, and the personality of Corbyn was large in the actuality of the public response.)<br />
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The slight majority remain position was dispersed, and First Past the Post gives victory to those that are coherent. Farage let his own tyres down, and had further consequence to support voting Conservative from a leave perspective. Even then, although it told leaver people to vote Conservative, Farage cost Conservative not Labour seats.<br />
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Take Hull East. Had Farage's company not stood, a portion of his votes would have gone Conservative. The Conservatives would have won here too. The Conservatives nationally could have had a majority of 180 rather than 80, had Farage stood down completely - and that was with Labour getting more votes! (The quoted figure I've seen is 188.)<br />
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Labour must get rid of Corbyn and that whole approach he revived. It must find an alternative to State Socialism. Sometimes nationalisation is good, for some natural monopolies and services, but it must be managed at a more local and aspirational level. The Labour manifesto was a back to the seventies approach. It was a cluttered and gathering collection of State Socialist freebies. It did not appeal. The Liberal Democrats, as historically Liberals, identify themselves in relationship to the left (e.g. trade union based non-socialist Labour Liberal MPs) - even though they have, historically, lost people off to the right (think Joseph Chamberlain). Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy built a Liberal Democrat identity just to the left of New Labour, with the expected Liberal philosophical twist. But this cannot be done if Labour has an antagonistic leadership. This is partly why Jo Swinson, receiving ex-Labour anti-Corby people, became 'tribal' according to friendly critics. She went with the Scottish Nationalists for a General Election, but lost coherence as Labour tried to neutralise its own remain and leaver dilemma, and so the Liberal Democrats suffered as well.<br />
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That's my point, to remember in years to come: for Labour to get rid
of State Socialism and its trapping membership, and for the Liberal
Democrats to remember its more open, less tribal, left-ecumenism.<br />
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The Liberal Democrats also suffered because of the Coalition and their self-discipline to keep it going to the very end, after which the appreciative Conservatives turned on them with their electoral machine. The argument the Liberal Democrats could have used in defence against facilitating austerity was that at least government then was competent - proper cabinet government. They failed to make even this case for the defence. Jo Swinson simply did not do it, and so much rested on her shoulders.<br />
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As for active policies now, the opposition MPs are there to turn up and vote, but that's about it. The real opposition to policies will come from the Conservatives to the Conservatives. Let them get on with it. If they harm us, we will protest. Johnson will want to hang on to as many convert constituencies as possible, to go for a further five years and into a future quite possibly beyond my lifespan! Johnson went to captured Sedgefield, Tony Blair's constituency, to stamp his feet there, to reach out beyond, and to be the Tory Blair. Let's see if this is what happens, domestically. The Scottish and Irish have more immediate and strategic oppositional and future creating strategies, to be watched with interest. The European Union will become more co-ordinated and likely more powerful, and the UK will feel it from the outside. We will likely end up taking, and not contributing, but it will be decades before our opportunity to contribute may come about again. This is tragedy of the moment: a future of isolation for a diminished England and Wales, and even Wales itself considering its future identity as a political unit.<br />
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The future of Britain in the European Union really did matter. This is defeat. Let the victors take the spoils. We'll be back later, but much later, when the wheels come off the wagon, and when there are an alternative set of wheels and indeed a repair to be made to the wagon itself. All political careers end in failure, after all. We pro-Europeans know this for sure.<br />
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Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-4991574522284019552019-12-13T15:33:00.005+01:002019-12-13T15:33:54.993+01:00Defeat on Europe and the end of the UK Union<blockquote>
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It is time for me to move on from politics in this blog. It used to be a religion blog but became exclusively political as the Remain-Leave battle took place.<br />
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The remain voters were dispersed and the leave voters cohered (mainly). I voted Liberal Democrat but Hull East was nearly lost from Labour to Conservative. The Brexit Party may have taken Labour votes, but had it not stood many voting for it would have voted Conservative and Karl Turner MP would have lost. Those were conditions for me to vote Labour! The campaign was Leave versus other issues, not Leave versus Remain. In the past few years Jeremy Corbyn should have stood down as his mismanagement was obvious; I'd also say the Liberal Democrats voted for the wrong leader. Ed Davey would have been more nuanced and had a broader resource for thinking strategy.<br />
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But the remain side has been defeated by First Past the Post, and that's it. We lost.<br />
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The Conservatives could well be disastrous. Leaving the European Union is not straightforward and I agree with Jo Swinson's attack against nationalism today (though I have sympathy for civic nationalism as demonstrated by the Scottish Nationalist Party). Beyond this, his vague promises and his constituencies and MPs will make Johnson a kind of Tory Blair. He also wants to be liked, as Blair did. Johnson is a conman who needs to keep convincing people as he sells his dodgy motors. Let's see what happens.<br />
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But it is his and theirs now, to see what they do. As the issues tighten, people will start to respond. The European Union will become more co-ordinated without what is left of the United Kingdom, and I will have my support from it from afar. As for Ireland, I hope it reunites peacefully and in an orderly fashion, and Scotland will surely now become its own nation. Wales needs to think about its future. As for England, well, we reap what we sow, and we have sown Tory seeds.<br />
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Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-10877283439274189762019-12-13T05:58:00.000+01:002019-12-13T05:58:05.406+01:00Effective Landslide for a Tory Blair<blockquote>
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Johnson didn't exactly win: Labour imploded. The old Liberal Democrat narrative of disappointment has come again. In First Past the Post terms, this means that Johnson has walked it.<br />
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People (like me) who wanted to stay in the European Union are defeated. Johnson will have the freedom to have trade talks closer to the EU, or have an extension, or anything he likes. A liar lies on, but a Prime Minister (especially a near sole campaigner) has enormous power. He has the monarch's powers - we learnt that once he took power months back, needing the Supreme Court - and he has party dominance.<br />
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I'm sorry Jo Swinson lost her seat, but she turned out to be a poor strategist and poor campaigner: she had profile but probably needed to nurture her seat more. Chuka Umunna failed too. All the ex-Tory independents failed. Liberal Democrat losses have undermined gains.<br />
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However, the Scottish Nationalist Party has done very well, and Irish Nationalists/ Republicans for the first time have a majority of seats in a Westminster General Election. The Union is likely finished, now, because Scotland is another country and Ireland wants its place in the European Union throughout the island. Johnson cannot ignore this, or these nations will rip away.<br />
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I'm going to go against the grain of many of my political friends. I think Johnson will be a kind of Conservative Blair. He talks about "One Nation Conservatives", and now he has MPs in deprived constituencies looking for public spending - spending that he has sort of promised. Of course he could spend three years being a political and economic bastard and two years appealing to voters, but my guess is that he'll want to connect and be loved. Blair wanted to be loved and then let his bigger simplistic politician George Bush take him into Iraq. The Tories will provide their own opposition over the next five years.<br />
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Corbyn should have gone long ago: ineffective from the off with his office, and saved by one campaign in 2017 and membership, making some sort of progress against the weak and indecisive May Prime Minister. It was a case of a party of devotees out of touch with a wider electorate. It's no good having a supposed fantastic manifesto if it fails to attract wider support, and it should have appealed over a neutralised Brexit policy and toxic leader (justified or otherwise). He should go soon, but he wants to hang about presumably to maintain the left wing policies - because Labour will fight over its left-right split. The membership should retain the party's left wing stance, but many will also give up party membership. Blair at least knew how to win elections, even if people saw less from his majorities than they desired.<br />
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The Liberal Democrats will rise again as the Conservative bloat fails - and it will because of the Brexit nature of the vote. But it will need another good strategist for the Liberal Democrats: another Paddy Ashdown ,really. If they don't find such a new leader, their future will stay low level.<br />
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In five years I'll be a year off pension age, so we just have to live with this. Is the body politic renewed by this General Election? Probably not. Even so, we'll still have to wait five years.<br />
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Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-48213755932503078532019-12-10T03:02:00.001+01:002019-12-10T03:02:04.975+01:00It was Not a Leave Versus Remain Campaign<blockquote>
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If this was the Brexit General Election, then it hasn't balanced the Leave versus Remain argument. It has been, rather, a contest of Leave the European Union versus a whole bunch of policies - because we've had Boris Johnson and his 'Get Brexit done' lie of a slogan versus Jeremy Corbyn and his neutral stance.<br />
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Some photos of children in hospitals have given a sideways shove to the control exercised through the Tory election machine - notice how the press do their duty with the same fed stories. It may help to show the truth against the consistent spin and claims: Johnson so far has got away with it.<br />
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Jo Swinson hasn't been able to compete. She can't get a look-in, or rather when she does it is along with a jumble of others. Nevertheless, the actual Brexit division, leave versus remain, may be happening at constituency level, begun by the Brexit Party deflating its own tyres. The result is that as support for this party declines, the Brexit vote coheres and the remain vote looks split, because Labour can, via its other agenda, attract some remainers. The Liberal Democrats have also been hampered by their reputation for participating in austerity, for which they have only themselves to blame. Jo Swinson's apology for measures attacking the poor sounds as hollow as the apologies for dumping free tuition fees once in government. The anti-austerity agenda is as much about what has happened as what will happen.<br />
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Nevertheless, the voting options are narrow. If I still lived in New Holland, I would have to vote Labour. This is despite being culturally, intellectually, and politically, Liberal. In East Hull, I can help build the Liberal Democrat vote in a safe Labour seat.<br />
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Or at least I thought so. There is a chance that the Tories could win even in a place like East Hull. So should I now vote Labour? I think the answer is no, because if the Tories do win in East Hull then they would be on an incredible landslide anyway. So I think I have the luxury of a first choice vote - one to waste. This is again the issue of First Past the Post, a rotten system when there are four parties, and one that has been upheld in the media campaign to squeeze out the remain case.<br />
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Seeing this, I'll vote for remain. I think. I don't like the local Labour candidate, and did say I would not vote for him. But I am not wholly decided yet. I don't like State Socialism as a means to solve problems, but I accept we need to solve them and do need some rebalancing in the economy. I don't find the Corbyn political office effective, and it suggests incompetence in governing. But it couldn't be as bad as the present shower in office, devoid as it is of an ethical heart - it is heartless and lying is to be expected.<br />
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I'll likely vote Liberal Democrat but do so despite the campaign and not because of it, in how it actually failed to make an impact.<br />
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Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-56954426914294319962019-12-06T06:37:00.000+01:002019-12-06T06:38:44.290+01:00Less than a Week to Go<blockquote>
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Less than a week to go before polling and where are we?<br />
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Corbyn is still having to fend off questions on antisemitism which, overblown or not, is sapping the life out of the Labour election campaign and still raising questions whether the number of Labour MPs won't shrink.<br />
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This is no good to anyone, partly because a weak Labour Party allows a majority for the Tories even if other parties do well. Sometimes one thinks that Labour should have seen this coming, and for the sake of the Labour Party Corbyn should have resigned, even in favour of another left winger. Failure at the polls means it's too late: they should have acted by now.<br />
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The Tories and, in particular, Boris Johnson won't stop lying, and giving slogans, but he just seems to be getting away with it. May's repetitive slogan was her undoing, but Johnson has the coherence of the Brexit vote behind him, especially as the Brexit Party continues to disintegrate. The communicability of the amoral conman must work or the conman has nothing. He won't be interviewed by skilled interviewers because the conman looks for the line of least resistance, and does not care about scrutiny.<br />
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The Liberal Democrats nationally have failed to cut through. It launched its manifesto when Prince Andrew was in a lot of media trouble, and it seems barely able to push through. The Remain Alliance seems to be weak as an attractor. Whatever happened that generated the million strong marches for a second referendum? It's as if the Brexit side of the argument is getting a free run, and people on my side of the argument are going down to defeat.<br />
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There are few days now to turn this around, and the next leaders debate again excludes others.<br />
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Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-10247286483171504152019-11-28T02:53:00.003+01:002019-11-28T02:53:59.759+01:00Emergency! Danger!<blockquote>
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I was going to write about Corbyn damaged but, otherwise, has presented himself and the Labour Party quite well, that Swinson had recovered from her Leaders' Question Time low point but this recovery is qualified by lack of media reach, and Johnson has gone for safety first and whose reputation is beginning to have impact.<br />
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But, forget all that. The YouGov poll is a wake up call to optimists. It predicts what I was beginning to think in Scotland, but throughout the UK.<br />
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I thought in Scotland that the Conservatives would resist better than we expected and, as the Scottish National Party progressed, it would be Labour that would be squeezed.<br />
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It seems that, according to the YouGov poll of 100,000, this is so across the UK and, not only that but the Liberal Democrat experience of disappointment isgoing to be repeated. I could have written about the latter, and now it seems the indicators are this could well be so.<br />
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<a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/11/27/yougov-mrp-conservatives-359-labour-211-snp-43-ld-" target="_blank">YouGov predicts</a>: Conservatives 359, Labour 211, SNP 43, Liberal Democrats 13, Plaid Cymru 4, Green 1. However, there is a margin of error that leads to the Conservatives having a majority of one to a landslide - 328 to 385 for the Tories.<br />
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The Brexit Party burst its own tyres weeks back, and now they have deflated completely. They could still deprive the Tories of some eight seats, but utter collapse improves the Tories further. The view that it was the party to take on Labour seats seems now to be fading away, and the Leave vote will give itself to Johnson's Conservatives. The squeeze on all others will lead to Labour having Michael Foot 1983 numbers of MPs and this when the Tories haven't just won the Falklands War.<br />
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The Remain Alliance is likely to fail completely. Defectors to the Liberal Democrats won't win unless local factors operate. In essence, the unity of the leave vote and the weakness of Labour lead to this likely Tory majority result. The Liberal Democrats simply cannot organise the remain votes to itself, not unless it takes from an even weaker Labour and that means a bigger Tory majority.<br />
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I take the view that half a loaf is better than none, but we are up against a Labour Party that thinks if ideological purity is not possible then we may as well have the Tories. It is this logic that leads to us having the Tories.<br />
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We have two weeks to turn this around. It needs dedicated 'least worst' voting in every constituency with a marginal flavour. I notice that even once safe Labour East Hull, my constituency, is at risk of a Tory win - not Liberal Democrat - and this means I may have to swallow hard and hold my nose. It is a likely Labour win, but it used to be rock solid.<br />
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Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449677811690616608.post-88739107121836723762019-11-22T22:48:00.004+01:002019-11-22T22:53:31.126+01:00Liberal Democrats Need to Regather<blockquote>
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I watched the two hours of four leaders meeting an audience. Now, to be clear, I am Liberal Democrat and support the revoke policy. But there is no doubt that the worst performance on that programme was that of Jo Swinson. More than that, I could see it coming. It was coming because Corbyn was matter of fact and played a straight bat, and then Nicola Sturgeon showed her skill derived from being First Minister, answering questions and even creating some room for some teasers about what Corbyn would and would not expect if ending austerity and promoting the public sector was his priority. I could foresee Johnson in some trouble as well, which he was but then had cheering supporters.<br />
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Jo Swinson will not get this policy understood if she doesn't do a Jonathan Sumption (the ex-Supreme Court Judge) and point out that a referendum is no more than an opinion snapshot and is not a part of the British Constitution, that no government or House of Commons can bind another, and a General Election is the opportunity for a party to make its manifesto promise. Instead, she was forced on to the back foot.<br />
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But her other weakness is her voting record in the coalition, for which the Liberal Democrats will get punished. For that she should promote government discipline, and contrast it with what has been missing this last three years, and that arguments were made in government, agreed, and then delivered. She can say a lot was regretted, but the necessity was for certainty in government at a difficult time. Failure to say this makes her look like a charlatan - and she looked like a charlatan in the programme.<br />
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Visuals matter, and Johnson didn't look good, but his waffles and defensiveness was not good either. The cheers of the crowd did not bail him out. The main result of his appearance was not his policies but the dodginess of his character and how he expresses himself.<br />
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There is no doubt, therefore, that Jeremy Corbyn continues to have a good General Election. He did it last time in 2017 through rallies and 'momentum' (to use a word) but now he is doing it by having a strong policy thrust. The Liberal Democrats manifesto launch was overshadowed by other news.<br />
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To describe The Tories and Brexit Party as having a 'stitch up' is to open the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Plaid Cymru to the same charge. The reason Swinson as less likely to be a PM is not the Brexit Party retreat but lack of impact of the Liberal Democrat campaign.<br />
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I receive many Liberal Democrat emails, but they cannot deny that they are having a rough election so far. They need not to change the revoke policy, but change how it is defended and where the second referendum policy fits into that. It is the case that a Liberal Democrat majority government would be such a seismic change that it would be the equivalent of a second referendum.<br />
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I'm not over worried at this point. That Labour is doing much better helps defend it against shirnkage, and it doesn't follow that the Liberal Democrats are less able to take Tory votes. Towards the end, Swinson made that point quite well. (She also made the anti-semitism accusation over Labour well.) So the result of the present moment could be better in terms of avoiding a Tory majority. But the Liberal Democrats need to gather round and sort this out fast; it needs something of a relaunch without it quite being a relaunch.<br />
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Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold)http://www.blogger.com/profile/01922153724523820866noreply@blogger.com0