Category Archives: elections

Boris, Angela, and Macron too

Tales of Brexit and Biarritz

We have now seen the political theatre playing what seems to be somewhere between comedy and tragedy, or perhaps an unfunny farce. The talking heads and “experts” of the msm have been scrabbling for meaning amid the obfuscation and posturing. Some “newspapers” have even resorted to “experts” in “body language”:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7380561/Boris-twitchy-anxious-veneer-cordiality-says-body-language-expert-JUDI-JAMES.html

Where does the truth lie? Where does Boris-Idiot lie? Everywhere and non-stop?

I find it infuriating to see, on every news broadcast, that part-Jew public entertainer posing as and (literally) playing the part of Prime Minister of this country. A total charlatan.

We now keep hearing the question, as in the TV game show, “Deal or No Deal?”, and, as in that silly but somehow addictive TV show, there is no skill involved. One just opens all the boxes to see what is inside. No skill, but much calculation as to one’s own best bet. In the case of The Boris-Idiot Show, we should ignore the flim-flam of the “head to heads” with what now are supposed to be “world leaders”. All that Boris-Idiot is considering is his own position and ambition; and was there ever in British politics such an empty ambition?

What After 31 October?

Even more than David Cameron-Levita, this latest ZOG figurehead has no real plans for the people of the UK, no interest in their lives or how to improve Britain’s place in the world. All he wants to do is to be seen as Prime Minister and show off. To that end, his girlfriend has cleaned him up and tidied him up a bit, told him to cut down on the rote-learned classical Greek and Latin and the silly obscure English words from the OED, and tutored him in how to appear, even if briefly, “prime ministerial”.

As noted, Boris-Idiot is the most ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government] Prime Minister ever, and his Cabinet is the most Jewish and Zionist ever, despite the fact that most of them are not Jewish, nor even part-Jew. All (as far as I know) are members of Conservative Friends of Israel. All are also extreme finance-capitalist by ideology, though few if any have ever run a successful private business (unless you include the scams of Grant Shapps etc). They want to destroy the few rights that British citizens have qua employee or otherwise for that matter (eg free speech rights).

Johnson does in fact not much care whether “deal or no deal”, so long as the mass media narrative plays well for him. If “no deal”, then “Boris” plays the Poundland Churchill, standing up for lonely isolated Britain against the EU bullies. If the EU offers enough so that Boris-Idiot can present it as some kind of “breakthrough”, then he can play the role of popular returning Chamberlain, waving his piece of paper and proclaiming “peace in our time with the EU”.

The above two characterizations may seem facile, but that is the level Boris-Idiot is on. He has no serious political or ideological position; it is all showy nothingness, relying on simplistic formulae, 1950s or 1960s boys’ comic-paper cartoons about standing up for Britain etc, and on fooling people too stupid or uninformed to see through what is essentially a con-act. That applies to Brexit too.

I myself favour Brexit, favoured Leave in 2016 and still do, but the Brexit process was criminally mishandled by a load of idiots in the Conservative government(s), possibly deliberately, and so now we career into uncertainty.

At first, Boris was pro-EU, pro-Remain, then “sceptical” (as public opinion moved), then pro-Leave, then voted in Cabinet (during his disastrous months posing as Foreign Secretary) for Theresa May’s “deal”, then he decided that his political future would be better served by acting the part of the “battling Brexiteer”, which meant that, out of 65 million UK inhabitants, the 92,000 Conservative Party members who preferred Leave to Remain (or “Brexit In Name Only” and so Boris-Idiot to Jeremy Hunt) in effect appointed the idiot as Prime Minister, with no popular validation as yet.

If Boris thinks that he can fool people into thinking that he has “achieved” a “better deal” than the Theresa May one, he will take it, knowing that many in the UK are now uneasy at what lies ahead. That also has the advantage for Johnson that he will not have to actually organize the UK and/or try to negotiate trade agreements with other states, something at which he has no experience and probably no aptitude.

If Boris cannot get enough from the EU to fool the public, then the Poundland Churchill will reappear, taking the UK out of the EU on the WTO/No Deal basis. Simple as that. There is no thought either way for what is best for the UK and its people. Everything is “what is best for 1. Boris Johnson and (far behind…) 2. The Conservative Party?”

What will happen if a UK general election happens soon after 31 October 2019? To my mind, Boris-Idiot will have to call one fairly soon, before the economy worsens and before he is fully-exposed as being completely incompetent for his present (or any) office.

Brexit Party is key. If the UK stays formally in the EU, via an extension or otherwise, the Brexit Party will stand 650 candidates, win some seats but more importantly, prevent the Conservative Party from winning dozens and possibly 100+. That would very likely mean that the Con Party will not even be largest party in the Commons.

What if the UK does leave the EU on or before 31 October? If that happens via some stitch-up deal and is in fact Brexit In Name Only (BRINO), Brexit Party will still stand those candidates with hope of a high vote-share.

That only leaves “no deal” or “WTO” Brexit. If that happens, and if it happens without chaos, or before absolute chaos and/or economic recession ensues, then Boris the Poundland Churchill can say to Farage and Brexit Party that they should stand down their troops. Like a Pacific salmon, Farage has spawned and can now die having fulfilled his mission. Will Farage do that? If so, or maybe even if he does not, Brexit Party might have little impact on the Conservative vote, if the UK is seen to have truly left the EU. However, it might still impact the Con vote (if Brexit Party can, ironic as it would be, distance itself from Brexit as sole issue, and seek votes on a wider basis…). It is a gamble. Boris-Idiot is a gambler, a chancer.

Never has the Labour Party been lower in public esteem or public support. Not all Corbyn’s fault. The Jews have mounted an attack on Corbyn for 4 years. Some of the mud has stuck. There are other factors. Corbyn and his allies have not really stood up to the Jew-Zionists. They have continued to parrot support for the “holocaust” fakery etc. There is also the “deadhead” nature of most of the Labour MPs around Corbyn (or not). Blacks and browns prominent, but also some of the English ones. Think Kate Osamor. Think Diane Abbott. The whole package is not electorally appealing beyond the ethnic minorities, beyond some of the public service people, beyond those reliant on State benefits and pensions.

I was until recently convinced that Labour would end up as largest Commons bloc after a 2019/2020 general election. Now? I cannot say with any confidence. That might still happen. Alternatively, the Conservatives might be largest bloc, as now, but with fewer MPs. There is now even a small chance (God forbid) that, in the absence of a popular Opposition, and in the possible absence or effective absence of Brexit Party, the Conservative Party might win a majority in the Commons. Boris Johnson might just survive as Prime Minister against the odds (and against merit), and with real power.

If that were to happen, the future really would be cast into the hazard.

Update, 20 October 2021

Having noticed that the blog post has had a few hits today and in recent days, I felt that I should update it.

Well, I was more or less right. “Boris” played the Poundland Chamberlain in the end. He then (as I predicted) called a swift General Election which, in December 2019, gifted him and the risibly misnamed “Conservatives” with an 80-seat majority, which the msm proclaimed to be a “landslide victory”, despite the fact that the Conservative Party popular vote scarcely increased on its 2017 showing.

The factors which propelled a clown (a sinister clown) into power by rigged “popular acclamation” were twofold, basically: the key factor was the collapse of the Labour Party popular vote from 40% (2017) to about 32% (2019); the second factor of importance was that political snake-oil  salesman, Nigel Farage, cynically sabotaged his own Brexit Party, then unilaterally decided to stand down most of its candidates. In the circumstances, amid the Brexit kefuffle, that all but guaranteed a Conservative party victory, though the extent of it must have been beyond the wildest dreams of both part-Jew “Boris” and the Jewish lobby (which was desperate to do down Corbyn)…

https://twitter.com/MaierViv/status/1229105401939025920?s=20

Since the 2019 General Election, “Boris” has of course brought in quasi-dictatorial laws giving his Friends of Israel regime wide-ranging social and police powers, all on the back of the 2020-2021 “Covid-19” “panicdemic”. A story, at time of writing, still unfolding.

The EU Is On The Way Out

Introduction

My attention was caught by this tweet [below], posted by the political scientist Matthew Goodwin (who used to block me on Twitter, I think, but we’ll say no more about that for now).

In Germany, the economy is contracting. For the first time (as far as I know) since 1945, Germany is doing worse economically than the present Eurozone states as a whole are doing (and they are not doing well either). In Italy, the League (formerly Northern League) has a plurality of support. Italy is now actively standing against the attempt of the international conspiracy to flood Europe with blacks and browns.

Discussion

A few years ago, it seemed possible that the EU was going to collapse politically:

CtnA-SlXEAQNZuu

Now, that seems less likely, at least in the short term and on the surface, if only because the System parties and politicians across Europe are hunkering down to protect “their” project (the EU-superstate NWO/ZOG project) out of which those parties and individuals have done so well for themselves. In addition, most of the insurgent parties are at present trying to destroy the EU from within, or to alter it radically, rather than pushing for their home states to exit the EU.

Britain is a major part of the EU not only because of its economic strength (even now), but also because the UK is the ideological, attitudinal, military halfway house between the mainland of Europe and the USA.

If Britain leaves the EU on WTO terms, the economic damage to the UK will be real, but do not underestimate the damage to the EU itself. The EU project is on a knife-edge both politically and economically. Brexit might well push the EU over the edge, especially now that the world economy as a whole is slowing. The EU may not “officially” fall to pieces for a while, but in reality it is like a tree, the trunk of which has been cut through, but which has not yet crashed to the ground.

Conclusion

We are looking at the resurgence, not far down the line, of the core peoples of Europe. I am not talking about “civil war” as experienced by people in recent decades or centuries. We are looking at culture war, socio-economic war, race war, religious war, all tied up together, entangled. This may continue for decades once it starts. Out of it may emerge, in the end, a society of a different kind altogether. God mote it be!

Afterthought

As far as the UK domestic political situation is concerned, we see attempts within the pathetic and incompetent British “political class” to stop “no-deal” Brexit. If one or other such attempt succeeds, then the major System parties are toast, first and foremost the Conservative Party. Brexit Party will challenge all Conservative MPs at the next, perhaps very soon, general election. That must unseat many of them, perhaps most of them. A Conservative Party of little more than 100 MPs is now a realistic possibility. As to Labour, its core vote now cannot be much higher than 25%. Brexit Party may not get more than a few dozen MPs in the short term, but it has the possibility of changing the face of British politics forever by weakening and perhaps destroying the two main System parties, now seen as colossi on legs of straw.

Notes

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7365809/PETER-OBORNE-Red-lights-flashing-economic-hurricane-coming-scared.html

Update, 10 June 2020

Well, now we know that there was a General Election (in December 2019). In that campaign, Nigel Farage stabbed his own party, Brexit Party, in the back, by standing down all Brexit Party candidates who were standing against Conservative candidates. This all but guaranteed a Conservative Party victory.

It now seems even less likely than before that the UK will leave the EU in reality. We have the much-discussed BRINO, Brexit In Name Only, maybe for years, in most respects. However, we now have an unexpected aspect: Coronavirus. This, or rather the panicky shutdown of several countries’ economies by their own governments, has placed the EU in even more of a pickle. Watch this space.

We May Be On The Brink Of Political Disintegration

In the Notes, below this article, is the text of a Guardian piece by the well-known expert on the British Constitution, Vernon Bogdanor. Worth reading, but what struck me apart from its detail was that one possibility mooted as a way out of the Brexit impasse is a so-called “government of national unity headed by someone such as Keir Starmer or Yvette Cooper“. YVETTE COOPER?! You mean (he means) Yvette Cooper the expenses cheat and greedy careerist freeloader? Yvette Cooper the “refugees welcome” hypocrite, who thinks that British people should all have to put up with culturally-backward hordes invading their country, their neighbourhoods, even their own homes? (Needless to say, Yvette Cooper and her equally greedy, cheating, freeloading husband, Ed Balls, have somehow avoided sharing their own comfortable large home(s) with the migrant-invaders). Yvette Cooper, the total doormat for the Jewish-Zionist lobby?

That sounds to me more like a government of national disunity!

In fact, though it may be largely factually correct, the Guardian piece shows to what extent the mainly London-based chattering classes and msm milieux are out of tune and in fact completely out of touch with what I take to be the majority of the population.

A “government of national unity”? In order to deal with a crisis entirely inflicted upon the people by the political class and more particularly the Conservative Party? It is not so much about Brexit itself as about the way in which persons governing despite being unfit to govern have criminally mishandled Brexit. I myself favoured Leave and Brexit in 2016, and still do, but (in the immortal words of Johnny Mercer MP), this is “a shitshow” and most of it has been and is a Conservative Party shitshow.

I expect that many will see my view as unnecessarily apocalyptic. I disagree. Many opinion polls have shown how very disenchanted the voters really are, to the point where many are willing to vote for Brexit Party, a party which, apart from the UK leaving the EU, has no policies at all. That willingness, to vote for a new party without any real policies (even in outline) also supports my view that voters at present are voting against the parties they oppose, rather than for parties they support.

There is no social national party for people to support (obviously I do not bother to examine again the bad-joke “parties” of recent years: Britain First, For Britain, the rumps of the old NF and BNP etc). UKIP too, which —as I predicted since 2015— is now so “yesterday” that I almost forgot to include it. There is a political vacuum.

As it is, the voters are left, at present, with the LibLabCon parties, i.e. the System parties, and the Brexit Party. Anyone (meaning anyone white and English, or Welsh, the Scots having the faux-“nationalist” SNP) and discontented with the way the UK is, can only either refuse to participate or can vote Brexit Party as a protest (or vote of hate against the System parties).

How has it come to this, that instead of the UK leaving the EU in a fairly orderly fashion, the government and msm are now talking in terms of food shortages? This is unbelievable! Those responsible are mainly the ministers and MPs of the Conservative Party, who after all have been in power now for over 9 years, including of course the 3 years since the 2016 Referendum. It is they who have messed up the negotiations, they who have blithely said that everything will be all right, they who have been the Government. Not Labour, not the LibDems, not Brexit Party.

Now we come to Boris-idiot. Boris Johnson as Prime Minister is, to me, no more acceptable or believable than food shortages as a result of Brexit. To me, he is not a legitimate Prime Minister of this country. He is totally unfit to be a prime minister of anywhere. He is only there because of the flaw in the UK’s constitutional arrangements, by which flaw a prime minister can resign without that prime minister’s successor having to call an immediate general election. In the case of Boris Johnson, he is also there because spineless Conservative Party MPs thought (I doubt rightly) that Boris-idiot was or is more “electable” than any of his opponents in the Conservative Party leadership contest, and so would give all Conservative Party MPs a better chance of electoral survival.

When you see Boris-idiot, you have to factor-in to everything that he says or writes that his primary and often only purpose is his own selfish interest.

Now we are told that Johnson is set on either leaving the EU on bare WTO terms or (if he can frighten the EU enough) getting a better “deal” than did the absurd bad-joke PM, Theresa May.

Boris-idiot’s calculation is very very obvious: if the EU makes even a slightly better offer, Boris “Tribune of the People” and “Conquering Hero” presents that to the House of Commons, which then either accepts it (so anointing Idiot as “great statesman” who would probably then win a general election if held fairly soon thereafter), or rejects it (so casting Idiot as “heroic but conspired against”).

On the other hand, if the EU refuses to make a better offer, Boris The Poundland Churchill can shake his fist at Brussels, take or try to take the UK out of the EU on WTO terms, and if that is blocked in the Commons, hold a general election, casting himself again as that “Tribune of the People” against Remainer (especially Labour, LibDem and SNP) MPs and Brussels eurocrats.

Whatever happens, keep eyes focussed on the fact that Boris Johnson is doing whatever he is doing for short-term political advantage. Having supported the fake “austerity” of his fellow part-Jews David Cameron-Levita and George Osborne, Boris Johnson now flashes the cash everywhere: NHS, police, whatever. Shallow 18th Century style largesse-politics.

Is Boris-Idiot correct in his calculations? Will be be borne back to power on a wave of anti-EU anger? I doubt it.

Let us say that there are food shortages (whether caused by Brexit, hold-ups at the ports, miscalculations by the large supermarket chains or panic-buying by the urban masses in the British cities). Who will be blamed? The EU? Perhaps, partly, at first. However, I believe that the people will also and in any event before long start to blame (and with reason) the “Conservative” government.

If the UK does not leave the EU on 31 October, then government remains paralyzed by its lack of a Parliamentary majority. If an election is then held, Brexit Party will stand in 650 constituencies and so enable the slaughter of dozens and even hundreds of Conservative MPs.

Boris Johnson is probably calculating that, if he can take the UK out of the EU on 31 October 2019, the voting public will see him (however ludicrous that may be to you and me) as a strong leader (when he is neither) who has kept to his word. He can then in effect call a general election and hope to win a Commons majority because either Brexit Party will fade away or not stand candidates, or will be sidelined by the electorate.

No doubt Johnson will hope that, like Pacific salmon who die after spawning, Brexit Party will expire, having reached its goal of a UK exit from the EU. Such a calculation may be misplaced. How Brexit Party would present itself if the UK really does leave, at least on paper, on 31 October, I am unsure. Perhaps by saying that the exit is not sure, not definite or that Brexit may possibly be reversed by an incoming government.

One thing is certain: Brexit is about more than Brexit and, that being so, Brexit Party itself, should its leader Farage so decide, could morph into a party of general faux-nationalist discontent. That sounds vague, but what is more vague than a party with neither policies nor ideology?

There is more going on than Brexit, of course. All the problems the UK has will still be there on 1 November: mass immigration (which will not stop after Brexit, far from it!), NHS decline, social security and housing defects and shortages, the increase in violent crime, social decadence and decline; and so on.

The msm and TV talking heads, the metro-“liberal” journalists, lawyers, media folk etc, all insulated by affluence, mostly London-centric, were shocked by the 2016 Referendum result, by the 2017 election results, by the immediate failure of their briefly-cherished “Change UK” pro-Jewish joke party, by Trump’s election too. In a word, these people are out-of-touch. Their experience of the years 2010-2019 is not the same as that of well over half the UK population.

My view is that a coming general election might produce a big shock again. The only thing preventing a landslide for a social-nationalist party is that, quite simply, no social national party exists.

In the no doubt upcoming 2019 or possibly early 2020 General Election, I believe that neither of the main System parties will do well. I believe that both the LibDems and Brexit Party could do well, if only as a reaction against the main two.

The two main System parties have both been losing not only loyal voters but their own raisons d’etre, and their heart.

Labour will keep the votes of the blacks and browns generally, as well as those of the public service workers and those dependent on State benefits. It may not keep the votes of those it has taken for granted for a century: the British (i.e. white) poorer people as such. They are now either voting with their feet (i.e. not voting) or voting desperately elsewhere. In 2005 or so, BNP; 2010-2015, UKIP. Now they vote, some of them, Brexit Party. I put the Labour vote as likely to be around 30%.

The Conservative Party cannot now appeal to Thatcherite-style “aspiration”. That was something real back in the 1980s. I remember sitting in a branch of Wheeler’s (fish restaurant) in Blackheath in 1986 or 1987. At the next table, a young plumber (the tables were not far apart and he was a little loud) and his girlfriend talking about his income, his house-purchase plans etc. Afterwards, my then girlfriend and I mused about the social changes then in train (a young tradesman and girlfriend eating at Wheeler’s and buying a house). Could that happen now? Perhaps, but it would be unusual, I think.

The Conservative vote nationally is now mainly that of the rich and affluent (nothing new there), which would be no more than 5% to (at most) 20% of the population. There are some older but not affluent people who still vote Conservative out of long habit, even against their own interests, but they are a dwindling stock. That is why the Conservative MPs backed Boris-idiot as their leader, because they hoped that this part-Jew public entertainer could jolly along enough unthinking voters to make up the numbers. All the same, I should not put the Conservative vote now much above 30%, and that might fall back to 20% if the UK experiences significant disruption or economic dislocation soon.

The LibDems may soon be able to corner the Remain vote in the South of England.

Brexit Party might just be the recipient of any further or renewed “roar of rage” from an electorate in pain. If that happens (meaning if Brexit Party gets at least 20% of the popular vote), then the Conservatives will soon be “an ex-party”, at least so far as government is concerned.

Many might say, so you get rid of a Conservative MP and put in a small-c conservative Brexit Party MP, what’s the difference? Well, it’s not that simple anyway (because LibDems and Labour might capture more Con seats than does Brexit Party), but the good thing is that many many evil Conservative Party MPs will be out of UK politics, many for good. Connections and career paths will be ruined. I don’t much like Champagne, but if that happened, I might make an exception. If the damage were great, I might even drink Bollinger instead of mere champagne-type such as Sekt.

A similar picture might emerge in the North as regards Labour (if Conservative voters vote Brexit Party to keep Labour out), but one thing at a time! The main thing is to cull the hundreds of Conservative Friends of Israel. And it could soon happen.

The way lies open, not far away, for social nationalism on a scale never before seen in the UK.

Notes

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/06/mps-thwart-boris-johnson-no-deal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Bogdanor

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html

Update, 23 December 2020

My analysis was right, but my prediction not right as far as the chances at an election of the Conservative Party were concerned. I failed to foresee that con-man Nigel Farage would stab his own candidates and Brexit Party members in the back, and stand down virtually all Brexit Party 2019 General Election candidates, thus gifting the Conservative Party and Boris-idiot an 80-seat Commons majority.

After Brecon and Radnorshire, What Now For Brexit Party and the Conservatives?

My original blog post (with updates to 2 August 2019) about the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/06/21/brecon-and-radnorshire-by-election-2019/

The result of the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election of 1 August 2019

  • LibDems 13,826 votes (43.5%)
  • Conservatives 12,401 (39%)
  • Brexit Party 3,331 (10.5%)
  • Labour Party 1,680 (5.3%)
  • Monster Raving Loony 334 (1%)
  • UKIP 242 (0.8%)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brecon_and_Radnorshire_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

The LibDems won fairly decisively, but with a smaller majority than the betting might have been suggesting. I have posted several informative links below.

Why did the LibDems win, why did the Conservative Party not win?

For me, the most important aspect beyond the headline result is the fact that the Conservative ex-MP, Christopher Davies, would have won, perhaps even handsomely, were it not for the candidature of Brexit Party, which received 3,331 votes.

The LibDem majority over the Conservatives was only 1,425. In other words, had Brexit Party not been standing, the Conservatives would almost certainly have won, and probably by nearly 2,000 votes. The Brexit Party received a vote-share of only 10.5% (LibDems 43.5%, Conservatives 39%), but that was more than enough to sink the Conservative candidate.

The Labour vote has suffered a general decline in the constituency over the years (all-time high was 57.69% in 1964), but this was its lowest-ever vote-share (5.3%). I attribute that partly and perhaps mainly to tactical voting: Labour supporters voting against the Conservatives (mainly) in a situation where Labour had no real chance anyway (the Labour vote here has not exceeded 20% since 2001 (21.4%). However, the 5.3%, barely enough to retain the deposit, does tend to support my view that Labour is now the party of the blacks and browns, the public service workers and those mainly dependent on State benefits.

The Sky News Political Correspondent tweeted something interesting about the Labour vote in Brecon and Radnorshire, which had been in the 10%-18% range since 2005 and until this by-election’s collapse to 5.3%:

Brecon and Radnorshire is almost entirely white British in demographic terms (Powys, the county in which is situated the constituency, is said to be 99.3% white British). In white British areas, Labour increasingly has no chance. Labour scarcely speaks to or for white British people now. This has implications that go far beyond Brecon and Radnorshire.

The Conservatives and Brexit Party down the line

Brexit Party is one of two parties that emerged in 2019 despite having no real policies (the other being the pro-EU, pro-Remain, pro-Jewish lobby party, Change UK, which sputtered to a halt almost immediately and now scarcely exists).

There is no doubt that the early promise of Brexit Party has somewhat blunted since its great 2019 EU elections success. The recent Peterborough by-election was nearly won, but not quite, Brexit Party losing to Labour by a mere 683 votes. Now we have another, though less unexpected, disappointment. Nigel Farage and his large meetings held before both the EU elections and the Peterborough by-election built up a head of steam and a head of expectation, but so far that pressure has just tooted into the void, at least as far as Westminster is concerned.

The political landscape has just suffered an earthquake. Boris Johnson (aka, to me, “Boris-idiot”) is now, incredibly, Prime Minister (or Fool posing as “King for a Day”), having been put there by about 92,000 Conservative Party members (out of about 50 MILLION voters, in other words by about 1 out of every 500 or so eligible voters). He has “pledged” (for what little his pledges are worth) to leave the EU “deal or no deal” by 31 October 2019. If that seems about to happen, I am assuming that the anti-“no deal”/WTO MPs will block it and/or vote for a no-confidence motion. That might in turn cause Boris Johnson to trigger a general election.

Alternatively, the EU might offer Johnson a form of words that he can present to the Commons as a workable “deal” (in the now familiar vulgar terminology). The UK can then pretend to leave the EU but in reality stay in, or kick the can down the road by means of an extension, which Johnson himself seemed to find acceptable recently. The Commons might block the former, but probably not the latter.

An extension (as mooted) might last until 2021 or even 2022. In 2022, new electoral boundaries will be in place in the UK. MP numbers are set to be reduced from 650 to 600. Those changes will hit both Labour and the LibDems hard.

If the Conservatives can hang on until 2022, their chances of survival (as individual MPs and as a party of government) look better. In the meantime, Boris-idiot can go on posing as Prime Minister, and his Cabinet of Conservative Friends of Israel, enemies of the people, can (with the help of their Labour Friends of Israel accomplices) pass more repressive laws to destroy (real) “democracy” and (real) civil rights in the UK…

CZpdYWeW0AQXGc_

Bso85QHCEAA1yun

scan25

That, at least, could have been the scenario had the Conservatives a majority or at least a working majority (reduced by Brecon and Radnorshire to 1 MP vote) and so able to continue as a government. As it is, whatever happens on 31 October, it cannot be long now before Labour moves a no-confidence motion. If not in November, then surely in December or early next year.

Brexit Party has not yet proven that it can win Westminster seats, but it has proven that it can prevent the Conservative Party winning. In Peterborough, the successful Labour Party candidate got 10,484 votes (30.9%). The Brexit Party got 9,801 votes (28.9%). The Conservative got 7,243 votes (21.4%). While it may be that not all of those who voted Brexit Party would, in lieu of that, have voted Conservative, most would have done; hardly any would have voted Labour, in my opinion anyway. It is clear that, without Brexit Party, the Conservatives would have won Peterborough. The same is true in Brecon and Radnorshire.

Boris Johnson may have shot Brexit Party’s fox by going all-out (supposedly) for a “no deal”/WTO Brexit if the EU does not play ball, but he has not killed that fox, just wounded it. If the UK leaves on a “no deal”/WTO basis, then Brexit Party probably will deflate to nothing, though it may reinvent itself even then. However, it seems unlikely that the majority of MPs of all parties will not block such a departure. If that happens, then Boris Johnson, however much he tries to play the Leave “tribune of the people”, will be seen by Leavers as a waste of space, “all hat and no cattle”. In that scenario, the anger of the Leave-preferring voters will devolve upon both Remain MPs and Boris-idiot. Brexit Party will then, like Antaeus treading on his native earth, be revived and take on new strength.

What Boris Johnson and the Conservatives would like is for Brexit Party to just disappear, thus leaving the Conservatives to trample all over the hopelessly-split Labour Party and the LibDems. What is more likely is that the UK will not leave the EU on any real basis by the beginning of November. Brexit Party will thus put up 650 MPs and the Conservative Party will be slaughtered. Most hard-core Leavers will vote Brexit Party, most hard-core Remainers (especially in the South) will switch to the LibDems. For Boris Johnson and the Conservatives, a two-front war. Apart from Brexit issues, anyone who believes in the Welfare State, in decent public services, in animal welfare, will not vote Conservative. Anyone hostile to Jewish Zionism, likewise.

The Brexit Party may only get 10%-20%, so say 15%, nationwide, but that alone all but destroys any hope for a majority Conservative government. My own efforts at working it out using Electoral Calculus [see Notes, below] indicate Conservative Party as largest party in Commons, but without a majority and quite possibly worse off than now.

Much depends on the LibDem vote. At present, the opinion polls show intended LibDem vote somewhere in the 15%-25% range, with latest educated guess (via Ipsos/MORI) at 20%.

That might give a Conservative majority of as much as 74. However, even if that poll is accurate, it is unlikely that the Conservatives will actually maintain a lead of 10 points over Labour. If Labour were able to achieve 30% instead of 24%, which is well within the parameters of reasonable possibility, then the Conservative Party would be 20 MPs short of a majority, i.e. worse off than now.

There again, even if Labour were still on 24%, but if Brexit Party could reach to 15% at the expense of the Conservatives on 29%, the Conservatives would be no less than 57 MPs short of a majority.

On the other hand, If Brexit Party can get 20%, LibDems 20%, Labour 25% and Conservatives 30%, the Conservatives would be about 35 MPs short of a majority.

It is a game one can play for hours.

Conclusions

The LibDems are back in the game, if only by default. They have much of the Remain vote, they have a (notionally) fresh and energetic leader, they have the votes of those disliking the other two main System parties as well as those of persons wishing to vote tactically. They have at least the possibility of a 50-seat bloc (again) in the Commons.

Brexit Party is not looking good as a potential party of government but it is looking effective as a way of blocking Conservative Party ambitions. A general election resulting in 30% Con, 30% Lab, 20% LibDem, 15% Brexit Party and 5% Green comes out with Labour as largest party, but 46 MPs short of majority, the Conservatives not far behind and the LibDems with perhaps about 50 MPs. On that basis, the LibDems could, as in 2010, be once again the kingmakers. Plus ca change…

Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brecon_and_Radnorshire_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powys

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-49200636

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/voters-head-to-the-polls-for-brecon-and-radnorshire-byelection-live-a4202956.html

https://news.sky.com/story/liberal-democrats-win-brecon-and-radnorshire-by-election-as-johnson-suffers-first-defeat-as-pm-11775356

https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Gigantes/Antaeus/antaeus.html

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html

Update, 4 August 2019

Worth reading:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/04/boris-johnson-armageddon-clock-what-is-it-counting-down-to

Andrew Rawnsley predicting the demise, quite soon, of both Boris-idiot and the Conservative government (and party):

“As he [Boris-idiot] points the country at the cliff edge and depresses the accelerator, does prime minister Johnson have any idea where this will end? It is a mistake to think that he does. No one knows what he is really up to, including himself. In one breath, he tells us that this is “do or die”; in another, he sets the odds on a no-deal Brexit at “a million to one”;

He [Boris-idiot] has to know that there is a strong possibility that it will mean an autumn general election. The least credible message from Number 10 is that it is not contemplating this outcome”;

Tory strategy for winning an election makes some very big and risky assumptions. One is that the gains harvested by the Conservatives at the expense of Labour among Leave-supporting voters will outweigh Tory losses in Remain-supporting constituencies. Nearly every top Lib Dem target is a Conservative seat, while Scottish Nationalists are hoping to scalp Tory MPs north of the border. The other perilous assumption is that Nigel Farage’s party will fade away or fold up. The leader of the Brexit party is enjoying being the object of renewed attention and displays no signs of wanting to retire again. He declares that he does not trust the prime minister and he has a bitter history of mutual loathing with Number 10’s chief strategist, Dominic Cummings.”

One lesson from the Brecon & Radnorshire by-election is that the Brexit party doesn’t have to do all that well – it polled barely a double-digit share on Thursday – to hurt the Tories. If the Conservatives could have added the Brexit party vote and that of Ukip to their tally, they would have held the seat with just over half the vote, rather than narrowly lose it to the Lib Dems. They’d hope to put a harder squeeze on the Brexit party in a general election, but couldn’t be absolutely confident. All the hazards of this strategy will be multiplied many times over if an election takes place after 31 October. In one scenario, we would still be in the EU, breaking the Tory leader’s “absolute commitment” to his party that Britain will be out “under any circumstances” and hugely boosting the Faragists.”

In the alternative scenario, Britain has tumbled out of the EU without an agreement. That is no longer a threat or a promise. The countdown has reached zero and no deal is a reality. Even in the less chilling versions of a crash-out Brexit – the ones that don’t involve supermarket shelves being stripped bare by panic-buying and children dying for lack of life-critical medicines – I wouldn’t want to be a prime minister trying to make a case for his re-election when the country has just suffered a big economic shock and the currency is collapsing.”

My suspicion is that the Armageddon Clock isn’t really there to count down the seconds to Brexit day. It is there to remind Boris Johnson how long he has left before it becomes too late to avoid his own doomsday.

Of course, I myself have made, in the above and previous blog posts, similar points to those now made by Andrew Rawnsley. He, however, has the inside contacts (and public profile) which I do not have. I, perforce, have to use simply my own knowledge and powers of reason (also, I am doing this unpaid, pro bono publico!)

I should say that there is little incentive for the Brexit Party to form a pact with the Conservatives unless the Conservatives in effect gift Brexit Party at least 50 winnable seats in return for Brexit Party standing down in the other 600. Such a pact might backfire for the Conservatives in that it would

  1. deprive the Conservatives of a number of seats which, even with Brexit Party standing, the Conservatives themselves might win; and
  2. create a bloc of up to 50 “fourth party” Westminster MPs for the first time, so
  3. making Brexit Party far more electorally credible in subsequent elections.

Meanwhile…

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/tory-mps-beg-brexit-party-candidates-not-to-stand-in-their-constituencies-amid-fears-of-split-vote-a4205031.html

If Brexit Party candidates give up their candidature in seats where the Conservative candidates might lose if there is a Brexit Party candidate, then not only has the Brexit Party given up what might be good chances of winning in those seats, but it has restricted itself to standing only in seats where it has, arguably, little chance of winning.

In other words, a one-way electoral pact with the Conservatives almost wipes out Brexit Party’s reason for existing. It might confirm as MPs a few Conservative Eurosceptics, but no political earthquake is going to happen just because of that. The better strategy is to fight all 650 seats and see what happens. If it should be that 200+ Conservative MPs lose their seats, then good.

Update, 23 June 2020

My analysis was not too bad (as good that of Andrew Rawnsley, anyway), but nexpected events happened, as they often do: as we now know, duing the General Election campaign of December 2019, Nigel Farage, for whatever reason, decided to stand down all his Brexit Party candidates standing in Conservative-held seats. That killed Brexit Party stone dead and ensured a Conservative Party victory by default. 2017 Labour voters did not, most of them, vote Conservative, but some did, in some seats. A relative few defected to the LibDems or what was left of Brexit Party, but almost as many as all of those simply decided not to vote.

Result: a Conservative Party majority of about 80.

Could the LibDems Win A General Election in 2019-2020?

Background

Nearly eight years ago, when I still had a Twitter account (read “before the Jew-Zionists prevailed upon Twitter to expel me”), I tweeted that the LibDems were finished. At that time, around 2011, the height of the Con Coalition, the LibDem careerists were signing up to pretty much everything required of them by the misnamed “Conservatives”. In fact, even now in 2019, new tales come to light about how totally supine the LibDems in coalition were: recently, for example, it was revealed that the LibDems agreed to screw down harder on the sick and disabled in return for a 5p tax on plastic shopping bags.

The public were so disgusted by the LibDems 2010-2015 that the LibDem support and vote in the country hit almost rock-bottom in 2015. The 2010 general election had seen so-called “Cleggmania” and a popular vote of 23%, resulting in 57 House of Commons seats. In fact, that 23% was only 1 point above the level achieved in 2005 under the LibDems’ former (1999-2006) leader, Charles Kennedy; the LibDems in 2010 had 5 fewer seats than they had in 2005.

Naturally, the UK’s unfair First Past The Post [FPTP] political system left the LibDems with far fewer Commons seats than they “deserved” by reference to their popular vote. 23% of the 2010 popular vote “should” have given the LibDems about 150 MPs, not 57.

The 2010 hung Parliament result gave the LibDems their chance to demand proportional representation, instead of which their leadership (Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander and David Laws, mainly) accepted from the Conservative Party leader, David Cameron-Levita, the mere promise of a referendum on Alternative Vote [AV], a halfway house between FPTP voting and proportional representation [PR].

Gordon Brown, on behalf of Labour, the then Prime Minister, was willing to offer the LibDems immediate AV, via a new law to be passed by Labour and LibDem MPs, but the LibDems instead (and to my mind inexplicably) chose the Conservative offer of a mere referendum on AV over the Labour offer of immediate AV. When they did that, it was already clear that the LibDems (so called “Orange Book” LibDems, meaning pro-finance capitalist LibDems) much preferred to make common cause with the Conservatives.

This “Orange Book” “liberalism” underpinned what the LibDems did in coalition with the Conservatives from 2010 to 2015. The “Orange Book” itself took the LibDems far from the positions of the old Liberal Party and even from those of the LibDem party itself during the time when it was in the hands of Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy.

The authors of the Orange Book favoured socio-political positions not far from those of leading members of the Conservative Party post-2000: effectively anti-Welfare State, pro-business, socially-judgmental, favouring so-called “choice” etc.

It is striking how many of the Orange Book authors have, in the years since its publication, been hit by scandal:

  • David Laws: found to have cheated on his Parliamentary expenses to the tune of about £40,000; many thought him fortunate not to have been prosecuted for fraud;
  • Chris Huhne: prosecuted and imprisoned for the very silly crime of perversion of the course of justice relating to a speeding offence [cf. Fiona Onasanya];
  • Mark Oaten, exposed as a coprophiliac and user of “rent boys”; since when Oaten has represented the International Fur Trade Federation, a largely Jewish body despised by animal-lovers worldwide. Oaten was also a supporter of fox-hunting.

“Only” three, but three out of only nine LibDems who wrote the Orange Book (Oaten admitted that in fact his research assistant had written his, Oaten’s, designated chapter, and that he, Oaten, had not even read that chapter, let alone the rest of the book). Of the other LibDems involved, Danny Alexander and Nick Clegg both lost their Commons seats in 2015 and 2017 respectively, gratefully then accepting lucrative directorships from transnational finance-capitalist companies.

The LibDem fortunes since the days of the Con Coalition

The LibDem popular vote crashed in 2015, sliding from its 2010 level of 23% to only 7.9%. MP numbers were slashed from 57 to 8.

In 2017, the LibDem popular vote slumped further, to 7.4%, though by the quirk of the FPTP voting system combined with the way boundaries are drawn, the LibDems actually managed to increase the number of LibDem MPs from 8 in 2015 to 12 in 2017.

The present situation

Nick Clegg took the Zuckerberg shilling (or should that be million?) and became an apologist for Facebook. He was replaced by Tim Farron, someone who was from an earlier, Nonconformist tradition within the LibDems and their ancestor-party, the Liberals. For example, “Farron was one of only two Liberal Democrat MPs to vote against the under-occupancy penalty (also known as the bedroom tax) in 2012.” [Wikipedia]. Farron was in the anti-Orange Book Beveridge Group [see Notes, below].

In 2017, Farron in turn was replaced by another Orange Book author, Vince Cable. Then, in 2019, Jo Swinson took the reins. She, though very much of the Orange Book persuasion, is more identified publicly with “socially liberal” than with “fiscally conservative” positions. Jo Swinson held the positions of PPS, and then Business Minister, during the Con Coalition period, but has managed to escape too great an identification with the social policies of the Coalition. Surprising, really, in that she

  • “Almost always voted for reducing housing benefit for social tenants deemed to have excess bedrooms (which Labour describe as the “bedroom tax”)”;
  • “Consistently voted against raising welfare benefits at least in line with prices”;
  • “Consistently voted against paying higher benefits over longer periods for those unable to work due to illness or disability”;
  • “Consistently voted for making local councils responsible for helping those in financial need afford their council tax and reducing the amount spent on such support”;
  • “Almost always voted for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits“;
  • “Almost always voted for reducing the rate of corporation tax

[see: https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/11971/jo_swinson/east_dunbartonshire/votes]

I have to say that I have always seen Jo Swinson as a ghastly bitch, who, like her husband (Duncan Hames, also a LibDem MP from, in his case only, 2010 to 2015) has been mainly a careerist type in politics; in Jo Swinson’s case, her brief period in provincial commerce before 2005 can only be seen as underwhelming, at best.

My view of Jo Swinson is, admittedly, mainly a personal impression based on what I have seen on TV etc. Her voting record on domestic UK issues must give pause, though, to those who see her as enlightened, socially compassionate etc.

Jo Swinson is a LibDem leader who does not frighten the Conservative horses. That could be key. In 2017, there were, if memory serves, 35 seats where the LibDems were in close 2nd place; there were many others where the LibDem was in close 3rd place. Most of those are Conservative-held seats. The implication is clear: if Brexit Party weakens an already-flagging Conservative vote, scores of (mainly) Conservative seats could fall, many to the LibDems. The Brexit Party is a major factor here.

Then we have the Remain vote. About 48% of the UK, famously, voted Remain. All three System parties were split in the 2016 Referendum, but the LibDems less so than the other two. As a party, the Conservative Party is now seen as basically Leave; the Labour Party is seen as sitting on the fence. That leaves the LibDems as the sole unalloyed Remain party. How that translates into votes and then into seats is another question. For one thing, people are likely to vote in any 2019/2020 general election on various issues, not only Brexit. However, Brexit is probably the one leading issue at time of writing.

The British electoral system is a bad joke. We know that a simple matter such as how the boundaries are drawn can alter everything:

c64bh5xw0aiwygy

In 2022, new boundaries will come into effect, along with the reduction of MP numbers to 600 (from the present 650). The Conservatives will be far less affected than Labour and the LibDems. It has been suggested that the LibDems will be all but wiped out by those changes. Perhaps, but any 2022 or later general election is still at least 2-3 years away. We are looking at the very strong likelihood of a general election within maybe only 2-3 months or so. The Conservatives would like to wait longer, but how can they, when they have a majority of one or none?

Boundaries and other factors make the popular vote indeterminative. In 2005, Labour’s popular vote was 35.2%, and the Conservative vote was not far behind (32.4%), yet Labour ended up with 355 MPs, while the Conservatives won only 198!

If the LibDems can gather to their banner the bulk of the votes of those for whom the number one issue is Brexit and for whom Remain is the only way to go, and then add those votes to the LibDem core support (which may be as low as 7%), then it is not impossible to conceive of the idea of the LibDems under Jo Swinson getting a vote at least as high as Charles Kennedy’s 22% or Nick Clegg’s 23%, and possibly even higher. As against that, many voters will not support the LibDems under any circumstances, either because the party is pro-EU Remain, or because it is seen as weak on immigration (but are the other two System parties any better?) or because most voters remember the LibDems as doormats for the Conservatives during 2010-2015.

In order to form the largest bloc in the House of Commons, the LibDems would have to get a popular vote in the region of 35% or 34%, both Lab and Con getting below 30%. Even then, the LibDems would be or might be at least 100 seats short of a majority.

As I have blogged previously, I do not think in terms of a LibDem surge, but more a concatenation of circumstances —LibDems as sole Remain party, weakening of Conservative vote because of Brexit Party, disenchantment with Labour— drawing votes away from the other parties and so to the LibDems. LibDems as largest Commons bloc? Unlikely but, now, not totally impossible.

Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_United_Kingdom_general_election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_Kingdom_general_election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orange_Book:_Reclaiming_Liberalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Oaten#Scandal_and_resignation

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Susan_Kramer

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/8508098/David-Laws-broke-the-rules-and-must-pay-a-price.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Laws

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Huhne#Expenses_claims

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Huhne#Criminal_conviction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Farron

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beveridge_Group

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Cable

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Swinson

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=195941

Update, 13 September 2019

Well…

So there it is: Jo Swinson could never work with (be in coalition with? proffer “confidence and supply” to?) Jeremy Corbyn and Labour under Jeremy Corbyn.

It’s against her “principles” to support any criticism of Jews or Israel, it seems. Pity that her principles did not extend to refusing to work with evil part-Jew manipulators such as George Osborne and David Cameron-Levita. She and most of the LibDem MPs voted for all or most of the measures which for a decade have demonized, impoverished and actually killed sick, disabled and poor people in the UK via the “welfare” “reforms” of evil part-Jap Iain Dunce Duncan Smith and the Jew “lord” Freud (etc).

I was right about Jo Swinson. My instinct told me that she is an evil bitch. I was right.

https://twitter.com/misslucyp/status/1172941119287648256?s=20

Update, 17 September 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/09/16/lib-dems-would-need-gargantuan-swing-hit-200-seat-target/?li_source=LI&li_medium=li-recommendation-widget

Some LibDems are actually saying that the LDs could get hundreds of MPs in the upcoming general election! Proof positive of their disconnection from reality. People are mostly going to vote LibDem (if at all) only as a way of hitting out at the more major parties. There is no “LibDem surge” as such, but (as I have repeatedly blogged) there is a desire on the part of many Remain partisans to vote against the Conservative Party (mainly).

We have been here before, as when pathetic David Steel urged his rank and file to “prepare for government” (in 1981): http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=42

I imagine that the LibDems will pick up some seats, maybe even 50, but what will prevent Jo Swinson getting 200 or becoming PM is that no-one really wants a LibDem government (well, about a tenth of the voters might…), but many more will vote LibDem negatively, to block other parties or to signal pro-EU Remain support.

Update, 8 October 2019

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=195941

Update, 24 October 2019

https://twitter.com/jameshirst91/status/1187268475477213185?s=20

Update, 27 October 2019

Well, my prediction that the LibDems want another “Con Coalition” becomes firmer daily; the Labour reaction is scalding (or should that be “scalded?):

https://twitter.com/TheMendozaWoman/status/1188389011917852674?s=20

https://twitter.com/MikeH_PR/status/1188347126352437248?s=20

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/27/bid-libdems-snp-december-9-election-rejected-stunt-tories-labour/

Update, 20 March 2020

Well, my analysis in the above article was right, but the basic facts changed in that Brexit Party candidates standing in Conservative Party-held seats were ordered by their duplicitous leader, Farage, to stand down. That order applied to all Conservative-held seats, even those held by the most committed pro-EU MPs!

That decision by Farage, which betrayed his own candidates and supporters, meant that dozens of pre-election Conservative Party MPs kept their seats when, had Brexit Party stood candidates, they would have lost them to the LibDems.

The LibDems were on track to win several dozen MPs until Brexit Party self-destructed.

Jo Swinson’s decision to push for a General Election, and Corbyn’s silly willingness to be shamed into going along with that, led directly to the victory of the Conservative Party at the 2019 General Election. It led directly to Boris Johnson, a part-Jew, part-Turk public entertainer, as Prime Minister. Disastrous.

My more recent pre-General Election blogging guessed the LibDem result almost exactly. I predicted that the LibDems would get fewer than 10 seats. They got 11. So nearly right, anyway.

As for Jo Swinson, her doormatting for the Jewish lobby paid off, in that she was made a fake “baroness” and elevated to the House of Lords once she lost her Commons seat.

Can Labour Win A 2019 General Election?

Introduction

Two days ago, I wrote a blog piece entitled “Can The Conservatives Win A General Election (or are they doomed)?

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/07/28/can-the-conservatives-win-a-general-election-or-are-they-doomed/

My conclusion was that the Conservatives are unlikely to “win” a general election in the sense of achieving a House of Commons majority, but that it is not unlikely that the Conservative Party might, after a general election in late 2019 or early 2020, still be the largest party, i.e. the party with the largest number of MPs.

Until recently, I thought that Labour would probably be the largest party in the Commons after a 2019/2020 general election; now I am unsure. I still think that Labour might beat the Conservatives in terms of numbers of MPs, but the chances must now be close to 50-50.

I now want to lay out my thoughts about Labour’s chances

Just as the Conservative Party has been running out of rank and file members and also (good) ideas for several decades, the Labour Party, though in recent years, under Corbyn, increasing its membership and activist support base, has at the same time been —-what would be the correct term?–laagering or hunkering-down or being concentrated in ever-fewer loyal constituencies. The membership of the Conservatives is still getting older on average (the majority now being over 51, and almost 50% being 65+ years old), whereas the Labour membership is more evenly-aged and far greater in numbers. The Conservatives can muster, at least on paper, about 160,000, whereas Labour has over 500,000 members or registered supporters. All the same, Labour now has 247 MPs, while the Conservative Party has 311.

It is a truth universally acknowledged…that it is better to win 2 constituencies barely than it is to win 1 constituency by a huge majority. That in a nutshell is the problem faced by both major System parties but particularly Labour:

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party now has the 10 of safest seats [sic] in the UK, according to a new House of Commons analysis of marginal constituencies…The briefing adds that the number of very safe seats – those won by a margin of over 50 per cent – increased by 21 in 2015 to 37 in June’s election. Labour have all of the top 28.” [The Independent]

Piling up votes in safe seats does nothing, or very little, for a political party under the British “First Past The Post” [FPTP] electoral system. Labour is piling up empty votes. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Labour is now, to a large extent “the party of the blacks and browns” and other ethnic minorities (except Jews). The tendency of the ethnic minorities to huddle in concentrations, whether for historical, economic, cultural or other reasons, has resulted in concentrations of the Labour vote in areas already historically Labour-voting.

Another aspect to the above is the flight of white English people out of areas becoming “diverse” (in reality, changing from white non-diverse to non-white non-diverse), thus concentrating in those “ghetto” constituencies (or particular wards within constituencies) the “ethnic” vote.

Coming to Brexit, Corbyn has managed to sit on the fence so far. More Labour voters voted Remain than voted Leave, but more Labour constituencies voted Leave than voted Remain, another proof of the concentration of the Labour vote.

In one sense, Corbyn’s fence-sitting means that Labour can in theory appeal to both Leave and Remain voters; in practice, it may make Corbyn and so Labour seem undecided and indeed the victim of events, rather than the setter of the agenda.

Beyond all that, though, Labour has a policy message which might appeal to many, if it can be heard: nationalization or more regulation of public utilities and rail transport, curtailment of the excesses in the private-rental housing sector, an end to the demonization, bullying and even quiet killing by neglect of the disabled, sick, unemployed etc.

Even if Labour is the party of “blacks and browns”, that voter bloc, when combined with the votes of public service workers and those dependent on State benefits, must in theory add up to a vote of something like 30%.

Many commentators have said that, after a period of fragmentation, voters are returning to the main two parties. They say that because, in 2017, the main two parties got 89.1% of the popular vote (Conservative Party 48.8%, Labour Party 40.3%). This consolidation, however, was the result of specific factors which no longer apply.

In 2017, the LibDem popular vote slumped further from its post-Con Coalition collapse in 2015: from 7.9% in 2015 to 7.4% in 2017. Likewise, UKIP, having attained 12.6% in 2015, fell back to 1.8% (UKIP contested only 378 seats). In other words, Con and Lab were really the only two games in town in 2017.

The situation today is very different. The LibDems can appeal on several fronts: to Remainers, because the Liberal Democrat Party is the only unalloyed Remain party of any importance; to those who dislike both main System parties; to the “socially liberal” in London and the South of England (mainly). The LibDems are therefore in theory able to draw from the dissatisfied of both Labour and Conservative. It is important to understand that this is not a “LibDem surge”, more a negative vote against the two main System parties and Brexit Party, though also a vote for a clearly pro-EU party, the only one left [in England].

Then we have Brexit Party. Its mere existence, even on 10% or 15% of the nationwide popular vote, means that the Conservative Party can almost certainly not get a Commons majority. If Brexit Party stands (as promised) in 650 seats and gets an average 20%, then Conservative MPs will die like flies as their seats are taken by the LibDems, by Labour and, in a few cases, by Brexit Party itself.

Labour is fighting against the Jewish-Zionist contrived “antisemitism” protest or faked “storm”. That is not too interesting to the general public, but may support a wider narrative about “Corbyn the extremist”, someone supposedly not patriotic, a supporter of radical and in some cases very unpopular causes in the past. There again, there is the public scepticism about whether Corbyn can do the job of Prime Minister. However, it might be said in response that if Boris-idiot can do it, why can Corbyn not do it? That does rather beg the question, though…

Looking at the electoral picture in the round, I think that Labour will be able to mobilize its core vote of maybe 25%, maybe beyond that to 30%. The Conservative vote is tied to Brexit Party. If BP stands in 650 seats and if BP can get 15%, then I cannot see the Conservative Party getting more than about 30%. The LibDems will siphon off quite a few Remainer votes from both Lab and Con; overall that LibDem vote might amount to 15% or even 20%. “Socially-liberal” Jo Swinson is very pro-capitalist and her party might be an option for pro-EU former Conservative voters as well as some pro-EU and anti-Corbyn Labour ones.

The upshot seems to be that any 2019 or early 2020 general election might produce a Commons with Labour as largest party but as many as 60 MPs short of a majority; alternatively, a Conservative bloc far larger than that of Labour but still about 10 short of a majority. In other words, about where things are now.

My conclusion is that Labour might “win” in the sense of becoming the largest party in the Commons, but cannot at present get a majority.

Notes

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-safe-seat-marginal-constituencies-house-of-commons-jeremy-corbyn-theresa-may-a7886571.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Commons_of_the_United_Kingdom

Update, 21 September 2019

This, below, is all too typical of the sort of person now prominent in “Labour” and what is left of the trade unions:

Riccardo La Torre, firefighter and Eastern Region Secretary of the Fire Brigade Union, branded the coast patrol “despicable” and said: “These have-a-go, racist vigilantes have no place in any kind of enforcement or emergency activities and will only serve to make conditions and tensions worse.”

“These groups claim to be the voice of the working class, but now they want to act as an arm of the authorities by patrolling beaches to apprehend struggling working-class people desperately trying to get to safety.” [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/far-right-britain-first-beach-patrols-calais-dover-anti-migrant-a9113471.html]

So “Riccardo La Torre” (que?), a regional secretary of the Fire Brigade Union, thinks that migrant invaders from Africa and the Middle East are “working class people, trying to get to safety”?!

From, er, France? There you have in a nutshell, the craziness that is much of “Labour” now. Alien migrant-invaders are “working class people” who should be allowed to occupy the UK at will (and be subsidized too)! Note the fag-end “Marxism”, trying to shoehorn the facts into some 1980s polytechnic back-of-postcard Marxism-Leninism.

Update, 23 September 2019

This creature might well be Home Secretary under a Labour government…

https://twitter.com/PaulWal96323461/status/1175921860481036289?s=20

Can The Conservatives Win A General Election? (or are they doomed?)

We are where we are, in the now-ubiquitous phrase. The prime-ministerial chair once occupied by the likes of Pitt, the 1st Duke of Wellington, Gladstone, Lloyd George, Churchill, Attlee, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher etc is now occupied by a public entertainer of mixed ethnic and cultural origins, born in New York City, brought up partly in the USA and Belgium, and until recently a dual passport-holder. A rootless cosmopolitan playing out a performance as an “upper-class” “Englishman” caricature. Am-dram Churchill. Poundland Churchill.

Boris Johnson, Boris-idiot, Boris the clown. More to the immediate point, Boris without a majority, soon. As a child of eight years, Boris Johnson wanted to be “world king” and has for decades schemed and cheated and lied in order to get to the nearest position (outside the monarch’s own ambit) that England allows: the rank of Prime Minister. However, he has not become “King of the World”, but “King for a Day”, the traditional role, in the Revels, of the Jester or Fool (“…for who but a Fool would be King for a Day?”).

The Conservative Party elected Boris Johnson its leader. Conservative MPs voted to reduce the field to two. Conservative Party members, some 140,000 of them, voted and 66% of them, about 92,000, preferred Boris Johnson. It is not my purpose of this article to rail more than en passant against the absurdity that allows a prime minister to resign and for her successor to be, in effect, elected by 92,000 (mostly very elderly, mostly rather well-off financially) Conservative Party members (out of about 50 million voters generally). This article is for the purpose of examining electoral chances.

First of all, we have the Brexit chaos. I favoured Leave. I still favour Brexit. However, the whole process was criminally mishandled by the Conservative government of Theresa May.

How will Brexit affect a general election? I assume that the House of Commons will not allow a WTO or “no deal” Brexit, and so any general election that is then called will see Boris Johnson parking his tanks on the lawn of Brexit Party and trying to go all out for, effectively, the Leave vote of 2016. There are dangers for the Conservative Party in that.

Brexit is not the only issue in a general election. Some more affluent voters may vote Conservative for tax or other reasons even if they oppose Brexit. Also, many in the population will never vote Conservative even if they favour Brexit. Many despise Boris Johnson and will never vote Conservative as long as he is the leader. This is, if chess, three-dimensional chess.

However, now that the Conservatives under Johnson present themselves as the “Leave”/Brexit party, it can be assumed that a sizeable number of former Conservative voters who favour staying in the EU will migrate, at least temporarily, to the only significant Remain-supporting party, the LibDems. Where else can they go? It might be argued that many Conservative MPs favour Remain, and that those MPs will receive a special vote based on that. Don’t count on it. The label is the primary motor, and if Conservative means Leave, many Remain voters will leave…the Conservative Party.

If the next general election is called without the UK having left the EU, or having left on terms dictated by the EU (Brexit In Name Only), then Brexit Party will be waiting to snap up the hard-core Brexit vote.

Brexit Party intends, at present, to contest all 650 seats. Its mere presence ensures that dozens, maybe even beyond a hundred, Conservative MPs will lose their seats, in some cases to Brexit Party, but in more cases to the LibDems or Labour.

There has been talk of a Conservative/Brexit Party electoral pact, but that carries the danger of gifting the Brexit Party a bloc of seats. which might challenge the Conservative Party more strongly later.

Labour, though now called by msm commentators a Remain party, is more nuanced. Corbyn’s fence-sitting tactic, though much criticized, is all that he can do in a circumstance where Labour-held seats were more often (about 60%) Leave-voting, though most Labour voters voted Remain (because, as I blogged recently, Labour votes are increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer seats).

It may be, anyway, that Labour voters have concerns other than, or as well as, Brexit: low pay, the Conservative attacks on the social welfare and benefits system, the burgeoning crime and disorder problem etc.

The composition of the Boris-idiot Cabinet and government will not attract many former Labour, LibDem or floating voters.

My conclusion is that the Boris Johnson government may struggle to attract the votes of more than 30% nationwide. Recent opinion polls have put the Conservatives at anywhere between 23% and 30%. Labour has been between 18% and 28%. LibDems around 16%-20% and Brexit Party 14%-20%.

If the Conservatives continue to lean towards Brexit strongly, they risk losing many of their pro-EU voters to the LibDems, but if they try to fence-sit or move more towards Remain, many of their previous voters will vote for Brexit Party or stay at home.

There is also the Boris Factor, but we see that, even though there has been a “Boris Bounce”, its effect has been slight. The Conservatives are still polling at or below 30% (as is Labour). Indeed, it could be argued that, for many former Conservative voters, especially in marginal seats, Boris-idiot is not an attraction but a turn-off. I concede that that is a guess, but it is at least an educated one.

I have fed various recent opinion poll results into the Electoral Calculus calculator [see Notes, below], and it is quite hard to come up with a Conservative majority in the Commons. Most results show a hung Parliament with either Lab or Con as largest party. Only one showed a Conservative majority (of one vote). In several cases, both main System parties were as many as 80 MPs short of a majority.

Now we all know that the “glorious uncertainty” of the Turf is carried over to the field of battle of British elections. It is hard to predict elections in Britain and “a week is a long time in British politics”, as Harold Wilson said. Also, Electoral Calculus is a fairly rough guide. Having said that, it seems clear that, at least in the short term, the Conservatives are on the back foot here. Any gamble to increase the Conservative majority in the Commons may well backfire, as in 2017. That would mean the end of The Clown as Prime Minister, but would also mean something of a political and even Constitutional crisis.

These should be fertile days for social nationalism, but we are as yet not even in the game…

Notes

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html

Afterthought, 29 July 2019

David Cameron-Levita as Prime Minister always made sure that the interests of pensioners were prioritized, in particular by introducing the “Triple Lock” on State pensions. Pensions have been one of several issues taking greater prominence over the years by reason of the increasing average age of the population of the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Pension_(United_Kingdom)#Pensions_Act_2007

There were clear practical political reasons for this policy. Support for the Labour Party at elections is fairly even across the half-dozen usual age groups, whereas support for the Conservative Party is concentrated among the old and middle-aged: just under 50% of all Conservative votes are those of persons aged over 65 years. Hardly any young people intend to vote Conservative (in the 18-24 age group, below 4%).

The loyalty of the over 65s has been reinforced by pensioner-friendly policies. There are signs now that the Conservatives intend to, in the oft-seen phrase, “throw the pensioners under a bus”. In 2017 Phillip Hammond wanted to remove part of the Triple Lock, but the DUP insisted on its retention in part-payment for DUP “confidence and supply” support in the Commons.

The Conservative Party is already getting some flak from the elderly for the BBC’s announcement that free TV licences will be withdrawn for those of 75+ years. There are rumblings about bus passes for pensioners. Overall, it is clear that the free market crazies now in the ascendant under Boris-idiot want to target the elderly as they have already done the disabled, sick, unemployed etc.

The Labour Party is now the party of the blacks and browns, those dependent on State benefits, and of the public service workers. The Conservative Party is now the party of the rich, the affluent, the buy-to-let parasites and the like, and (many of) the elderly. If the elderly who are not particularly well-off desert the Conservatives, the Conservative Party is in big trouble, because only about 10%-15% of UK voters can really be described as rich or even affluent, certainly no more than 20%. In 2017, the Conservative vote amounted to 42.4% of votes cast. If half or more of those votes suddenly disappear, the Conservative Party is quite likely to disappear with them.

Further Notes

https://www.ipe.com/countries/uk/peers-call-for-removal-of-triple-lock-on-uk-state-pension/www.ipe.com/countries/uk/peers-call-for-removal-of-triple-lock-on-uk-state-pension/10030786.fullarticle

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/apr/27/pensions-triple-lock-questions-answered

https://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2019/04/james-kanagasooriam-the-left-right-age-gap-is-even-worse-for-the-conservatives-than-you-think.html

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/bbc-over-75s-licence-fee-18335538

Update, 3 February 2023

Well, we all now know that, in December 2019, Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party won a supposed “landslide” at the General Election. In fact, the Conservative Party vote was only 43.6% of votes cast, but Labour’s vote fell to 32.1%, and that decided the matter.

Key was the decision of Nigel Farage to stab in the back his own candidates and supporters by withdrawing Brexit Party from serious contention. That was the key act that ensured a Johnson/Conservative win.

Brexit Party ended up with 2% of the vote nationwide. Had Farage and Brexit Party gone all out to win from the start, Brexit Party might have got 15%, which though giving Brexit Party few if any seats, would have tipped the balance back to hung Parliament territory.

Other factors were the elderly and late middle-age voters sticking with the Conservative Party, and the relentless and mainly Jewish anti-Corbyn campaign in the msm, which helped to crush Labour’s chances.

The Boris Johnson Cabinet

I start this examination of the new Boris Johnson government by posting part of an interview with Nicholas Soames MP [Con, Mid Sussex] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Soames

I have, of course, blogged about Boris Johnson before:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/07/19/after-a-2019-general-election-what/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/07/06/the-conservatives-boris-johnson-upcoming-political-events-and-the-currents-in-society/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/06/12/boris-a-story-for-our-times/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/06/09/the-conservative-party-leadership-contenders-in-outline/

Any brief perusal of my above blogs about Boris Johnson will show that I am unremittingly hostile to him, despite the fact that I have always favoured Brexit (which he also now does, though only or mainly because it suits his narcissistic ambitions). What I want to do in this blog article is to examine those he has chosen to be in and around his Cabinet. I cannot examine every one for reasons of space and length, so I have chosen to focus on a few key players, as well as on the overall thrust of this new Cabinet.

Priti Patel

Thick as two short planks, Priti Patel is now a “British” Cabinet minister, having been saved from spending her life serving customers behind the counter of a Kampala grocery shop by her parents having immigrated to the UK, “several years” before Idi Amin became Ugandan leader in 1971.

Priti Patel is a member of Conservative Friends of Israel, and was exposed as being effectively an agent of Israel only 2 years ago. This daughter of Indian immigrants, this Israeli agent, this expenses-freeloader (she “employed” her husband part-time, on expenses, from 2014-2017) and supporter of harsh and cruel policies is now going to rule over British people as Home Secretary.

https://twitter.com/Citadelen/status/1154135023408336897

https://twitter.com/SFoP_Palestine/status/1154128443363086337

https://twitter.com/SFoP_Palestine/status/1154127392383705088

Hard to believe that an MP, let alone a Cabinet minister, could be as plainly thick as Priti Patel really is, but the fact that she is has been proven time and again. Example:

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24778/priti_patel/witham

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priti_Patel

Esther McVey

A few facts about Esther McVey in government:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/esther-mcvey-housing-minister-record-11831140

Now Minister of State for Housing, not normally a Cabinet post, but it seems that she is either being treated as a member of the Cabinet or is at least attending. It will be recalled that she was partly responsible for implementation of the ghastly “bedroom tax” created by [Conservative Friends of Israel] Iain Dunce Duncan Smith and jew “lord” Freud.

McVey is someone who was willing to accept and promote the attacks on the poor, disabled and unemployed (and the elderly) during her previous time in government. She is also a member of Conservative Friends of Israel. She is yet another one who is as thick as two short planks, her cartoon view of the world being expressed in a Liverpudlian accent almost impossible to understand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_McVey

Dominic Raab

Half-Jew, though supposedly not brought up culturally Jewish. Hard-faced careerist. As far as I know, another member of Conservative Friends of Israel. Has visited and worked in Israel/Palestine.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/who-dominic-raab-foreign-secretary-12882420

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Raab

Sajid Javid

A Pakistani, though born in the UK. A very weird individual, who is obsessed by the Jewess known as “the philosopher of selfishness”, Ayn Rand:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand#Political_influence

Sajid Javid, a member of Conservative Friends of Israel, is so pro-Israel that he even spent his honeymoon there, despite he and his wife both being non-Jewish. As Home Secretary (2018-2019), he made the astonishing assertion that he supports the violent “antifa” thugs [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States)

and he has been seen at Scotland Yard events alongside Jewish Zionist “activists” such as Stephen Silverman of the malicious “Campaign Against Antisemitism” or “CAA” cabal (Silverman being someone who has been exposed in open court as a serial troll and harasser, and who used pseudonyms to disguise his identity while doing that). Silverman and the CAA attempt to influence government and police policy in favour of Zionism and Israel, working with groups such as “UK Lawyers for Israel” etc, the memberships of which often overlap.

Javid, unsurprisingly in view of his background, thinks that mass immigration has benefited the UK!

Javid became a director of Deutsche Bank in 2000, leaving in 2009, by which time that bank had become one of the main “drivers” (causes) of the worldwide banking crisis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Bank#Financial_crisis_years_(2007%E2%80%932012)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sajid_Javid#Banking_career

This person, Sajid Javid, is now the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Cabinet minister in charge of government finances, tax, overall financial strategy etc. Very worrying…

CYHP3gvWYAArn3_

 

Grant Shapps

Jew and member of Conservative Friends of Israel. Exposed in 2012 as having used two pseudonyms in order to basically cheat members of the public by selling them dodgy business and self-improvement courses! He even got into the Palace of Westminster using those false IDs! In fact the Jew has a history of dodgy business dealings, tax dodging and cheating the public.

Now Shapps has been appointed to the Cabinet as Transport Secretary! You really could not make it up. Speaking of transport, when will my train arrive?

Hitlers-train-Amerika

This “government” is, in the immortal words of Johnny Mercer MP (applied to Theresa May’s tenure) a “shitshow”. In fact, if the Theresa May government was a “shitshow”, Boris-idiot’s one is going to be a total shitshow!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Shapps

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Shapps#Denials_of_pseudonym_and_second_job

Mark Spencer

Not a Cabinet minister, but the new Government Chief Whip, who attends Cabinet and is a key figure, especially in a government with no majority and even with Democratic Unionist Party [DUP] support only a majority of 3 or 4, which will probably soon be 1 or 2, depending on the result of the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election and whether Charlie Elphicke MP [Con, Dover] is allowed to remain on bail (and so vote in the Commons), having been charged with three sexual assaults against two women:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jul/22/tory-mp-charlie-elphicke-charged-with-sexual-assault

The Guardian journalist and Chief Political Correspondent, Jessica Elgot (a Jewish Zionist who, if memory serves, blocked me on Twitter before I was expelled), has penned this cheerful piece about Spencer:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/23/relative-unknown-mark-spencer-becomes-chief-whip

Jessica Elgot’s Guardian piece somehow neglects to mention that “Spencer attracted criticism in early 2015 after suggesting that a man with learning difficulties who had been left without food or power after being sanctioned for arriving four minutes late at the benefit office should “learn the discipline of timekeeping“” [Wikipedia]; or that

In January 2016, Spencer was one of 72 MPs who voted down an amendment in Parliament on rental homes being “fit for human habitation” who were themselves landlords who derived an income from a property.” [Wikipedia]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Spencer_(British_politician)#Controversies

In other words, Mark Spencer is a hard-faced bully type, as well as being a parasite landlord. What a horrible bastard.

I wonder whether new Chief Whip, Mark Spencer MP, is also a member of Conservative Friends of Israel? IMO, odds-on…

The immediate reaction about the new government from John Rentoul

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boris-johnson-reshuffle-cabinet-patel-raab-general-election-a9019661.html

My View

This is a disaster of a Cabinet, a disaster of a government, led by a part-Jew public entertainer who probably should never have been even a backbench MP, certainly never have become even a junior minister, let alone a Cabinet minister. That such a person is now Prime Minister of the UK, and leader of one of the two main System parties, is an indictment of that same political system. The political and electoral systems are broken. The House of Commons is full of trash.

What else? Well, as we have seen, all those examined (including Boris-idiot) are Conservative Friends of Israel, with at least one (I think maybe three) being in effect Israeli agent(s) of influence (if not more). The same will be true of the rest of the Cabinet.

This is not only the most pro-Jewish Lobby, pro-Israel Cabinet ever, but the least truly British (in any real sense; yes, they have British passports; actually, some have or had others, like Boris-idiot, who actually was a US citizen with a US passport until quite recently!); Sajid Javid— Pakistani; Dominic Raab— part-Jew, Priti Patel— Indian.

Even The Times of Israel impliedly agrees!

https://www.timesofisrael.com/priti-patel-previously-ousted-over-israel-meetings-named-uk-home-secretary/

and the Jewish Chronicle!

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/board-of-deputies-praises-firm-friends-on-boris-johnson-s-new-cabinet-1.486833

*and look at this:

Johnson’s maternal great-grandfather was a Russian Jewish immigrant named Elias Avery Lowe.” [Breaking Israel News]

““I feel Jewish when I feel the Jewish people are threatened or under attack, that’s when it sort of comes out. When I suddenly get a whiff of antisemitism, it’s then that you feel angry and protective.” [Boris Johnson]

In addition to his Jewish ancestry, Johnson has even stronger ties to Israel through his Jewish stepmother, Jennifer Kidd Johnson, who married his father Stanley in 1981. 

In 1984, Johnson, age 20, and his sister Rachel spent six weeks in Israel, volunteering on Kibbutz Kfar Hanasi, approximately 22 miles north of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. 

The visit was coordinated by Michael Comay, a career Israeli diplomat and close family friend of Johnson’s stepmother. Comay and his wife Joan connected the Johnson siblings with the overseas volunteer program at Kibbutz Kfar Hanassi.” [Breaking Israel News]

https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/134041/new-uk-prime-minister-descended-from-rabbi-feels-jewish/

Several of those appointed to Cabinet, including Raab, Priti Patel and Liz Truss, were co-authors of the notorious booklet Britannia Unchained, their credo being unrestrained finance capitalism and the British people as slaves to usurers and employers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britannia_Unchained

Highlights?

  • “Britain needs to adopt a far-reaching form of free market economics, with fewer employment laws”;
  • “The British are among the worst idlers in the world. We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor. Whereas Indian children aspire to be doctors or businessmen, the British are more interested in football and pop music.” [Wikipedia]

Well, I agree about the football and pop music etc, but the rest postulates as an ideal a dystopian economic slave-society (is that surprising, when you see that the booklet was written mostly by those from non-British, non-European backgrounds, societies where slavery and serfdom are still ubiquitous: India, Pakistan etc?)

What now?

So unfree is the UK already, that if I were to print what I really believe should be done to remove this government of evil, I should probably have the police at my door.

In terms of what might happen politically or electorally to remove this unelected System dictatorship led by Boris-idiot, it is a grace from God that its Commons majority is almost non-existent even with its bought (by Theresa May) DUP support. Soon it will have no majority in the Commons even with those bought DUP votes.

The Brexit dilemma is the first matter. It is suggested that Boris-idiot will try to leave the EU either without agreement with the EU, or with an agreement not much different than that Theresa May agreed, but which was rejected by the Commons. The probability must be that the same will happen again. If so, Johnson will before long face a no-confidence vote, which probably but not necessarily will lead to a general election. Johnson thinks that he can win such an election. Not if Brexit Party stands 650 candidates as promised. Brexit Party may sink the Conservative Party even if it itself fails to win a single seat.

On the other hand, if Boris Johnson makes an electoral pact with Nigel Farage, eg guaranteeing Brexit Party a free run in say 50 seats in return for the reverse in the remaining 600, that is a gamble which threatens to destroy the Conservative party as a main national party contesting all seats. It also risks creating a far more powerful because far more credible Brexit Party.

What if Johnson in effect caves in, accepting a poor “deal” with the EU (assuming that the Commons approve it)? That would be the end of Johnson as Prime Minister even if he were able to cling on for a while. At the next general election, he would probably lose his own seat, as would 100 or even 200 of his MPs.

What about other matters unconnected directly with Brexit? The Conservative majority is now effectively gone already, with quite a few anti-Boris MPs likely to abstain on critical votes. This “government” scarcely has the strength to be called “lame duck”.

It is worth noting that the Conservative Party has not managed to win a really substantial majority at a general election since the 1980s, though in 1992 and 2015 it had enough MPs to rule (leaving aside Brexit) without serious interruption (which is why Mrs May’s decision to hold a snap election in 2017 was such a great error).

In the end, Britain needs social nationalism. This weak and stupid government of aliens is the opposite, a would-be tyranny of non-Brits, non-Europeans, and pro-Israel dystopians. It is evil and must go.

and still the show goes on

C7_6DhaW4AA5xQV

[above, Boris-idiot with some (full) Jews, including notorious paedophile, now deceased, Greville Janner]

Ctdcka4WAAApkQ6

[above, Boris-idiot, one of whose great-grandfathers was an Orthodox Jew rabbi in Lithuania, puts on his “ancestral” skull-cap at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Looks now as if Jehovah granted his wish! Still, be careful what you wish for…]

Notes and updates

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7287171/The-gilded-life-Boris-Johnsons-new-team.html

Update, 27 July 2019

I was musing on exactly why Boris-idiot has appointed so many of what Ronnie Reagan might have described as “misfits, looney tunes and squalid criminals” to his Cabinet. Yes, they are mostly Leave supporters; yes, they are mostly those who supported Johnson in the Conservative Party leadership contest; but I think that there is another reason.

In my view, Boris-idiot was limited in his choice because so many potential ministers and Cabinet ministers simply would not and will not serve under Johnson. In fact many who served under Theresa May did not wait to see whether they might be reappointed or given other jobs. They ruled themselves out.

There are two or three aspects to this:

  • Many MPs and most former ministers despise Boris-idiot and simply cannot see him as a real Prime Minister of this country. They know that he was out of his depth as Foreign Secretary and that he is even more out of his depth as Prime Minister;
  • MPs mostly know very well that this government of crazies cannot last long, firstly because of its crazy and/or plain thick Cabinet ministers. When it falls, they do not want to be contaminated by association with it;
  • also, this government cannot last long because the Parliamentary arithmetic scarcely adds up even now. Once the Brecon and Radnorshire seat is lost (1 August 2019, this coming Thursday) and if Charlie Elphicke is convicted, later this year or early next year, of the sexual assault of two different women, the Government will have no majority at all, even with the DUP support bought by Theresa May. There is every chance that this government will be gone by Christmas. When that happens, the Conservative Party will probably either lose to Labour (i.e. get fewer seats), or at any rate get fewer seats than it now has. Either way, Boris will be gone as Prime Minister, his ignominious parody PM act having lasted only a few months.

Look at those who are now in Cabinet and in other ministerial posts! I have blogged already about some: Priti Patel as Home Secretary! This is a bad dream! Sajid Javid; Esther McVey!…; Grant Shapps…; Dominic Raab; Liz Truss (!); GAVIN WILLIAMSON…WHAT?!…the idiot who plays with his pet spider and wanted our troops to face the Russian Armed Forces with guns mounted on tractors or in the back of furniture lorries!…; even bloody Nadine Dorries is a minister of state now! Nadine Dorries, who was one of the biggest expenses freeloaders in the Commons, “employing” her recently-graduated daughters at the highest pay level permitted [in 2019, that level is £50,000 p.a.], and allowing one of them at least to occupy the taxpayer-funded flat in Central London meant to be for the MP’s own use, whereas Nadine Dorries actually commuted back daily to Bedfordshire (by rail, First Class, and of course again on expenses)! She also got all three (herself + 2 daughters) expensive new laptops and telephones etc on expenses! This is like a TV sketch writer’s joke!

I have little doubt that, just as his shambolic term as Mayor of London spawned the political comedy show The Thick of It, Boris Johnson’s term as Prime Minister will generate another political sit-com. The British people may not see the joke.

Well, enough for today, but anyone who saw Boris-idiot making promises of rail lines in Northern England when he was speaking in Manchester today saw a person well out of his depth, putting on a “prime ministerial” act and failing to raise to even a decent am-dram level. As a speaker, Johnson is poor (though his ad-lib humorous style might be OK for after-dinner speechifying). Content? Very poor. Delivery? Amateur and unconvincing.

Finally, one must ask why so many Conservative MPs voted for this clown to be their leader. I think that the answer is that most of the other candidates were also very poor, and even the few with potential to do the job of PM (leaving aside my firm ideological opposition to them) had impediments, such as that they were Remain supporters (eg Rory Stewart) or unconvincing recent Leave convertees (Jeremy Hunt and maybe Stewart), or with a negative public image (Michael Gove, a one-time cocaine abuser, as well as a flagrant expenses cheat in the 2005-2010 Parliament and possibly later).

The vote for Johnson, by most Conservative MPs, was a gamble, the gamble that the public entertainer and bullshitter can “reach the voters other MPs cannot reach”. I think that the Conservative Party is about to lose its shirt.

Update, 28 September 2019

Michael Gove, seen intoxicated through drink or drugs in the Chamber of the House of Commons recently! This is becoming just bizarre! (ignore the silly “Nazi newspapers” comment by the tweeter. “Nazi newspapers”? If only…!)

https://twitter.com/Aidan63499469/status/1177372771279605761?s=20

Update, 6 June 2021

Noticing that very many people from across the world have recently been hitting this mid-2019 blog post, I have decided that I should update it.

Well, since my article was posted, much water under bridge. My analysis, though correct in itself, was blown out of the water when political snake-oil salesman Nigel Farage stabbed his own party in the back during the 2019 General Election campaign by standing down most Brexit Party candidates, and thus gifting to “Boris” an apparent “landslide” victory and, as a consequence, an 80-seat House of Commons. Farage’s action has, as an extra consequence, probably finished off the Labour Party.

As to Brexit Party itself, Farage closed it down, having effectively killed it. He then started another party, “Reform Party”, which he then abandoned to its miserable fate. Farage is now to be seen promoting investment ideas online. Politically washed up (but wealthy…).

Some other matters have changed since I wrote the main post.

Charlie Elphicke [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Elphicke#Sexual_assault_charges_and_conviction] tood down as MP, was convicted and (in September 2020) imprisoned for 2 years. Arguably harsh for his very inept and minor sexual assaults. He will be released soon, after he has served 1 year. His now ex-wife was selected as candidate to replace him in 2019, and is now the MP in his place.

Both Sajid Javid and Esther McVey have left government but remain as MPs.

Deadhead MPs, An Occasional Series: the Jared O’Mara Story

Jared O’Mara [Lab, Sheffield Hallam] finds his way to these pages not, as have previous MPs so honoured, merely by being stupid or ignorant (sometimes and in fact usually combined with arrogance and dishonesty) but by expressing his mental and physical afflictions through his behaviour.

I suppose that most people feel, or feel that they should feel, sorry for those born with or otherwise suffering from physical or mental disabilities. However, my view is that, notwithstanding those feelings, I do not want such people entrusted with, inter alia, flying passenger aircraft, carrying out the duties of a surgeon, or helping to rule the United Kingdom.

According to Wikipedia:

O’Mara was born in Sheffield.[1] He has cerebral palsyhemiparesis and is on the autism spectrum.[10][11] He was educated at Tapton School, in the city’s Crosspool suburb,[12] and graduated from Staffordshire University with a first class honours degree in Journalism.[13]Before entering politics, he was a local school governor and had volunteered for Sheffield-based disability information services and charities.[13]

With friends, he ran West Street Live, a bar and music venue in Sheffield.[14]

O’Mara had stood as a Labour candidate in various Sheffield council elections.[13][15][16][17]He supported Jeremy Corbyn‘s election as Leader of the Labour Party in 2015 and 2016,[18]was a Momentum supporter and was backed by them during the 2017 election.

O’Mara graduated from Staffordshire University, one of the least convincing of the new wave of “universities” in the UK. I have no idea what a degree in journalism involves or consists of, but I do know that since the proliferation of courses in that subject, thousands of semi-literates have been let loose in the msm, with the result that one now sees egregious errors in spelling and grammar everywhere, but especially in the online versions of the old print newspapers. The Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror are among the worst offenders, replete with sentences including “he was stood at the back” and “she was sat at the back of the bus”. As for real knowledge of history, geography etc, forget it.

These new “journalists” often have no idea how to report accurately, either. Often, one has to scan a newspaper report several times before locating the salient facts. That is especially true of the court reports.

Enough of my discontent. Suffice to say that Jared O’Mara graduated in journalism, with a “first-class” degree, whatever that now signifies (my opinion: not much). He did not attempt to do any actual work as a journalist, however; he started, with friends, a bar with music, in Sheffield. He was engaged in that activity, it seems, for more than a decade until the 2017 General Election. At any rate, there is no other work or activity known, except for attempts at local elections and a stint as a local school governor.

At the General Election of 2017, O’Mara, with 38.4% of the vote, unseated Nick Clegg, the then LibDem leader (and 2010-2015 Deputy Prime Minister), who received a 34.7% vote share. The Conservative came in a moderately-strong third, with 23.8%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_Hallam_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

Labour whip suspension over offensive online comments

O’Mara became a member of the Women and Equalities Select Committee in September 2017.[3] Following revelations of offensive comments he had made before becoming an MP, he resigned from the committee the following month.[34]

A series of derogatory comments about women and gay men posted by O’Mara on websites over a decade before he became an MP were revealed by the Guido Fawkes blog on 23 October 2017.[35][36] He commented about the Girls Aloud pop group: “I advise you to sack Sarah and the remaining four members (NicolaCherylNadine and Kimberley) come have an orgy with me”; and he said that the 2003 winner of Pop IdolMichelle McManus, had “only won because she was fat”.[6][35][37]

He has also been accused of making homophobic comments including referring to gay men as “poofters” and “fudge packers” and referring to jazz musician Jamie Cullum as a “conceited cunt” who should be “sodomised with his own piano”.[6][38][39] O’Mara apologised “if his comments caused offence” and resigned from the Women and Equalities Select Committee.[6][39] In a later speech, O’Mara said that the homophobic words he used were part of an Eminem record he listened to at the time.[40]

The following day, O’Mara was accused by Sophie Evans, a Sheffield bar worker whom he had met through an online dating app, on BBC Two‘s Daily Politics of having “made transphobic slurs” towards her in March 2017, and of saying in the same incident that she was an “ugly bitch”.[41][42] O’Mara denied the allegation.[43] On the same day, it also emerged that he had been posting derogatory comments about children in Sheffield and appeared to advocate corporal punishment to deal with delinquent youth.[44] Following the emergence of the comments to Evans, the Labour Party announced an investigation into O’Mara’s conduct, but stopped short of suspending him from the party.[45]

Further revelations were made public on 25 October 2017. On a Morrissey fan site in 2002, he was found to have made xenophobic insults, saying that Danes were “pig shaggers” who “practised bestiality” and referring to Spaniards as “dagos“.[46] O’Mara, when reviewing the Arctic Monkeys in November 2004, made several sexual comments including how “sexy little slags” danced to the band’s songs.[47] These revelations resulted in O’Mara being suspended from the Labour Party and therefore having the party whip withdrawn.” [Wikipedia]

Recently, it has emerged that the now “Independent” MP has completely abandoned any constituency work, does not bother to answer enquiries from his constituents, and has no staff, having sacked some, while others quit, unable to bear O’Mara and his behaviour. The most recent (and last?) staff member, the “chief of staff”, left very publicly, tweeting that O’Mara was “the most disgustingly morally bankrupt person I have ever had the displeasure of working with“, and “a selfish, degenerate prick“. The employee had only worked for O’Mara for 8 weeks! He added:

We’re left with a situation where there’s people in Sheffield Hallam who are not being represented, there are people who are waiting on their immigration status, there are people who are not getting houses, there are people having their benefits stopped and all these things stopped just because he’s not prepared to do his job properly.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/24/jared-omara-aide-uses-sheffield-mp-twitter-account-to-quit-in-angry-tirade

O’Mara is also, it seems, some kind of alcoholic, downing a bottle of vodka in the mornings (even before breakfast) on some days. It just gets better…

Below, the tweets the “chief of staff” sent out under O’Mara’s own Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/SocialM85897394/status/1153971833231818752

Despite the above, O’Mara has stated that he intends to stand again at the next general election. Some idiots have been defending him. The tweet below is typical of modern Britain, not just because the tweeter is non-white and painfully politically-correct, but because she seems to have no understanding of the fact that an MP is supposed to be there to serve his constituents, not use his status as a well-paid holiday or mental and physical therapy opportunity:

https://twitter.com/a_leesha1/status/1153798835669352449

Pathetic. At least most people (see below) seem to understand why MPs even exist…

https://twitter.com/FeralWildCat/status/1153966211878850565

So there we have it. For me, the most important part of this story is how it has somehow come to be expected that, if an MP is disabled or mentally unwell, then the House of Commons should change to accommodate that, or if a woman has a small child, then the procedures of the Commons should be interfered with in order to make her daily life easier. Maybe mentally-ill, addicted or incapable people should simply not be MPs? Same with women MPs who have small children. They serve the country better by dealing with them, not by grandstanding in the House of Commons.

What about Sheffield Hallam, the unfortunate constituents of which now have even less help from their MP than is the norm? They must await a general election. There is no prospect of Jared O’Mara standing down, not while he can get about £80,000 a year plus expenses (London flat, utilities etc) paid.

Obviously when there is an election, O’Mara is gone, even if he makes some quixotic attempt to stand as Independent. The LibDems are probably in a good position to recapture the seat now. The Conservatives will be weakened by their national situation and by the Brexit Party (which threatens to stand in every English and maybe every UK constituency). Labour has little chance. O’Mara was the first and may be the last Labour MP elected for Sheffield Hallam (the seat was created in 1885). The Conservatives held the seat until 1997.

The present House of Commons; look upon its members, ye confounded…and despair.

Notes

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/18/jared-omara-labour-mp-sheffield-hallam-defeated-nick-clegg

Update, 25 July 2019

Statement from Jared O’Mara MP:

Statement regarding my mental health and recent events

In a few weeks, I will be making a follow-up statement regarding my position, until then I will be taking time out to receive professional help to deal with my mental health and personal issues regarding self-medication. During this time I would appreciate you could give myself and family privacy.

This is what I would like to say in the meantime:

I would like to start by apologising to my family, my friends and my constituents. I have not been honest with you about the depths of my depression and self-loathing. When I started this job in 2017 I was a different man: a confident and passionate man that wanted to help others. Sadly, I was unable to do that because very quickly I was bullied and mistreated in a harsh and unforgiving environment and that led me to be weak.

I wasn’t even meant to win the election. I stood because I wanted to give my time to support the democratic process and because I was inspired by Jeremy Corbyn and everything he had to say. Particularly about “Equality and Fairness”. I voted for him twice, was a member of his group ‘Momentum’ and practically idolised him.

But I got no support from him or the National Labour Party during the campaign. The previous Labour candidate Oliver Coppard (who I think should be the MP for Sheffield Hallam and I think is a top bloke) got funding and support nationally but I did not. The efforts of a small group of dedicated grassroots activists working to help me with the campaign I lead won that election for us. I will always be grateful to those amazing volunteers and all who voted for me. I don’t get many people backing me, helping me and supporting me in my life so it means so much when you do.

One person who constantly snubbed me and treated me less favourably than other people was Jeremy. He was the biggest shock of that election; not my victory. He has not been the man I thought he was nor that he appears to be. To the point that he and his team lied to you all last year. I was never let back in the Labour Party as they said. Nor was I ever ordered to go on training or “warned”.

They wanted me to act like I was when I was not provided with any details in writing about anything and they wanted me to act like I was guilty of those allegations from the two women from the pub when I had submitted hard evidence and witness details that showed I was not. So I had no choice but to leave the party I loved.

Within months of my appointment as MP for Sheffield Hallam the smears happened and I fell into a self-destructive nosedive. During my suspension Sam Matthews his team were consummate professionals but then Jeremy’s office took over the case and I had to get a solicitor involved because of disability discrimination in order to get it back on track.

The discrimination made things even worse. My mental health deteriorated further and I isolated myself from family, friends and constituents. My actions became erratic and my thoughts became incoherent to the point where most recently I suffered a delusional episode.

In May this year, I sent an email to Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn asking them for help with getting Equality in parliament. Some MPs were parents who were not getting support and Maternity/Paternity cover and I wasn’t entitled to my rights under the Equality Act for adequate support for my disabilities and as such was not provided with the safe and necessary environment for me to speak in the chamber. This was to serve as my olive branch to Jeremy for the bullying he and his staff had put me through which caused me to leave the party in July last year.

Jeremy and his office then offered me a meeting by letter and by my parents’ observations I was visibly excited. Jeremy’s office then promised to get in touch with me and offer a selection of dates on a certain day but did not fulfil their promise, so I emailed the next day and let my disgust at their disrespect be known. Jeremy’s response was to make false reports about me being a mental health danger around parliament with a delegation of Labour safeguarding representatives and his staff. I know this because I have it in writing from the parliamentary doctor.

I was not then a mental health risk at that point but such gaslighting ultimately made me one.

About two weeks ago I told a staff member I was in love with her during the aforementioned delusional episode. I’d been paranoid for weeks that if I was mad like Jeremy and his team said I was then I’d do something like that. The messages I said that were not of a sober or rational mind and felt like an out of body experience when I sent them but I know that does not excuse my actions because I should not have been self-medicating with a drink to get into that state. It was my lowest point and I will be apologising personally to her and her family.

I want to become a better person again; like I was. I feel I’ve become unrecognisable and I want to make amends. I need treatment for my mental health and rest first though. I will make a further statement about my future in a few weeks.

Lastly, to my dear, old friend – the Noel to my Liam – Gareth: Thank you for sticking with me like I am sticking with you. How anyone put up with for this long is a mystery! That’s what mates should do. I wish you a good break, you have earned it.

I am so sorry to everybody for everything. You have put up with so much; all of you all my staff, my family, friends and constituents.

Thank you so much,

Jared O’Mara MP

https://www.jaredomara.co.uk/recentactivity/2019/7/25/statement-regarding-my-mental-health-and-recent-events

Update, 28 July 2019

Well, only a day or two after I blogged, another twist in this story: O’Mara has now indicated that he will stand down as MP for Sheffield Hallam when the Parliamentary Summer Recess is over (3 September 2019).

So I was wrong in assuming that O’Mara would cling on as MP for financial reasons. He has done the right thing, or promised to do it. Credit where due. He has made the honourable decision to fall on his sword.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jul/27/ex-labour-mp-jared-omara-to-resign-from-parliament

If only other MPs who have lost all legitimacy would follow O’Mara’s lead: Anna Soubry, Fathead Chuka Umunna and the other “Change UK” defectors, sex pest Israel lobbyist John Woodcock etc.

As to the by-election which will now occur in Sheffield Hallam (and which the LibDems must, even speaking so far in advance, have a good chance of winning), that will probably be held in October. I shall blog about it once the candidates are announced, which will probably not be until some time in September.

Update, 23 August 2019

Seems that my general suspicion might not have been quite so wide of the mark after all…

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/23/sheffield-mp-jared-omara-arrested-on-suspicion-of

Update, 4 September 2019

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7424617/Controversial-MP-Jared-OMara-postpones-plan-resign-Commons.html

Now O’Mara wants to “postpone” his standing down until the next general election! He may be a “fuck-up” mentally and physically, but he is cunning about money…

So now, O’Mara is going to keep getting the pay, “expenses” (inc. free London housing or hotel costs, utilities, food, taxis etc) for further weeks or even months. He has already said that he will not be doing any further actual MP work (not that he has ever done much), so all the money he gets will have been extracted on a basis of total dishonesty (regardless of whether he is ever charged with fraud as such).

Update, 23 December 2019

Well, in the end, this particular deadhead MP did not stand at the 12 December 2019 General Election. Labour put up a new candidate, a former Sheffield councillor, Olivia Blake, and she managed to hang on to the seat for Labour (just*): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_Hallam_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Blake

* Lab majority in 2019 was 712; O’Mara’s majority in 2017 was 2,125. LibDem leader Nick Clegg’s 2015 majority was 2,353; his 2010 majority had been rather better— 15,284!

Update, 11 January 2023

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-64238809

“Former Sheffield MP Jared O’Mara has pleaded not guilty to an eighth charge of fraud ahead of his trial.

Mr O’Mara, who represented Sheffield Hallam from 2017 to 2019, is accused of submitting fraudulent invoices to Parliament’s expenses watchdog.

The 41-year-old previously denied seven counts of fraud by false representation relating to sums of £28,700 alleged to have been claimed dishonestly.

He faces trial at Leeds Cloth Hall Court this month alongside two others.

Update, 23 January 2023

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11666979/Ex-Labour-MP-Jared-OMara-41-falsely-claimed-30-000-expenses-fund-cocaine-habit.html

Update, 8 February 2023

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11727415/Ex-Labour-MP-Jared-OMara-guilty-six-counts-fraud.html

Update, 26 September 2023

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12562937/Former-Labour-MP-Jared-OMara-jailed-expenses-fraud-loses-bid-prison-sentence.html

The LibDems Elect A Leader

Introduction

I suppose that I should write a brief piece about the LibDems, now that they have elected a new leader. Somehow an underwhelming topic. First of all, the new leader.

Background

Jo Swinson MP was born in Scotland in 1980, went to a local state school and then to the LSE, graduating, it seems, aged only 20, and with a degree in management. She then worked briefly for a small enterprise in Yorkshire before becoming marketing manager with public relations duties for a local radio station in Hull, called Viking Radio.

Elected as MP in 2005 [LibDem, East Dunbartonshire], she was PPS to Nick Clegg, then a PUS, then a junior minister, all during the time of the “Con Coalition” of 2010-2015.

Jo Swinson voted for all or almost all of the Con Coalition policies, and has endorsed both zero hours contracts and “flexible working”. I am not a LibDem, but I have to say that Jo Swinson is really rather far from the LibDem traditional stance on such matters. She comes across as almost “libertarian” as far as worker rights are concerned.

The other candidate, Ed Davey, is not far from Jo Swinson, ideologically, though I should say that Davey was the more intelligent candidate of the two, so it makes sense for the LibDems to go for the less-intelligent and less-educated Jo Swinson…Davey was also the more experienced candidate, being about 15 years older and having been in Parliament for longer (since 1997, compared to Swinson’s 2005); Davey was also the only one to have served in the Cabinet.

Both Swinson and Davey lost their seats in 2015 (Davey to a Conservative, Swinson to the SNP), but were re-elected in the same constituencies in 2017. Both are “doing rather well” financially outside politics too: Davey is director or consultant to a number of companies, while Jo Swinson’s husband, Duncan Hames, an accountant (and also a LibDem MP from 2010 until 2015), now works for Transparency International, a well-funded NGO.

The LibDems’ situation and chances

2010 was surely the high point of LibDemmery. 57 MPs (out of 650) and a share in government: the Con Coalition. In 2005, under the egregious Charles Kennedy, the LibDems had won 62 seats out of 646, but were not in government.

The LibDems got 23% of the popular vote in 2010, but only about 9% of the MPs.

I believe that the LibDems could have demanded electoral reform from the Conservatives. They did not. They sold their chance for a few ministerial places, for official cars, red boxes, rank and flummery. In return they (Ed Davey and Jo Swinson among them) voted for every misconceived “Conservative” measure: the appalling regime of hounding of and cruelty to the poor disabled, sick and unemployed; the whole nonsense of “austerity”, which left the UK economy almost alone in advanced states in being mired in recession and/or low growth for years; the near-destruction of the armed services as an active and effective global force. For all that and more, for being doormats for the Conservatives, the LibDems were punished by the electorate.

In 2015, the LibDem vote slumped to 7.9% (8 MPs), then slumped again in 2017, to 7.4% (but, by the vagaries of the British electoral system, the LibDems ended up with 12 MPs).

In the 2019 UK European elections, the LibDems came second. I blogged about them then:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/05/29/eu-elections-2019-in-review-the-libdems/

but they failed fairly miserably at the Peterborough by-election a week or so later:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/06/07/peterborough-by-election-post-poll-analysis-and-thoughts/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/06/08/a-few-peterborough-afterthoughts-about-the-libdems/

I do not think that I have a lot to add to what I then wrote. My view is that there is and will be no “LibDem surge”, but what there might be is a LibDem gain from the decline of both of the other main System parties, as well as an electoral benefit arising from the Brexit Party surge —if it happens— in the South of England, mainly, where the LibDems are not infrequently in 2nd or close 3rd place.

If the Conservative Party is hit badly in the South, its voters split between Con and BP, the main beneficiary is likely to be not the Brexit Party, and not Labour (in most cases) but the LibDems. In those circumstances (and “Change UK” having died shortly after birth), it is not now impossible to imagine the LibDems again having a bloc of 50 MPs, something that I admit I thought, until very recently, would be impossible. The LibDems may not deserve it, but might in any event get it. In fact, thinking of —inter alia— Boris Johnson, that might just be the epitaph of our present age.

Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Swinson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Davey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democrats_(UK)#General_elections

Update, 12 December 2022

We now know that there was the 2019 General Election only 5 months after I wrote the above assessment. At that election, my initial judgment, rather than my later speculation, was vindicated: the LibDem vote increased from 7.4% to 11.55%, but the FPTP system resulted in the LibDems losing 1 MP. That MP was Jo Swinson, who exited political life, having led her party for less than 5 months (144 days).

After the departure of Jo Swinson, Ed Davey was elected leader.

The LibDems had 12 MPs after the 2017 General Election, which reduced to 11 after the 2019 General Election. However, since then the LibDems have had three by-election successes, taking their number to 14.