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…
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.
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.
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.
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
"He has got great qualities… They're just not the qualities that I want to see, personally, as prime minister of this country.
"These are not the times when we need someone who is a bit of a chancer, you know, and Boris is a chancer"
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.
I do not trust #BorisJohnsonPM or #Priti Patel and they have 2 of the top jobs in the government. I’m wondering if the @Conservatives party is the party for me anymore.
Priti Patel is pro death penalty and voted against same-sex marriage. Not to mention they both helped write "Britannia Unchanged" which advocated the type of total free market capitalism with little to no regulation that led to the 2008 financial crash. What fresh hell is this?
– did backdoor deals with Israel as a cabinet minister – want the death penalty – threatened Ireland with food shortages over Brexit – oppose gay marriage – lobby for the tobacco & alcohol industry
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:
Priti Patel is set to be in Boris Johnson's cabinet as Home Secretary so here's Ian Hislop tearing her a new one on the issue of Capital Punishment pic.twitter.com/MWSWW8Gfc7
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.
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.
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:
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…
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?
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!
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:
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:
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]
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.
“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]
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:
“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.
EU27 diplomats have received a note from @MichelBarnier saying that @BorisJohnson’s demand to eliminate the backstop is unacceptable, that his speech today was “combative” and that the UK’s increased preps for No Deal are designed to crack unity of the EU.
[above, Boris-idiot with some (full) Jews, including notorious paedophile, now deceased, Greville Janner]
[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…]
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…!)
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.
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.
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%.
“Labour whip suspension over offensive online comments
O’Mara became a member of the Women and EqualitiesSelect 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 (Nicola, Cheryl, Nadine and Kimberley) come have an orgy with me”; and he said that the 2003 winner of Pop Idol, Michelle 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.”
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:
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.
“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.
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.
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…
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).
* 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!
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:
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.
New Lib Dem leader, Jo Swinson, said here that she regretted *some* of the Tory Lib Dem murderously brutal austerity cuts — the bedroom tax for example. So why did she vote for the bedroom tax, ELEVEN times, and how come our MSM NEVER point this out.pic.twitter.com/MT72zqPjKi
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.
Update, 3 February 2026
Having seen the blog post get quite a few hits in the past days and weeks, time for an update.
Ed Davey has become notorious for clowning around at fetes, rallies, conferences etc.
Having said that, and despite the LibDems having become near-irrelevant in policy terms, present opinion polling has them on or around 11%-15%, and surviving the coming likely massive cull of System party MPs. The polls seem to indicate that the slide of the Conservative Party (mainly) means that, as “dustbin” alternative, the LibDems might keep about 50-70 MPs, mostly in the southern half of the UK, at the likely GE 2029 or GE 2028, whichever. That might put them into the unaccustomed position of being the third or even second-largest bloc of MPs in the Commons, if Reform UK sweeps the board.
The conclusion of that article is that Boris Johnson will be forced to a general election before very long. Unlike msm talking heads, we have no need to say “whoever is the next Prime Minister”: the system is broken, the 100,000 elderly people actually given a vote love “Boris”, and so we, the other 65 million, are having imposed upon us the least honest, least competent, least loyal, least decent, least worthy, least genuinely British Prime Minister in living memory, perhaps ever.
The crunch is coming, but Boris Johnson has never kept to any “pledge” or promise, whether political or personal, so will not be bound by his “Leave EU by 31 October 2019” one either, in my view.
No-deal Brexit is not inevitable – our new prime minister will still have options | Charles Grant https://t.co/LL9hFUtC4A
As I have blogged previously, Boris Johnson likes to be presented as a strong maverick character, whereas in fact he is actually rather weak: weak in logic, weak in general knowledge, weak in resolve, weak in ethical standards, weak politically.
Philip Hammond puts it more diplomatically: ” “He is actually a more complex personality than it sometimes seems,” Hammond said of Johnson in his interview. “He is a mainstream conservative on all topics except Brexit. I very much regret his attitude to Brexit. His own story, which is multicultural, multinational and liberal, speaks for itself.” [The Guardian].
Hammond’s words of course are two-edged and allude to Johnson’s part-Jew, part-Muslim, born-in-USA (and brought up largely in USA and Belgium) background, as well as his loose and indeed louche morality.
I may be overthinking this, because I do not see Boris Johnson as a determined —or indeed any sort of— planner (except in terms of trying to become Prime Minister for the past 20+ years), but I wonder whether Johnson foresaw that the Commons would block fulfilment of his “Brexit on WTO terms by 31 October” so-called “pledge”? After all, it would hardly require clairvoyance. The House of Commons has a large Remain majority.
If Boris Johnson “pledges” to leave on WTO terms on 31 October 2019 and if that is then blocked by the Remain majority in the Commons, Johnson can then sigh loudly in public and say “I did my best, but have been stabbed in the back by all those pro-EU MPs…”, thus absolving him from blame for not “delivering Brexit” (the EU will very likely grant further “extensons” etc…). Johnson can then present himself as the Tribune of the People, fighting the corrupt Remain MPs. A hero to fools…
From Johnson’s point of view, perfect. No need to actually negotiate with people who are more intelligent, more knowledgeable, better prepared than Johnson himself ever is, no need to put in much effort and, finally, also parking tanks on the lawn of Farage and Brexit Party (that less certain, though).
What if it goes wrong for Boris-Idiot and there is a no-confidence vote? I am wondering whether the prospect of this stupid clown as Prime Minister, even leaving aside Brexit, might not be enough to make some Conservative Party MPs abstain in a no-confidence vote. I would not bet against it.
If Labour put forward a no-confidence vote, and if that succeeds, it might not mean an immediate general election. The Conservatives can put forward another, less obviously clownish MP as their prime ministerial choice. If all the Conservatives and all the DUP support that person, then that freezes out Corbyn and Labour for a while.
What if there is a general election? If Brexit Party put up a fairly full slate of candidates in England, and if at least some form of Brexit has not happened by then, there might well be an explosion of rage from the half of the country (more than half) that voted Leave in 2016. That explosion might well not spare the Conservatives who have so badly handled the Brexit negotiations for the past 3 years. After all, that inept performance calls to mind the other stupidities of the past decade.
Scotland seems likely to vote at least 40% SNP in a general election, creating (maintaining) a bloc of about 40-50 Westminster MPs. As for England and Wales, if you take out the blacks and browns (etc), and you take out London (and Gibraltar, which has no votes in Westminster elections), the Leave vote was around 70%. What does this mean?
First of all, Brexit is not the only issue. The socio-economic problems of the country play more to Labour’s advantage. What is letting down Labour electorally now is that it is seen to be largely the party of the blacks and browns, the immigrants and their offspring, as well as public service workers, and those reliant on State benefits. I speak in broad-brush terms of course.
The people who are voting Labour now and might vote Labour in any 2019 general election are concentrated in quite few seats, about 200-250, but some polls are saying that only 40% of 2017 Labour voters will vote Labour if there is a general election this year. Translating that into seats is not easy, but it could mean a substantial reduction from the position now.
The above is however affected by the effect Brexit Party might have on the Conservative vote, bearing in mind that, as with Labour, as high as 60% of 2017 Conservative voters say that they will not be voting Con next time.
If Brexit Party puts up candidates all over England and Wales, and scores at least 15% nationwide, the present 312 Conservative seats will reduce to about 250 and possibly fewer. Most will fall to the LibDems or Labour, but no doubt Brexit Party could win a few too. If Brexit Party can score 20%+ nationwide, then there might be only 150 Conservative MPs left.
We are in minority, possibly coalition, territory. Either
Labour + SNP or
Labour + LibDems; or
Conservative + Brexit Party or
Conservative + LibDems
One intriguing fact is that Boris Johnson is apparently marginally more popular with Brexit Party members than he is with Conservative Party members.
My guess today (in this volatile climate, one alters perceptions almost daily) is that it is a race between Labour’s vote (especially in the North) collapsing and the Conservative vote collapsing in much of the country, and weakened further by the existence of Brexit Party (even if Brexit Party itself scarcely wins a seat).
I cannot see Boris-Idiot lasting for long as Prime Minister— he is completely unsuited for such a position; but having said that, the country has already gone half-mad…
Postscript
I had scarcely published the above when, about an hour after that, the Guardian published the report below:
Nearly two years later from when I wrote the above blog post, we look back at the December 2019 General Election and see that most of the analysis was correct. What made the prediction of Conservative Party electoral collapse misfire was the event few —if any— predicted, meaning that Nigel Farage, snake oil salesman, stabbed his own party in the back, and withdrawing from active participation the majority of Brexit Party candidates, all of whom had actually paid for their own deposits (and more)!
All or almost all Conservative Party candidates were given a clear run by Brexit Party. Brexit Party candidates in some formerly Labour seats where the Conservative Party was always unlikely to win, were allowed to stand, as in Hartlepool, where the Brexit Party 2-i-c, Richard Tice, came a very close third and, had the party not been killed by its own leader, might have pulled off an historic coup in a seat Labour-held since it was created. Farage’s actions destroyed Brexit Party credibility during the campaign.
The net result was that, with most intended Brexit Party votes going to Conservative candidates, the Con Party achieved a huge 80-seat overall majority. Many Conservative candidates, especially in the North, won by fewer than 2,000 votes. Had Brexit Party put up more than a token fight, the Conservative Party might well not have achieved a majority at all.
As for Nigel Farage, after his treachery in 2019, he had the gall to wind up Brexit Party (literally, since it was set up as a private company) and start yet another party, Reform Party or Reform UK, which he then abandoned when offered a great deal of money in business. An out and out, controlled-opposition, con-man.
Below, we see the supporters of the now-again-imprisoned activist known as Tommy Robinson, scuffling with police and msm employees on College Green by the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey a few days ago.
Police move in as ‘Tommy Robinson’ supporters attack BBC broadcasters on college green. Chants of “We want our country back” pic.twitter.com/CaZszLxqVl
Reporters reported these events as though at the Storming of the Bastille, whereas in fact the clash shows a few dozen, or at most a hundred demonstrators (though the police estimated the crowd of protestors outside the Old Bailey earlier the same day as having numbered about 200).
I do not want to comment on the rights and wrongs of the Tommy Robinson contempt case, but to examine the protests to launch a wider-ranging article. I have in any case written previously about Tommy Robinson:
I should make my own position clear: Ideologically, I am not much on the same page as Tommy Robinson. For one thing, Robinson makes it clear that, like his supporters Katie Hopkins and the tribe of Anglo-American “alt-Right” wastes of space (the main British ones being “Prison Planet” Paul Watson, Carl Benjamin “Sargon of Akkad” and Mark Meechan “Count Dankula”), he is pro-Israel and pro-Jew. This despite the fact that 99.9% of Jews in the UK despise and hate him and his followers. The American “alt-Right” have a word for people like that: “cucks”. Ironic, in view of the pro-Israel stance of many “alt-Right” persons. In fact, in the clip above, you can see some idiot waving a Israeli flag!
Tommy Robinson, however, parts company with the “alt-Right” in that he is able to mobilize fairly large (by UK standards) and very combative (by UK standards) partisan followers. Admittedly, 200 is not very many, but this was on a weekday, when the bulk of Robinson’s supporters are probably working on building sites or driving white vans, if that is not too patronizing. Also, Robinson’s support seems stronger in the North West and Midlands than in London.
I have a sneaking regard for Robinson, in that he is willing to put himself out at the front, is willing to lead “in action”, has a certain courage (others disagree and say that any courage is fortified by others backing him up), and is not by any means stupid, despite some of his behaviour. Also, he has been able to create at least a loose (and undisciplined) street army, or at least a sizeable street “troop”.
Having said the foregoing, Tommy Robinson is not a serious political figure. Even leaving aside the pro-Israel-ism, a few hundred or a few thousand marchers and bottle-throwers do not a revolutionary army make. I blogged about this quite a while ago, in relation to the connected “Football Lads’ Alliance”:
A figure such as Tommy Robinson needs to lead, if anything, not a political movement but the street army of such a movement. In other words, he should be not the overall or political chief but the “street” head of a movement, and subordinate to one with a proper political programme. He himself should understand that.
When Tommy Robinson stood as “Independent” MEP candidate for North West England, he was humiliated, getting 38,908 votes out of 1,744,858 (2.24%). A couple of the “alt-Right” wastes of space also stood, notably “Sargon of Akkad” (Carl Benjamin), who stood in the South West England EU constituency for “dead-parrot party” UKIP, whose group (Benjamin was one of 6) received 53,739 out of a possible 1,676,173 (3.24%).
Tommy Robinson and the “Alt-Right”— dependence on Internet platforms
An important point is that both Tommy Robinson and the “alt-Right” vloggers are highly-dependent on the Internet, and particularly social media. Those are the platforms they use in order to get views out to the public, as well as to receive donations, subscriptions etc. These are the platforms which are now being removed by the System (notionally by the platform-owning companies themselves, but this has all been co-ordinated behind the scenes, mainly by the Jewish lobby that the “alt-Right” and Robinson claim to support…).
Tommy Robinson and the “alt-Right” vloggers are not alone in now having their online platforms removed. The persecuted singer-songwriter Alison Chabloz has already been barred from Twitter and YouTube, many others including ex-BNP leader Nick Griffin have gone from some platforms (though so far Griffin is still on Twitter) and I was expelled from Twitter after a co-ordinated Jew-Zionist campaign in 2018 (and am not on Facebook; neither do I have a YouTube channel).
Many others have also had video and payment platforms removed arbitrarily (usually via a fig-leaf of “you are in breach of our rules” nonsense). The Jew-Zionists are behind most of this repression of free speech.
One such is the vlogger “Millennial Woes” (Colin Robertson). Removed from YouTube though still occasionally on Twitter (not posting much and presumably only keeping an account for use as as a private message facility).
There is a general move online to restrict and, in slow stages (thus deflating resistance) to remove, in particular, nationalist or social national people and organizations from the major platforms. That applies also to the “Alt-Right” and its offshoot known as the “Alt-Lite”. In fact, it goes further than that. We have seen how the social media platform GAB was almost taken down by a concerted campaign by Jews and “antifa” terrorists acting in concert with System forces. That almost worked, but GAB managed to survive by switching providers etc. The System has not given up, however…See:
There are now other “free speech” fora emerging, such as “Free Speech Extremist”[https://freespeechextremist.com/main/all] but these have few users compared to Twitter, Facebook etc.
As far as Twitter is concerned, in the UK the Jewish-Zionist element, the mindless “antifa” element, and the politically-correct perpetually-offended element, which all love to “report” and denounce anyone social-national or even mildly nationalistic, have managed to reduce an interesting online platform to a boring and predictable echo-chamber. I certainly do not miss my own Twitter account, though it may be that my followers (3,000 at last count) are impoverished by not having sight of my tweets.
“Freedom” online has been diminished by, primarily, the Jewish-Zionist element. I imagine that many of my readers on WordPress will know of my own experiences in this regard:
The thing here is not just that there is a Jewish lobby, or a Zionist lobby, that tries to shut down free speech (as we now see “them” once again trying to do within the UK Labour Party), but the fact that there is a huge amount of collusion between that lobby and those who might protect freedom of expression but, increasingly, do not: the police, most journalists, professional bodies generally, the Press, the msm generally.
As I write this, there is a backlash from the Press because Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Neil Basu (half–Indian, half-Welsh, and the head of police “counter-terrorism”) warned the “free Press” not to publish leaked documents that might embarrass the government. He has been put back in his box for that, but only in respect of the Press. The general crackdown on freedom by, or with the collusion of, the police continues. In fact Basu, in the police vernacular, “has form” here. He has interfered with free speech issues on previous occasions:
Looking at his background and known history, he has no reason to be kind or even objective as far as British social nationalism is concerned. He is not alone, in any case. The police are now ceasing to be protectors of the British people and are looking more and more like their zookeepers.
Free speech and its ever-more restricted limits
In fact, we hear more and more in the msm about how “legal free speech” could and should be shut down in order to more easily police and/or pacify the crazed multikulti society being created by the forces of evil in the UK. Or as the conspiracy puts it, the “necessity” to “prevent” “legal extremism” which does not reach as far as anything prosecutable (even as far as the cobbled-together recent prosecutions of young persons engaged in political activism: juries are beginning to reject the State’s attempts to crucify young social-national activists, I note). I blogged about this a year or so ago:
In the UK, though the “antifa” idiots have made a number of violent attacks here and there, they are no doubt well-infiltrated by the State monitoring organs and have not attained the level seen in Germany, the USA etc.
However, there are some in the UK who hide behind the false label of “journalist” or “historian” and who use online accounts to incite violence by “antifa” idiots (while themselves hiding away). One such is failed supply teacher (he was sacked some years ago from his last teaching position) Mike Stuchbery, an Australian with mental illness problems (about which he tweets in order to get sympathy), and who is a notorious beggar and grifter, always asking for money from those who read his material. Below, one of his more notorious tweets (despite which Twitter has not expelled him. Ah, I see…he did not say anything about Jews. Of course…)
Mike: I’m not extreme violent left wing antifa communist who from bio loves everyone and hates no one
Stuchbery retweeted the tweet(s) below only an hour before I wrote these words.
They actually don’t care how history remembers them. What they care about is what will happen to them personally in the immediate future. Remind them. https://t.co/0JuF7SI3Of
(for “anti-intellectuals” in those Jews’ tweets, read perhaps “those with whom I disagree” or “those with another view to me and my Jewish antifa friends”).
As seen above, Stuchbery loves to imagine those with whom he disagrees having their skulls broken in, or otherwise killed or injured. It was a different matter, however, when he set up Tommy Robinson’s wife and children for a kind of pseudo-legal “home invasion” (which failed, in the event). Robinson later turned up at Stuchbery’sown Luton-area house, at which confrontation Stuchbery had a meltdown. The “brave” keyboard warrior and “antifa” propagandist was suddenly again just an Australian ex-schoolteacher on the scrapheap, a begging grifter and fake “historian-journalist” with mental problems, blubbing because he cannot control the situation that he himself has created.
In fact, I have discovered that almost all the Jewish/Zionist, “antifa” and other nuisances on Twitter who have obsessively denounced me (and others) have mental health problems and are on medication for them, but I shall blog about them separately. Something for them to look forward to.
In parts of the USA, this “antifa” nonsense has reached levels not seen even in Germany or France. See below.
Like something out of the state of Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale.
In relation to this, it was disturbing to many to see pro-Israel tool Sajid Javid MP, an ex-Muslim (in effect), not only appearing (as Home Secretary) at Scotland Yard and apparently being on good terms with fake charity “Campaign Against Antisemitism” members such as Stephen Silverman of South Essex (exposed in open court as a serial troll and harasser of several women) but even expressing support for “antifa”! Sajid Javid might not be the brightest tool in the box but that really was hard to believe!
When the Home Secretary of the UK openly supports violent sub-terrorists, when the police or elected officials in the UK and USA collude with Jewish manipulators and/or violent extremists of various other kinds (cf. the recent “Extinction Rebellion” demonstrations in London), “democracy” as we know it is on the way out.
So Scotland yard's new Commander is Basit Javid, who conveniently happens to be the brother of none other than Sajid Javid who as Home Secretary is in control of Scotland Yard. See how this works yet? https://t.co/GWN1Z2ZtLM
— CK #SearchingForTheTruth (@ck1984ishere) June 7, 2019
In tone, the Sun’s “report” is not unalike to the hysterical condemnations seen in the Soviet newspapers at the time of, say, the purges of 1937, the Yezhovshchina.
As for the “democracy” expressed in our system of parties and elections, it has failed. The boundaries of constituencies are rigged to create a faked “balance” between two or three similar parties, as shown below:
Then there is the selection process for candidates (PPCs). Anyone in the slightest social-national is excluded from all three “main parties”, i.e, System parties.
The House of Commons has become the home of, mostly, the very mediocre, often the uneducated, uncultured and stupid. One only has to look at the last few leadership elections of the two main System parties (the LibDems are even less impressive, though that may be hard to believe).
Take Labour: Corbyn is himself not very inspiring or impressive: poorly-educated, effectively a school dropout and, later a dropout from a polytechnic, who has very little real employment or work history, a poor grasp of history and whose wives claim that he never reads a book. Telling. Leaders are readers:
[above, Hitler reads on the terrace of the Berghof]
[immediately above, the library of Vidkun Quisling]
[some people have a bookworm, others have a book-cat…]
[above, parts of the library I once had]
Having said the above about Corbyn, look at those who tried to seize his crown! Chuka Umunna (I, admittedly rudely but oh! how truthfully!, call him Fathead Chuka), Liz Kendall (thick as two short planks and quite likely part-Jew), Andy Burnham (I suppose the best of an appallingly-poor group opposing Corbyn), Yvette Cooper (would-be dictator, hypocrite, freeloader and expenses cheat)…Later, Owen Smith MP, a little Welsh windbag, also tried to topple Corbyn and, like the previous rebels, failed.
Would any of the above-named really have had more electoral success than Corbyn? I doubt it.
Labour is now the party of the “blacks and browns”, the public service workers, and those dependent on State benefits.
Then we have the misnamed “Conservatives”. In 2015, the leadership contest to replace David Cameron (Cameron-Levita-Schlumberger) contained:
Theresa May (a hopeless Home Secretary, previously a local councillor and back-room person at the BACS cheque-clearing body; possible part-Jew);
Stephen Crabb, exposed as a serial sex-pest (and ineffective even at that) as well as so pro-Israel that he could well be termed “an agent of influence”; very poor employment record before getting into the MP racket; expenses cheat; in fact, Crabb is a complete deadhead and will probably find a place in my blog category “Deadhead MPs”;
Liam Fox: unreliable, dishonest, expenses cheat, very pro-Israel, with many links to Israel and covert US centres; considered to have generally “dodgy” lifestyle (see Notes, below);
Michael Gove: expenses cheat, pro-Israel extremist, unreliable, dishonest (and in 2019 revealed as having been a frequent cocaine abuser when he was a pro-Zionist Times scribbler prior to latching on to the MP racket);
Andrea Leadsom: nonentity.
What a useless, mostly dishonest and mostly (in fact, all) pro-Israel pack!
Then we have the 2019 Conservative leadership contest, about which I have blogged extensively already, and which, at time of writing, looks certain to be won by Boris Johnson over Jeremy Hunt. I have also blogged re. Johnson, and if I say that I think of him as Boris-Idiot, my view will be clear enough…(though I do favour leaving the EU).
We have seen, particularly in the past decade, institutions which were basically meant to be “non-political”, politicized: Civil Service, police, armed forces, the courts, the Bar (as witness my own unjustified disbarment). Below, the Financial Times agonizes about the “Conservative” approach to the Diplomatic Service, Parliament and the British Constitution.
— The Secret Barrister (@BarristerSecret) April 4, 2019
Somehow, I cannot recall “The Secret Barrister” (((The Secret Barrister?))) or any one of “his friends and his relations” (with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury; in fact, I have no idea of the identity of The Secret Barrister or his connections) at the Bar standing up for my rights, freedoms and civil liberties when I was wrongfully disbarred at the instigation of a pack of manipulative Jews, but “that’s life” (and what goes around comes around…eventually):
Still, his tweet gives an idea of what has happened to the justice system, at least the courts, in outline. There is also the crisis in the underfunded, undermanned, badly-run prisons, and the collapse of the Chris Grayling-idiot privatized probation service(s).
“They” are interfering with the justice system, of course, and even with how judges and magistrates are trained to handle supposed “anti-Semitism”:
Citing CAA research, Judicial College adds International Definition of Antisemitism and section on use of ‘Zionist’ as a slur to its handbook for the @JudiciaryUKhttps://t.co/qBkFwgmhlA
As we have seen (see above), the UK police (certainly some areas or parts of the police) are well-infiltrated now, and politicized to a degree never seen before:
Thank you to our friends at the @JewishPoliceAs for hosting us at their annual #Chanukah party at New Scotland Yard, where we discussed concerns over antisemitism and the Chanukah message of hope and resilience with @MetPoliceUK Commissioner Cressida Dick pic.twitter.com/VoT7hx1DK0
— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) December 7, 2018
[above, Gideon Falter of the “Campaign Against Antisemitism” group and fake charity, with Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick…]
What about the people?
The British people as a whole have been, in the now much-used phrase, “left behind”, and in fact ignored, as well as being repressed, bullied, lectured to. Whether it is the exploitation of the people as employees or private renters, by speculators, whether it is the epidemic of (mainly) Muslim rape conspiracies, or the dishonouring of the votes of the BRITISH majority who voted Leave/Brexit in 2016 (and if you took away all the non-white votes and those of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Gibraltar, the Leave vote would have been at least 70%…and if you took away the cosmopolitan exclave that is contemporary London, Leave would probably have won 80%), whether it is the banning of free speech (by which I mean free speech on matters of history, society and politics), the real people of the UK are being ignored, the needs unmet, their wishes for a better life laughed at.
The Labour Party is the party of the blacks and browns and other (non-Jewish) ethnic minorities, as well as of the entrenched public service employees. It cannot help the British people.
[above, Diane Abbott MP, lampooned during her attempt to become Mayor of London in 2015. She came third, netting 16.8%, in the selection process to be Labour candidate. If Labour form the next government, she will probably be Home Secretary. Have we fallen down the rabbit-hole?]
[above, Emily Thornberry MP, Labour Shadow Cabinet member, at a Zionist dinner in London, photographed with the Israeli Ambassador. formerly a major Israeli government spokesperson, Mark Regev (centre); her husband, a High Court judge, is half-Jewish]
What about the “Conservatives”? The name is every bit as much a bad joke as “Labour”.
[above, Sajid Javid tries to use his brain]
The cartoon, below, from the George Osborne days of 2010-2015, puts the position succinctly
There is every prospect now that a Boris Johnson (“Boris-Idiot”) “Conservative”-label government will plunge the UK into crisis. I am not talking about Brexit alone (which I supported and still support, but it has been criminally mishandled) but about the sheer ineptitude not only of Boris Johnson himself (bad enough) but of those likely to be made Cabinet ministers around him, deadheads like Matt Hancock (a mediocre suited thug), Priti Patel (a proven Israeli agent as well as being as thick as two short planks), Liz Truss (who basically only became an MP on her back), Chris Grayling (a sociopath who has failed in every single government job he has been given) etc.
There is a real and pressing need now for a proper social-national party and organization in the UK. Anything is possible within the next 10 years.
Soon, sooner than many imagine, those of us still alive will be called upon to re-establish European civilization and culture. That may be hard and may be harsh, but it must be done. God mote it be!
The enemy know that the blacks and browns are breeding fast and will soon make “election politics” a waste of time for social-national parties. Look at the tweet below and its photos. Four young London-resident voters…and three out of four non-European, with the fourth possibly partly-European, maybe something such as Cypriot.
and look at these tweets below, look at the crowd registering to vote in South London! Not a white face anywhere (yes, in the cartoon there are a few whites, but not in the real crowd photographed…).
Some of yesterday's highlights from our voter registration drive at Trinity Baptist Church, South London. 😃
Today, the Labour Party committed suicide. It decided both that it is going to back a “second Referendum” or “people’s vote”, and that it will be supporting Remain in that vote. In other words, the 2016 EU Referendum result will be dishonoured and quite possibly overturned if Labour has its way.
I have been predicting this System move for a long time; in fact, my first opinion published after the EU Referendum itself was that the Remain side, which is basically the System’s preferred side, would try every method to overturn the Referendum result. After all, the EU has “form” in this regard, making numerous countries re-take referenda which came up with the “wrong” result, even refusing to deal with governments which contained the “wrong” type of elected politician (in Portugal and Austria etc in the past).
The idea (held by most Remain whiners) that the EU is some kind of “democratic” and “liberal” entity is completely naive. The EU was set up by or under the influence of the sinister Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi
Part of that is the so-called “Great Replacement”, effectively the replacement of the white Northern European peoples by those of other race (blacks and browns etc) and those, in the future, of mixed-race, the outcome of mass immigration into Europe.
My view, published numerous times in these blog pages, has been that the System in the UK and EU would delay Brexit, try to keep Britain in the EU by means of various strategems, or if necessary, to give the UK a “deal” which would effectively be “Brexit In Name Only” (BRINO). Ideally, remaining or BRINO would then be falsely validated by a “second Referendum” under such name as “People’s Vote” or “confirmatory” referendum. So it seems to be happening. I did wonder how long Corbyn himself could sit on the fence.
The possibly deliberate mishandling of the post-2016 Brexit process by the Conservative Party government has now led to the position in which the pro-Remain majority in the House of Commons is determined that the UK will not leave the EU on a “no-deal” (WTO) basis.
I despise Boris Johnson as a politician: he is a charlatan and mountebank, to use old terms, and I have very little faith that he will honour his “pledge” to take the UK out of the EU on 31 October 2019 “if necessary”. However, it is possible that, to save his own skin, if he cannot persuade the Commons to accept a “deal” similar to that the EU offered Theresa May, that Boris Johnson will either cave in to the demand for a second referendum or will appeal over the heads of the parties to the electorate, and hold a general election in an effort to strengthen his hand. A gambler’s gamble.
Alternatively, Johnson may be sidelined quite soon by a no-confidence vote, which will either mean a general election or even his replacement without general election by someone else, presumably Jeremy Hunt. The British Constitution is so vague, relying as it does on a few sentences in Bagehot etc, that that would not, stricto sensu, be unconstitutional.
Labour in a general election
Labour received nearly 13 million votes at the 2017 General Election, 40% of the votes cast. In terms of percentage, that was Labour’s best since Tony Blair in both 2001 and 1997, and before that, Harold Wilson in 1970 (Labour scored over 40% in every general election from 1945 to 1970).
When it comes to House of Commons seats, however, it is a different story. In 2017, Corbyn-Labour won 262 seats with its 40% vote, not much better than the 258 seats won by Gordon Brown’s Labour in 2010, when the Labour vote-share was only 29.1%. In 2001, Tony Blair-Labour won 413 seats on a vote-share of 40.7%.
I think that something more is going on here than just the “glorious uncertainty” and illogicality of the UK First Past The Post and eccentric boundaries electoral system. It is clear that the Labour vote is becoming ever-more concentrated in fewer and fewer constituencies.
Harold Wilson in 1974 (twice), James Callaghan in 1979, and Neil Kinnock in 1987 and 1992, all scored well below 40% in general elections, yet ended up with more seats, considerably more, than Labour won in 2017.
As stated above, it is believed that, out of Labour’s nearly 13M voters in 2017, perhaps 3.5M, though perhaps as high as 4M, had voted Leave in 2016. In other words, about or around 70% of Labour voters voted Remain.
The inference is plain: not only are most Labour voters generally clustered in a relatively small number of constituencies, but the number of 2017 majority Labour-voting constituencies that also had a majority for Remain is even smaller, somewhere around 100.
Labour as a party has been growing distant from its roots, from its core vote, for decades. The industrial proletariat is virtually non-existent, replaced by the “precariat”, economically insecure, politically both apathetic and volatile. The trade unions, though often still linked to Labour, are likewise almost without importance now, all but powerless to help employed persons much, and focussed on “diversity”, “equality”, anti-racism” etc and on ever-more convoluted codes of conduct, politically-correct nonsense, and on support for mass immigration.
As I have commented previously, the Labour “core vote” is now not really the English and Welsh (or Scottish) “working classes”, but the post-1945 immigrants and their offspring and, after them, the public service workers generally, as well as most of the unemployed and/or disabled persons reliant on State benefits.
There are many many seats in the North of England particularly which were rock-solid Labour but which are now less-solid Labour, or are marginal. These are areas which voted Leave, where the English majority (in some cases now, minority) are sick of mass immigration, of cultural decay, of crime and lawlessness, of the patronizing callousness of the self-regarding and self-described “elite” in the msm and Westminster and in the City of London.
A recent opinion poll put Labour on only 18%. Critics said that that was an “outlier” and (perfectly true) that another poll the same week put Labour on 25%. My feeling and view is that Labour will struggle to get even 30% in any general election, i.e. where Labour was in 2017. The big question is where that 30% will be.
Labour’s new unambiguous Remain stance will alienate anyone who regards Brexit (not just Brexit, but the bundle of issues around Brexit) as important. That could be a third of 2015/2017 Labour voters, and particularly in the more marginal seats.
Fortunately for Labour, it looks as though Brexit Party will cripple the Conservative vote nationally. However, Labour too is on thin ice. There is every chance that the new Remain policy will rob Labour of the formerly solid seats in the North.
The Conservatives will fight the next general election against three enemies, but Labour will also be fighting against at least two (Brexit Party being one) in formerly safe seats.
Labour may gain votes in its new core areas, among the blacks, browns, public service people and millennials of London and elsewhere, but at the cost of traditional Labour areas of the North etc. They will not vote Conservative, but might vote Brexit Party out of pure anger. Beware.
If Labour’s new voters are fickle or volatile (as I think that many are), Labour will have lost formerly solid support in exchange for what could be fair-weather votes, leaving Labour, somewhere down the line, with next to nothing.
At present, I still think that Labour might be the largest party after a general election, if held this year or next (the Conservatives are all but on their knees) but I have the feeling that, looking at the medium term (from 2022), Labour has just committed suicide.
Update, 21 September 2019
…from the Independent, “reporting” on beach patrols at Dover; all too typical of the sort of persons 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.”
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”, who are “trying to get to safety”?!
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.
We come soon to the culmination of the farcical Conservative Party leadership election, the result of which will be decided by a simple majority of the supposed 140,000 (possibly only 100,000, though a few say 160,000) members of that party. About 1 in every 300 or 400 UK adults is a Conservative Party member. If two-thirds vote in the leadership election, that means that not only the Conservative Party leader but also the Prime Minister –by default– is about to be elected by perhaps 50,000 or 60,000 people, in other words by about 1 in every 900 adults in the UK. There is something bizarre and even sick about this.
At time of writing (5 July 2019) it looks as if Boris Johnson (for me, Boris-Idiot is the right label…) will win easily. Others say that the race may be closer than most have thought. Either way, very few if any are predicting a win for Jeremy Hunt.
I have blogged before about the contest and also about a few of the main protagonists. Most relevant now would be these:
Returning to my first paragraph, I happened recently to hear some Radio 4 Today Programme interviewer, perhaps Nick Robinson, asking Conservative Party members in Wales their views on what I see as the tragi-comic “leadership” contest. There were about half a dozen or so, all from one local Conservative Association.
Only one in that group was thinking of voting for Hunt; the rest all preferred Boris-Idiot. Only one struck me as in any way thoughtful, a young man (the only one, in fact, who seemed to be of under pensionable age) who was not much taken with either candidate.
What interested me most about that group was the incredible level of both political ignorance and socio-political unreality. One old bird, who sounded around 80, opined (re. Brexit) “we got through two world wars, we can get through this, and I think that Boris is the man to bring the country together.”
Where does one even start to unpack nonsense of that sort? First of all, it implies that Britain somehow endured two massive wars and came out OK (if not “victorious”), whereas in fact the two main open conflicts of the 20th Century crippled the UK and mortally-wounded the British Empire (qua empire), a fact concealed by the very great overall improvement in British living standards since 1914.
Then there is that bit about “Boris” being the politician (surely even the aforesaid old bird cannot regard the idiot as a “statesman”?) who can “bring the country together”. What country is that? Can people really be that blind? There is no “country” to speak of any more. What there is is a geographic space, inhabited by a motley collection of races, ethnicities, social groups, “tribes” (both social and ethnic), lifestyles etc. I do not think that even the old descriptive term “classes” really fits any more. Society has fallen apart to the extent that the idea of a “working class”, a “middle class” or “middle classes”, let alone an “upper class” or “aristocracy”, is not just lacking in credibility but is actually pathetic. That is even if we leave aside the race question.
What is the “working class” now? Anyone who receives less than a designated income? The bottle-throwers of the EDL? “White van man” with his artisan trade and his purchased council house or tract home, complete with Sky TV and an above-ground pool in the back garden? The “chavs” or “chavscum”, with their sub-American “culture” of baseball caps, untaxed cars and drug use? The officially-bullied and taunted unemployed or disabled? The blacks and browns?
Faux-revolutionary scribbler and metro-gay propagandist Owen Jones was unable to shoehorn these new types into the traditional Marxist categories, so conflated proletariat and lumpenproletariat in his book “Chavs: the demonization of the working class“. Unable to find enough steel workers, miners and trawlermen to constitute a viable “working class”, Jones ropes in whatever he can from the poorly-incomed “precariat”: call centre workers, unemployed, retail staff, low-paid office bods etc.
Then we have the “middle class”, or as used to be said, “the middle classes”. Prior to World War Two, these strata were fairly well defined: the “upper” middle-classes (fringing on the gentry and even aristocracy), with their successful, long-established business firms (The Forsyte Saga), Oxford/Cambridge education (Brideshead Revisited, Zuleika Dobson etc), careeerism in the Diplomatic Service, the Bar, the higher ranks of the medical profession, the armed services. Then there were the “middle middles” in management, small business ownership etc. The “lower middle class”, meaning the lower ranks of management etc, were a vast throng, sometimes only distinguishable from “the workers” by the wearing of a tie.
In America, these terms are (certainly now) either not used, or used differently.
Then we have the “aristocracy” and “gentry”, the latter sometimes termed (as late as the 1950s, in novels by the likes of Agatha Christie) as “the County” (the older, more significant, or wealthy landed families in any particular county). This stratum was already being infiltrated by foreign or alien elements as early as the 19th Century.
Winston Churchill was famously half-American. He was not alone. Many ancient or at least old houses admitted an American admixture, usually for reasons of money. Even some Jewish and part-Jewish women married into the English and Scottish nobility. One well-known example was the 6th Duke of Carnarvon, whose ancestral home, Highclere Castle, is today used as the fictional Downton Abbey on TV. His mother’s biological father was a Rothschild: “Rothschild provided a marriage settlement of £500,000 and paid off all Lord Carnarvon’s existing debts.” [Wikipedia] Tens of millions in the money of today.
The 2nd Duke of Westminster was incensed by the way in which Jews were infiltrating the British aristocracy, and (according to his third wife, Loelia) was writing a book on the subject, which book has, regrettably, never been published.
The society which now exists in Britain, especially in England and Wales, is a mixture of the old pre-1939 society, that which developed between 1939 and —arguably— 1979 or 1989, and that which has since emerged.
I think that we have to be quite clear here. At present, we do not have a functioning or sustainable society in the UK. The appearance of one owes much to the older, pre-1989, way of doing things, to institutions which still exist, though badly-wounded: the monarchy, the police, the armed services, the NHS, the Civil Service, local government. The people who grew up in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and even 1960s are carrying on as if Britain is a unified country. It is not. It is a mass of contradictions and absurdities.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s and early 1990s (officially, 1991), huge numbers of people in factories, on farms, attending country rail stations, driving trams, carried on working even though in many cases they were not being paid. The society carried on under its own momentum for a while. Britain is like that socially, politically. More and more parts of British society are either not working properly or are not working at all, but many have not fully woken up to that fact.
If the working classes and to a large extent the middle classes have been replaced by the “chavscum” and “precariat”, the short-term contract people, the here-today-gone-tomorrow little businesses etc, then the former “gentry”, “aristocracy” (insofar as the term has meaning in Britain) and even royals have just become functions of the cosmopolitan wealth-soaked “celebrity” culture, in which it is hard to distinguish between a film star, a pop star, a TV talking head, a Premier League footballer and his WAG, Gary Lineker, Prince Harry or the Royal Mulatta.
As far as the Royal Family are concerned, it is noticeable how there is an almost-complete gulf between the older royals, such as the Queen and Prince Philip and the present generation, with Prince Charles and the others a kind of halfway house. The older royals are recognizably “royal”. One might or might not be “royalist”; that is another question, but no-one could mistake the Queen and consort (whether one “likes” them or not) for “ordinary citizens”.
By the time you get to Prince William and “Kate”, or Harry and the “Royal Mulatta”, there is very little that marks them out as “royal” at all, unless it is ingrained public acceptance (propped up by the msm) and their own huge sense of entitlement, brought home most recently by the endless boring soap opera of Harry, the £2.5 million refurbishment of his new house (work paid for, in effect, by the people) , and the various rumours and tabloid interest around “the Royal Mulatta” (a mixed-race woman, formerly a Hollywood TV actress, and formerly married to an American Jew).
The present generation of “royals” are scarcely “royal” at all: they are educated in ordinary (if expensive) schools and universities, live lives which are carefully crafted to at least seem “ordinary” most of the time, and seem to feel that they can do largely as they please in terms of marriages, children etc.
In fact, it could well be said that the only thing linking the attitudes of the present three generations of royals is their sense of entitlement.
When we look at the more “ordinary” people of the UK, do we see there a “country” which is “united” or which might be “unified” (leaving aside the question of whether a clown like Boris Johnson could “unify” anything)? I think not.
The racial question is also hugely-important. Can a multikulti society survive and thrive? I think not; not for long. People used to point at the USA. Well, look now. Falling to pieces. Britain is about 87% “white” (mainly English), but even that figure is doubtful. If you take out Scotland, and Wales, and Northern Ireland, that figure, now for England alone, shrinks alarmingly. Huge cities and large towns in England now have a minority of inhabitants who are really English.
Looking again at Boris-Idiot:
“The Balliol College Register for 1983 contains an entry that begins: “JOHNSON Alexander Boris de Pfeffel: JOHNSON, Boris – b. 19 June 1964. New York. American. Generally known while at Balliol as Boris Johnson. Eton; Balliol 1983–7.” [Daily Telegraph]
Note that. “American”. At that time, Johnson was considered to be an American, born in the USA, with an American passport, and brought up in the USA and Belgium as well as the UK.
“In reference to his varied ancestry, Johnson has described himself as a “one-man melting pot” – with a combination of Muslims, Jews, and Christians as great-grandparents.”
[Wikipedia]
We see, time and again, and reflective of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion [usually called a “forgery” but better described as “literary fantasy reflecting facts and real events”], that those assigned leading political positions by the New World Order [NWO] and ZOG [“Zionist Occupation Government”] are not Jewish as such but part-Jew. Boris Johnson is one example. David Cameron [Cameron-Levita] was another. Theresa May another. Sarkozy too. This all fits in with the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan, which underpins the EU.
“In his book Praktischer Idealismus (Practical Idealism), written in 1925, [Coudenhove-Kalergi] describes the future of Jews in Europe and of European racial composition with the following words:
The man of the future will be of mixed race. Today’s races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian–Negroidrace of the future, similar in its appearance to the Ancient Egyptians, will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals. […]
Instead of destroying European Jewry, Europe, against its own will, refined and educated this people into a future leader-nation through this artificial selection process. No wonder that this people, that escaped Ghetto-Prison, developed into a spiritual nobility of Europe. Therefore a gracious Providence provided Europe with a new race of nobility by the Grace of Spirit. This happened at the moment when Europe’s feudal aristocracy became dilapidated, and thanks to Jewish emancipation.”
[Wikipedia]
There you have it: a black-brown-white mulatto dustbin race, ruled over by Jews and part-Jews, and/or by freemasons. That is their vision of EU Europe, including the UK. Now you see how it is that the 2016 Referendum result has led to delay, vacillation, huge fear propaganda, plans to hold a second referendum, blah blah blah. All because this goes beyond trade, beyond co-operation. It is a massive international and cosmopolitan conspiracy.
“Hitler did not share the ideas of his Austrian compatriot. He argued in his 1928 Secret Book that they are unfit for the future defence of Europe against America. As America fills its North American lebensraum, “the natural activist urge that is peculiar to young nations will turn outward.” But then “a pacifist-democratic pan-European hodgepodge state” would not be able to oppose the United States, as it is “according to the conception of that commonplace bastard, Coudenhove-Kalergi…”“
[Wikipedia]
As so often, Hitler has been proven to be right. The EU, that “pacifist-democratic pan-European hodgepodge state” is indeed unable to oppose the American expansionism which is in fact better termed NWO/ZOG expansion. It was planned to be like that, secretly. The EU does not stand in opposition to the USA (meaning the NWO) but is at the higher levels tied in with it.
The EU has already begun “the Great Replacement”, the replacement of decent, progressive, evolving European peoples with the backward black and brown peoples who will make suitable slaves for the planned robotic and AI-oriented superstate or “European space” of the near or medium-term future. Below, one aspect of that:
The “Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor” will run from Sweden and Finland, through Denmark, Germany, Austria and Italy to Malta in the south https://t.co/RkhECaQTEw
decide to break EU law and to “invite” untold millions of blacks and browns etc to invade EU territory. This is all part of the plan.
This continues, though now not much publicized. Meanwhile, EU “leaders” [NWO puppets such as Macron] recently met in Marrakesh, where they “decided” to funnel millions more migrants “legally” into the EU, thus not so much disturbing the invaded European peoples. At the same time, they decided to make any criticism of it illegal. The real decisions are of course taken earlier, behind closed doors.
Returning to the UK, to the Conservative leadership farce etc, there seem to be various possibilities when Johnson wins and, however briefly, becomes Prime Minister. The first thing to understand is that Boris-Idiot is no strong character, but a weak and vacillating one. I cannot be sure, but I think that he will probably agree to something with the EU, then try to sell it to the British people as a huge improvement on Theresa May’s “deal”. I doubt that he will, in any real sense, take the UK out of the EU in October 2019. If he does, it will almost certainly be a con-trick. Brexit In Name Only.
One has to ask oneself why the msm have been promoting Boris-Idiot as “Prime Minister in Waiting” for years and years, despite his obvious unfitness for any kind of high office.
Should Boris Johnson really try to take the UK out of the EU on WTO terms, his time as Prime Minister will be measured in weeks not months. It only takes 3 or 4 Conservative MPs to abstain in a confidence vote to effectively remove Boris Johnson as PM. Or for 2 or 3 Conservatives to vote against their own government.
If that were to happen, there would be a general election and one of the first seats to fall would be that of Boris Johnson himself, at Uxbridge. It will be recalled how Johnson at first signed up to the Theresa May “deal” (he wanted to stay in the Cabinet…). How much more will Johnson want to cling on as Prime Minister! He has no honour, no real ideas (beyond schoolboy ones such as garden bridges, cablecars over the Thames, water-cannon, Boris Island etc). He has no ideals, no real ideology. He is also administratively incompetent. He is very likely going to be the worst prime minister the UK has ever had, certainly for the past century or more.
Boris Johnson is looking to be not only one of the least-worthy and least-fitted persons ever to hold that great office of Prime Minister of the UK, but also one of the weakest. Johnson will be a prisoner of Remain-favouring MPs. He has no real desire to Remain or Leave. All that matters to him is being Prime Minister for as long as possible, not to accomplish anything, but just to be there (and to get the perks etc). Money in terms of salary etc is not the main thing, in fact he might lose out, though only temporarily. Memoirs can be penned later and millions paid…
Will Johnson last as PM (assuming that he even gets that far)? Probably not. He is being pulled in various directions, by the DUP whose votes he will need, by the pro-Remain MPs, by the EU. He is as weak as weak could be, politically.
The likelihood must be a 2019 general election.
Beyond that, there is a crying necessity for a serious social-national movement in the UK.
Having watched the above clip, either Boris Johnson is on cocaine, which would be worrying, or he is not, which would be even more worrying. What more can one say? This is somehow an area beyond ideology. It was once said that the Soviet Union was divided into the drinkers and the non-drinkers. Now Britain, whatever its other divisions, divides into, on the one side, those who see that an idiotic, uncontrolled, madly-ambitious, conscienceless incompetent, without ideas or ideals, is about to become, incredibly, Prime Minister of this country, and on the other side, those who either do not see, are too stupid to understand what Boris-Idiot is, or are totally deluded (or both, or all).
If anyone wanted to be convinced of the complete decadence of “democracy” in the UK, I should think that the Boris-Idiot/Jeremy Hunt “debate” (schoolboy level spout-fest) would be enough, judging from –admittedly– the bits that I myself have now seen. As for the audience, they seemed to love Boris-Idiot, I suppose because they, like mobs and crowds of plebs down the ages, from the days of the Roman Empire and even Republic, want to be entertained, want to be pandered to, and above all do not want to have to think seriously.
A small selection of Twitter vox pop
WOW! Just got to the #ITVDebate question on taxes. What a f*cking embarrassment that was all round! @BorisJohnson answering & one-upping a shambles, @Jeremy_Hunt calling people on £51k “rich” and that’s without the pathetic playground squabbling and talking over each other 😤🤦🏼♂️.
— Charlie George Woodgate (@CG_Woodgate) July 9, 2019
"Nonsense" does not give justice to the utter rubbish coming out of their mouths, especially the blonde bi-polar's one. #ITVDebatehttps://t.co/DvJz8k3IP1
— 🕷Francesco Carollo 🇪🇺🇬🇧🇮🇹 3.5% (@Innovandiamo) July 9, 2019
The lady below sets the bar low! What a stupid woman!
Would appear the only votes that count in the Hunt/Johnson circus are the votes of a small minority of the British people: the Conservative Party. How close to dictatorship is this? #ITVDebate
That #ITVDebate was not normal. The Johnson march to Downing Street is not normal. The complete lack of accountability and transparency is not normal. Surely we should be discussing that rather than who scored more debating points?
The Isle of Man isn’t in the UK or the EU. Why are we all so fucking stupid we let this airbed full of porridge say whatever the fuck he likes without question. https://t.co/mugbJVYDKt
Boris-Idiot won by about 92,000 votes to about 48,000. Clear but not overwhelming. “Boris” will therefore become PM today or tomorrow, unless some public-spirited chauffeur runs over him in a ministerial limousine.
92,000 elderly Conservative members have decided that they want Boris-Idiot as Prime Minister. The other 65 million UK residents have no say. All that UK voters can do, in any future Westminster election, starting today, is vote any way exceptConservative.
The reaction has been sharp and is not confined to those who want to Remain in the EU.
Foreign or near-abroad reaction?
'Johnson is a profoundly unserious man wildly unsuited to high office… In normal times, his ineptitude… would hold his country back. In these times of crisis, his character flaws could prove catastrophic' – @IrishTimes view https://t.co/FdivRhdRit via @IrishTimesOpEd
A by-election is to be held in Brecon and Radnorshire constituency (formerly Brecon and Radnor, 1918-1997). Unusually, this by-election has been triggered by the conviction for (what amounts to) fraud relating to the Parliamentary expenses of the sitting MP. Christopher Davies, who had held the seat since 2015, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 50 hours of community service and a fine of £1,500.
The relative leniency of the sentence may reflect the fact that the £700 wrongfully claimed by way of expenses by Davies could have been claimed legitimately (whether approved or not); the way in which he went about it (creating two false invoices amounting to the sum in question) made it unlawful. On a kind interpretation, Davies was stupid or incompetent more than (very) dishonest. Still not very good for him, I would have thought.
The position of the MP and the calling of the by-election
The events around this by-election raise interesting issues.
The news reports say that the seat “has been vacated”, but I have seen nothing about the Speaker declaring it so, a problem which previously arose during the Fiona Onasanya case, when that MP, despite having been sentenced for perversion of the course of justice, and despite a recall petition having been approved by more than the requisite 10% of eligible voters, still sat and voted as MP for Peterborough (including, crucially, in a significant Brexit debate and vote), also getting paid for months.
Davies may or may not, at time of writing, still be an MP. Even the more serious newspapers and the specialized websites (eg Politics Home) have not clarified the position. The Wikipedia entry for Davies says that his removal as MP was “automatic” once the results of the petition were known, but such is not the case. Wikipedia also says that “the seat was declared vacant on 21 June 2019” (today). Perhaps.
The Conservatives must “move a writ” to start the by-election process. In Britain’s unwritten or (more accurately) uncodified Constitution, this is supposed to happen within (usually) 3 months of the seat being declared vacant. After that, the by-election usually happens within 27 days (of the writ having been moved).
In other words, while in theory this by-election could happen by the end of July 2019, it might not happen until late October or, if the Conservatives really stretched the Constitutional proprieties to the limit, even later. Parliament rises for its Summer Recess on 25 July, so if the writ is not moved by then, the very earliest date on which the writ could be moved would be 3 September, after the Commons return, making the earliest by-election date one in late September.
If Davies is still nominally the MP, then he is entitled to his salary and expenses until such time as he is declared (by the Speaker) not the MP.
Christopher Davies, remarkably (bearing in mind that he pleaded guilty to the charges), seems to be breezy about the matter, and has invited his constituents to his local office, in the small Welsh town of Builth Wells, to view and enjoy the 9 landscape photographs which were the subject-matter of the expenses claims in question! I daresay that many of his constituents might wonder why Parliamentary expenses cover such purchases anyway (surely he or the local Conservative Association should have paid?).
Even more remarkably, Davies says that he intends to stand again! The local Conservatives, meanwhile, have not pronounced on whether Davies will be allowed to stand as a Conservative Party candidate! One can see their difficulty: if Davies stands as Conservative candidate, their chance of success is weakened, contaminated by his candidature, but if Davies stands as Independent Conservative or some such, he may draw off at least a few hundred, maybe even a thousand or more otherwise “Conservative” votes. None dare call it blackmail?
Still, one would have thought that simple ethical standards might have come into play, but in the contemporary Conservative Party, it seems not.
Another strange aspect: one would have thought that the two contenders for the Conservative Party leadership would have condemned Davies for his offences, or at least mumbled something neutral, but it seems that both have been “very supportive”.
The constituency
Before 1939, the constituency, under its Brecon and Radnor name, had as MPs persons from the Labour, Liberal, Conservative, Unionist, National and National Liberal parties (the latter three effectively Conservative coalition candidates).
Labour held the seat between 1939 and 1979. From 1979 to 2019, the Conservatives won 3 times, the Liberals/Liberal Democrats 3 times.
The post-WW2 Labour vote peaked in 1964 at just under 58%; its lowest was 10% in 2010. In general, the Labour vote has declined over the years, having not exceeded 20% of votes cast since the General Election of 2001.
The LibDem vote peaked in 2010 at 44.8% (1st placed), since when it declined to about 28% in 2015 and about 29% in 2017; however in both 2015 and 2017, the LibDems were placed 2nd.
In 2017, the Conservative candidate, Davies, achieved a vote of 48.6%, a post-WW2 record for Conservatives in the seat.
The only other (slightly) significant party contending over the years has been Plaid Cymru, which however has rarely retained its deposit in recent decades. Its typical vote share in recent years has been 2%-3%, though it reached 4.4% in 2015 (3.1% in 2017).
A few other parties have stood over the years. UKIP got 8.3% in 2015 (its best in the seat), but slumped to 1.4% in 2017.
The joker in the pack is Brexit Party.
Conclusion
There are some uncertain factors here: will Christopher Davies really stand again, and if so will it be as Conservative Party candidate or as some type of Independent? Will Brexit Party put up a strong candidate? Whatever happens, the Conservatives must be toast here. If Davies stands as Independent, and with Brexit Party now standing, then the Conservative vote will (probably though not necessarily) be even lower than if Davies brazenly stands again as Conservative. Davies does seem to be quite embedded locally, as a former livestock auctioneer, Royal Welsh Show ring commentator and manager of a veterinary practice.
The LibDems are currently strong favourites. The only thing that would or might upset the applecart would be the Brexit Party, now (announced today) entering the fray. Looking at 2015/2017, the LibDem core vote in the seat is below 30%. Even so, the LibDems must be in pole position here. It’s their election to lose.
Further factors
It is plainly in the Conservative interest to delay this by-election as long as possible. Their notional working Commons majority, even with DUP support, is now only four. If Brecon and Radnorshire goes LibDem or Brexit Party, that will reduce to three. Some Conservative MPs are ready to abandon support if Brexit no-deal looks likely. Boris Johnson may be a very short-lived Prime Minister.
The Brecon and Radnorshire Conservatives have reselected Christopher Davies as their candidate.
Davies faces an uphill struggle. While his offence was only marginally dishonest, it was still dishonest. It also showed Davies as both lacking in judgment and as simply inept. Apart from that, there is the point that the Conservatives have rarely if ever been lower in public estimation. Also, this is a by-election and the Conservative Party is in government.
The position has now been clarified. Davies is no longer the MP and the writ is expected to be moved today, Thursday 27 June, having failed two days ago. The by-election is now or soon will be set for 1 August 2019.
In a sense, I am surprised that the Conservatives did not play this more tactically, in view of their situation re. the numbers in the Commons, but there it is.
Now that Brexit Party is standing, the chance of the Conservatives actually winning (especially with a rather discredited candidate) has shrunk accordingly. If Brexit Party gets half of the 2017 Conservative vote, that would give them about 24%. The LibDems are unlikely to get less than the c.29% they got in 2017. Labour got over 17% in 2017.
If Labour does better than it did in 2017, and if Brexit Party does well too, and the LibDems do at least as well as they did in 2017, then all four serious contenders might well get vote shares in the 20%-35% range. If the Conservative vote were to collapse to, say, 10% or 15%, then the other three parties in serious contention might well end up getting about the same vote shares as each other.
This might turn out to be quite close among LibDems, Brexit Party, Labour, and maybe Conservatives too, with the likelihood of placings in that order.
Meanwhile, minor Remain-friendly parties look like not contesting the seat, in order to give the LibDems a clear run. Green Party, Renew, Change UK (probably, if they even bother to make a statement, they are already so marginal), Plaid Cymru (maybe).
Renew has never contested this seat, though it scored about 4% in Newport West recently; Change UK is already a “dead parrot” party, marginal, negligible in support (below 1%); the Greens last contested this seat in 2015, scoring 3.1%; Plaid got 3.1% in the seat in 2017.
If Plaid get on board the non-contest train, the boost to the LibDems must be worth several points, maybe as much as 7%, though more realistically about 5%. Worth having, anyway.
There are so far 4 candidates standing (LibDems, Conservatives, Brexit Party, Labour), with less than 48 hours until nominations close. Plaid Cymru has “indicated” that it will not be standing, in order to give the pro-Remain LibDems their best possible chance. The other pro-Remain parties, meaning Greens and Renew, are both not standing and for the same reason. Any late entries are likely to be vanity or joke candidates and will not at all change the outcome of the by-election.
The LibDems must be in an even stronger position to take the seat now that the smaller parties are not standing. In the last few elections, minor parties accounted for between 5% and 10% of the total vote.
Update, 4 July 2019
My eye was caught by the latest YouGov national opinion poll, as reported by Britain Elects.
If this poll is in any way accurate (and Ipsos Mori put out a very different result only a week ago, which shows how volatile UK politics is becoming), then Brexit Party would actually be the largest party in the Commons after a general election:
Brexit Party 196 seats (130 short of Commons majority), Labour 148, Conservative 169, LibDem 66. That would mean a Brexit Party government with, almost inevitably, Conservative support; possibly a coalition government. Large numbers of both Conservative and Labour MPs would be gone, including half of those recently vying for Conservative leadership.
Thinking about how that might apply to the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, it may be that most of the 2017 Conservative votes in the seat will go to Brexit Party, but they might not. There is uncertainty. Personality often means more in rural constituencies than in urban and suburban ones. Much depends on whether voters regard the Conservative, Christopher Davies, as an “expenses cheat” and/or “fraudster” after his criminal conviction, or whether they will “forgive and forget” his sin/error because they (do they?) regard him otherwise as OK and his offence a technical one.
My view is obviously no more than an educated guess, but I should think that many locals will think that £700 is a ridiculous sum to pay out for 9 photographs anyway. Others will see the dishonesty aspect; yet others may think that the former MP should be given a second chance. Much depends on his personal vote, on his local popularity.
I find this by-election hard to call. However, it must be done. On present facts, I think that Labour has no chance, realistically. It is seen as the party of the blacks and browns now, for one thing. They are few in number in that part of the world, unless it has changed hugely since I was last there. Also, Remain voters will go LibDem here, not Labour, whereas committed Leave/Brexit voters will go Brexit Party or maybe Con.
I think that it is quite possible that at least half the 2017 Conservative vote will defect to Brexit Party. The LibDem vote will be solid now that the party is bouncing in the polls; also, in this seat, the LibDems are not seen as a wasted vote, Brecon and Radnorshire having had LibDem MPs from 1997 until 2015.
If the LibDems can build on the 29% they got in 2017, and I think that they will, then they are in with a very good chance. They might get a vote between 30% and 40%.
I doubt whether Labour will get more than 10% or so.
The Conservative vote may collapse, though I remain unconvinced that it will go much lower than 20%.
Brexit Party, if it can capture disaffected Conservative votes, might go as high as 30%. There is another point, which is whether people who prefer Conservative or Labour will vote tactically for Brexit Party. Hard to say. The LibDems must get at least 30% and may get 40%, so Brexit Party has to get around 40% to have a chance of winning.
Provisional Conclusion (with nearly 4 weeks left to run):
LibDems
Brexit Party
Conservatives
Labour
Update, 5 July 2019
With weeks left to run, the online betting market shows the LibDems as heavily odds-on (about 1/5), Labour (oddly, but the market is thin) on 2/1, Conservatives on 9/1, Brexit Party at 12/1. Political betting is a minefield. The favourites often go down. Labour on 2/1 looks like exceptionally poor value! Brexit Party, however, looks like fairly good value at 12/1. My own valuation of the odds would be nearer to: LibDems 1/2, Brexit Party 2/1, Conservatives 3/1, Labour 10/1, but we shall see.
The confirmed final list of candidates shows the four expected parties (Con, Lab, LibDem, Brexit Party) and two late entrants, namely UKIP and Monster Raving Loony. The UKIP entry will obviously eat into Brexit Party’s chances; to what extent we shall see, though even 500 or 1,000 votes might be enough to sink Brexit Party in the by-election. Looks more like a spoiler than a serious candidature.
The Guardian interviews locals. One part stands out:
“Given that 19% of the local electorate signed the recall petition, almost double the 10% threshold, a surprising number of locals of different party allegiances express sympathy for Davies’s plight. Yet there are some who are adamant that he should have stood down. One council worker tells me that, owing to her job, she’s in electoral purdah and can only speak off the record. “I signed the petition against Chris Davies because he tried to shaft a friend of mine who works in his office, by blaming the expenses mistake on her,” she says. As far as this council worker is concerned, Davies, whom she voted for in 2017, was given a second chance for cynical reasons. “Everyone knows that they didn’t want to put any promising new candidate in,” she says, “because they know they’re going to lose the seat.””
Had a look at Oddschecker betting array. LibDems are hugely odds-on (1/9), Conservatives second at aroung 7/1, Brexit Party about 12/1, Labour 100/1. Not noted were UKIP and Monster Raving Loony. I expect that anyone wanting to throw away a few pounds could ask for and get 500/1 against either of those.
Betting is not always a sure indicator of a election or referendum result, but the LibDems have, as previously said, a lot going for them here: a fairly recent history of providing the local MP, the fact that the Conservative candidate is damaged goods, the fact that those who would have voted for the parties that have voluntarily withdrawn (Green, Plaid Cymru, Renew) will vote LibDem in a contest where Labour is anyway a wasted vote.
Well, “the moment of truth”, meaning that the by-election will be held tomorrow, Thursday 1 August 2019. This blog post has so far had, in about 5-6 weeks, 600+ views, far above the norm for my blog. Brecon and Radnorshire is having its 15 minutes of fame…
The LibDems are in pole position, hugely odds-on with the bookmakers (1/20 in some quarters), with the Conservatives in 2nd place (about 9/1) and (perhaps surprisingly) Brexit Party in 3rd position (as high as 50/1, which may be, at those odds, a value bet); Labour seems out of it at odds of 150-1.
A month ago, I was predicting, provisionally, LibDems to win, followed by Brexit Party, Conservatives, Labour, UKIP (a pure spoiler candidature, it seems) and the inevitable joke candidate, a Monster Raving Loony calling herself Lily the Pink (presumably after the comic song of 1968).
I see no reason to think that the LibDems will not win Brecon and Radnorshire. They have all the Remain votes and so many of the votes of the highly-subsidized local farmers, though no doubt some of the latter will remain loyal to the Conservative Party and its recently-convicted candidate. I do not know what sort of campaign Brexit Party put up in the constituency, but I should imagine that BP might still come second, notwithstanding the bookmakers. If it does not, Brexit Party’s balloon deflates a little more, but many will be looking at the result of the by-election to see whether the Conservative might have won were there no Brexit Party candidate. If the Brexit Party candidature alone meant that the Conservative could not win, alarm bells will sound at CCHQ.
Update, 1 August 2019
Polling day. The betting odds, for what they are worth are (best odds) LibDems 1/18 odds-on; Conservatives 7/1, Brexit Party 100/1, Labour 150/1. The bookmakers, at least, think that Brexit Party is heading for 3rd place. Perhaps.
It may well be that tactical voting is taking place, in particular that Labour supporters, recognizing that Labour has no chance here, are going with the LibDems in order to ensure defeat for the Conservatives (and Brexit Party).
The only significant changes in the betting are the Conservatives taking closer order (yesterday 8/1 or 9/1, today 6/1 or 7/1, and Brexit Party sliding from 50/1 to 100/1.
Looks as if the LibDems have probably nailed it and that the Government’s majority, even with DUP support, is now 1 MP vote.
The LibDems won fairly decisively, but with a smaller majority than the betting might have been suggesting. I have posted links here below.
For me, the most important aspect beyond the headline result is the fact that the Conservative ex-MP would have won, 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 by nearly 2,000 votes. I shall be blogging separately later about the by-election and the implications of that Brexit Party aspect for the national political picture.
The Labour vote had 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%).
The Monster Raving Loony Party got 1% (334 votes), the UKIP spoiler candidate (or was she just irredeemably stupid?) only 0.8% (242 votes).
There is not much sunshine for the Conservatives in this result. Still, ex-MP Christopher Davies can always return to auctioning cattle; and he has some lovely landscape photographs (the subject-matter of his criminal case) for his Builth Wells office. Something to think about as he endures his community service serf-labour…
Ynys Mon, a constituency which (sub nom Anglesey) goes back to 1545, was won by the Conservative Party at the 2019 General Election, only the third time a Conservative Party MP had been elected there, and only the second Conservative MP (the first having been the multikulti supporter, Keith Best [MP 1979-1987], who was convicted, while MP, on charges of having made fraudulent share applications).
As to Brecon and Radnorshire, the Conservative Party won easily, with a vote-share of over 53%, at the General Election. Brexit Party had not stood (rather, withdrawn) a candidate after Nigel Farage stabbed his own supporters in the back.
The present MP for Brecon and Radnorshire is Fay Jones, a rather obscure and youngish woman (34/35 y-o) whose father was also once a Conservative Party MP (and is a prominent freemason in Wales).
The time has come for me to write about the most incredible charlatan and mountebank the UK has seen since the days of Horatio Bottomley.
The background we all know (though when I say “we”, of course I diplomatically pretend to mean “all British people” but in fact mean “the tiny minority who take a serious interest in how the country and society they themselves live in is run”).
In outline, therefore: the UK has a combined political and electoral system that no longer really works. Part of that is the sclerosis of the major political parties of the System.
The LibDems, heirs to the great late 19th and early 20th Century Liberal Party, failed in 2010 to demand (as they had the power to do) some form of proportional electoral system. They are flagging, though may benefit from not being Conservative or Labour, if Brexit Party grows stronger.
Labour is doing well within its boundaries, as the party of the public services and of the “blacks and browns”. In terms of MP numbers, Labour under Corbyn is doing about as well as it has generally done in the past, if one excludes the Tony Blair years:
though it may struggle to get a popular vote much above 30% in future.
Then we have the Conservatives, for long considered “the natural party of government”, but which now struggles to attract votes from anyone much under pensionable age, or from those not in the most affluent 10%-20% strata of the population. Its MPs are mediocre or worse, and its ministers no better. The leading contender to take Theresa May’s purple is now Boris Johnson. He is the leading contender because the Conservative Party is terminally sick. In its healthier days, someone like Boris Johnson would not even be an MP, let alone promoted (briefly, disastrously) to Foreign Secretary; the idea of someone like him becoming Prime Minister would be a joke, rather like that of The Simpsons, c. 1993, casting Donald Trump as a future President of the USA. Jokes are dangerous!
And the parliament elected (49th) was the last where:
-the Tories won the popular vote by more than 10 points. -the last where they had more than 336 seats. -the last where a Conservative govt lasted a full term with a majority of seats intact.
A serious point from Lewis Goodall. It has been a long time since the Conservative Party had anything like a solid majority in the House of Commons (1992; arguably, 1987). 27 or even 32 years:
Serial liar, adulterer & charlatan #borisjohnson says "of course he'll run for the Tory leadership"; how could anyone think otherwise? The sense of entitlement of that useless turd, who squandered millions as London mayor & who was an appalling foreign secretary, is breathtaking.
#borisjohnson If Darren from a council estate had committed arson in Oxford, looting in Iraq, conspiracy to assault, been sacked from 3 jobs for lying, fathered a child with one mistress and caused another to abort, would a third of Tory Party members want him to be the next PM?
“After the briefest of honeymoons,” he wrote, “the voters would quickly start to wonder how this spectacularly incompetent braggart, with a Churchill complex but no Commons majority, had ended up in Downing Street in the first place.”
My enduring image of Boris Johnson is when, for a photo opportunity while campaigning to be London mayor, he held out a £20 note to give to a female busker. Once the photo had been taken, he put the note back in his wallet. That's him in a nutshell – promise anything then renege.
There was a Mafia leader in New York once, John Gotti, who at one time enjoyed the newspaper-invented title “The Teflon Don”, because he was always being arrested and even charged with serious crimes, but who always seemed to get away with whatever. No charges stuck. There is something of that in Boris Johnson.
“Matthew Engel in The Guardian notes [Bottomley’s] ability to charm the public even while swindling them; one victim, cheated of £40,000, apparently insisted: “I am not sorry I lent him the money, and I would do it again”. If London had had a mayor in those days, says Engel, Bottomley would have won in a landslide.”
A transparent reference to the (one-time) Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. Johnson seems able to shrug off, not so much allegations against him, but allegations proven beyond all doubt and repeatedly, against him.
Boris Johnson, journalist trainee (sacked), journalist (sacked), Spectator editor (hopeless, largely absent), MP twice, Shadow minister (sacked), Foreign Secretary (“resigned”), Mayor of London (useless). That’s before we even look at detail, or about his personal failings (easily available elsewhere, so no need to again detail them here).
— Julie Owen Moylan (@JulieOwenMoylan) June 12, 2019
One of the most risible aspects of Boris Johnson is his am-dram reprise of Churchill. Johnson affects not only the voice (slightly) at times, but (also occasionally) the solid buffalo-like massed body posture, hunched, looking down etc. I may have my trenchant criticisms of Churchill’s historical role, but the man was a titan compared to Boris Johnson!
There is something sick here about the Conservative Party, the UK, and the UK’s political system. The Conservative Party consists now of between 50,000 and 120,000 mostly elderly, mostly affluent persons, who are going to vote on a leader. The majority will vote and a majority of those will elect the leader. In other words, about 40,000 or so of those elderly people will, in effect, elect the next Prime Minister of the UK, a position which the “elected” candidate may hold for nearly three years, until 2022!
What kind of fake “democracy” is that?!
What will happen if Boris Johnson wins this contest?
Either Boris Johnson will take the UK out of the EU without a trade “deal” with the EU in place (I am sanguine on that score), in which case there is every chance of his losing a House of Commons confidence vote either immediately or not very long afterward, or Johnson will renege on his meaningless “pledge”, in which case he will be giving Brexit Party a gift worth rubies. Either way, the Conservative Party will be toast. Any loss of a confidence vote will result in a general election in which the Conservative Party might well be wiped out.
The Daily Express (meaning the Jew who owns the Daily Express) has been pushing an opinion poll which says that a Boris Johnson Conservative Party might win a landslide 140-seat House of Commons majority. That is very unlikely, for several reasons.
What Britain needs is a powerful social-national movement. So far, there have been mere straws in the wind only. No movement, no party exists, as yet. An inevitably-disastrous Boris Johnson government might create the socio-political conditions for one to emerge.
(“It’s quite something when Liz Truss, Gavin Williamson and Chris Grayling are three of the brightest people in the room.“)
(“No, he didn’t want to talk about his record at the Foreign Office. Probably because his tenure had been an unmitigated disaster. Rather, he wanted to claim other people’s achievements during his time as London mayor as his own.”)
(“Just as the event threatened to unravel, Johnson remembered his instructions and dashed for the exit. Some journalists shouted that the whole event had been a total disgrace, but for Boris it had done the business. He had got through the day more or less unexamined. Onwards and downwards, further into the cesspit of Tory party politics.”)
(“This was the Tory party in survival mode, reduced to its basest instinct. Things were serious now. The Tory party had decided it must live, and so everything else must die.”)
(“All dignity dispensed with. All integrity gone. Survival is everything.”)
(“The most telling fact of the speech was how bad it was. Boris Johnson is on his best behaviour, but bad behaviour is all he is.“)
(“What was he offering exactly? There was something or other on “investing in the infrastructure this country so badly needs”. His current record on infrastructure is an utterly pointless cable car in east London that recent TfL research showed is used by precisely six actual commuters. It now serves alcohol in the evenings to try and stay afloat.
Then there are the rolling windowless sauna buses, and his decision to make himself chief executive of the London Legacy Development Corporation, and personally see through the execrable Olympic Stadium deal with West Ham United – the only aspect of London 2012 over which he had any executive control, and the only aspect considered to be an utter failure.”)
We keep hearing that “Boris Johnson has the ability to be Prime Minister, but does he have the necessary character?”
My response is “where has Boris Johnson proven that he has the ability?”; on the contrary, he has, if anything, proven that he has not the ability.
Afterthought, 20 June 2019
It occurs to me that some readers, on reading my assertion that Boris Johnson is the most egregious charlatan and mountebank since Horatio Bottomley, may object “what about Robert Maxwell?”, and it is true that Johnson does invite comparison with “Maxwell”.
However, Maxwell was a far more organized and intelligent figure, and in some respects far more sinister (he is supposed to have been Israel’s chief secret operative in Europe). Also, though “Maxwell” was indeed an MP (in the UK) for 6 years (1964-1970), Britain in those days was still decently “anti-Semitic” and (rightly) somewhat “prejudiced” against “Maxwell” (though Britain still allowed him to become an MP, defraud pensioners etc). No-one would ever have even thought of “Maxwell” as a potential Prime Minister.
It is true that Maxwell was every bit as much of a charlatan as Boris Johnson is, but there was an element of seriousness or even tragedy in Maxwell that does not exist in Boris-Idiot. I don’t suppose that anyone would entrust Boris with millions to invest, neither would he know what to do with it, though his incompetence in every sphere would still ensure that every penny was lost! One could ask, “then why is Boris being entrusted with the fate of the whole country?” God knows. I don’t.
Seems that Boris-Idiot and his girlfriend/fiancee (?) had what the police used to call “a domestic”, the neighbours then calling the police emergency line 999. “Our” next Prime Minister”… He is as fit for that position as I might be to take Olympic gold (in any sport).
Well, the idiot has been appointed Prime Minister, most of the Cabinet of Theresa May has resigned, others have been sacked. I shall blog separately about this disastrous new Cabinet of “kings and queens for a day” when it is complete. I just note now that Boris-Idiot has appointed, as Home Secretary, one of the traditional “Great Offices of State”, Priti Patel, who is non-European, thick as two short planks, and a proven Israeli agent. We no longer have freedom of speech in the UK; otherwise I would express what I think should happen to her. I therefore content myself with observing that, had it not been for Idi Amin, she would now be serving customers from behind the counter of a Kampala grocery shop.
Ian Robert Millard 