Time to restart the blog thread. Previous ones are here:
https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/11/11/general-election-2019-daily-updated-blog-no-3/
https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/11/06/general-election-2019-daily-updated-blog-no-2/
https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/11/01/general-election-2019-daily-updated-blog/
16 November 2019
The Sun “newspaper” report about Farage standing down another 38 candidates:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10357962/boris-johnson-election-brexit-party-candidates/
Only a few of those 38 constituencies are likely to elect a Conservative MP by reason of Brexit Party‘s withdrawal, but every seat counts at present. The total of seats withdrawn from Brexit “Party” contestation is now 355.
Apart from that, and despite the fact that I do not and never have supported Brexit Party (or its previous incarnation, UKIP), I feel almost infuriated myself that Farage has let down his thousands of troops in this way. God knows how they themselves feel! At least there was some logic, however mistaken, in the decision of Field Marshal Paulus to surrender at Stalingrad. In the case of Farage, his “army” was intact and fairly up for the fight, with at least some prospect of isolated successes here and there.
I discussed these matters in greater detail in my last blog thread about the election.
The polling experts seem agreed that Labour has “close to zero” chance of a Commons majority, a fact obvious to most people, surely, and for months if not years. The well-known Professor Curtice says that any narrowing of the Conservative lead below 8 points will place the result in hung Parliament territory; Kellner of YouGov, however, thinks that the present strong Conservative lead predicts a Con majority.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10358196/jeremy-corbyn-election-defeat/
I always go with the famous remark of Harold Wilson about a week being a long time in British politics. Only 25 clear days (plus Polling Day) now remain, but that is enough, dependent on events, to change the overall picture.
Police now examine whether the Conservative Party has rigged the election:
The “Labour Party offers free broadband” story is interesting. The msm have been unsure whether to laugh at it, regard it as a serious policy and/or attack it as almost Leninist.
It seems to me that there is an age differential here. A high proportion of those of pensionable age (and I should add, for those unaware, that I myself am now 63, incredibly) probably regard this Labour policy offering as mad or as irrelevant. Many of that demographic either do not use the Internet (quite a few have never used it) or use it only for reading emails and/or for reading the Daily Mail online. Most people of that age, say 65+, can easily afford a broadband service if they want one. Most people over 65 vote, the vast majority in fact, and most of those who do vote, vote Conservative.
When we move to the under-35s and especially the under-25s, we see that, in the 18-24 age group, only about 4% (acc. to some polls) support the Conservatives, and most do not vote. These are they who have never known a world without the Internet. Many are not affluent. A proportion are downright poor.
You can see from the above that those who disparage the Labour “free broadband” idea are those who have no problem getting good Internet provision anyway, who may or may not use the Internet at all, and for whom the Internet is a add-on to their world, not a sine qua non. Also, they are those who probably vote Conservative.
As to those young or younger people who mostly do not vote Conservative, and who probably like the concept of free Internet service, the big question is whether they like it enough both to register to vote and then actually to vote (Labour).
Will this make any difference? A question which may only be answered on 12 December. Britain Elects has this:
A popular policy, in outline.
In fact, this is one of Labour’s better ideas and I do not say so only because I was tweeting about free universal Internet access years ago (before the Jews had me expelled from the Twitter timewasting echo-chamber in 2018). I was putting the idea out there from about 2012.
If Britain is going to become a high-quality tech state, it needs fast and universal broadband, inter alia. It would enable areas more remote, less wealthy, more rural (in some cases. all three) to foster new service and retail enterprises and industries. It also helps to educate the population, educate in the wide sense.
There are other reasons to support the idea of universally-available free broadband. In the Britain of 2019, Internet access is not available freely to all, yet most freelance or other jobs and even most applications for jobs require Internet access. Many State benefit applications now require Internet access. Also, of course, even things which do not require Internet access (e.g. taxing a road vehicle) are done cheaper and easier online.
Some people say “Internet access is available from libraries”, but
- not always free of charge;
- only if there is a local library (many have been closed by reason of “Conservative” cuts since 2010);
- only during (often very limited) opening hours;
- often using outdated computers bought or donated years ago to the libraries.
Such limited access cannot be compared to 24/7 access free at home.
Now to the immigration question. Here is a typical tweet from a System/msm journalistic source:
The idea that (recent non-white) “immigration has been good for Australia” is news to anyone who knows the country. I was there as a child for nearly three years (1967 to late 1969), attended school there (Middle Harbour PS and North Sydney Boys’ High School), had and have relatives there etc. The non-white immigration (since the 1980s) has been disastrous, though the “business community” love it (as in the UK). Of course they do! Lower unit labour costs, more consumers, higher rents etc. For most people though, higher costs for everything (food, property prices and rents etc), lower pay, more stress on roads and all services. When I lived in Australia, the population was 12 million, Sydney about 2.5M of that. Now, 5M or more in the Sydney area, and 25 million in the whole of Australia.
Mass immigration is often not at all positive:
I have not revisited Australia since 1969, but relatives are always going backwards and forwards (four were here recently, one is still here), so I do hear impressions of the situation. About the non-economic consequences too…
The truth is that virtually all System msm outlets in the UK push the “immigration is great for the UK” line. The poor British people, who know that that is nonsense (and that knowledge applies even more to those aged over 60) are ignored, laughed at, ranted at and lied to (etc).
“Law and order”. Saw the piece below (first pub. a year ago), which puts “Shadow Home Secretary” and serial ignoramus Diane Abbott in her place.
https://emergency-services.news/?p=5778
Diane Abbott must be worth a million votes…to the Conservatives!
Update, 17 November 2019
Latest polling (Deltapoll) puts Con on 45%, Lab on only 30%; LibDems 11%, Brexit Party 6%.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7693553/Boris-Johnson-surges-ahead-Jeremy-Corbyn-polls.html
YouGov has reported similar results, though BMG Research says Con 37%, Lab 29%, LibDem 16%, Brexit Party 9%:
SavantaComRes polling:
According to my use of Electoral Calculus, the superficially-similar Deltapoll and YouGov polling would lead, in an election, to divergent results (Con majorities of 110 and 152 respectively), though both showing huge Con majorities all the same.
However, the not dissimilar SavantaComRes polling would leave the Conservative Party 14 MPs short of a Commons majority, worse than the 2017 result. In British general elections, the devil really is in the detail.
We see Labour support slowly growing now. In my opinion, this is mainly a “Stop Boris” surge rather than an “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!” uplift. Those who hate the Conservative Party as it now is are beginning to see that a vote for Labour is their only option in most cases, except in Con/LibDem marginals.
The narrative has moved on from a purely Brexit analysis. Immigration has moved up the agenda. While in theory this plays better for Con than Lab, voters can see that huge numbers have invaded the UK unimpeded even since 2010. Labour cannot be blamed for that.
As cold weather advances, the deficiencies of the NHS come to the fore. That plays better for Labour, overall. The same is true for problems with rail, roads, utility bills etc.
I could hardly believe that, in the past week, Corbyn spoke in support of Gypsies and Irish tinker “travellers”, and against the British Army of the 1950s that fought the evil murderers and torturers of the Mau Mau and its support base, in Kenya. I think that part of Corbyn is not a Labour Party leader trying to speak for the British people (and get elected) but is still a campaigning Islington-residing backbench MP best described as cartoon semi-Marxist. As election speeches, those were a disaster. Fortunately for Corbyn, few voters likely to be swayed even heard or read of them.
Labour’s policy offers of free broadband, more regulation and possible part-nationalization of rail and utilities are meeting with at least some interest from voters, in the teeth of a completely one-sided msm barrage. I think that the days when some semi-literate “newspaper” like the Sun could make or break a campaign are gone. The newspapers are scarcely read anyway, these days, and the outdated “leader” pages and editorials are as out of date and irrelevant as the sermons of John Wesley.
It may be that, except in Con/LibDem marginals, the LibDem vote will mainly migrate to Labour as a way of stopping the Conservatives from winning.
As I see it, there is still a good chance for Labour to hold on to the extent that the Conservatives are denied a majority. If that happens, then the Conservative MPs will have no incentive at all to hang on to this idiotic clown, Boris Johnson, as leader. They only wanted him in the first place because he was supposed to be able to reach out to voters normally resistant to the Conservative Party. If he cannot do that, he is toast.
More from Professor Curtice:
“Ho” news…
Oh dear. Rather awkward…
Aforesaid “ho” gets free foreign trips and £126,000 taxfree from the British taxpayer (thanks to Boris-idiot) and she’s a “victim”, it seems!
“Arcuri says: “It’s caused nothing but utter chaos, destruction and sheer disappointment on many fronts … and as a result I am the collateral damage that’s left behind. I mean the prime minister hasn’t been affected. He puts his head in the sand and looks the other way.” [Guardian]
Boris-idiot leaves chaos and confusion behind him, always. Well, does one expect anything else? After all…(((you know)))…
Recent tweets of note:
The problem (either way) in talking about Labour policies is that it is all but impossible for Labour to get a self-standing Commons majority, so the best it can hope for is a minority government propped up by SNP, odds and sods and maybe (Jo Swinson notwithstanding) the LibDems. It is very unlikely that Labour’s most controversial policies will ever become law and/or be put into effect.
My feeling is that the main two parties are at last starting to converge in the polls, though at time of writing the Conservative Party is clearly still ahead both in headline poll terms and on the majority of issues. However, with 24 clear days (plus polling day itself) to go, there is yet time for the voters to be less sure that they want Boris Johnson to get a real electoral mandate.
The election is clearly the Conservative Party’s to lose, but it may be that, despite Labour support collapsing all over the country, that is what will happen, resulting in another hung Parliament. If LibDems, whose preferred candidate in a given constituency has no realistic chance, switch tactically to Labour, if Labour supporters whose candidate has no chance switch to LibDem candidates (in Con/LibDem marginals), and if former Brexit Party supporters prefer a Lab vote to a Con one (as may be the case now in the North and elsewhere), then a hung Parliament is once again a not-unlikely outcome.
NHS moving up the political agenda:
https://twitter.com/SkyeCitySeries/status/1196126457476636672?s=20
Update, 18 November 2019
Once again, the msm tries to make out that Corbyn is not far from being a Russian agent (ironic, in view of the storm around Russian money and Boris-idiot…). In fact, getting rid of Trident is a perfectly respectable policy position. Michael Portillo, a former Defence Secretary in the John Major Conservative Party government of the 1990s, has said that Trident is not useful. That is right. Trident is hugely expensive and, equally important, cannot be used independently of the USA. It is not an independent deterrent. It does not do what it says on the tin. Were Trident ever used, it would guarantee the complete or almost-complete destruction of the UK, a geographically-small state (unlike the USA, Russia and China).
As to mass immigration, yes, there Corbyn is vulnerable (and seems unable to dissemble about it). He actually thinks that mass immigration is good for the UK. In his world, his milieu, people probably agree. His problem is that most British people do not agree.
Corbyn’s only defence on immigration is that he himself has been so far responsible for none of it. Au contraire, it was the msm-approved, Jewish lobby-approved, “Centrist”, Blair and Brown governments that deliberately imported millions of immigrants (migrant-invaders) with the express though secret intention of destroying the UK’s race and culture. Whistleblowers have since revealed the truth, and that the ones really pushing for mass immigration were Jewish, including Barbara Roche and Phil Woolas (both now disgraced and removed from Parliament): https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/press-article/83/was-mass-immigration-a-conspiracy
In fact, the “Conservatives” have always secretly been pro-immigration too, in government. Look at the years 2010-2019…Big business loves mass immigration: lower unit labour costs, more consumers etc.
Labour tries now to move the news agenda on, away from Brexit and away from Corbyn’s personality and controversial connections:
An example of what “Conservative” misrule has brought to the UK in the past decade:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/man-collapses-dies-job-centre-20906100
Corbyn cannot be blamed for this:
Britain is being invaded, by (inter alia) boats crossing the channel. Hundreds daily; and all Priti Patel (posing as Home Secretary) does is to make “tough” statements meaning precisely nothing. She also wants to bring in more Indians “legally”.
More “ho” news:
Below: in the Age of Wokeness, the well-used mis-quotation now reads “Hell hath no fury like a ‘ho’ scorned”…
Interesting piece re. Brexit “Party”:
https://bylinetimes.com/2019/11/15/the-great-brexit-party-swindle/
“The Conservatives might win Bolsover”
https://twitter.com/virgosam70/status/1196476734868201473?s=20
The report is interesting both in itself and in its implications.
Bolsover is or was one of the rock-solid Labour safe seats.
I have never thought much of Dennis Skinner. For me, he personifies a kind of old Labour wilful ignorance that is best buried: in favour of the disastrous 1939-45 war against Germany, wilfully ignorant about Stalin’s Soviet Union etc. A cartoon view of history, especially 20th Century history. No real ideas about how to improve Britain (if Skinner ever had any original or interesting ideas, I never heard them). Just a grouchy surliness and defeatism posing as “socialist” “resistance”. I dislike many of his stances on social policy too:
“Skinner has voted for equalisation of the age of consent, civil partnerships, adoption rights for same-sex couples, to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, and for same sex couples to marry,[15] and has a strongly pro-choice stance on abortion. On 20 January 1989, he talked out a move to reduce the number of weeks at which termination of a pregnancy can be legally performed in Britain by moving a writ for the Richmond by-election.[16]”
[Wikipedia]
Skinner is of course rather old now [b.1932] and is not really au fait with much of contemporary life:
“In 2014, he was voted off Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC).[7] In the same year, he stated that he has never sent an email and does not have a Twitter account.[27]” [Wikipedia]
Having said that, Skinner is said to be a very good constituency MP. He is a rarity in the Commons in coming from a genuine old proletarian background: mother a cleaner, father a coal miner, and he himself a coal miner for 15 years (though he claims 20) before he became the President of the NUM in Derbyshire aged only 32 (he later became a councillor at Clay Cross, Derbyshire and attended Ruskin College, Oxford for a while). He has been MP for Bolsover since 1970.
Despite being a bit of a self-caricature, Skinner is —at least mainly— authentic. He is not a careerist, not corrupt, not an expenses cheat, fraud or freeloader, though his personal partner for the past 22 years has been his long term researcher/assistant, an American Jewish woman now 70 called Lois Blasenheim, said in 2012 to be then paid ~£35,000 a year (considerably more now —up to £50,000— if still en poste) via Skinner’s expenses. Crucially though, she was his assistant prior to the personal relationship; i.e, no scandal. In any case, Ms. Blasenheim is said to be wealthy in her own right and, when she met Skinner, had a house in Carlyle Square, London, where houses (now, at time of writing) average £8M in value. I have no idea whether she and Skinner now live there. Probably.
Skinner’s views are genuinely held. On the negative side, he is in a mental-ideological straitjacket, and has no really developed ideas about how to evolve UK society (let alone Europe or the world) to higher levels. He is obviously unable even to comprehend the many bad things that mass immigration has brought to the UK over past decades, and I have never heard anything of his against the Jewish lobby in the UK, though he did vote against the Iraq war.
The importance of Bolsover is, of course, as symbol. Labour has, in the past, scored vote-shares as high as 80% (1950; 1966) and was still getting well over 50% and usually over 60% (even over 70%) until 2010, since when the Labour vote has stuck around 50%.
50% is still very high, but the Conservative vote, before 2017 always below 30% and often below 20%, rose to over 40% that year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsover_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections
Now?
“It wasn’t the Conservatives who shut the pits,” he adds. “It was Arthur Scargill who let us down by not having a national ballot. They were tough times for us. We had to come out and couldn’t go back.
“We were Labour people then, but now we are leaning to the Conservatives to get Brexit done and because of immigration.” [inews]
“Drive up the hill out of town today and you can see why the site of the old colliery is once again a source of tension.
After the pit closed in 1993, the 930-acre site was turned into a business park and half of it was given over to billionaire Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct. By 2016, figures suggest the firm’s warehouses were employing 3,500 agency workers – mainly from eastern Europe.
Anti-social elements
Hundreds of protesters marched on the site saying it was attracting “anti-social elements” from abroad. There were also claims of a clash of cultures in the town – with a local newspaper reporting that gangs of men were drinking on the streets and leaving women and pensioners feeling intimidated.
“People are annoyed because there has been an influx of people from Europe because of Sports Direct,” says Yvonne Chapman, 74, who is shopping in the market square. “We’ve seen the effects of immigration here. That’s why people want Brexit.”
“I come from a mining family,” she adds. “My dad and my granddad were miners. It goes back centuries. But I think we’re all voting Conservative now. I don’t even know the name of their candidate. I’ve never needed to know until now.”” [inews]
“Back in the market square, 76-year-old Douglas Steel has just stepped out of a cafe with his wife Connie. The pair met at a fairground in this square back in 1962. He is hobbling on crutches – a reminder of the back injury that finished his mining career at Shirebrook pit in 1987.
“I was born right there above the bank in 1944,” he says. “We had no electricity and I was born by gaslight. I joined the union when I was 15.
“During the miners’ strike, I had no choice but to go back to work. I needed to for the sake of my family. It was the bully boys from Doncaster who kept us out. They came down here and smashed people’s gates to make bonfires.“It makes you cry what’s happened to this town. It used to be together. But the town is shattered now.” [inews]
You can see the dilemma the voters of Bolsover have: they want both nation and society. Social nationalism. Labour have ignored them, their MP is a dinosaur living in the 1970s if not 1940s, so they blindly thresh around, even thinking of going against a century of inward-looking Labourite socialism and voting “Conservative”, despite the evidence before them that globalist capitalism is no answer to their problems.
It might still come good for Labour in this election (to the extent of at least not being half wiped out) but Labour remains in deep trouble, with only 22 clear days left. When 40% and maybe even 50% of the voters of Bolsover are thinking of voting Conservative (not even LibDem, Brexit Party, UKIP or whatever), there has been a sea change.
It can be seen that the Bolsover voters are not voting for Conservative Party policies or people but against immigration and stagnation. Dennis Skinner, 87 years old Labour Party machine dinosaur who has never sent a email and who is like a living relic from some bygone era, is a symbol himself, of a Labour Party which ceased to exist at least 22 and probably 27 years ago.
Labour, as I have often said, is no longer the party of the proletariat, because the “proletariat” no longer exists (in significant numbers) even in the once-industrial North of England. Labour’s strength lies now in the blacks, browns, the public services (somewhat), the 20% dependent on State benefits. That strength is concentrated in large cities only, or at least mainly.
The UK is ripe for social nationalism. There needs to be a party. People cannot support or vote for or fight for a party that does not exist.
Good points from Peter Oborne about how Boris-idiot has been given a fair wind and an unfair advantage by the msm for the past 20 years; I have been saying that for years:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/18/boris-johnson-lying-media
https://boris-johnson-lies.com/
Update, 19 November 2019
Brexit Party is still about 5% in the polls. It is an irrelevance and is now becoming an embarrassment. My blogging, for several months at least, about how Nigel Farage —despite his crowdpleasing and oratorical gifts— is a poor politician and strategist, has been proven accurate. As with UKIP, Farage has not set up a decent party administration, has had no Westminster success and has failed to break the “3 main parties” System scam. He could have done it but, as with UKIP, was unwilling to put forward radical social-national policies, and so remained “national-conservative” and far too close to the Conservative Party.
Farage also did something else that he did at UKIP— betrayed his followers.
Brexit Party is a dead duck. Farage’s own actions have killed it stone dead. Idiot.
Brexit is not the only fruit
General Election 2019 in the UK, freedom of historical inquiry is not permitted, and look at who is milking it all— “them”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7699869/Tory-candidate-suspended-party-online-comments.html
Pity that the “Conservative” candidate in Aberdeen North does not have the steel to tell the Zionists to get lost…he needs more fibre in his diet, or in his character.
Labour is –possibly, maybe…I think— slowly catching up, and Boris-idiot’s lead as “best candidate to be PM” is diminishing fast:
Update, 22 November 2020
Well, as I predicted, Dennis Skinner lost his seat at Bolsover. A remarkable result all the same: Labour and Skinner ended up with just under 36% of the votes cast, the Conservative Party candidate getting well over 47%.
What made the result even more remarkable is that a Brexit Party candidate actually stood, one of the few that did in the end, and moreover got 9% of votes cast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsover_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s.
It is a open question as to the result had a Brexit Party candidate not stood. It may be that the Conservative Party candidate would have attained as much as 56% of the vote.
Even so, this result represented a sea-change. The Conservative was a gay, and also an employee of a private health company! The new MP for Bolsover!
Dennis Skinner’s binning at Bolsover shows that the old Labour type (even where assisted by the Corbyn/Momentum-style “counter-Reformation” “socialists”) will never be popular again. That old-style 1930s-meets-1960s “socialist” type, with its focus on “anti-fascism”, “No Pasaran!”, “the Battle of Cable Street” and “Jarrow Hunger March” banners, is dead and buried in the Britain of 2019 and 2020.
[Brave antifa inciter Stuchbery, crying his eyes out when one of his chickens came home to roost]
Ian Robert Millard 