Tag Archives: General Election 2019

Boris Johnson, Brexit, Conservative Friends of Israel, elections, Jewish lobby in UK, MPs, Party Politics, Uncategorized

If Food Supplies Are Held Up Because of Brexit, The Conservatives Are Toast

18 Comments

The failure of the so-called “political class”, aka Westminster Bubblers, is manifest more clearly every day. We now know, if we did not already know, that the government of this country is in the hands of incompetent chancers, that the Opposition is in the hands of bad jokes, that the British Constitution is not a finely-tuned machine but a broken bit of clockwork, and that the Queen is about as much use as a human rubber stamp.

Brexit looms, but the fact is that now it either will not happen at all or will happen only in some very vague way (Brexit In Name Only). The only way that it can now happen as a real thing is if Boris Johnson, for reasons of blatant self-interest, manages to get it over the line, and that is looking increasingly unlikely.

In the law, a saying was always “justice delayed is justice denied”. Apply that to the 2016 Referendum.

 

Now no-one expected that the UK would leave the EU the very next day. There are processes, procedures, timetables etc. However, the British Government, or what passes for it, should have within a short space of time triggered the Article 50 process, which (under the Lisbon Treaty) gives a state wishing to exit the EU two years in which to complete the leave process. In fact, Theresa May did not even send the triggering letter for nearly a year after the 2016 Referendum; she then asked for extension of time when the process should already have been completed.

Had the 2-year process (it can be less— 1 year, 18 months, whatever) been started soon after the Referendum result, the whole Brexit process would have been finished by the Autumn of 2018 at the latest. Now here we are, more than a year later, and with no obvious closure in sight.

I always said, right from the start, that a huge campaign would be waged by the international conspiracy to keep the UK in or tied to the EU. The EU is a major building-block of the New World Order strategy. The UK is a major building-block of the EU. You get my meaning.

I favour the UK getting out of the EU, I favour Brexit, but the Brexit process has been so criminally mishandled that it is hard to avoid the conclusion that that mishandling was done deliberately.

Whatever the truth of all that, the fact is that the sheer duration of this whole process, which has now gone on for over three years, has not only delayed democratic decision from being implemented, but has denied democracy itself. Now it is said by the Remain partisans that it is so long since the 2016 Referendum that huge numbers of people have changed their minds or even just died, and so it is bizarre to implement the Referendum decision.

That view is not without force: the process has dragged on. People may well have a different view now, but that is in part why the process should have been expedited and handled properly. If a general election were called and held and if then the results were delayed in being implemented for 3 or 4 years, I daresay that many people would start to say “I have changed my mind!”…

So here we are, still in a state of uncertainty. I cannot say whether the UK will leave or (in the Remainers’ propagandistic “transformational vocabulary”) “crash out” of the EU “without a deal”, i.e. on basic WTO terms, or whether some “deal” not very dissimilar to Theresa May’s one(s) will be accepted both by the person presently posing as Prime Minister and by the UK Parliament. It is an open question as I write.

What about the next election?

It now appears that any general election will not be called until October (assuming that Parliament is not recalled until October) and so may not happen until November, or even later.

Boris Johnson wanted to make the next general election all about Brexit. That way, fervent pro-Brexit voters would join with those who would vote Conservative-label whatever, giving the Conservative Party a Commons majority fuelled by Brexit anger. That has now been denied to him.

As time goes by, the inadequacies so obvious in Boris-Idiot will become ever more apparent. That is a major reason why Boris needs a swift election. Time is not on his side, in my opinion.

At present, most of the opinion polls put the Conservatives well in the lead, by 3, 5, 10, even 14 points over Labour. Neither the LibDems nor Brexit Party are at 25% in the polls, though a recent outlying poll had the LibDems close to 20%. A national average below 25% will not change political history.

In 2005, the LibDems got 22%, then increased that to 23% in 2010. In 2015, the LibDem vote declined to 7.9%, and in 2017 to 7.4%, but the LibDems’ propensity to embed themselves in particular seats meant that they retained 8 seats in 2015 and (by reason of Britain’s mad and unfair FPTP voting system) won a total of 12 seats in 2017.

At present, the Conservatives are polling generally above 30%, in one outlier at 35%. Labour is in the doldrums, somewhere in the 23%-29% range. That is very poor, bearing in mind the overall situation.

Present polling would place the Conservatives in Commons-majority territory, though the size of that majority could be anywhere from single figures to triple figures.

The Jews have been on Corbyn’s back for years, and he has (perhaps typically) chosen to ignore the threat from them rather than take the war to them. So he has chosen (along with John McDonnell) to parrot “holocaust” nonsense and the like (eg on officially-marked “holocaust” days), rather than fight the lies and fakery of the whole “holocaust” scenario and mega-scam. Meanwhile, Tom Watson, Corbyn’s supposed deputy, someone completely in the pocket of the Jewish lobby, has chosen this crucial time, of all times, to highlight yet more “Labour antisemitism” propaganda!

In other words, Labour remains a house divided and in fact divided in more ways than one. That does not attract voters. Also unattractive to much of the electorate is the fact that so many Labour MPs now are blacks and browns. The Labour core vote now is really the black-brown part of the population, together with public service workers (notably NHS) and others paid or supported via State monies of one kind or another.

The white British voters are mostly not voting Labour now: the Scottish ones mostly vote SNP and Conservative (about 70% in all), whereas the English are voting primarily Conservative (42.4% in UK in 2017, but that figure disguises a higher percentage in England itself). It is not that voters generally like or respect the Conservatives, but that Labour is a complete turn-off for many. A vote not for, but against…

Labour however has some good cards to play in terms of policy: rail nationalization, utilities regulation, rights of tenants and employees. It is just that it is not being allowed by the pro-Conservative/pro-Israel msm from putting that message effectively to most voters. There is also the point that, despite the complete unfitness of Boris Johnson for public office, his age and vigour (albeit misdirected vigour) helps him vis-a-vis Corbyn, who is presented in the msm as old and (by implication) useless.

I do not see Labour as coming back, in electoral terms, in most of England and Wales outside London and the West Midlands/Northern rustbelts. Could anything change that? There is one thing. Breakdown of public order and/or resupply of basic goods.

The Yellowhammer report, if accurate, indicates the possibility of shortages of fuel, medicines, even fresh food, if the UK leaves the UK without a “deal” of some kind. If that were to happen, then people would rapidly turn, not to Labour, as such, but against the Conservative government.

There are other nuances: Brexit Party has deflated from its stellar start, and the Conservatives have rejected an electoral pact, but if the UK does not fully leave the EU in reality, Brexit Party, like Antaeus, would contact its native earth and be reinvigorated. That would cut into the Conservative vote. On 15%, Brexit Party weakens, but not mortally, the Conservatives’ chances; on anything over 20%, Brexit Party would cull dozens if not hundreds of Conservative MPs even if Brexit Party itself were to win few seats.

Another Con Coalition?

Jo Swinson, entirely in the pocket of the Jewish lobby, has now said that she would never “work with” Corbyn (because of “anti-Semitism”, she says; but she is completely pro-finance capitalism anyway). That would seem to rule out a coalition or arrangement with Labour (so long as Corbyn heads it); it does not rule out a coalition with the Conservatives.

Conclusion

I should say that, at this stage, despite most polls showing the Conservatives many points ahead of Labour, the next general election is quite open. It is unlikely that Labour can win a Commons majority, but it is just about possible that, if chaos or the appearance of chaos soon rules, Labour could, if largest party, come to an arrangement with the SNP and smaller parties (Plaid, Greens, some Northern Irish) to form a minority government.

A Boris Johnson government with a real majority would be a catastrophe. You might as well relocate the UK government to Tel Aviv.

Much depends on whether Boris Johnson makes major mistakes between now and then. Apart from that, the election may well be dependent more than usually upon…events.

Notes

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum/results

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7458401/Labour-Leave-voters-switch-Nigel-Farages-Brexit-Party-vote-Tories.html

 

Update, 14 September 2019

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/13/criminal-gangs-will-cash-in-on-no-deal-brexit-police-warn

Update, 15 September 2019

The opinion polls are all over the place: Opinium just published this poll:

…which would give the “Conservatives” a Commons majority of as much as 92.

On the other hand, ComRes has published this (see below), which might see Labour as the largest party in the Commons (265 seats as against the Conservatives’ 261) but about 61 seats short of a majority, in which case the only way in which Corbyn could rule would be via an arrangement with the SNP (Jo Swinson having already ruled out the LibDems, who on this showing might have 45 MPs), with Plaid Cymru, Green and Irish MPs in the mix. What would the SNP want as an inducement? Probably more funding for Scotland, and the right to call another Independence referendum whenever they like. I imagine that the Kremlin will be taking a keen interest, in view of, inter alia, the nuclear submarine bases in Scotland.

Update, 22 September 2019

The two latest polls indicate the political uncertainty about: the YouGov poll might mean a Conservative plurality in the Commons, but no majority (perhaps about 6 short of a majority, so not so different to the present situation); the Opinium poll, in a general election, would give the Conservatives a Commons majority of around 156!

Enthusiasm lacking at the 2019 Conservative Party Conference!

Boris Johnson, Brexit, Conservative Friends of Israel, elections, Jewish lobby in UK, Labour Friends of Israel, MPs, Party Politics, society, Uncategorized

Boris Johnson, A Kind of Coup d’Etat and the Likely Early General Election: Thoughts

109 Comments

https://twitter.com/election_data/status/1167432703035236352?s=20

The Brexit mess has become entangled with the straight party-political fight. There are many who despise the Conservative Party who are quite hard-line Leave/Brexit partisans. Me for one. To be pro-Brexit is not necessarily to be pro-Conservative Party, and still less to be in favour of Boris Johnson.

The most recent polling (even more recent than that shown above) shows that most voters oppose the tactical prorogation of Parliament, a higher percentage than those who simply oppose (or support) “no deal” Brexit.

This prorogation feels like a coup d’etat even though, in strictly factual or logical terms, it is not one. This may be because the prorogation does not stand alone. At about the same time as the prorogation has been announced, the eminence grise in Johnson’s wake, Dominic Cummings, has taken it upon himself to sack a Special Adviser (SpAd) even though said SpAd worked to Sajid Javid, who was not even informed until the matter was a fait accompli.

There’s more. Boris Johnson is apparently “considering” preventing Conservative MPs who do not show complete loyalty to him over the Brexit matter (or otherwise?) from standing as MPs in a future (perhaps even the upcoming) general election.

These actions display a mindset which could be called dictatorial or even tyrannical. There are some people who should never hold power, not even so much because they might exercize it in a dictatorial way, but because they would misuse it in a tyrannical way.

The mindset of Boris Johnson is basically tyrannical. When he was Mayor of London and (co-incidentally) large-scale riots erupted, he veered between complete panic and a kneejerk tyranny which included his decision to buy water-cannon, which weapons in the end were never used and in fact could not be used (because not approved by the Home Office for use on British streets). Boris-Idiot is useless in a crisis.

People of Britain….beware. This rootless, part-Jew, part-Muslim-origined narcissist, born and largely brought up overseas, will say, or do, or promise, anything at all to get what he wants, which is (and is only…he has no real ideology or ideals, or even plans) to be in the spotlight.

One can only dread what might happen to this country if Boris Johnson is actually able to have and exercize real power, actually able to pass laws directly affecting the people of the UK and their lives. He is unrestrained by any feeling or understanding of, or for, law, ethics, religion, or even simple decency.

Only one thing stands in the way of Johnson— his non-majority in the House of Commons. It now looks as though Johnson’s plan is to use Brexit to achieve a (misnamed) “Conservative” majority in the Commons. Typically, the msm has got it wrong. Johnson does not want a majority to enforce “no deal” or other Brexit. Au contraire; he wants to use the Brexit situation to gamble on getting that Commons majority, after which he and his pro-Israel, pro-Zionist, pro-finance-capitalist Cabinet of criminals and agents of Israel will start to destroy what is left of the freedoms, rights and public decencies left in the UK.

Not long ago, a few months ago, even a few weeks ago, it was possible to think that the Labour Party might become the largest party in the House of Commons after the next general election. I do not think that that is at all likely now.

The Conservative Party can only get a majority in the Commons if Labour is unpopular. That binary choice —Conservative/Labour— was axiomatically the way things were in past decades. The three-party and four-party politics (if the SNP is included, five-party politics) of the past 10-20 years altered that binary, but have not replaced it.

If Brexit Party, or the LibDems, or any other party, could get above (about) 25% of the popular vote, then whichever party did that would reach the FPTP tipping-point and would have a large bloc in the Commons. Below that imprecise level, and the party concerned either gets no MPs or a handful, depending on the degree of concentration of votes in particular constituencies rather than across the board. The Germans, as always, have a word for such concentration, the Schwerpunkt. In 2015, UKIP had no Schwerpunkt anywhere, “only” 12.6% of the popular vote. Result: only 1 MP.

The record low vote-share registered for a successful candidate in a Westminster election was that achieved by Alasdair McDonnell of the SDLP at Belfast South in 2015: 24.5%. That illustrates rather well the problem faced by non-main parties. The Green Party has only ever had one MP, Caroline Lucas. She was elected for Brighton Pavilion in 2010 on a vote-share of 31.9%. The national vote for Green Party was below 1%. In fact, at the General Election 2017, the Green Party still got only 1.6% (a decline from the 3.6% won in 2015), but Caroline Green’s own 2017 vote went up to 52.3%. In 2005, the Green Party candidate at Brighton Pavilion got a 21.9% vote but that was not enough to win (he came in 3rd).

Leaving aside unusual circumstances, exceptional candidates, fairly equal 3-way or 4-way splits in a constituency etc, a party needs about 25% or more  across the board to succeed. The recent polls (meaning those taken since Boris Johnson became leader of his party) all put the Conservatives well ahead of Labour, in one or two cases 11 points ahead. Not that voters generally like Johnson, but even fewer rate Jeremy Corbyn.

Corbyn not only scores below Johnson on every indicator (except “is he ‘caring’?”), but Corbyn, as “potential Prime Minister”, scores even below the LibDem leader, Jo Swinson! JO SWINSON! What can one say? Yes, of course the Jew-Zionist termites in the msm have trashed Corbyn for 4 years, but that is not the whole story. The anti-Corbyn propaganda has been able to hugely amplify Corbyn’s real deficiencies.

Labour is now a point or two behind, not the Conservatives (they are, incredibly, miles ahead of Labour) but the LibDems! The figures differ slightly, but tell similar stories. The most significant fact of all, though, is not that the Conservatives are ahead of Labour, nor that the LibDems are ahead of Labour (the latest poll, from DeltapollUK, in fact has Labour ahead of the LibDems) but that both are below that 25% Rubicon (Con 35%, Lab 24%, LibDem 18%, Brexit Party 14%).

The above poll would, even without any Con-Brexit Party electoral pact, give the Conservatives a Commons majority of somewhere in the region of 124. If that were to happen, there could, somewhere down the line, be actual civil war breaking out, bearing in mind the kind of policies the Cons would implement, e.g. getting rid of State pensions for the under-75s (the first State old age pension brought in by Lloyd George in 1911 was from 70 years of age).

As I have blogged previously, the Labour Party is now, at core, the party for the ethnic minorities, the NHS and other public service workers, and those dependent on State benefits (excluding pensioners). That is why it struggles to get beyond 30% in elections (eg the recent Peterborough by-election).

The Labour Party, at this time of national importance, is almost invisible. I do not entirely blame Corbyn. The previous ZOG/NWO “Labour” governments of Blair and Brown betrayed the (white, esp. English, Welsh) British people in various ways. Corbyn-Labour has tried to reconnect, but how can it when Labour puts up deadheads such as Kate Osamor and Fiona Onasanya as MPs? How can it, when Corbyn expresses support for Irish tinker “traveller” riff-raff and “Roma” thieves and scavengers?

This is not just me talking. Look at those polls, such as the Survation graphic at top of this blog article. Boris Johnson, Conservative Party leader, a part-Jew, of cosmopolitan origins, who attended Eton and Oxford, where he even belonged to the Bullingdon Club, scores better than Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on “does he have the common touch?”! You really could not make it up.

It pains me to have to say it, because Corbyn is at least anti-Zionist (though cringingly half-heartedly when it comes to the Jewish lobby in the UK and France), but I think that Labour is unsalvageable now, whether under Corbyn or not.

Labour is “socialist” now, at least more than at any time since 1997 or even 1992, but that is not enough. It is not “national” in the sense of “nationalist” (neither is the Conservative Party, but Johnson pretends to be, sometimes). What the voters really, unconsciously, want is social nationalism, but there is no party offering that in an acceptable way, and no major party offering it at all. Hence voter apathy.

Can Labour do anything to salvage what might be a general election as soon as November or even October? It could. Whether it will, who knows? My points:

  • If Labour really hit hard on how the Conservatives intend to attack pensioners via sharp and swift increases in pensionable age, via cuts to old age care, via other cuts to pensioners’ incomes;
  • If Labour really went all out to save its white English vote;
  • If Labour made, harder, the points where it has voter support: railways, old age care, utilities; NHS funding, education;
  • If Labour really went into all-out attack on the Jewish Lobby, especially in terms of msm coverage of Labour itself, but also in terms of attacking exploitation of British workers by horrible predators such as Philip Green;
  • If Corbyn stops being or seeming invisible and inaudible.

I have no confidence that Labour can do any of the above effectively. It is in a ghetto of blacks, browns, NHS employees, and people reliant on State benefits. However, these are its core support areas. If it is thought to have abandoned them, Labour might well do even worse.

Brexit Party is proving to be a damp squib so far. It too is not social-national, in fact it is the mirror image of Labour— “national” without being “socialist”…

Brexit Party is now languishing in the polls, around 15%. Good for a “new” party (really the UKIP snake without its old skin), but unless BP can get voter support somewhere well above 20% soon, it will sink the way UKIP did.

Polls usually narrow before Election Day. If they do not, we could be looking at a very solid Conservative Party majority and so a government which, even in advance, is making some of its own MPs uneasy… However, if Labour can somehow recover from 21%-24% to somewhere around 30%, then we may be back to more or less where we are today, a minority Conservative government.

There is an outside chance that, from the desperation of the 30% of eligible voters who do not vote, there might come a surprise anti-Conservative upsurge at the last minute.

Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_Kingdom_general_election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_Kingdom_general_election#Results

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

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

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

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schwerpunkt

Even former Labour Party candidates have not only abandoned Labour but are looking not unkindly upon “one nation” traditional Conservatism!

https://twitter.com/remainwithkate/status/1167366602217742336?s=20

https://twitter.com/_IanMoss/status/1167369085346299904?s=20

https://twitter.com/remainwithkate/status/1167370282971123712?s=20

Meanwhile… a fine example of the Westminster Bubble: a few thousand (thousands, or hundreds?) of demonstrators make noise around the Palace of Westminster, achieve nothing, change nothing, but go home with the delusionary warm feeling that they have…and ITV News reports on it as if at the Storming of the Bastille!

https://twitter.com/MarcherLord1/status/1168077918896943105?s=20

These people would, most of them, never throw a stone, let alone a Molotov Cocktail, and they think that they will rattle what is now a near-tyrannical Boris-Idiot government? They will not even rattle the windows of the nearest Waitrose cafe!

Look again at that tweet, above, by one Paul Brand of ITV [nb: since posting of this article, apparently deleted]: “Traffic has been brought to a standstill.” No! Traffic brought to a standstill? At one roundabout in Central London? Call out the Preobrazhensky and Izmailovsky Guards! Notify the Tsar!

More. Here is Katie Hopkins, making a good point about how unrepresentative the Remain side is, though her point about the ethnic minorities could be made equally in relation to the Leave side. Also few blacks and browns. That, in a way, is why the international conspiracy (NWO/ZOG) is encouraging mass invasion of white Europe by blacks and browns (The Great Replacement), because most of the ethnic minorities cannot organize and will not stand up for what we have known as civil rights and freedoms.

https://twitter.com/KTHopkins/status/1168066456497598464?s=20

Of course, Ms. Hopkins supports Israel, so naturally supports Boris-Idiot…

https://twitter.com/KTHopkins/status/1167789420029849600?s=20

Where the opinion polls have been since late last year:

Update, 3 September 2019

A stray tweet seen; if true, may be ominous for “Labour”:

https://twitter.com/DavidStonehous7/status/1168591927081656321?s=20

Meanwhile…

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-prorogue-parliament-brexit-dominic-cummings-email-court-scotland-a9089911.html

Update, 4 September 2019

The above opinion poll, if accurate and if mirrored on Election Day, would be a Conservative Party majority in the Commons of about 92…

Look at the scheiss that entered Parliament in 2010 and 2015, and imagine what another 100 Con MPs might be like. “Load up, load up…”

Update, 8 September 2019

Update, 8 October 2019

Boris Johnson, Brexit, Campaign Against AntiSemitism, Conservative Friends of Israel, elections, Jewish lobby in UK, Labour Friends of Israel, MPs, Party Politics, society, the Great Reset, Uncategorized

Boris, Angela, and Macron too

123 Comments

Tales of Brexit and Biarritz

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

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

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

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

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

What After 31 October?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update, 20 October 2021

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

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

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

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

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

Alt-Right, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Conservative Friends of Israel, historical revisionism, Jewish lobby in UK, Labour Friends of Israel, MPs, Party Politics, Reminiscences and Musings, society, The Great Replacement, Uncategorized

Les Eminences Grises…of Dystopia

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It seems that the intellectual power behind the Boris Johnson throne is one Dominic Cummings, someone who only came to my attention recently. His new eminence put me in mind of a few similar people in the recent and not so recent past.

Brendan Bracken

Brendan_Bracken_1947

Churchill had the egregious Brendan Bracken as his adviser and amanuensis. Bracken was, as such people often are, very strange indeed. He was born into modest but not poor circumstances in Ireland, drifted around Australia, attended Sedbergh School at age 19 (though claiming to be just 15), paying the fees himself, then left after one term, having acquired what the later KGB would have called a “legend” as an Anglo-Irishman who had attended a well-known English school (he let people believe that he had been there for years).

Armed with the Sedbergh “old school tie”, Bracken became a schoolmaster at Bishop’s Stortford College in 1921, but by 1922 was a magazine publisher and editor in London. He became wealthy quite rapidly. Puzzling. Here was a young man who had presumably saved some money while in Australia, and may have had a part-share in whatever his father left, but all the same Bracken’s swift rise to wealth is a puzzle. Still, there it is.

Having attached himself to Churchill, Bracken was instrumental at the vital moment when Chamberlain resigned in 1940:

” When Bracken became aware of Churchill’s agreement to nominate Lord Halifax, he convinced Churchill that the Labour Party would indeed support him as Chamberlain’s successor, and that Lord Halifax’s appointment would hand certain victory to Hitler. Bracken advised Churchill tactically to say nothing when the three met to arrange the succession. After a deafening silence during which Churchill was expected to nominate Halifax, the latter obligingly ruled himself out and Churchill was put forward as Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, having avoided any appearance of disloyalty to Chamberlain.” [Wikipedia, and see Notes, below].

Thus this odd man “from nowhere” was not only present at the pivotal moment, but can be said to have altered the course of the Second World War on the strategic level. Had Churchill not become Prime Minister, Britain would have agreed peace with the German Reich in 1940. The whole history of Europe and indeed the world was thus altered in its course by this now-forgotten man (forgotten by the public, at least).

Bracken was MP for Paddington North (1929-1945) and for Bournemouth (1945-1951). He was Churchill’s PPS from 1940, later promoted to Minister of Information (1941-1945) and was briefly First Lord of the Admiralty in 1945. He was one of the chiefs of the Political Warfare Executive. He was elevated as a viscount in 1952. He was the publisher of, inter alia, the Financial Times, The Economist and History Today.

Bracken was rumoured to have been Churchill’s illegitimate progeny, though this seems to have been a myth not discouraged by Bracken himself. The viscounty granted was hereditary, but Bracken was unmarried and without issue. He died in 1958.

Was this the story only of a remarkably talented self-made businessman and politician or was there more to it? There are hints of the then-concealed New World Order about it all. We shall probably never know.

Steve Hilton

5078

[As with Cummings –see below— Hilton felt the need to display his “I’m an off the wall maverick genius” persona by wearing beachwear or surf dude getup to Downing Street…]

Wikipedia says of Steve Hilton the following:

“Hilton is the son of Hungarian immigrants whose original surname was Hircsák[7] (which some sources spell “Hircksac”),[8] who fled their home during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. They came to Britain, initially claiming asylum, and anglicised their name to Hilton. Steve Hilton’s father, István, had been goaltender for the Hungarian national ice hockey team and was considered one of the top ice hockey players in Europe in the 1930s.[7][9] After arriving in Britain, his parents initially worked in catering at Heathrow Airport. They divorced when Steve was five years old[7] leading to what he has described as a struggle and great financial hardship; his mother worked in a shoe store to earn the little money they had, and the two lived in a cold, damp basement apartment. He won a scholarship to Christ’s Hospital School in Horsham before studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at New College, Oxford.”

“After graduating, Hilton worked at Conservative Central Office, where he came to know David Cameron and Rachel Whetstone, his future wife and Senior Vice-President of Policy and Communications for Uber.[11] He liaised with the party’s advertising firm, Saatchi and Saatchi, and was praised by Maurice Saatchi, who remarked, “No one reminds me as much of me when young as Steve.”[8] During this time Hilton bought the “New Labour, New Danger” demon eyes poster campaign[12] for the Conservative’s pre-general election campaign in 1996, which won an award from the advertising industry’s Campaign magazine at the beginning of 1997.[13] The Conservatives went on to experience their worst election defeat for more than half a century, with some journalists speculating that the poster contrasted unfavourably with Labour’s more positive campaign.[14] In 2005, Hilton lost out to future Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove in the selection process for the Surrey Heath constituency.”

“Hilton talked of the need to “replace” the traditionally minded grassroots membership of the Conservative Party, which he saw as preventing the party from embracing a more metropolitan attitude on social issues.”

So he was at first, in the 1990s, little better than a gopher, but then he met his wife, Rachel Whetstone. Who is she? She is described in Wikipedia as having been head of communications for Uber taxis. For a number of years until 2015, she was in a similar position at Google. She has more recently joined Netflix.

“In February 2013, Whetstone was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4.[4] Whetstone has been featured on PRWeek’s Power List several times, most recently in 2016 at number 14.” [Wikipedia]

“Whetstone is married to Steve Hilton, whom she met after an affair with Lord Astor (stepfather to Samantha Cameron, wife of former Prime Minister David Cameron) in the lead-up to the 2005 election. Cameron is no longer on speaking terms with Whetstone or Hilton.” [Wikipedia]

More interestingly, Rachel Whetstone’s grandfather was one Antony Fisher, not much known to the public, though extremely influential behind the scenes:

“Sir Antony George Anson Fisher AFC (28 June 1915 – 8 July 1988), nicknamed AGAF, was a British businessman and think tank founder. He participated in the formation of various libertarian organisations during the second half of the twentieth century, including the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Atlas Network. Through Atlas, he helped establish up to 150 other institutions worldwide.”

Antony Fisher may have been at least part-Jew, and was certainly a Zionist, pro-Israel to the hilt.

Hilton was thought by many to be half-mad. He was lucky to escape with a caution and a small fine after having assaulted someone on a railway platform in England. He had been arrested after the assault and after shouting “wanker!” at staff and police. At the time, this useless creature was being paid £200,000 a year from public funds. There were other incidents of aggressive behaviour during his time at No.10.

“Andy Coulson, the former communications chief who was later jailed over phone hacking, recalled recently in the Telegraph: “I would ask, ‘So how does that work then?’ If I got an answer at all, it was along the lines of, ‘It’ll be fine – just you see.’ That was mildly irritating, as it was my team who would have to get out and sell the latest product from Steve’s dream factory.”” [The Guardian]

“Hilton’s rightwing, free-market ideas certainly infuriated Lib Dems who worked with him, as chronicled in David Laws’s book about the coalition. One Lib Dem former adviser said: “I was unfortunate enough to spend some time in Steve’s thought wigwam and it was not a pretty place. I remember him suggesting we should scrap maternity laws and invest in cloud-busting technology to improve the British weather. I certainly do not remember at any time him raising any points about the immigration policy he is now criticising.”” [The Guardian]

Hilton accomplished nothing, certainly nothing concrete, at Downing Street, and eventually decamped to the USA, where he was, laughably, taken on as some kind of visiting “professor” at Stanford:

“In March 2012, Downing Street announced that Hilton would be a “visiting scholar” at Stanford University‘s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies for a year.[21] His last memo concerned the advocacy of severe cuts in the number of civil servants in the United Kingdom[22] and further welfare cuts.” [Wikipedia]

At time of writing, Steve Hilton is on the American TV network, Fox News, as a talking head, and is apparently a Trump partisan.

“Had Bernie Sanders been the Democratic nominee, Hilton “probably would have supported him”. Hilton says he is not really a conservative or a liberal: “It’s hard to pin me down because I’m a bit of Bernie Sanders, a bit of Rand Paul, bit of John Kasich.” He’s pro-Trump simply because he was the candidate most likely to “shake things up”” [The Guardian]

Someone who actively likes and promotes chaos, in fact, just like Dominic Cummings [see below]

Steve Hilton, in other words, like the others examined here, is connected with cosmopolitan finance-capital and its intellectual superstructure of “think tanks” (which have proliferated over the years) and with supposed “institutes”, mostly carrying the same sort of message: internationalism, multikulti “get rich quick”-ism, destruction of tradition, race and culture, combined with State repression of those without money.

Dominic Cummings

dominiccummings

[above, Dominic Cummings: note the “I’m Too Important To Wear A Tie Or A Jacket” affectation, as with Steve “Hilton”]

While “researching” (too grand, call it “looking up a few things”) for this blog post, I saw that at least one other has trodden much of the same path as me re. “the latest self-appointed genius” at Downing Street: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/dominic-cummings-brexit-boris-johnson-vote-leave-nigel-farage-a9045766.html

As stated at the start of this blog post, I know of Cummings only what I have read. The links are either posted here below or are available easily via Google.

One thing that did interest me was the Wikipedia statement, taken from a biography of Michael Gove, that “Cummings speaks Russian and ‘is a Russophile'”. It seems that he tried to start an airline with the single route line of Samara (a large city on the Volga) to Vienna, an interesting choice of route. We are told on Wikipedia that: “After university, Cummings moved to Russia from 1994 to 1997, working on various projects. In one Russian venture, he worked for a group attempting to set up an airline connecting Samara in southern Russia to Vienna; however, the venture fell foul of the KGB, and was abandoned after only one flight.“

Well, the “KGB” bit is wrong in exact terms, because the KGB was disbanded (reorganized) in 1991. The bulk of the “internal” work of the old KGB was given to the “FSK” which later became the FSB. As to why the revamped FSK/FSB would want to interfere in the activities of a foreign or foreign-connected airline, I wonder. There are, and have been for 2-3 decades now, numerous foreign airlines operating in the former Soviet Union, flying between Russia and other states.

In the 1990s, new “babyflots” (bits of the old Aeroflot) were emerging all the time, as were ad hoc operations such as the German airline “Luftbrucke” (Air Bridge), which transported tens of thousands of “Volksdeutsche” from Kazakhstan and Siberia to new lives in the reunified Germany (those people were mostly the descendants of Germans invited to Russia by Russian tsars, notably Catherine the Great, then deported East by Stalin). Luftbrucke, if I recall aright, also flew from Samara, as also from a host of cities in Western Siberia and Kazakhstan, such as Semipalatinsk.

I find the history of Cummings interesting. He graduated from Oxford in 1994 aged 22-23, his degree being in Ancient and Modern History. The very same year he moved to Russia “where he worked on various projects” including the idea “to set up a new airline”.

I admit that I myself have never set up an airline, but I know that you cannot do it without rather a lot of money, even in the conditions of post-collapse Sovietism (I myself was briefly in Moscow in 1993 and also dealt with legal and business matters in Russia and Kazakhstan for several years).

Cummings is said to be the son of an oil rig project manager and a special needs teacher. There is no suggestion of any heavy family wealth. Cummings only left university in 1994, yet by —at latest— 1997, so 0-3 years later, was setting up an airline? In fact, how did he get into Russian-oriented business anyway, with no obvious connections or personal monies. He is able to speak Russian, though. That too raises questions.

I lived in Almaty, Kazakhstan for a year (1996-1997), meeting dozens if not hundreds (and over the years, certainly hundreds) of businessmen, lawyers etc doing work in the various ex-Soviet republics. While most of the diplomats I met spoke at least some Russian, the vast majority of businessmen and lawyers encountered knew no Russian at all really (that was true of both British and Americans). Certainly unable to undertake even simple discussions. I even met some unable to order simple food and drink.

So Cummings leaves university in the UK, where he studied ancient and modern history, somehow speaks Russian (or learns it on the ground), and is at once involved with business activities which seem to go beyond being a mere gopher for others. I have to say that I wonder whether Cummings was up to something other than just being a British graduate drifting about and getting into Russian business speculations almost by chance. Maybe the Russian security people were right to be suspicious of him, as is suggested in his Wikipedia entry.

Anyway, he is now considered to be Boris Idiot’s eminence grise, and looks it (meaning “grey”, if not particularly eminent). In fact, despite being only 47, he looks 10+ years older than me, and I am now 62. His political career is summarized here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Cummings#Political_career

I have to say that I agree with his view of many of the leading political and official figures (he described Iain Dunce Duncan Smith as “incompetent”, for example).

It seems that Cummings married a lady of the North Country gentry who is or was Deputy Editor of the Spectator. They live in Islington, in what the Daily Mail is pleased to call a “£1.6 million house” (though in London, what does that mean? I lived for years in a house in Little Venice now (over)valued at £4 million! Madness). Other details about Cummings are few.

“What is clear is that this character is right now in the maelstrom of chaos and action that he loves so much. A defender quipped that he’ll be thrilled with upheaval – it’s the only way he sees people being forced into action. His friend once heard him quote Lenin: “The worse the better.” [Reaction magazine]

The Prophets of Dystopia

These “advisers” (of whom I have selected a mere few from a larger pool) and their connected “think tanks” etc are, even when some of their critique of society is justified, basically destructive. The same applies to the people themselves. Admittedly, Brendan Bracken left a less obviously destructive legacy, but then, after the huge and unnecessary war which he, from the shadows, did so much to bring about, what more need he do to be adjudged a negative force?

Look at Steve Hilton, Dominic Cummings etc. Where are their real achievements? Leaves blown away by the wind. These people may themselves have acquired riches, but only or mainly because they married wealthy wives, then used their own political attachment and profile to become highly-prized TV, radio, press and online “gurus” . They themselves have not established anything solid, whether in commerce, industry, academia, the arts, the sciences, charitable work or anywhere else. They are creatures created from the chaos and decadence in society. They prosper from the decadence and weakness of the political system in the UK and attach themselves to stupid, weak, posturing politicians vainly trying to reach to statesmanship, people such as David Cameron-Levita and Boris-Idiot. They are a symptom of dark days ahead. Social nationalism must rise up to exterminate evil and to found a better and better-organized society.

Annual midnight swearing-in of SS troops at Feldherrnhalle, Munich, 1938.

Notes

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

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/boris-johnson-s-key-adviser-who-is-no-deal-brexit-guru-dominic-cummings-1.3966946

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/18/david-cameron-dominic-cummings-career-psychopath

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/07/dominic-cummings-takes-swipe-at-greive-over-confidence-vote-plan

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43518628

https://www.eurotrib.com/story/2019/7/28/135136/889

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

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/churchills-faithful-chela

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

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/dominic-cummings-brexit-boris-johnson-vote-leave-nigel-farage-a9045766.html

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/07/no-deal-dominic-cummings-boris-johnson-brexit

https://www.theredroar.com/2019/08/revealed-anti-elite-dominic-cummings-lives-in-1-6-million-islington-townhouse/

https://reaction.life/who-is-dominic-cummings/

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

https://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/01/cameron-speech-bullying-hilton

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/21/how-steve-hilton-turned-on-his-friend-and-ex-boss-david-cameron

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/15/steve-hilton-im-rich-but-i-understand-the-frustrations-people-have

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-camerons-chief-spin-doctor-193369

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

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

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cameron-spin-doctor-arrested-in-train-fracas-1861393.html

https://www.itv.com/news/2019-08-09/the-truth-about-dominic-cummings-writes-robert-peston/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3372743/QUENTIN-LETTS-PM-Cheryl-Sexy-Fish-party-says-people-run-Britain.html

Afterthought, 10 August 2019

Is it fanciful to compare the sliding society we now have (look at the past few days…) and the prominence of these odd characters such as Hilton and Cummings, whose academic and patchy work histories are at best underwhelming, with the sliding Russia of the last few years before the Revolution(s) of 1917? Perhaps, but in late-Tsarist Russia too the government, civil service, certainly the politicians, were paralyzed, helpless to do anything positive, and so the influence grew of odd characters: tarot practitioners, mystics and occultists, fortune-tellers of all kinds, persons believed to have arcane knowledge and unorthodox ways to make politics work via persuasion and peculiar ideas and methods. The starets (he was never a monk or priest) Rasputin was only the most important of a whole host.

The rest is history.

rasputin

Update, 12 August 2019

Typical…

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-dominic-cummings-vote-leave-referendum-farm-eu-subsidies-a9051961.html

Update, 14 August 2019

A partisan journalist writes…

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/dominic-cummings-10000-prison-places-brexit-boris-johnson-failure-a9054516.html

In fact, I agree with some of what Cummings has said:

“We should stop selecting leaders from a subset of Oxbridge egomaniacs with a humanities degree...” That is true, though I have nothing against degrees in the humanities, but the whole idea of the “generalist” (almost always armed with a degree from Oxford or Cambridge) has blighted UK political, cultural and even industrial life for 70 years, perhaps 100 years. The Soviet Union tended toward the same behaviour (the politically-OK “Man From Moscow” who could “direct” anything from a tyre factory to a Young Pioneer camp or the building of the Moscow Metro), and look what happened there (the Metro in Moscow admittedly being a —rare— success of the Soviet system).

Of course, the worst single example of the generalist might be Cummings’ present employer, Boris-idiot, who has proven that he is incapable of doing anything properly, but who can do it while quoting a bit of rote-learned Ancient Greek, or using an English word no-one else has ever heard of (he must trawl the OED for those silly words, I expect…what a complete waste of space he is!). As the journalist writes,

“All evidence goes out the window. The grandest ever Oxbridge egomaniac of them all (with not even a very good humanities degree, as it happens) is seeing only the flickering shadows on the news on the wall. It is not even day 14 and already we have beaten a hyper-accelerated march to the world of crap policy for political gain.“

The journalist continues, citing a recent Times article by Cummings:

“Elsewhere, in that same Times article, we read: “We must train aspirant leaders very differently so they have the skills and experience of managing complex projects.””

“And here he is, bringing in policies that would make Norman Tebbit look enlightened, working for a leader whose skill at “managing complex projects” so far extends to some rolling windowless sauna buses, a cable car to nowhere, and a ghost garden bridge that may or may not take you to a demented airport that has never and will never be built.“

Update, 22 August 2019

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/22/dominic-cummings-should-not-have-no-10-role-suggests-tory-mp-damian-collins

I think that I recognize the symptoms of someone who has spent too much time in Russia.

Update, 5 September 2019

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7429303/We-going-PURGE-Boris-Johnsons-enforcer-Dominic-Cummings-warned-minister.html

and

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dominic-cummings-boris-johnson-brexit-vote-commons-no-deal-downing-street-a9091181.html

Update, 8 September 2019

Seems that my blog was (again) prescient, if I say so myself: not a day or even part of a day goes by now without someone publishing something in the newspapers about Dominic Cummings (though Steve “Hilton” is old news and Brendan Bracken ancient history).

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/07/smash-and-grab-dominic-cummings-democracy

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/08/mps-amber-rudd-tories-boris-johnson

Update, 14 September 2019

It seems that David Cameron-Levita was suspicious of Cummings as long ago as 2013:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/14/cameron-suspected-cummings-of-dripping-poison-into-goves-ear

Update, 29 September 2019

“Through his system, as yet unexplained – “I will go into what I think this vision could be and how to do it another day” – he will turn a nation of average people into one of the most successful countries in the world. He will sweep away the suffocating postwar mainframes of politics, and build something capable of withstanding the unknown crises ahead. Or so he would wish. In truth, he may be little more than a survivalist in the woods, soldering wires together in the belief he is saving us all.

Is Dominic Cummings a visionary or a fool? The remarkable fact is that the Conservative Party has risked its future, and the country’s, on which one Cummings turns out to be.” [Harry Lambert, writing in The New Statesman]

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/09/dominic-cummings-machiavel-downing-street

Update, 8 October 2019

Update, 19 October 2019

Dominic Cummings dresses down (even more) in Downing Street on the day of the Saturday sitting of the Commons (today). Not sure whether the bimbo is Boris Johnson’s girlfriend or a lookalike.

19919814-7590721-image-a-49_1571483331651

All he lacks is a few copies of The Big Issue and a plastic cup for tips. Oh, no, wait, he’s holding the cup…

Update, 3 November 2019

I very much doubt that Dominic Cummings works or worked for Russian Intelligence…au contraire.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/labour-asks-about-dominic-cummings-years-working-in-russia-vl6d0w62z

Update, 3 January 2020

Update, 23 March 2020

A floundering idiot working for a floundering idiot, and both pretending to be great brains…you couldn’t make it up.

https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/23/dominic-cummings-denies-saying-bad-pensioners-will-die-coronavirus-12441467/

Update, 24 April 2021

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/apr/23/dominic-cummings-launches-attack-on-boris-johnson;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56870370

Update, 30 April 2023

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/30/anthony-seldon-boris-johnson-at-10-biography-interview.

Update, 5 November 2023

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12711263/NADINE-DORRIES-Dominic-Cummings-Downing-Street-Prime-Minister.html

Boris Johnson, Brexit, by-elections, Campaign Against AntiSemitism, Deadhead MPs, Defence, elections, immigration, Jewish lobby in UK, Labour Friends of Israel, MPs, Party Politics, society, The Great Replacement, Uncategorized, white flight

Can Labour Win A 2019 General Election?

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Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

Update, 21 September 2019

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

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

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

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

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

Update, 23 September 2019

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

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

Alt-Right, Boris Johnson, Brexit, elections, historical, MPs, Party Politics, Uncategorized

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

Afterthought, 29 July 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further Notes

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

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

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

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

Update, 3 February 2023

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

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

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

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

Brexit, elections, MPs, Party Politics, Uncategorized

The LibDems Elect A Leader

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Introduction

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

Background

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

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

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

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

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

The LibDems’ situation and chances

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

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

Update, 12 December 2022

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

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

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

Party Politics, Uncategorized

What Will Be Conservative Strategy Now? Will It Be to Stay in Office until 2022?

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I have repeatedly blogged in the past year or two about how the Conservative Party, as a party of government at least, faces an existential challenge. MSM scribblers and talking heads have caught up now and discuss the situation frequently.

The opinion polls must make sobering reading for Conservative MPs. For the upcoming EU elections, the Conservatives are rated as between 11%-15%; for the next general election, the figures are 24%-25%.

That might translate into a loss of Westminster seats numbering somewhere between 50 and 200 out of the 312 that the Conservatives currently hold [the Con Party also has 247 out of 782 peers of the House of Lords, 18 out of 73 UK seats in the European Parliament, 31 out of 129 Scottish Parliament seats, 12 out of 60 Welsh Assembly seats, and 8 out of 25 London Assembly seats].

As my previous blogs explored, the Conservatives are menaced by several trends and facts:

  • an ageing membership (largely of pensionable age) and voter profile (only 16% of those under 35 intend to vote Conservative, and only 4% of those under 25);
  • a burgeoning ethnic minority population in the UK; most ethnic minority voters who vote, vote Labour (with the exception of Jews);
  •  increasing numbers of urban and other renters, as opposed to property-owners; many renters are paying very substantial sums for their rent, and are subject to perceivedly unjust rental situations;
  • very many former Conservative voters defecting to Brexit Party by reason of the events around the EU Brexit situation;
  • dissatisfaction with Theresa May and, to a lesser extent, with the mediocre or poor level and performance of Conservative ministers and backbenchers;
  • Conservative voters tactical-voting for the LibDems in Lab/LibDem marginals and in former Conservative safe seats where Brexit Party has undermined the Conservative vote;
  • financial problems (recent msm reports that the Conservative Party cannot easily pay the rent on its head office), meaning, eg,  that publicity cannot be bought;
  • reports that as many as 60% of 2017 Conservative voters will not vote Conservative next time.

The upshot is that the Conservative Party is in deep trouble. The UK, especially England and Wales, that the Cons have created since 2010, is just not working for most people. This is perhaps not the place in which to detail that statement, but I have done so in earlier blog posts.

What can the Conservatives do to recover their situation? Obviously, as a social national thinker, I hope that the Conservatives do not recover, but these matters must be examined. Conservative plans may include

  • ditching Theresa May: this is mooted daily in the msm, but she seems to be hanging on for the Summer, until August/September and possibly even until the Conservative Party Conference which starts on 29 September 2019, though no doubt her MPs would much rather have anointed a new leader by then;
  • once Theresa May is gone, election of a new leader. This presents another problem, in that the existing candidates are mostly of very poor quality. Even the most popular (allegedly) in the country, Boris Johnson, in fact (as opinion polls have revealed) is not very much supported by voters: only 20% think that he would be the right candidate (though he still scored higher than all others);

What else might the Conservative Party do to improve its position? Well, there is one thing, though it would be an extremely risky stratagem: not to call a general election until 2022.

The law brought in by David Cameron-Levita’s government in 2010 mandates a general election in 2022. It can happen before 2022, but that date is the backstop.

At present, the Conservatives have no chance of getting a Commons majority or even being the largest party in the Commons without a majority, if a general election were to be held this year. I have long held the view that a general election could be held in 2019, and it might well be held. The msm (again) lag behind and now the most likely date is indeed thought by the msm to be 2019, once the Conservatives elect Theresa May’s successor. It seems to be the msm/System wisdom-of-the-moment that the new Conservative leader will want to have his or her election approved by the votes of the people. I wonder. Now, however, we have to factor-in Brexit Party.

I begin to think that the general election will be delayed until 2020, 2021 or even 2022.

It has been a convention not amounting to a Constitutional convention that, when a Prime Minister of the UK stands down, the successor holds a general election to “sanctify” the new order via public approval expressed in votes. Those Prime Ministers afraid to do that (rapidly) usually lose out. Look at Gordon Brown. However, the situation now may impel a different decision.

When Theresa May goes, her successor will have to face the fact that Brexit Party is taking somewhere between a third and a half of Conservative votes. If the new Conservative leader calls a 2019 General Election, it will be akin to a turkey voting for Christmas. The chance of a Conservative win (meaning a Commons majority) would be unlikely. There is every chance that the Conservatives would lose seats. There is every chance that the Conservatives would lose many seats. There is a good chance that Labour would be the largest party in the Commons and so able to form a minority government (or possibly a Lab-SNP-LibDem coalition). There is even a chance that Labour might get a Commons majority, something all but impossible prior to the emergence of Brexit Party.

Faced with the above, the new Conservative leader might simply refuse to call a General Election (in effect, leaving aside the details) until (as would be hoped, no doubt) the enthusiasm for Brexit Party wanes. Who knows what might happen in a year, or three years?

There is another point here. The boundary changes decided upon a few years ago take effect in 2022. Reduction of MP numbers from 650 to 600. The seats lost will mostly be Labour and LibDem seats. If a General Election is deferred until 2022, the Conservatives will be about 30 seats better off.

A risky stratagem, and one that could backfire, but it might be the only chance for the Conservative Party.

Tweets

The tweet below displays typical twitterati wishfulness: says “must” when he means “can” or, indeed, “need not”…

Update, 18 May 2019

Straw in the wind?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/05/17/early-election-will-kill-brexit-warns-health-secretary-matt/

but:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7042737/Ministers-threaten-bring-government-accept-Boris-PM.html

Conservative Friends of Israel, Deadhead MPs, elections, Jewish lobby in UK, MPs, Party Politics, society, Uncategorized

Deadhead MPs, An Occasional Series: The Karl McCartney Story

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This is the latest in my occasional series about those whom I consider to be “deadhead MPs”. The lucky politico this time is Karl McCartney, MP for Lincoln 2010-2017.

 

I would not usually bother with someone who is no longer an MP and who is very unlikely to be returned to the House of Commons. In McCartney’s case, I have decided to make an exception. The reason is because McCartney’s combination of brash overconfidence, unpleasantness, personal moneygrabbing and expenses blodging, lack of interest in the poorer part of society and unimpressive academic and work background is now, and has become, over the past decades, almost typical of MPs (and by no means only on the Conservative side of UK System-politics). That such people can become MPs is an indictment of the selection and election procedures in place in the UK.

Lincoln is considered to be an “ultra-marginal” and a “swing seat”. In 2010, McCartney and the Conservatives won with 37.5% of the votes cast, as against 35.2% for Labour and 20.2% for the LibDems (BNP 3%, UKIP 2.2%, English Democrats 1.3% and an Independent on 0.5%).

In 2015, McCartney was re-elected: Con 42.6%, Lab 39.6%, UKIP 12.2%, LibDem 4.3%, TUSC 0.7%, Lincolnshire Independent 0.6%. The key points were the collapse of the LibDem vote by 16 points, the non-appearance of the BNP and English Democrats, and the rise of UKIP —by 10 points, though that was modest bearing in mind that the BNP and EDs did not stand. Both Con and Lab increased their percentages.

In 2017, the result was Lab 47.9%, Con 44.7%, UKIP 2.6%, LibDem 2.6%, Green 1.2%, and two Independents (0.6%, 0.3%). A pattern seen in many constituencies: UKIP slumping back to a 2010 or pre-2010 level and the LibDems failing to recover from the 2015 debacle and indeed slipping further. While the Con vote percentage did slightly increase –2 points– in 2017, Lab did far better–8 points higher. That despite the UKIP slump, despite McCartney favouring Leave/Brexit, despite the appearance of a Green candidate likely to impact the Labour vote. It is hard to escape the view that the Con loss was the result of popular judgment on McCartney himself.

McCartney was exposed from 2010-2017, in various ways, as unsuitable.

A lecturer at the University of Lincoln blamed McCartney’s laziness and complacency for the loss (see Notes, below) and was too polite to mention McCartney’s alleged porn-trawling (though that was, admittedly, in 2014), his employment of his wife at £50,000 a year via Parliamentary expenses, or his expenses generally.

“On 28 February 2013 McCartney apologised to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) for the content of notes he had sent to staff. The notes were described by IPSA Chief Executive, Andrew McDonald as ‘abusive’, ‘offensive’ and ‘condescending’. McCartney’s apology stated, “I apologise unreservedly to IPSA for my comments” [Wikipedia]. and

“The following month he claimed that IPSA’s incompetence had forced MPs from all parties to borrow money and that he had had to ask his parents for financial assistance.[30] McCartney also said that he had been told by a “senior IPSA official” that the organisation intended to “damage MPs as much as possible,” a claim that IPSA said was “wild ..simply untrue.” [Wikipedia].

An idea of McCartney’s character can also be gained from the Twitter exchange printed in a local newspaper: https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/lincoln-news/bitter-row-breaks-out-twitter-1447360

The readers’ comments section under that newspaper report was harsh:

“Poor old Karl. He really needs to wipe away those tears and get on with his life. He is an arrogant, rude and bitter loser. And they are his good points. Lincoln and the Conservatives are better off without him. Ignore him Karen.”

and

“Happiest day last year was when he walked away in a huff and refused to speak to anyone or congratulate at the election result which pretty much summed everything up.”

As to what McCartney is doing now, I think that the answer may be “very little”. I notice that, as I write this piece, around 1800 hrs, he has already tweeted or retweeted 29 times today, so far. His website seems to say that he will be the Conservative candidate at the next general election. It is hard to know why. One can only speculate as to why the local Conservatives have chosen him. He was a lay magistrate at one time; he is a Freeman of the City of London (see Notes, below), having “worked with”, his website claims, more than one Lord Mayor in the late 1990s. Freemason? I do not know.

McCartney obviously did pretty well financially in his 7 years as MP: salary of (then) about £70,000 pa, and wife’s salary (paid out of his expenses claimed) £50,000 pa; also possible other (outside) sources of income (I do not know about this). His overall expenses alone over his time as MP totalled well over a million pounds. He does not appear to have a job at present (there is nothing mentioned on his website); perhaps his wife has found another job, now that her well-paid work as her husband’s assistant has gone.

Readers of The Lincolnite (online newspaper) were as harsh as those commenting on Lincoln Live (above):

“A totally useless MP, more concerned about himself and his expenses than he ever was about Lincoln – amazed that they’ve reselected this waste of space.

John Bercow (Speaker, House of Commons) summed him up nicely with this in a parliamentary debate when McCartney let himself (and us) down yet again:

“Mr McCartney, calm yourself. Be quiet, young man. We do not need to hear from you. You add nothing and you subtract from the proceedings.”

Then there were the abusive notes (for which he had to apologise) he sent to the parliamentary expenses staff when they queried his expenses.”

and
“Unvelievable! [sic] A sure fire way for the Conservatives to lose votes.”
and
 
“It’s not what you know but who you know ,Roll your trouser leg up, funny handshake and fancy apron crowd.”

What are McCartney’s chances of getting back as Lincoln’s MP? Very slight. I have blogged elsewhere about the impact of Brexit Party (and slightly revived UKIP) on the Conservative vote, assuming that Brexit Party contests a general election. That alone would sink the Conservatives in an ultra-marginal such as Lincoln.

Another point is that present Labour MP, Karen Lee, who worked in shops for years before spending 14 years as an NHS nurse, still puts in some shifts at a local hospital, donating her NHS earnings to charity! What a contrast to greedy, moneygrasping and “entitled” McCartney! His work in the City of London in the 1990s was obviously so unimportant that even his own website says almost nothing about it (neither does he seem to have done much outside Con politics in the decade up to his election in 2010).

In addition to all that, Karen Lee is local in origin, whereas McCartney was born in Birkenhead, “Murkyside” (Merseyside), and was educated there and in Wales.

Well, there you are. My latest “deadhead MP”, who is hoping to resume his place at the trough soon. Over to you, voters of Lincoln…

Notes

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Lee_(politician)

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/11/27/tory-mp-karl-mccartney-tweet_n_6232142.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvLnVrLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAIKZhoa8XJCbB18xVaaWRBehkKE5w89EpDknuZJaJ8VfUfEduIH82JL8WXecZ0k7u8-GT4528zeaV2gMoMCe7kQ5jN5eBgSwNM6ayc1OQI9PIsXSsHYaEO29QoJ2fz2DE1esHEBaKTjrJD2ZQ9ShET86lXCWEgNmlpCKEmDNbwgz
Tory MP hastily deletes Twitter favourites after porn ‘gaffe’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-30230261

https://labourlist.org/2014/11/tory-mp-favourites-graphic-porn-tweet/

https://politicalscrapbook.net/2014/11/karl-mccartney-mp-and-twitter-porn/

https://www.anorak.co.uk/352433/money/karl-mccartney-shocked-that-politicians-can-be-treated-like-any-poor-sod-waiting-for-benefits.html

https://www.karlmccartney.co.uk/

https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/former-lincoln-mp-karl-mccartney-111161

https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/lincoln-news/bitter-row-breaks-out-twitter-1447360

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24790/karl_mccartney/lincoln/votes

https://adrippingtap.wordpress.com/tag/karl-mccartney-mp/

https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2019/03/lincoln-conservatives-re-select-karl-mccartney-for-mp-candidate/

https://www.conservativehome.com/parliament/2019/03/mccartney-selected-as-the-candidate-for-lincoln-his-former-constituency.html

Note re. “Freeman of the City of London”:

“In England, the most established borough freedom is that conferred by the Freedom of the City of London, first recorded in 1237. This is closely tied to the role and status of the livery companies. From 1835, the freedom “without the intervention of a Livery Company” has been bestowed by a general resolution of Common Council, by “redemption” (purchase), at one time for an onerous sum. Now the Freedom can be obtained by servitude, by patrimony, by nomination, or by presentation via a Livery Company. Freedom through nomination by two sponsors is available for a fee (known as a “fine”) of £100, but is free to those on the electoral roll of the City.” [Wikipedia]

Update, 1 May 2019

I am writing this update just after 1400 hrs. McCartney took to Twitter today at about 0600 and, by my reckoning, has, in the intervening 8 hours, tweeted or retweeted at least 52 times (I think that I have left out a few retweets). Quite a few of his tweets and retweets seem to be about “anti-Semitism” in the Labour Party. McCartney must have been part of the “Friends of Israel” crowd (like 80% of “Conservative” MPs). He obviously wants to remain (((onside))). I have no idea whether Lincoln’s deadhead former MP actually has a job at present. I doubt it. He seems an extremely unpleasant person either way.

Update, 18 July 2019

https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2019/07/karl-mccartney-on-lincolns-climate-emergency-fine-words-butter-no-parsnips/

In the article above, written for The Lincolnite (local online newspaper), McCartney again obsesses about “anti-Semitism” in the Labour Party, saying that Labour peers have raised the issue again. Well, about 50 or 60 have, out of 179…

I wonder whether the voters of Lincoln share McCartney’s obsession with speaking out in favour of the Jewish lobby? I doubt it! As for the rest of his article, the Lincolnite needs a sub-editor to correct spelling errors (“buses” is right, “busses” is not) and grammar.

Some of the few readers’ comments on the above article have been unkind:

“FAT303

Why are you giving this failed Tory a voice he spent 1000s on a letter folder, and employed his wife as an assistant on 45k a year. He doesnt give a toss about us he just wants his expenses back…“
 
and
 

“Graham R Peck

I am assuming the Lincolnite has decided to join his very early election campaign hence the article. I assume we will get more of the same until a General Election. As it stands he is a nobody and yet has got 3 times more space than the sitting MP who represents which Party? Well blow me“
 
Seems that McCartney and his wife, a local councillor, are living rather well off the hump, despite having had their joint income reduced since his 2017 election failure:
 
 
 
Update, 3 November 2019
 
Well, it seems that McCartney’s leech-like tenaciousness in Lincoln might (against the odds and all reason) pay off. Corbyn-Labour is suffering a crisis of public confidence, while (by reason of that) Boris-Idiot and the misnamed “Conservatives” are riding high in the opinion polls.
 
People vote (mainly) according to party label and national trend rather than for or against the individual candidate. That plays to McCartney’s advantage here, however unfair that may be. At present, the Conservatives are favourites in the betting to retake Lincoln (1/2) whereas Labour is on 11/8:
 
He remains not universally popular in Lincoln, though:
 
 
Update, 24 November 2019
 
Update, 26 November 2019
If I myself say so, it was rather prescient of me to have included Karl McCartney in my Deadhead MPs series, inasmuch as the tides have turned, at least temporarily, in his favour, which means that he may well be back as MP for Lincoln (well, MP for His Own Benefit, His Wife’s Benefit, and, maybe, Lincoln) by 12 December.
The betting odds have McCartney favourite to retake the seat on Polling Day. That must reflect the general/national public sentiment against Labour, mainly, as well as McCartney’s pro-Brexit stance in a Leave constituency.
Brexit Party is standing, but is probably of no great significance now, Farage having shot his own party in the head (now at 3% or so in the opinion polls). UKIP stood at Lincoln in 2017, but only received 2.6% of the total vote.
Update, 13 December 2019
Well, the voters of Lincoln have evidently eaten too many potatoes. McCartney has been elected again as MP. He must be celebrating his return to paid “work”, generous (whatever he says) expenses, and perhaps to getting his wife back on the gravy-train (£50,000 pa as “assistant” or whatever, yet again via expenses), though the rules were changed for MPs elected in or after 2017, so it may be that he at least will be prevented from blodging in that way.
McCartney was elected this time because the Brexit Party candidate withdrew on his own initiative. What an idiot…his (guessing) several thousand intended votes probably did it for McCartney, who beat the far better Labour candidate, Karen Lee, by about three and a half thousand votes.
Update, 5 July 2024
The people of Lincoln have finally removed McCartney, who came a very poor second in the 2024 General Election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s

He will have to find another job, if he can.

Update, 29 January 2026

After McCartney lost his seat again in 2024 (he scored 23% as against the Labour candidate’s 43.8%; Reform scored 18%, so even had Reform not stood, McCartney would still have lost), he tried to be selected as Conservative Party candidate for the Greater Lincolnshire mayoral contest, but did not make it onto the shortlist; in any event, the ex-Con Party ex-MP, Andrea Jenkyns, standing for Reform, soundly beat the Con Party candidate, by 42% to 26.1%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Greater_Lincolnshire_mayoral_election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_McCartney#Post_Parliament

McCartney is now 57. His loyalty to the Jewish lobby and the Israeli cause may have helped him stay as MP for a total of 12 years, but his political career, such as it was, is now at an end.

Party Politics, society, Uncategorized

Some More Thoughts About the Next General Election in the UK

4 Comments

A 2019 General Election?

A recent ComRes poll indicated that only about half of those who voted Conservative in the General Election of 2017 are intending to vote that way in the next general election, which might come any time between Summer 2019 and early June 2022. I have been thinking and blogging etc for a year or so that 2019 might be the year. Mainstream commentators have recently been gravitating to the same view.

The Brexit chaos has highlighted the incompetence of the Theresa May and other Conservative Party governments stretching back to 2010: roads, rail, social security/”welfare”, the migration-invasion (mass immigration), crime etc.

As I have more than once blogged and (before I was banned in our “free” country, tweeted), the choice for many may be between a Labour Party government which may well prove to be incompetent, and a Conservative Party government which has already, time and again, proven its incompetence.

Labour, Conservative, UKIP, Brexit Party

Labour is now slightly ahead of the Conservatives in the opinion polls, probably because

  • UKIP, though effectively washed-up as an electoral force, has managed, under its latest leader, Batten, to halt its downward slide;
  • Brexit Party now exists and is taking votes mainly from the Conservatives;
  • also, Theresa May is now finally seen almost universally as the disaster she is.

No-one expects UKIP to win seats in any general election this year; after all, 1 in 8 voters voted UKIP in 2015, but the rigged/unfair UK electoral system deprived it of its merited success. On strict PR voting, UKIP’s 12.6% popular vote would have given UKIP about 80 MPs. Indeed, had many not seen a vote for UKIP as a wasted vote, that number could have been doubled or even trebled. In Mrs. May’s now-famous screech, “nothing has changed!” as far as that is concerned.

UKIP will probably get a few percentage points of the vote in English and Welsh constituencies, maybe even 5%, but that will not win any seats. What it will do, though, is deprive the Conservatives (mainly) of those votes (nearly 600,000 in 2017). Many constituency seats are won and lost by less than a thousand votes.

Now we have Brexit Party, which I had thought would fight only the EU elections, but which, it seems (see Nigel Farage’s comments in Notes, below), now intends to fight the next UK general election.

My initial skepticism about Brexit Party has been proven wrong, at least in the opinion polls. Brexit Party is now running at anything up to 30% re. the EU elections, and, in initial polling, 14% in respect of Westminster elections. That latter polling may already have been superseded by events, but even 14%, at a general election, is huge, inasmuch as it means that Brexit Party and UKIP in aggregate may take away from (mainly) the Conservatives as much as 20% of the votes in any given English or Welsh constituency. In an average constituency with average GE turnout that works out at about 8,000 votes!

As usual, most of the Twitterati get it wrong. Look at the tweets below by one Tom Clarke, who seems to be a fairly typical Remain and anti-nationalist tweeter. He says, probably correctly, that 27% is not enough to “take power” but fails to see the side-effects in terms of depriving others of power…He also bleats about “mandate”. What about the 52% who voted Leave in 2016?

In fact, Twitter is a poor guide to elections and popular votes. The twitterati voted Remain in 2016 (losing side), thought that Trump had no chance of becoming US President (wrong again), and are (or often seem to be) almost all pro-immigration, virtue-signalling idiots etc…

Core votes

The Labour core vote, though no more than 25% of eligible voters, is solid because it is composed of those unlikely to be enticed by other parties presently around, and particularly by the Conservative Party: almost all “blacks and browns” (and other ethnic minorities, except for Jews); almost all of the poorly-paid, unemployed, and disabled. Others, while not “core vote”, add up to possibly another 10% of the eligible electorate: those 18-24 (only 4% favour Conservative), voters under 35 (only 16% favour Conservative). Increasing numbers of persons in their 30s, 40s and older are victims of buy-to-let parasites and bully landlords, or are not getting much personal or social benefit from their work. Labour’s policies speak to them. The Conservatives have nothing to say to such people except “pay up or get out! And don’t complain about repairs!” and “poor pay? Get a different job!”

When one thinks “who today would vote Conservative?” the answer, in broad brush terms must be

  • the wealthy
  • the affluent
  • buy to let parasites
  • those who own their homes outright and are financially stable
  • those elderly who are stick-in-the-mud creatures of frozen voting habits

That is the 25% or so core vote, to which must be added

  • those who hate Labour or Corbyn enough to vote Conservative simply in order to keep Labour and/or a Labour candidate out.

Here is an important point: the Labour core vote may be and probably is growing; the Conservative core vote is shrinking.

The Brexit Party and UKIP strike both at the Conservative core vote and the potentially-Conservative non-core vote.

Would Boris Johnson make a difference?

Doubtful. I concede that I am as anti-Boris as almost anyone could be, but my antipathy is matched by many voters: Boris is apparently the choice for Con leader (and so, unless there is a general election, Prime Minister by default) of about 70% of Conservative Party members (if one can believe sources such as the Daily Express), but even if correct, that is 70% of (at most) 120,000 Con Party members, i.e. 84,000 voters out of at least 40 million (in 2017, about 32 million voted).

In polls of the wider public, Boris Johnson is only a few percentage points ahead of other possible Con leaders.

Conclusion

Since 2017, I have thought that the most likely result of the next UK general election is Labour to win most seats, but not enough to have an overall majority. Now, for the first time, I am questioning that and wondering whether a strong general election campaign by both Brexit Party and UKIP might weaken the Conservative vote to the point where, nationally, the Conservatives might get as little as 30% (could it drop even to 25%?) as compared to 42.4% in 2017 and 36.9% in 2015.

I am of course no psephologist, but using online tools etc, it seems not unlikely that, if the Conservative vote falls to 30% and Labour is five points ahead, Labour might end up with about 300 seats and the Conservatives about 250. Others, about 100. No overall majority.

If, though, the Con vote were 25% and the Lab vote five points ahead, the Conservatives would end up with perhaps 225 or fewer seats, while Labour might get about 320. Yet again no overall majority for Corbyn, but closer.

However, we are uncharted territory, and in the “glorious uncertainly” of the British electoral system, it is not impossible that, in dozens and perhaps hundreds of constituencies, the Conservatives might come in second rather than first, their vote sapped by voters voting for UKIP, Brexit Party and others.

The ComRes poll cited at the start of this article said that only just over half of 2017 Con voters were planning to vote Con next time. In 2017, about 13,600,000 or so voted Con. If that is reduced to about 7 million, then the Conservative Party is toast.

In that event, the parliamentary Conservative Party would be reduced to a half, even a quarter of its present strength, and Labour under Jeremy Corbyn might actually be elected with a considerable majority. After that, anything might happen.

Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_Kingdom_general_election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Independence_Party#House_of_Commons_2

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/nigel-farage-thinks-his-brexit-party-can-win-general-election-1-5998829

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/24/nigel-farage-brexit-party-use-eu-elections-oust-remain-parliament

Afterthoughts, 25 April 2019

In my concluding sentences, above, I explored what might happen if Brexit Party (and/or UKIP, but Brexit Party is plainly taking off in a way that UKIP now is not) were to take away a large number of votes from the Conservatives. I examined what would happen if, nationally, the Conservatives went from 35%-45% down to 30% or 25% (or even lower).

Nigel Farage has made comments indicating that Brexit Party might make inroads into the Labour vote too, especially in the North where Labour was once monolithic in its supremacy in most constituencies.

The polling percentages and national vote percentages can only take you so far. In 2017, Theresa May led the Conservatives to inconclusive victory-defeat and 317 MPs, despite getting 42.4% of the national vote, a level not achieved by any political leader since Mrs Thatcher in 1983. In 2015, David Cameron-Levita’s Conservatives only got 36.9% of the national vote, yet 330 MPs. Only in an electoral system as Alice in Wonderland as that of the UK could that make any sense.

In other words, predictions are tricky when it comes to exact or even inexact numbers.

However, in my view, Brexit Party (and what is left of UKIP support) will hit the Conservatives harder than Labour. Indeed, some voters in seats where Labour never wins may vote tactically to unseat Conservatives, even if the result is that a LibDem or other may get in as a result. One can easily imagine seats fought until now as effectively a two-way split which may now be fought as a three-way or even four-way split.

If Brexit Party can go up from its 14% polling (Westminster voting intention; in EU elections the figure may be as high as 30%) to 25%+, that raises the serious possibility of Brexit Party MPs being elected. If about half the 2017 Conservative voters are not going to vote Conservative (as ComRes reports), are they going to abstain or vote elsewhere? The fact that they bothered to vote before seems to suggest that they will vote again. That means that even in the handful of seats where the Conservatives won in 2017 with over 60% of the vote, the Conservative share of the vote might go from 60% or so to 40%. (the safest Conservative seat is North East Hampshire: 65.5% in 2017).

In the circumstances above, defending a 60% vote share and ending up with perhaps 40%, the Conservatives would still win in most cases, but that would not be the case in more typical constituencies, where the Conservative MP won in 2017 with 50%, 40% or an even lower percentage of the votes cast. A Con MP who got 40% in 2017 might end up getting 30% or even 20% next time.

If Brexit Party can maintain momentum, it (with UKIP’s effect added) will cripple the Conservatives, who will lose swathes of seats. For example, in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Boris Johnson received about 50% of the vote in 2017. Most of the rest (40%) went to Labour. Were half or even a quarter of the Conservative votes to be cast elsewhere, Labour would win (even if the votes “cast elsewhere” were not cast for Labour). In that example, Boris would end up with less than 40% and (if Labour’s 2017 40% vote were to hold up), the Labour candidate would win. That could be replicated in hundreds of seats, in theory. Most would fall to Labour, a few might go to or revert to LibDem, but it is also possible that some would fall to the Brexit Party. At present, unreal though it feels, it is not totally impossible to foresee Nigel Farage’s Frankenstein coming to life (energized by the Brexit hullabaloo itself) and actually ending up as a bloc of anywhere between a few MPs and as many as 50.

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

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/insights/ge2017-marginal-seats-and-turnout/

https://fullfact.org/news/how-many-seats-are-safe-and-how-many-votes-count-under-first-past-post/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIkaOb1Ivr4QIVDFXTCh3Ing2pEAAYASAAEgK6fvD_BwE

and Farage has now confirmed that Brexit Party will fight the next general election. The Conservatives are toast.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/brexit/8938714/nigel-farage-brexit-party-general-election/

Update, 27 April 2019

Times columnist Iain Martin tweeted on 27 April 2019 that “Disintegrating Tories need a leader who can get the Brexit Party to shut up shop.” It is clear to him, quite evidently, that Brexit Party, even if only as a “super-protest”, has the ability to smash the Conservative Party forever by reducing a typical Conservative vote in a marginal or even hitherto “safe” constituency by anything up to 8,000 votes…

The corollary is —almost— equally true: if Brexit Party (and UKIP) either did not exist or were not popular, the Conservatives would be well ahead of Labour for the next general election.

27 April 2019

Interesting analysis from 2017: had Labour won 7 more seats (requiring only 2,227 votes!), Corbyn might now be Prime Minister!

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/corbyn-election-results-votes-away-prime-minister-theresa-may-hung-parliament-a7782581.html

and here is John Rentoul, writing in The Independent, saying outright part of what I have been saying (I think that he is the first msm commentator of importance to have done so), that is that the Conservative Party is a dead duck (he says “smoking ruin”!) and likely to run only third after Labour and Brexit Party at the next UK general election:

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-betrayal-corbyn-pm-farage-european-elections-a8888991.html

Not sure that Rentoul is right about Labour manifesto policy though: Corbyn might just continue to sit on the fence. It is working for him so far…

Meanwhile, Britain Elects tweets thus:

If that polling is right, the combined Brexit Party and UKIP vote at the possible/probable 2019 General Election is now running above 20%. Today 21%, tomorrow 25%, even 30%? Anything above 10% (as in 2015—UKIP got over 12% that year) is pretty bad for the Conservatives; anything above 20% will kill them stone dead. They would lose not even 100, but 200 MPs.

Update, 1 May 2019

With only 1 day to go before the UK local elections, I saw this tweet:

Meanwhile…

This is incredible! I am not a “supporter” of Farage or “Brexit Party”, but this is the sort of reception that few get! Reminiscent of the Fuhrer (though without the depth or substance, of course). Brexit Party is on a roll! Only three weeks to go before the moment of truth (EU elections).