The madness of the “politically-correct” continues…
Corbyn
Corbyn is still trying to say to the Jews, “hey, man! Respectttt!”. What an idiot. “They” will hate you whatever you say. Anyway, why wish them “Happy Hanukah”?
Many misguided Christians think that the Jewish religious festival of “Hanukah” is somehow analogous to Christmas, the profound Christian religious festival of birth and peace. Wrong. “Hanukah” is, like most other Jewish religious festivals, an ethno-nationalist celebration of resistance and victory (of Jewish triumphalism if you like), in this case the rebellion of the Jews against their Greco-Syrian overlords in the 2nd Century B.C. (or “B.C.E.”):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah#Story
What was the Jewish response to Corbyn’s olive branch? “Jeremy Corbyn‘s annual ‘happy Hannukkah’ message to Jews in Britain and around the world has prompted a furious reaction from, amongst others, the editor of a Jewish newspaper, who told the Labour leader: ‘go f*** yourself!’“… [Daily Mail]
Need one say more? Corbyn has seen and experienced the way in which the Jewish lobby has conspired against him and the Labour Party for over four years. Why give them the satisfaction of throwing a peaceful greeting back in your face? Just cold-shoulder them.
As with the Diane Abbott situation, Corbyn seems incapable of learning from experience…
Meanwhile, Labour leadership contender Rebecca Long-Bailey is attacked by the Daily Mail (which seems to be afraid of her…):
- “Labour frontrunner Rebecca Long-Bailey has said her political outlook was shaped by watching her father worry about losing his job at Salford Docks
- But the Shadow Business Secretary, born in September 1979, would only have been two when the docks closed in 1982.” [Daily Mail]
Well, if Jews can be terribly upset about the death or disappearance of remote relatives that they never even met, and indeed who died or disappeared long before they, the descendants, were even born, why should Rebecca Long-Bailey not…? (well, you get the idea…).
Priti Patel “to be given power over sentencing” [Daily Mail].
Just when I thought that the news in Britain could not get madder…
Labour Friends of Israel member Rachel Reeves MP wants to launch a purge in the Labour Party:
Was the recent General Election fixed?
That is a good point. I can only think that most postal votes are held by older people, most older people vote Conservative these days, so…Maybe.
https://twitter.com/MargrainLynda/status/1208426751635968001?s=20
Looks like there is something rotten in the state of Boris…
Blyth Valley
I am reading “mainstream” analyses saying, as my blog did in the days since the General Election, that the Conservatives only have those Northern and Midland seats “on loan”, though I do not use that term. I said that the Cons have “shallow roots” there.
The msm are still trying to say that huge numbers of voters turned to the Conservatives; but we know that the Conservative vote increased by a mere 1.2% nationally over 2017. The real story was and is the collapse of trust in Labour and support for Labour. It is probably true that the Con vote increased in those Northern and Midland areas by more than the national average, and did not increase, or it fell, in some other areas.
In the most striking result, perhaps, Blyth Valley went Con after 69 years (the seat was established in 1950 and won by Lab, by Alfred Robens who later, as Lord Robens, was chief of the National Coal Board).
The 2019 Con vote, however, only increased by 5.8% over 2017. The real story is earlier: the Con vote increased from 13.3% in 1997 to 15.9% in 2001, was 13.9% in 2005, and 16.6% in 2010; not much difference. However, the 21.7% the Cons got in 2015 jumped to 36.9% in 2017, then 42.7% in 2019.
What happened? What happened was that national sentiment increased and “proletarian” old-style “socialist” sentiment took second place to that.
Only once in the 69 years did the Conservatives come 2nd where there was a third candidate at Blyth Valley, and that was in 1960 when an Independent stood. The Conservative Party has otherwise always come 3rd or 4th.
In 2010, there was an identifiable “national” vote at Blyth Valley: BNP 4.4%, UKIP 4.3%, English Democrats 0.8%. So 9.5% in toto (Conservatives 13.3%, LibDems 27.2%, Lab 44.5%).
In 2015, only UKIP represented a kind of “national” vote, and received 22.3%, beating the Conservatives (21.7%). Lab won with 46.3%. You can see that Labour only beat the combined UKIP/Con vote by a couple of points.
In 2017, no UKIP or other “national” party, and Labour’s vote surged to 55.9%, easily beating the Conservatives’ 36.9%, but in 2019, Brexit Party stood, getting 8.3%, and the Labour vote collapsed to 40.9%, allowing the Conservatives to win on 42.7%.
For me, the dynamics are clear. The Brexit vote only went partly to Brexit Party (which also was probably perceived as not fully “national”. The Conservatives benefited, though —as said above— by only 5-6 points over 2017. Turnout was 3 points down from 2017. The Brexit Party votes were probably from former Labour voters. Labour only lost to the Cons at Blyth Valley by 1.8 points. Those 8.3% Brexit Party votes were crucial. Had Brexit Party not been there, the vote would have been closer by far; Lab might have won.
The old “proletarian” certainties have disappeared at Blyth Valley, along with the coal mines. Only traces remain. That has cut the ties binding the voters to Labour.
Leaving the Brexit issue aside, as presumably will be the case next time, it can be seen that Blyth Valley will either revert to Labour or may go to a new party, so long as it is both “national” and “social”…
That may be the case in most of the new “Conservative” seats.
NHS
What was that that Boris-idiot was saying about “no plans to sell off NHS”?
Dan Hodges, faux-proletarian, who lives in his mother’s house in Blackheath (she being the once-famous actress, Glenda Jackson), describes Corbyn supporters as “parasites”…So speaks the scribbler who scribbles for the Mail on Sunday (formerly for the Sunday Telegraph) and of whom Wikipedia says: “Hodges is the son of the actress and former Labour MP Glenda Jackson and her then husband Roy Hodges.[4] He worked as a parliamentary researcher for his mother between 1992 and 1997, describing it as ‘straight-forward nepotism’.” “His former colleague Mehdi Hasan described his…role with The Daily Telegraph as one where he “now performs the role of the right’s useful idiot”. “In 2014, Hodges co-founded the Migration Matters Trust, a pro-immigration pressure group chaired by Barbara Roche, Lord Dholakia and Nadhim Zahawi and run by Atul Hatwal.”
I know which group of (((parasites))) I should prefer to see driven out of Labour!
Boris Johnson “not in charge of his own government” [The Independent]
Ian Robert Millard 