Look to the skies for a Tory loss

I might owe an apology to the Professor of politics predicting unforeseen events affecting the Election (see post 24/11) One of his predictions has come true and there has been a terrorist attack. Although it was dealt with very efficiently by passers-by and armed police who were quickly on the scene and in numbers, it has indeed somehow provided ammunition for an attack on Tory policies

Tories criticised over police cuts in wake of London Bridge attack 

His second prediction was more floods  Look to the skies

Elsewhere, it's rather slim pickings., Guardian journalists seem to disagree about whether the right anti-Tory line should focus on the future (Sarkar) or on the present and near-past (Beckett) . The first focus will galvanise da yoof, but the focus on the future also distracts from who is to blame for the present screw-ups.

My favourite column today is by a guest, Prof Davis, who bangs on rightly about how appallingly amateur is the UK ruling class:

the Conservative party has simply run out of a set of ideas it can unite behind...the UK establishment has become socially and ideologically incoherent. Globalisation severely divided their ranks...The elite can however only agree on what they don’t want: a Corbyn government. 

More widely:

The deterioration of expertise and knowledge stretches much further than Johnson. He is not the only frontline MP who doesn’t seem able to master a simple brief....“expertise” has become a highly devalued commodity. The term itself is almost an insult and not just because Gove has said so....In the 1980s the economic victors of the Thatcher revolution were those who were the quickest to disregard the mores of gentlemanly capitalism. The old corporate and City leaderships were ruthlessly replaced by those ready to ignore business traditions and long-standing relations. In the 1990s and 2000s, New Labour’s spin machine was notorious for its elasticity with the truth, be it selling the Iraq war or the merits of big finance. Now, institutionalised lying, obfuscation and dirty tricks are the new normal.

Johnson gets away with his porkies:

where neither politicians nor commentators are trusted, why not pick Johnson?...Johnson’s skill sets are to be prized by those who just want a winner....The public knows he lies but his open acknowledgment of that can seem almost “refreshingly honest”....In the dishevelled void that is British politics, why not pick a ruthless, Churchill-style leader to guide us out of the national existential threat that is Brexit? Such “strong” leaders are gaining in public support, in the UK as elsewhere.

All that wasted effort by those who lovingly detail flaws or minor linguistic inconsistencies to embarrass people on TV and then hector them with finger-wagging moral superiority demanding answers to their banal questions and telling them what they mean 'in effect', instead of letting us hear the politicians themselves (that's you, E Barnett or E Maitlis of Newsnight, E Davis of Radio 4, or K Guru-Murthy of C4News)!

Dark arts or useful idiocy?

Hilariously solemn piece in the Graun today as their journalists expose (to the public -- it was material circulated only to candidates) and counter a deadly ploy by the Tories:

Revealed: Tory candidates issued with attack manuals on how to smear rivals

 Many of the statements within them are sourced from comments made several years ago, or by local party members, and do not accurately reflect the current positions of opposition parties....Some draw on pledges made in the run-up to the 2015 election, or take statements out of context.

The Graun sets a high standard for its political comments as we know and would never recycle old details from Johnson's newspaper columns, take his remarks out of context (especially about women wearing burkas), or announce what he meant 'in effect'. Marvellously naively, the piece goes on to repeat these very smears before dismissing them, often rather feebly:

warnings that the party’s policies would cost the nation £1.2tn, and that every taxpayer could expect a bill for £2,400 to install Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister.. were widely debunked when made two weeks ago...One attack line highlights the “anti-Brexit” comments from a Liberal Democrat candidate’s blog – even though they were made two years before the referendum took place [see below --and has she apologised to those of us who were made vulnerable, as we might demand?] .

Then a more comprehensive summary:

• The Liberal Democrats want to scrap the promotion of “British values” and replace them with “universal values” – this was a suggestion made in relation to counter-terrorism only.
• The party’s leader, Jo Swinson, supports a new tax on homes. This dates back to 2014, and is not party policy.
• Labour’s plans will push up household bills by £2,000. This is sourced from the rightwing tabloid the Daily Express, which itself was reporting Tory calculations.
• Labour will “automatically” support all strikes. This relies on a 2015 quote from the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell. However, the party’s manifesto says it will only “remove unnecessary restrictions on industrial action”.
• McDonnell has said that business is “the real enemy”. This draws on a 2011 speech he made, but misses the ending – he said the enemy was “the corporations who created the crisis”.
  

 On and on with the list, helpfully reminding us of these comments:

the briefing note claims: “The Lib Dems have put forward ‘pro-pimp’ policies on prostitution – and have suggested prostitution should be suggested as a career to schoolchildren.” To reach this claim, the dossier took comments made three years ago by a former chairman of the Lib Dems’ Cheltenham branch and suggested they were indicative of party policy....In fact, Dennis Parsons was forced to resign in 2016 after making the remarks, which he said were a rhetorical question and not his views. Parsons also apologised unreservedly.... The Lib Dem manifesto does not mention prostitution, although the party has a longstanding conference motion promoting decriminalisation to safeguard sex workers.

Clegg had boasted about blocking the Tories on Trident while deputy prime minister in the coalition government, but the party reinstated a policy of supporting the use of a nuclear deterrent two years ago under Tim Farron.

Most relevantly for our purposes:

“Wera Hobhouse [LibDem environment spokesperson] called the ‘angry’ public [Leavers] ‘spoiled and selfish’, claiming they just don’t want to ‘share in the wealth of the country’,” the briefing note claims...Hobhouse made those comments on her blog in 2014 – two years before the referendum was held.

Do the Tories need sinister masters of the dark arts when the dear old Graun will freely do this work for them?

 

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News and Opinion agree on the need to woo Leavers

First the news section in today's GRaun:

 Labour will renew its focus on convincing voters in vulnerable seats in the Midlands and the north not to desert it over Brexit in the final fortnight of the election campaign....the party recognises that it now has much more to do to hold constituencies in Brexit-voting areas....[The party] seek to make the election a binary choice [oh no --is that wise?] between Labour and the Tories, in the hope of squeezing the Liberal Democrat vote further.

O Jones's column yesterday,in the Opinion section makes the case (and therefore made todays' news, I suppose?):

Since the campaign began, Labour’s gradual recovery in the polls has been driven by those previously antagonised opponents of Brexit. While its support among remainers has risen by on average 10 points to 44%, among the Lib Dems that figure has slumped seven points to just 26%. A month ago, Jeremy Corbyn’s net favourability among remainers was a dire -33, now recovering to -4; for Jo Swinson, it has plummeted from +13 to -8. 

 Yet Remainers are still not convinced by Corbyn's 'neutrality', and, worse:

Yet there is no question that the chief obstacle to Labour’s electoral ambitions is now on its leave flank. The party’s support has also grown among leavers during this election campaign, but from a derisory level: from 11% to 16%.  ...Labour’s polling in Grimsby – a seat it has held since 1945 – has collapsed from 49% since 2017 to 31%, almost all to the Brexit party, which would allow the Tories to win through the middle....Private research [Labour Party?] suggests that around 80 Labour leave seats are at some risk of being lost to the Tories

Jones might be feeling a twinge of conscience, although on TV he always appears as rather smug and self-satisfied:

Remain campaigners must acknowledge their own faults, too. After the referendum defeat, a wise – and dare it be said, a rather obvious – political strategy would have been to seek to persuade leave voters of the case for another referendum. With honourable exceptions, this did not happen....Brexit was treated as a self-evident national catastrophe, while remainers who accepted the referendum result – let alone leavers – were conceived of as malign dupes. Some treated the result as illegitimate, stolen through illicit means and foreign meddling.

if the party cannot attract support from voters from across the referendum divide, Johnson will secure his majority and a hard Brexit [bring back 'crashing out' and 'chaos' before it is too late?] is just weeks away.

The schoolboy shoplifter or the dangerous weakling?

R Behr has been doing some research (not just attending dinner parties or tweeting  -- an encouraging sign) 

I have been visiting constituencies, trailing candidates and phoning activists to get some sense (away from opinion polls) of what is going on

 It's mixed news:

suspicion of Corbyn has crystallised into something harder for Labour to crack...The word “dangerous” comes up a lot, as does “weak”.

The beef:

A second change is that leavers did not think Brexit was in serious peril at the last election. May looked set to do the business. Besides, Corbyn pledged to honour the referendum mandate. Now he wants a second vote, and seems shifty on the whole subject. In 2017, pro-Brexit voters who hated the idea of switching to the Tories could find reasons to stick with Labour. This time they might not take any chances.

On ideological themes it is still old hat:

The most cunning inflection in Johnson’s rhetoric is his portrayal of EU withdrawal as something mundane, “oven ready”, “just add water”...It is dishonest to depict Brexit as a chore when it is closer to a revolution [!]...Johnson is speaking to undecided voters who are predisposed to see Corbyn as a crackpot...

Smaller parties are being squeezed.

But there is still hope:

Johnson’s personal brand clashes with a campaign built on trust and getting stuff done. His record bears no scrutiny on either trait. His public performances are not as brittle and alienating as May’s were, but nor does he sound vastly more professional than Corbyn...Johnson’s appeal is weaker with women,[!]  and falls away among younger voters. If the latter account for the late surges that have been reported in electoral registration, the demographics of the race could be markedly altered in Labour’s favour. All sides are expecting the race to tighten...Tory candidates are braced for a shock [but] Brexit fatigue and dread of Corbyn are carrying them towards the finish line

Who was responsible for all that fatigue I wonder? Meanwhile Behr uses his great talents to SEE:

You see it written on Johnson’s face too, at unguarded moments: the flicker of a guilty smile, the glint of disbelief around the eyes that, yes, he really is getting away with this; the furtive shuffle, like a schoolboy shoplifter, with unearned electoral advantage stuffed down his trousers, sidling past the checkout hoping not to trigger any alarms before polling day.

For Graunistas it seems similar to the dilemma for the French electorate two (?) presidential elections ago. They had the choice between  'the fascist or the crook'. We have  'the schoolboy shoplifter or the dangerous weakling' .  

G Monbiot scours the party manifestos and submits them to a searching and detailed critique on our behalf  (Such sweet innocence! As if manifestos still mean anything!):

For the first time ever, environmental policies are now central, almost everywhere. But they have scarcely been mentioned in most of the coverage...

The best manifestos lead to one choice -- well two:  

A vote for the planet means a vote for Labour or the Greens

 Not terribly helpful, but The Graun might be able to help us decide with its lead story:

Jeremy Corbyn reveals dossier 'proving NHS up for sale'

And there might be further advice in the shocking revelation in this Spotlight item: 

Many Spanx: how did shapewear become a political battleground?

Fascinating stuff for elderly men, lengthy and lavishly illustrated. Who knew there were these crucial political issues, viciously sidelined in this election campaign by the phallogocentric media, no doubt:

[There is] an imaginary feminism graph with “books read” on the X-axis and “knickers worn” on the Y-axis?...Victoria’s Secret has... turned women’s bodies into luridly compelling content, and in doing so turned underwear into a political battleground....millennials are driving a shapewear boom.... the question: “Shapewear is anti-feminist, right?”...disrupting the shapewear and lingerie worlds with an authentic celebration of all women....Whether or not shapewear has truly developed in philosophy...essential for a generation that wants a high, prominent bottom as well as a small waist.

BBC tries to nix flak

Not long ago, it was Labour vacillation on supporting a Parliamentary plot  to stop Brexit that threatened us with the Black Death, expensive strawberries and eternal winter. No apocalypse now though. Now it is an election. P Toynbee on a Tory win:

That means exit from the European convention on human rights, and exit from civilisation. The BBC expects no mercy

The only hope is:

a progressive alliance, which would choose its priorities together.

Well, its only priority is to stop Brexit. Mind you, Toynbee has done me a service by reading the popular press.It seems to be they who keep banging on about getting Brexit done which explains the endless solemn analyses in the Remainer press and on the BBC and C4 news that that is all a monstrous lie believed only by cretins. As one ideological pole forms, it calls into being its equal and opposite as Fleet Street dog growls at Fleet Street dog. Almost a fake binary one might call it. That's the collapse of civilisation for you -- thin binary ideologies. I blame the vocational turn in universities.

I think it quite understandable that the BBC is wetting themselves after their ludicrous Newsnight tantrums and constant backing of lame horses in the national interest. They might feel the need to grovel their way back into some sort of acceptability:

The BBC has claimed it made a “mistake” in editing a clip where it cut out an audience laughing at Boris Johnson, insisting the decision was made due to time constraints rather than political bias.

Of course,they will now upset the other side of the binary:

The discrepancy was spotted by Nick Flaks, a resident of Brighton...Flaks said the whole thing could have been avoided if the BBC had not made the edit: “I wholeheartedly support the BBC and the idea of public broadcasting in general. However, I think that in recent years, particularly the news/politics department have sacrificed accuracy on the altar of ‘impartiality’..

It is a classic BBC ploy where rival opinions are published so they can claim to be 'in the middle'. Standards are falling even there, though --  'Nick Flaks' is just too close to Nix Flak

Cheesy leitmotifs

Same old stuff on Brexit not getting done by Dec 12, so don't vote Tory you morons, even by the relatively insightful J Rankin in the Gruan today. They really need a new ideological leitmotif for the Election but may have fired all their shots already. Amateurs!


Meanwhile, the millenial world must be shaken by this:

Halloumi hell: how will we survive the cheese crisis?

A lengthy article in the GRu tells you all you wanted toknow about halloumi and then much much more. That includes sneering at plebs who eat the sort of halloumi you get in Nandos -- nothing like the real thing connoisseurs buy in Cyprus. It also predicts shortages of other crucial foods like avocado. However, the Gr editors must have had a heavy weekend campaigning because none of these shortages are blamed on Brexit

On TFB, a useful piece on European identity from a leader of Pour un Frexit de Gauche

Professorial remainer prays for floods as the Observer bangs on and on and on

A Rawnsley announces that Brexit still has a long way to go,so the slogan 'Get Brexit done' is misleading. Fancy that. Never heard that before. His argument takes a familiar form:
First decide that the Tory slogan means a promise to have the new arrangements up and running straight after the election. Then the more impassioned can denounce that as a lie and/or broken promise, or, in this case, as foolish ignorance:

It will be “done” only in a very limited sense if Mr Johnson is returned to Number 10 with the Conservative majority that he craves....It cannot be said often enough [!]  that this will not be the end of the Brexit saga. It will not even be the beginning of the end. It will be merely the end of the beginning...Those voters who are planning to pick the Tories in the belief that they will never have to hear about Brexit again are in for a disillusioning experience.

The argument depends,secondly, on there being really stupid voters  who can't work this out for themselves and need nice liberal people to explain it to them. In particular, sinister forces are at work behind the scenes, undetectable to the gullible public, turning statements into covers for that which will happen 'in effect':

The ultras want a bare bones free-trade deal with the EU, a “Canada-minus”. If Mr Johnson is returned with a slender majority, the ultras may take him hostage, just as they did poor old Theresa May [!]. The ultras will demand that Britain diverges from the EU as much as possible in pursuit of their vision of turning the UK into a Singapore in the North Sea.... very early in the life of a re-elected Conservative government, we would be back to ticking clocks, brinkmanship, showdowns and cliff edges, probably accompanied by a lot of angry cabinet rows about what kind of compromises and trade-offs are acceptable to achieve an agreement. And if there were no resolution by the end of 2020, Britain would once again be facing the calamitous prospect of crashing out of the EU with no deal.

Rawnsley gets a bit ultra Remain himself with this:

Labour has adopted the slogan “get Brexit sorted”, an imitative echo of the Tory mantra....The sort of deal Labour talks about involves a customs union and close alignment with the single market, so it would be softer than any Tory version of Brexit, but it would still be Brexit.

So who does that leave? Oh dear -- nobody:

a Lib Dem majority government would simply revoke withdrawal and keep Britain in the EU without any further reference to the people. This is clear. It is also fantastical

Rawnsley can only offer us the enticing possibility of:

another hung parliament... To function, a Labour minority government would be reliant on the grudging acquiescence of the Scottish National party or the Lib Dems or possibly both.

However, the Observer's own latest poll is bad news for such a minority government:

The Conservatives have taken a commanding 19-point lead over Labour with less than three weeks to go before voters head to the polls, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.

The Observer then has to reassure us,in a piece appearing just below the poll results, of the unreliability of polls! Happily, things are volatile, at least in London constituencies which voted Remain, which is all that counts:

This weekend’s survey of three marginals suggests that voting movements are likely to vary wildly – even in neighbouring seats which look similar....the poll models used to project local constituencies from detailed national surveys – they are known in the trade as “MRP” projections – produce very similar predictions for the two seats. But our actual polls yield very different figures

A few straws drift by, either in the wind or in the water, depending on your preference:

With tactical voting, Luciana Berger has a real chance of winning Finchley for the Lib Dems...Local factors such as the impact of candidates and the effectiveness of local campaigning make a difference – and that difference might be greater this time than in past elections. 

Luckily, there is also a professor of politics to cheer us up further in yet another piece:

We are halfway through the election campaign and the Conservatives lead Labour by [only] roughly 10-12 points [so ignore the latest Observer poll]... 

There is still bad news:  

[The Tory campaign] campaign has featured the usual smattering of gaffes, wobbles and awkward encounters with angry voters, but nothing serious enough to blow things off course (yet) [Prince Andrew currently has a stronger lead in gaffes]... Nigel Farage’s decision to stand down Brexit party candidates in Conservative-held seats has given Boris Johnson a headstart in the race to squeeze third-party support...The Conservatives have gained nearly three points in polling since the announcement...Johnson holds a massive lead over Jeremy Corbyn in favourability ratings and “best prime minister” questions...The public is also more focused on Brexit than they were in the last election...Remain voters are still split....Labour Leave voters are switching to the Conservatives in much larger numbers than Conservative Remain voters are going to Labour

But do not lose faith all ye who wish to Remain:

....there is still a long way to go. The same polls that give the Conservatives healthy leads also give them reasons to worry: more voters than ever before think they may change their minds before polling day, and record numbers say they are personally invested in who wins the election.

Then a few more straws:

ratings of the Conservative government are very negative, with particularly dismal scores on public services and immigration. The radical spending promises in last week’s Labour manifesto could still mobilise discontent with austerity on the one hand, while the radical cuts to immigration promised in the Brexit party “contract with the people” could yet attract voters angry at the Conservatives’ past failed pledges on migration control....the growing threat of a dominant Conservative majority could yet focus the minds of Remainers and tribally anti-Tory voters, and convince them to unite behind the Labour banner.

Getting a bit desperate now, and appealing to God and his mysterious Acts:

Events beyond the government’s control could also shake the campaign. The final weeks of the 2017 contest were overshadowed by terror attacks [I am sure we all wish earnestly for more of those] ...The Tory campaign has already been wrong-footed by flooding, and could be thrown off course again by another bout of extreme winter weather....The vagaries of the electoral system leave the Conservatives needing a lead of seven points or more to be confident of a majority, and it is majority or bust this time. A two or three-point swing to Labour would therefore be enough to put everything up for grabs once again....[and there is] the much clumsier Boris Johnson [in charge]

'Economic forecasts ideological '-- shock for Graun readers

P Mason is a curious specimen of Labour Left remainerism. He has got increasingly pissed off over Brexit in his increasingly rare TV appearances. Here, he makes some good points about the IFS:

The Institute for Fiscal Studies seems unable to imagine an economic model that is different from the one we have

[Reacting to Labour's spending plans, the IFS argues]: instead of the rich and big companies paying for better public services... “we collectively will need to pay for it” – and will pay for it, according to the IFS, through the £44bn rise in taxes on corporations being passed on to shareholders, consumers and workers...The core assumption of rightwing economics is that companies can always put up prices to consumers or depress wages. But the assumption is wrong...Only if all companies had an absolute monopoly could they force workers and consumers to bear all the pain of increased taxes....But the IFS cannot consider this because it has no model of an economy in which the government pursues social justice via structural change...on some outcomes, the model will show firms passing between 10% and 50% of the tax increase to workers and consumers, and on some outcomes it will not. The result depends on execution and class struggle....For the IFS, workers are always powerless individuals, consumers are dumb price-takers, and shareholders are money-grabbing optimisers of short-term profit, incapable of investing for the long term. 

Good arguments all, possibly a bit incoherent on the relative merits of economic competition and class struggle in achieving social justice, but why have we not heard them concerning IFS forecasts of doom after Brexit?

Post-debate spinning

I didn't watch the second televised debate either. I had to fix a leak in the roof of the conservatory. The media  processed it all for me, and I trust them. GUardian coverage today (I'm not sure if it counted as news or comment) includes these insights:

O Jones (Labour, Corbynista Tendency):

the big takeaway was Corbyn declaring he would be neutral in Labour’s commitment to implement a referendum on Brexit. This should have come earlier: Corbyn should always have said that enough divisive prime ministers have sought to represent only one side of the Brexit split, that he needs to be a honest broker, that the country needs to be united. It finally came tonight: here was Corbyn’s most assured – and, dare it be said – prime ministerial performance....Jo Swinson’s performance was a near-calamity...Nicola Sturgeon – Britain’s most effective politician – pulled off a typically solid performance...As for Johnson, he was finally held to account for his offensive comments about Muslim women – which led to a 375% [very precise] surge in Islamophobic hate crimes – and about black people and gay people.

P Toynbee (Still centrist Labour? Not if it is antisemitic, surely):

Nicola Sturgeon showed how it should be done. For clarity, agility, intelligence – and likability – she swept the floor....[Corbyn] declared his neutrality: not ideal [!], but safe ground...Squashed and mangled was Jo Swinson...her visceral attacks on Labour are dangerous when she needs their tactical votes.... Let’s hope tactical voters block their ears.... the prime minister...looked surprised to be barracked on so many issues – from a killer opener on his view of truth, to his hidden Russia report and nine years of his party crushing the poor.

M Kettle (still Lib Dem probably):

in the light of the mauling that Jo Swinson got from the audience, the Liberal Democrats should reflect that they were lucky she was cut out of the earlier confrontation altogether...[but luckily there was also]...he audiences’ abrasive and impatient reaction towards Boris Johnson. The Conservatives may be ahead, and Johnson may have better leadership ratings than his rivals, but the Tory leader’s capacity to rile is striking.

Kettle does not mention Brexit at all,which must be a first, but seems keener on fights to come:

Scotland, though, was centre-stage, this time because of Nicola Sturgeon’s involvement and because Jeremy Corbyn repeated his very important pledge [why exactly?] not to permit a second independence referendum in the first two years of a Labour government.

Good old Corbyn is doing well. His prevarications and evasions are really strengths.

K Balls  (possible relation. Possible Tory of some persuasion if not Johnsonian?):

Johnson faced difficult moments as members of the audience challenged him on his previous comments on Muslim women, along with Tory austerity. However, the prime minister remained calm...The disastrous performance of the night was Jo Swinson’s....She was criticised by Brexiteers and remainers alike over her party’s policy to revoke article 50 rather than simply push for a second referendum. The position has been a cause of concern among some Lib Dems since its creation....the Conservatives need the Liberal Democrats to retain a significant share of the remain vote come polling day...Despite Jeremy Corbyn’s attempts to play down the chance of a Labour government granting a second independence referendum in the near future as part of a power-sharing agreement, Sturgeon suggested his words should not be taken too seriously as she could change his mind...This has quickly been seized on by Conservative MPs in Scotland – it’s exactly the type of material they want in order to unite the unionist vote north of the border.

And why all this hate for Swinson?  Is it because she is a woman?

PV -- single issue fails to unite.

The Graun has M Kettle urging tactical voting but wondering how to coordinate it,especially if he runs out of nice people like D Grieve to support. Meanwhile the decline of PV looks terminal:

The plan was for People’s Vote to become one of the most influential voices in the election campaign....[but now we have] the total collapse of the second referendum pressure group...With over 500,000 supporters, and two successful mass marches in London behind it, the group was raising £100,000 a week...as a force, the most powerful pressure group in British politics appears all but dead....Alastair Campbell, who had been closely involved in the campaign, said: “This has become an absolute joke. We had a big platform, ready to go, and we were taken off the field. We could have been a bridge between Labour and the Lib Dems, and the organisation is nowhere.”

 Why oh why, asks this blog,when the national interest was so clear? Factors include:

After months of simmering tensions, a boardroom coup...The organisation’s 40 staff all walked out in support, and three weeks on the dispute is no closer to resolution, even though Rudd resigned as chairman...“The reality is that the organisation was not professionally run, and if a second referendum was ever called would struggle to be designated the official remain group,”

 And:

Even those involved struggle to articulate any clear reason for the dispute, which in large part appears to revolve around a clash of personalities. Campbell accuses Rudd of wanting “to have status at west London dinner parties”, while friends of Rudd say “Campbell and Peter Mandelson don’t want to pivot the organisation to a pro-remain position”. Like Campbell, Mandelson has fallen out with Rudd....People’s Vote was made up of a patchwork of nine different organisations, the largest of which was Open Britain, the successor to the failed StrongerIn pro-European Union campaign from 2016. “Rudd appointed himself as chairman of People’s Vote, and although it was a bit odd, we didn’t really think that much of it,” Campbell said....What Rudd did was seize control of Open Britain, which employed the majority of the staff working at Millbank Tower and controlled its data, via a company called Baybridge

It was at first thought that Soubry and Umunna had wanted to use the group as a platform to form a new party, but they were rebuffed, complaining that they were not getting enough media appearances, as more MPs gradually came on board.

The whole episode confirms the problems with single-issue campaigns with inner divisions on other issues always threatening unity. This has been known since the early analyses of CND. XR has its moment to come. 

The inner tensions are hilarious in this case, with PV's pompous assertions about national interests and democracy. Prima donna politicians and their rivalries, corporate power struggles and 'personality clashes' seemed much more potent. That these issues triumphed surely raises doubt about the sincerity of the goal as well? I hope all those marchers, supporters and useful idiots are not too disillusioned with real politics.

Facts and lies -- the Guardian and BBC back Twitter

They must still all go together for dinner a lot and marry each other's relatives, or else it is one of those mysterious zeitgeisty things as in Rushie's Midnight's Children, but Newsnight and the Guradinsa speak with one voice. 

E Maitlis was really thrilled last night with a story about a fake factcheck site. So thrilled! She was back into full smug schoolmarm flow, with wagging fingers and insistence that the interviewee answered her questions (which weren't questions but rants), while she heckled their answers. She is riding high, of course, after being able to voice carefully scripted and rehearsed questions for Prince Andrew in an interview the BBC can't stop talking about. 

Today, the same story headlines the GHruan website:

Twitter has accused the Conservatives of misleading the public after they rebranded one of their official party accounts to make it look like a factchecking service during the ITV leaders’ debate...The party was widely criticised on Tuesday night when it temporarily changed the name of its Conservative campaign headquarters press office Twitter account, which is followed by nearly 76,000 users, to factcheckUK from its usual CCHQPress.

Oh no -- not Twitter. Not that guardian (sic) of fact and rigour! This looks terminal. Incidentally, doesn't el gruno use quotation marks around proper names any more? Only people searching for 'factcheck' and not noticing the link to CCHQ would be misled, of course. Maybe the Beeb and the GRu were aggrieved because they also offer 'factchecks'? Alas, I have to agree with a Tory once more:

On Thursday morning, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, defended the move and told BBC Breakfast that “no one gives a toss about the social media cut and thrust”.

Here's how the Grun spun the TV debate:

Corbyn outperforms expectations in head to head with Johnson 

Those expectations were pretty low in the first place, of course: 'A pre-match YouGov poll suggested that people believed Johnson would perform better by 37% to Corbyn’s 23%'. Who got the other 40% I wonder -- the presenter?'

As for the poll afterwards:

Johnson won the ITV debate in the eyes of just 51% of the viewers, compared with Jeremy Corbyn’s 49%...It can be tempting to dismiss such immediate sampling, although such surveys are taken in the minutes after a TV debate ends and people are invited to express a simple, binary [not again] view. 

51%, 52% -- only idiots or binary thinkers would call those majorities. On a more general note, we get a glimpse into the science of polling with this:

Deborah Mattinson, who runs Britain Thinks, said that when asked to describe Johnson as a fictional character in focus groups “leave voters say something like James Bond, a figure who is a bit glamorous and gets things done, while remainers prefer Homer Simpson, unable to select which button to push”.

I'd love to know what fictional character they thought up for Corbyn or Swinson.

Guaridna separates news from election soundbites but not in a binary

I could have it all wrong.Maybe the Gru is ironic through and through.Today they have this:

Brexit weekly briefing: election soundbites replace hard news

Mostly, it was all solid electioneering stuff, as it has been throughout the newspaper for months:

Best of the rest

• Brexit could weaken rules on antibiotics in farming, activists warn.

• Stressed Whitehall staff at ‘breaking point’ over Brexit.

• Voters’ choice is Tory no-deal Brexit or second referendum, says Gauke.

• Police assessing claims that Tories offered peerages to Brexit party.

• Roland Rudd exits People’s Vote amid continuing rancour.

• ‘CVs at bottom of pile’: Britons in EU say Brexit is taking its toll.

• Rising proportion of EU citizens in UK given temporary ‘pre-settled status’.

But there were some interesting more news-like (but still ideological)  nuggets too:

The EU launched legal action after Britain failed to nominate a candidate for the European commission, and the outgoing European council president, Donald Tusk, called on anti-Brexit campaigners to keep fighting in the run-up to the polls [isn't that electoral interference?] ....Somewhat embarrassingly, Tesla cited Brexit uncertainty after choosing Germany rather than the UK...Australia (backed by 14 other countries) demanded compensation for Brexit trade disruption.

Meanwhile,P Toynbee shows some signs of regaining perspective:

Time was when poverty was prime electoral turf. Labour struggles to push it on to the agenda, but it makes no impact on the Tories and their press. There’s no lack of brutal facts: in the last week alone the TUC reported that wages are still £20 below 2009 levels, with household debt at its highest. The Resolution Foundation finds the “jobs miracle” is due to poor people being driven to take on extra work. Fidelity says half of non-home owners now doubt they will ever own. The Trussell Trust reports the steepest rise in food-bank use in five years, while the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce finds four in 10 don’t believe they’ll have a decent standard of living in 10 years’ time – “the new normal”.

There is a party political point at the end though. Unlike G Brown (Blairite Remain Party):

There is no sign that Boris Johnson feels any need to pretend to be concerned

So he should pretend to be concerned? Meanwhile, S Moore puts a feminist case:

The looming general election offers fake binary choices – Corbyn or Johnson, leave or remain. Taking part is to bolster brokenness

We know binaries are the root of all evil and all that, and fake ones worst of all -- but aren't there at least 4 parties? Do all the binaries nestle together conveniently?

Moore puts her case and dignifies Grau perplexity:

it’s actually my right to vote for none of the above. To register my disgust.

Like many another Graunie, I suspect, she has argued herself out of any action at all because no saints are actually standing

Labour has a radical transformative programme. ...But I stand in solidarity with my Jewish friends and refuse the fake binary [!] of austerity v antisemitism....[Johnson is a] deeply unimpressive ego-driven mobster [who] stands for nothing....Jo Swinson in her possessed head-girl persona doesn’t float my boat, either.

So overall:

the mainstream media fails to reflect what is really going on, replaying all this as a simple choice and zombie party politics. Vote, everyone says. Get a large nose peg. Do the right thing. But what if the right thing is refusing the fake binaries [!] on offer? Voting now feels like clinging to the wreckage of a system we should dismantle. All the issues that really matter require cooperation, not silly, point-scoring conflict. 

Meanwhile, revealing problems with cooperation not silly point-scoring abstention, with T Meadowcroft:

Party politics didn’t come naturally to me. I was a twentysomething crypto-anarchist wastrel from the outer suburbs of Bristol who’d spent five years after university moving between jobs and getting distracted. Then, in 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave humanity 12 years to reorganise itself to limit climate catastrophe. A few months later, my son Finn was born.

Our future is safe in his hands. In terms of real politics, the Remain Alliance looked nice, but doubts emerged:

The obvious problem, to me, was that the alliance could end up hurting the remain cause as much as helping it. Polling expert John Curtice predicted immediately after details were released that there were “probably five or six seats” that might be turned over by the pact – but rather counterproductively it targets 10 pro-remain Labour MPs  ...Across the country, Greens like me now face the prospect of throwing our lot in with Jo Swinson, a leader whose green credentials include voting to sell off England’s forests, taking a donation from an energy company that owns fracking licences, and voting against slowing the rise of rail fares.

So he withdrew as a Green candidate, and Remain triumphed despite 'the planet' crying out for help, despite his great concerns for impending catastrophe, despite even his son being born. He even seems prepared to take a binary choice. What is it that produces such passion? 

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Pole dancing while Brussels prevaricates.

Johnson-Arcuri investigation to review affair with another woman

Says the Graub. There is hope! Johnson might have had more affaires! The American poledancing entrepreneur is back with a tale of cruel abandonment, and another candidate  affaire-ee has also come forward. Happy days! This will swing it with those fisherman in Scotland!

In other news, two academics have warned us that trade deals can take a long time to complete. 'Anand Menon is director of the UK in a Changing Europe and professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King’s College London. Catherine Barnard is a senior fellow at the UK in a Changing Europe and professor of EU law at Cambridge University'. No partisanship there, obviously. Maybe a bit of anticipated schadenfreude though?

 Even if the Tories gain a majority, the UK faces a long wait for a trade deal with the EU to be negotiated  

Never heard that before! If only I had known in 2016!  Even longer if any of the other parties gain majorities, but let that pass. With the precision for which academics are loved the world over, the hammer blow appears early:

And now for some semantics. This government and its predecessor have insisted on using the phrase “implementation period” to describe transition and that is the wording which appears in the bill. The reference to implementation is, to say the least, profoundly misleading. Why? Because we have absolutely nothing to implement.

It could be sinister indeed:

Johnson has said that he will not ask for an extension to the transition period, and so many fear a new cliff edge or no-deal Brexit on 1 January 2021

Let's hope Hilary Benn is re-elected. Luckily, there is always work for lawyers in the EC:

.. the EU will wish to scrutinise very carefully what dealignment actually means in practice. Clause by clause, chapter by chapter, the negotiations will be painstaking and time consuming. [And] it is conceivable each [nation state] will enjoy a veto.[Finally] ...because this is a deal intended to make trade harder rather than easier, we will be dealing solely with losses.

Perhaps we need some semantic analysis of the term 'deal'? Sounds wise to 'keep no deal on the table'?

The dark arts and enlightened Twitterati

The Gru is usually against social meeja and has blamed devious uses of it for wining the 2016 Referendum. Chaps who are not trained journalists post on it! Now they have discovered a possibly good side:

Some call it toxic, but a lively local Facebook group has brought young and old together to trade memes and debate

Edd Withers set up the Canterbury Residents Group on Facebook five years ago in an attempt to bridge the divide between the city’s large student population and its older residents....In 2017, students and remain-leaning residents of Canterbury helped Labour candidate Rosie Duffield do what many had thought impossible: turn a constituency that has voted Conservative for the past 160 years red...It’s an obvious place for the candidates to campaign, and all of them have agreed to do Facebook Live interviews on the group. Across the country such local Facebook groups are increasingly potent political forces. In Merthyr Tydfil one group was credited with helping to overthrow the council.

Journos might still object, though:

The information in the group tends to reflect the scattergun chaos of social media. 

And it is not always critical of the right people:

[Content included] an anti-Labour meme suggesting John McDonnell’s spending plans would cost too much, a lengthy discussion sparked by claims people had been seen smoking while queueing at a foodbank... and an image of Jeremy Corbyn superimposed on to an underwear model, declaring Labour was the sort of man who “ensures you come first”.[as well as]... an impassioned video [originally?] on Twitter calling on Labour and the Liberal Democrats to form a progressive alliance...By the evening, less than 24 hours after the video was uploaded, the Liberal Democrat candidate, Tim Walker, announced he was stepping down

Oh yes -- Twitter, once feared and loathed even more by guardianista journos. It seems jolly positive as well:

Throughout the day on Twitter, Brooks-Martin and Clifford also saw Corbyn’s pledge on childcare and news of the cyberattack on Labour. It’s where Brooks-Martin found a tactical voting website that told her to back Duffield for the best chance to remove the Tories from power and where many students watched Duffield’s moving speech in parliament about her personal experience with domestic violence.

Classic Graunies appear at the end:

Michael Coulson-Tabb, a 49-year-old part-time owner of a gourmet burger restaurant [who formerly 'worked in the financial sector before moving to the area in 2001'] who lives in the rapidly gentrifying seaside town of Whitstable, got much of his election-related news from Facebook and online news sites. ..While snipes about Brexit dominate the local resident group and Twitter, Coulson-Tabb said it was the personal tragedies and difficulties within their community that swayed who they would vote for. Many spoke of their frustration that those personal stories were lost in the fast-paced, ever-changing algorithm of Facebook and Twitter [and he provides his] .

And generational politics continues:

When one man posted a Back to the Future meme that called on Corbyn’s father to wear a condom this week, the likes were swift, but so was the almost uniform response from students: “OK Boomer.”

Shame on the Graun for using,and in effect promoting, this demeaning and insulting term!. If it spreads any further, I may find myself feeling so vulnerable and insecure that I might not be able to go out in public.

Your witches tonight. And a spectre.

The Guran helpfully provides its readers with a list of named and shamed candidates, provided by no less than their Deputy Political Editor:

As Tories, Labour and Lib Dems finalise their list of candidates, here are the furores so far 

 Allegations of racism and sexism have abounded, leading to several to withdraw and/or apologise. Others have been the subject of rows over their selection or accusations of cronyism.

They are too tedious to list in detail. Some seem serious. Others reek of dead cat. I am not sure what we should now do exactly. Tories have the most defaulters and LibDems only one, so should we take the next step and infer that the Tory Party generally is home to nasty people? Or Brexiteers are?

Above all, has no-one at the Grun considered the implications? Won't all this make the public even more cynical or disillusioned? Won't it encourage a debasement of political discourse? More trolling? Endanger the lives of candidates?

At this point, my webpage refused to reload. The Gruan has noticed I read their webpages a lot and has asked for money. Maybe they have now realised why I read their webpages?

Normal service has been resumed. Onwards...

Chakrabortty must be a marxist apostate because his opening comment on the anniversary celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall recalls Marx's I8th Brumaire...

The threat of the Soviet bloc forced western democracies to acknowledge the rights of workers and poor people 

The very presence of a powerful rival ideology frightened capitalists into sharing their returns with workers and the rest of the society, in higher wages, more welfare spending and greater public investment...the “more national elites [in South America] were under the threat of communist revolution, the more the state introduced policies that reduced top income shares”...[Manifesto now] ... a spectre was haunting the west: the spectre of egalitarianism. [But, just as in 18th Bru...] Communism didn’t topple capitalism, but kept it honest – and so saved it from itself.

Conversely, the collapse of communism between 1989 and 1991 has left capitalism unchallenged and untempered – and increasingly unviable....for most of the past three decades, the political classes – whether Tony Blair or David Cameron, George W Bush or Barack Obama – have accepted vast gulfs between rich and poor as just one of those sad facts of life. With tiny shrugs, they put it down to globalisation or the shifting job market

Almost all...counterweights to extreme capitalism have disappeared today, from strong trade unions to alternative national models. The resulting debauchery is all around us, [and with a bit of Marxist eschatology now] A system so manifestly unwilling to change course will hit the rocks

The mystery remains though -- how does all this lead nevertheless to his support for Remain? 

Meanwhile, the Graun has an absolutely priceless, if long, article, which all fans should read, on the aesthetics and erotics of the dick pic. What a contribution to serious journalism and civilised Western values in these difficult times!

Sexting: do men and women do it differently?