Westminstenders Contines. Boris outmaneovered everyone?! Now War and Peace?

[RedToothBrush]

THE BREXIT FALLOUT CONTINUES - THREAD TEN

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This set of threads started out asking if Boris had been outmanoeuvred by Cameron handing him a poison chalice. Fate made it seem as if Boris lost the battle but May has confounded everyone and handed him a second chance. Or so it might seem.

May now has a new Cabinet after a sweeping cull of Cameron's lot. It is more right wing than in a generation. A number of appointments have raised eyebrows. There are plenty of poison chalices and plenty of Brexiteers. Will this create peace in the Tory ranks? Or is it just the calm before the storm

Labour are tearing themselves apart what now seems to be all out civil war. Talk of gerrymandering, violence, disenfranchisement, deselection and intimidation are rife. The seems to be no end in sight, and no prospect of a solution apparent. The question perhaps seems to be when and how, rather than if the party will split, and who will retain the name and party funds.

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So the sad face of British politics in the last two days can be summed up in a single image. Boris and a brick.

Depressed?

I think we have a while to go yet before we hit the bottom.

Excuse me with the intros as I'm starting to struggle to keep up with things myself

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/2684990-The-Westminster-Hunger-Games-Contines-May-Day-May-Day Previous Thread Nine

Thinking about this discussion about the Conservative-LibDem coalition: I've just come to the collusion that the LibDems actually brought this current Conservative Government upon us.

Not just be having pissed off their own support by apparently backtracking on key manifesto commitments but by - in an act of Schadenfreude - ameliorating the worst of the Conservative policies (which they understandably would have thought was a positive), they actually made the Conservatives appear not so nasty, so that people were not so scared to vote for them

I think at the minute the Labour Party is doing a very good job at making the Conservatives look like the only competent party.

With no opposition and with so much in chaos I think it is very likely that they will get more support because "well at least they make the trains run on time".

From personal experience (DD) I would say that it is the young new voters in 2010 who voted LD off the back of that ridiculous pledge that are exactly the ones who are most fervent in support of Corbyn now.
They are looking for something to believe in and are getting very, very frustrated.

I kind of agree with your assessment prettybird in the sense that I think that people felt betrayed by the LibDems and gave all the credit for good government in the Coalition to the Conservatives.

But I think that it is a shame that voters were not sophisticated enough to realise that the LibDems were influencing policy.

Maybe in the future we will be more nuanced in our judgements..? Or maybe not, given the unedifying spectacle of the referendum campaign. As a country we seem to form our views based on feeling a particular way rather than by examining and balancing all the relevant factors and reaching a reasoned conclusion. Far less emotionally satisfying than shrieking about "control" or "betrayal".

The Liberals probably genuinely did what they thought was best for the country at the time.
Hindsight is always brilliantly clear.
Clegg wanted the coalition, but he wouldn't have been able to join it without the general agreement of his party.

After going from about 50 seats to 8, he had to quit, whatever the policy rights / wrongs.
That was a horrendous defeat which left them too weak to effectively oppose the government

• someone needs too, since JC was never an effective Leader of the Opposiiton

There was no real need for Milliband to quit after fairly narrowly losing.
He was a decent leader, just unlucky to be there when the electorate swung (nastily) to the right on some key issues.
In particular, the Labour report on the 2015 loss found many voters fiercely disagreed with immigration policy

Labour would be in a far better position if he had stayed.
So would the country.
JC is a disaster who may destroy the Labour Party.
In the meantime, the country is without an effective opposition and has been since JC became Labour Leader.

I hope voters - including the young - are sensible enough not to look for a "superhero" leader who promises simplistically to fix the world.
That's potentially dangerous.
UKIP / Arron Banks are waiting to gobble up those who think that way.

Democratic politics lives best among the shades of grey, not when voters are led by over-simplified slogans and Facebook likes.

it's lack of funding for living costs that really prevents poorer students going to university because those have to be paid upfront.

No... it's lack of grades, is main factor. The poorer kids get poorer grades. This stretches back to years previous of inferior education options. That's why Scottish "No tuition fees" thing is a sham; they don't have more kids from poor backgrounds going to Uni. England has one right thing by keeping more preschool funding (Scotland lacks); at a point in life when free access to education opportunities can make a lot of difference.

Liz Kendal wanted more funding for preschool education but got beaten by Corbyn who wants free Uni tuition for the already privileged. Students get a vote & preschoolers don't. :(

I'm a natural LibDem voter but despaired of the LibDems promises on tuition fees.

I could never understand why Cameron wasn't allowed to form a minority Government as Harold Wilson did in 1974, although Labour then did get the largest no. of seats from what I recall.

I vote LD. I didn't vote to put the Tory party in, which is ultimately what going into Coalition did. 4 other members of my family voted LD in 2010. They all deserted to Green in 2015; two with a possibility of getting a Green elected, and two with no hope whatever. I think they are still voting Green and were shocked when I still voted LD. I now feel totally disenfranchised.

Back to talking about proportional representation: I like the Billy Bragg solution, where the House of Lords keeps the same legislative role, but becomes the chambre with members chosen by a PR system.

Keep FPTP for the commons & for MPs that represents specific areas so that the MP has to face up to their specific voters in explaining their actions.

Boris looks a bit stumped for words as the very real and seriousness of his new job have been slammed home over the past 2 days.

Time to lose the buffoon act and do some real work.

Not sure I anyone else has mentioned this (thread moving so fast!) but I really recommend the book by David Laws on the Coalition. It's a bit repetitive (I think it was rushed out and needed a bit more editing) but an interesting insight into the compromises made and some of the relationships and personalities

Is it okay to ask this here... Is terrorism really worse now than it was in 1975 or '85 or '95? Was there as much handwringing & I've just forgotten it (the handwringing, I mean)?

Europe wide, I think terrorism is worse now than earlier decades. In the UK though, we had IRA bombings, so for us it's probably not much different. Just IMO though.

I worked in a government office in the mid 70s and there were frequent bomb scares.
I also remember it was the time when plane hijacking was often in the headlines.

Spain & France had Basque terrorism.
Portugal/Greece/others had decades of fascisim, following horrors of civil wars/Holocaust.
Lebanon had mass bombing problems in 1970s.
I wish we weren't such a violent species. :(

lljkk, its different. Its evolved. Its more visible due to social media (and therefore it is more scary as you can't avoid it). Its also happening in different parts of the world. You could argue about what happened in Eastern Europe during the cold war, and the terror that was carried out by the state. You could argue about regime changes. It depends on what your definition is in many respects.

If you want to take the definition of terrorism by the common one that the media tend to use as 'some kind of rogue group' then tactics are evolving and growing more difficult for security services to deal with. The irony is that as security services have improved at catching terrorism and stopping attacks, terrorists have found new ways to carry out attacks. There is less of a need for physical networks. The events in Nice are being regarded as a worrying development, as if it does turn out to be inspired by rather than part of ISIS then we may have reached a point where services can not stop attacks before they happen and can only take preventative actions on the ground which are limited and may well affect civil liberties (and further inflame problems).

The other thing that is happening is that tactics seems to be becoming more brutal and are targeting 'soft targets' - basically anything that will cause a lot of deaths, provoke maximum outrage and offend western sensibilities of liberalism and humanity. There was a report that cited the French inquiry into The Bataclan yesterday that suggested that the French government played down what happened inside.

Hollande's comments yesterday reflect all this when he said we will 'have to learn to live' with terrorism. Frankly, having spent a long time being interested in the subject I'm inclined to say that he's right. It will be viewed as defeatism by many and I'm sure this will be a theme that in the coming weeks, months and years will be pushed by right wing agendas but its 'a truth' that will born out by which ever political path or action we pursue I fear. I also fear that racial tensions are only set to rise.

However whilst this is all terrifying - as indeed it is designed to do, try and also put some perspective into this:
www.independent.co.uk/voices/nice-attack-do-you-feel-like-youre-more-likely-than-ever-to-be-hit-by-a-terror-attack-this-is-why-a7140396.html
This article was written by a risk analysis about how likely you are to be killed in an attack. Its very small.

There is one small problem that I have with this though - in that it only counts risk and damage as deaths directly caused. The reality is that the effects of terrorism are more wide ranging and are not restricted to death nor even injury caused directly.

Overall though I think we have become rather complacent and have taken for granted our Human Rights Law and Geneva Convention and are immune to the realities faced elsewhere in the world. This makes us much more vulnerable to assaults on us by terrorism. Our media is remarkably sanitised.

We are moving into an era that is uncertain in many, many ways. IMHO we frankly we really didn't and don't need Brexit, as its effects will only serve to make things worse as someone will seek to exploit emerging differences between EU nations.

The events of the last two days have really got to me, I have to confess. I am going to try and stay away from it a bit, but I am finding it very hard to do so.

I don't know, I'm old enough to remember the 1970s and they were bad, terrorism-wise. Plane hijackings, The Red Brigade, Baader Meinoff, the IRA.

Also, French terrorism dates back much further than you think, its roots are based in its colonial history in North Africa and this has impacted on its current political and social structure. Many of the 'networks' are the same networks and the same groups and people fwiw. The recent attacks, for the most part, are an evolution rather than a totally new thing.

Social media and real time TV reporting means that our experience of an attack is much more intensive and immersive. We watch as things happen front of our eyes, rather than getting delayed (and sanitized) reports.

Genuine Q - was there ever a halcyon age when MPs all represented their constituents? Haven't we always had people parachuted into safe seats, old boys network, nepotism etc etc?

I think a big difference with the current terrorism, compared to the IRA or left-wing terrorism of past decades, is that it's being committed by the "other" - people who are not white, not from a Christian background, immigrants who are "not really French" (or Belgian etc). It makes the political atmosphere infinitely more poisonous because it adds racism, xenophobia and the far right into the mix.

(Now as Red said, there's a long history of colonialism-related terrorism in France, but it's usually been either committed by the far right or in direct relation to Algerian politics - so not as clearly "against France")

Incidentally the discussion we had earlier about whether or not to call the latest attack "terrorism" was prescient. It's not entirely clear what umbrella it falls under - the current best guess is that the attacker was depressed and maybe disturbed, and that he "used" very fast intense radicalisation as a way to justify his impulses towards suicide. If that's indeed the case, it's a very murky grey area.

I suppose a difference I see is how modern extremists use social media to encourage these attacks, to support the extremist ideology which acknowledges no innocents.

The Orlando shooter planned out the attack & was influenced by extremists but also depressed & mentally ill. Similar with that hostage taker in Australia (last year?). We can't lock up every mentally ill/depressed/also Muslim person.

I perceive that there is a reluctance within some/many Muslim communities to acknowledge their vulnerable children (or mentally ill). Because mentally ill are already very stigmatised & children are supposed to do what their parents said so no willingness to acknowledge these potential weak points?

I'm in France now and while driving I've been thinking about the state of the world (gloomy!)

I think the consumption of mass media has an awful lot to answer for, particular rolling news but also the publication of phone videos or photos of the slightest event. There's therefore a far greater knowledge about what is going on in the world which feeds insecurity and paranoia.

When that's combined with a toxic living environment (short term jobs, zero hours, low wages etc), it really encourages turning to extremes which promise salvation rather than dull compromising middle of the road sensible stuff, especially as much of that starts to be taken for granted - eg the massive improvement in living conditions across Europe in the last 50 years...

Yes, sort of similar to the Orlando shooter - Internet and social media allow extremists to reach disturbed/depressed individuals and weaponise them

It's really difficult to prevent that because it can happen so fast, with few warning signs. In that sense the far right/Le Pen discourse of "being tough on Islam radicalism" is desperately behind the times (on top of being pretty useless, which it always was)

As far as I remember the IRA were never suicidal and their cause was allied to a clear political movement with an identifiable chain of command. They may have attracted some very questionable people, but there did seem to be a limit to what they would do.

Now it's increasingly difficult to tell the difference between terrorism and incidents like Columbine.