Westministenders: Tell Boris it should be more Stokenders and Copenders

[RedToothBrush]

FINALLY this is the thread of the Copeland and Stoke By-Elections.
In the next few days we will be subjected to a whole pile of analysis from the media most of which will completely miss the point, and will waffle on about Brexit as if it’s the only issue ever and this is what matters to everyone.

Its bollocks.

This is the ‘Westminster Bubble’ that doesn’t report what is on the ground. It includes the media and the politicians who ran into town for the election, never to set foot there ever again. In one case pulling faces at the local children. In another desperately trying to prove how local he is.
Is it any wonder some think that all politicians are all the same?

You can learn far more about what really matters by reading the Stoke Sentinel and The Whitehaven News than reading The Sun or The Mail, those great champions of Leave. (Fancy that local papers being more relevant to a community than a national ones).

The by-election in Stoke has been a particular display of pond life style campaigning. We’ve had Hillsborough, ‘dodgy addresses’, arrest of a candidate, text messages saying you’ll go to hell for voting ‘wrong’, letters that say that MPs voted differently to the way they did, an activist being hunted by the police for trying to enter someone’s house and then pissing on her property, crying candidates, faked photos on twitter, dodgy sexist tweets from candidates dragged up, photographs with known far right activists, egg throwing and vandalism.

The word that keep coming out? Not ‘Brexit’. But ‘Change’.

What have the main parties in either election really added in terms of positive change?

Tomorrow’s weather will not help matters. The chances are that it will keep turnout down, making those postal votes more important. It will drive out the angry to vote whilst the apathetic and hopelessly disillusioned will stay home. The result will not be decided by the 60%+ of the electorate who voted to leave the EU. It will be decided by a fraction of that.

Someone has to lose. There will be political blood shed. Friday will see the political blame and finger pointing I doubt anyone will get it.
The real story is about how few people will vote and how few people think their vote counts for anything.

Immigrants and ‘benefit scroungers’ are not to blame for this. Nor is it even the ‘cultural elite’. Politicians have a duty to the whole country, to do the best for them all. Not to merely do the ‘will of the people’. Popularism does not help people. It merely starts a runaway train of the tyranny of the majority. You don’t give children sweets because they demand them. You educate children, and nurture them. If they are unaware of real issues, you make sure they learn and you explain why you are making unpopular decisions honestly, rather than feeding them a crock of shit. Because that’s your job as a PM, as MP, as a MEP, as an elected mayor, as a county councillor, as a borough councillor, as a parish councillor. To step up.

We need politicians with the back bone to do the right thing for all, rather than just worrying about their electoral strategy and how to con people to vote for you this time. We need politicians to actually take the responsibility of office rather than see it as a career opportunity.

The issues that matter most to people ultimately are not about the EU. They are not about immigration. It’s too easy to blame on immigration rather than tackle the infrastructure problems of the country and admit where you have gone wrong in the past. It’s easier to drive an hysterical fear of terrorism and cultural values being in danger from an enemy far away rather than look at who is really responsible.

If people don’t think that others are unaware of the problem, and don’t care about them and how they are being thrown under the bus, they are wrong. Plenty of people on both sides of the EU referendum debate get it.

Plenty on both sides don’t and are indulging the fantasy land excuses for domestic political failure.

The question is how do you get that message out, in a way that makes a difference and does change things? How do you break the stereotypes of the stupid and the patronising? How do you get people like the Nathan from Stoke to be heard and to believe in politics. Not believe in Brexit. Believe that politics can help them.

There are 2 new threads for regretful leavers, but the posts are predictable.
Educated Germans would know exactly what is happening wit these deportations and letters to EU citizens. I honestly think they are going to be coming after whoever the fuck they choose, once compassion is compromised.
It's also not a co incidence that brave Jo Cox's campaign is against loneliness. In the Arendt book, one of the key features of societies prone to totalitarianism is isolation of individuals.

We are watching The Man in the High Castle. Wow! Eerie. We will not need the NHS if this the way we are going.

Right to stay webinar tomorrow evening:
neweuropeans.net/event/1763/righttostay-webinar

Eee Labour's problems in England are both leader & party, but Scotland seems to have discarded Labour as useless / irrelevant, long before Corbyn.

imo, the English and Scottish electorate have VERY different priorities, so need different politics and policies.
Difficult to manage within UK political parties - maybe better if Scottish Labour (and Tory) completely split from the English party ? < provocative >

England has been right of center for decades, so will consistently vote Tory, provided Tory sleaze stays within limits and the leaders are not too obviously odious or batshit.
Scotland is more radical left, so has given up on a Labour party that wins too few GEs to protect them from Tory govt policies.
If there ever is Independence, the SNP would probably reduce to a rump, with more conventional left-right party politics resuming

Bashing "benefit scroungers" and cutting welfare plays much better in England than Scotland.
Also, immigration is a big issue in England, but doesn't seem to raise such passions in a less populated Scotland - Nicola Sturgeon said right after the ref that Scotland's immigrants were very welcome, Cameron and then May did not; even some in Labour are pandering to the dislike of English voters for immigration.

Russian trolls have been spotted winding up for Californian independence from the union, to divide the democrats.

I have to wonder, especially after that Mercer article, what is really happening in British politics. We are trying to work out patterns, when patterns and behaviours are being manipulated beyond the control of normal British political institutions.

The Germans again sensibly, are onto this and have actively been organising to shut down fake news. Silence here.

Re how safe foreigners should or shouldn't feel, a man drove deliberately into a group of Romanian car washers today.

This will be framed as a lone wolf attack by a drunk (like the murder of the Indian student in Kansas) not as far right terrorism, of course.

Utterly sick of this. If you're still banging on about migrants then you have their blood on your conscience.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/bellingham-crash-car-collision-south-london-mercedes-a7600776.html
Horrendous. The law of incitement should be applied.

Thats dreadful misti

Meanwhile, the govt plans to use rookie lawyers to negotiate Brexit (from Bloomberg)

The Government Legal Department has published vacancies for as many as 17 London-based trade lawyers who would receive a starting annual salary of 48,400 pounds ($60,747). While the going rate for British government lawyers, that’s as much as 60 percent less than what similar private-sector positions offer.

It’s even more of a hard sell considering the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, has a 700-strong trade department, meaning a dearth of national government lawyers specialized in the area across all of Europe.

“You really can’t get anyone with any experience in trade law for that price,” said Mark Husband, a London-based head hunter at Cogence Search. “It’s probably the lowest conceivable entry point. It’s about two-thirds of what someone would require for anyone with any degree of experience,” he said, and “about a fifth of what someone with any experience of trade negotiations would demand.”

This is going to end well ...

Misti it's economic and legal vandalism, the whole project is.

Yes. Economic, legal, social, cultural, intellectual.

I counted about 30 vacancies on the DforExiting EU (or whatever it's called) last time I looked (recently). Actually, possibly a good idea to use rookie lawyers. Maybe it needs to be fucked up spectacularly for public opinion to swing back again - it will. Thatcher/Major had 18 years, Blair/Brown had 13 years, Tories have already had 7.

Hope your are right Swedish.

Swedish, your Mercer/Cambridge Analytica link honestly makes me doubt whether public opinion will swing back even when the most dire consequences become apparent. As woman says

We are trying to work out patterns, when patterns and behaviours are being manipulated beyond the control of normal British political institutions.

The thing is, people may well decide they've had enough of Tory cuts sooner rather than later, but what possible hope is there of reversing any of them once we have inflicted this huge economic wound on ourselves? Where is the money going to come from?

Well, yes, you're right there Kaija. And I think the Mike Hind link I posted earlier was right about that. The first post on his blog said,

"1 — As you say we keep assuming people think like us. In particular that they consume as much news as we do. Most people really don’t give a sh*t. They come home, they are tired and they want to veg out.
Earnestly wagging our fingers about the facts would be fine in a country where everyone watched the 10pm news, but not in one where a DIY show beat a Brexit TV debate in the viewing figures.
2 — Related to that, we’ve got to stop giving so much of a damn about what Quitters think about us.
For example, Anna Soubry saying ‘stop call us Remoaners.’ Christ, it’s time we grow a pair and take a leaf out of the book of our opponents, who certainly didn’t pay much attention to stuff like this over the years."

Where is the money going to come from?

I am quite sure if the will was there, the money could be found.

Related to that, we’ve got to stop giving so much of a damn about what Quitters think about us.

Quite so, apart from a few die-hard Leavers, the Farages, and the Tory extreme right wing, the vast majority of people don't really care. Perfectly reasonably they want things like decent work, housing, and the ability to put food on the table.

Once the EU is no longer the bete noire, there will be something else to grumble about.

Yes I agree. Appeals for understanding are a waste of words right now.

Banks said AI won leave, in that article.

I look to the US to see how this could be dealt with intelligently. Bot spotting is key hence the California exit trolls spotted, the media is trying to come up with a strategy to counter the fake news stuff, the democrats have got a new leader in place. And when ICE go in to deport, flash protests form. Merkel has the German government actively countering fake news.

The zeitgeist here is in many ways testimony to the appalling education and culture in England particularly( as you said before Misti). There is a sinister, collusive indifference.

I just don't understand why people aren't screaming from the rooftops about this.

Although, during our brief period of quiche, I understood the nationalist socialism that is the basis of some of the leavers' views. All these views are so easy to manipulate, especially the extreme ones. Le Pen is going in hard on the left wing nationalists right now.

Flags creep me out now.

Because they shrug and we're brought up to "not discuss politics", they're boring and cause arguments. So people give you a weird look if you start raising the subject.

I was at an event recently where someone was joking about hating paying tax etc, trying to avoid it as far as possible. And then the same person was decrying the lack of service from the NHS. People don't join the dots and, because we're discouraged from "talking about politics" in public because it's "boring", no-one challenges him. Civic responsibility starts in school but it won't come from a government that advocates low taxes and minimal public services.

England has a cultural problem when "too clever by half" and "getting ideas above your station" are still used to keep down bright youngsters.