Westministenders: Oh No Not Another One. Thread that is.

[RedToothBrush]

In this edition of Westministers we play a game of ‘Where are they now?’

In June 2016 our screens were subjected to the sight of a number of particularly vocal MPs who participated in debates and stood on soap boxes to talk about the referendum.

The most noticeable of these for Leave were perhaps Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom, Gisela Stuart, Nigel Farage, Priti Patel and Kate Hoey. For Remain it was David Cameron, George Osborne, Jeremy Corbyn, Ruth Davidson, Sadiq Khan, Nicola Sturgeon, Nick Clegg and Tim Farron.

It is starting to seem that anyone involved in campaigning either for or against Brexit in June 2016 has faced an epic battle for survival. Just how long can they last before being defeated or conceding defeat.

David Cameron’s scalp was the first to go, as he swanned off leaving everyone to clear up his mess.

Boris Johnson, who was keen to stamp his mark and pitch for the leadership by stitching up Cameron, got stitched up by Michael Gove who also lost his own bid for leadership as a result.

Johnson, of course, still lives to fight another day by getting a nice job as Theresa’s whipping boy. He’s occasionally let out by himself, but its Michael Fallon who does the ‘Grown Up Business’. He was said to be one of the last to support an early election. I can’t think why that might be.

Poor old Gove is now confined to a straight-jacket, the back benches where he’s been told to think about what he’s done like a naughty school child and a column in the Times

Andrea Leadsom was sent to a field of cows never to be seen again except to pop up for the odd cameo line shouting about ‘Jam’.

Queen Theresa also dealt with the other Conservative Leader Leave Candidate Mr Liam Fox, by shipping him off to every dodgy corner of the global to get pampered by state hostility.

Stephen Crabb simply crawled back under his rock.

The announcement of the General Election seems to be like the major soap incident episode where half the cast get killed off by a totally unrealistic disaster because their acting contracts weren’t being renewed.

The quitters and abdicators who now have legged it at the sight of a General Election are Gisela ‘Champion of the Brexit Bus’ Stuart and Nigel ‘Too chicken to be defeated for an eighth time and risk losing my nice EU pension’ Farage. George Osborne took the advice of his school teachers and had another career to fall back on when he didn’t become successful in his first choice.

Its rather starting to look like the curse of being a leading Brexiteer is to be made to disappear off the face of the earth or fuck off when the going gets tough. Have you seen Priti Patel lately? Does she even still exist? And Chris Grayling? He was convinced he was going to get chancellor when he supported May in her bid for the leadership.
Instead he got packed off transport and disappeared off the face of the earth much to the annoyance of everyone caught up in the rail strikes.

The only one who is remotely visible seems to be David Davis and is like May’s pet poodle who just tries to please his owner.

It’s almost like the only one still standing or hasn’t been banished is Kate Hoey. And the Lib Dems are trying to work on that one and make her sink beneath the waves, on board her Alan Partridge Titanic once and for all.

Conversely the visible Remainers seem to be – on the face of it - fairing rather better at the moment.

Sadiq Khan is hugely popular and actually does his job rather than fannying about on zip wires. Ruth Davidson is also well respected and apparently has saved Priti Patel’s job from abolition. If the rumours are to be believed bored with scrapping with Nicola, she might be lining herself up for ‘Big Things’ in Westminister. Cameron’s one time love interest, Nick Clegg hasn’t shaken the tarnish of the coalition but he is enjoying a new reputation as the Brexit Soothsayer and some people actually know who Tim Farron is now, which is progress. Nicola Sturgeon is of course riding high and seems to be a permanent thorn in Theresa’s side.

Jeremy ‘I’m a Remainer, honest comrades’ Corbyn is the one who seems to be something of a walking disaster area yet is also thriving with it like a zombie who just keeps going regardless of what you throw at him.

And then of course there is Queen Theresa. The Remainer. Who has crushed everyone in her party. Not just the saboteurs. Even her supposed ally Hammond and BBF Rudd have been thrown under the bus at her wimb when its suited May personally.

The General Election now sets a new scene and opportunity for new characters to emerge. Now the rats have left the ship or been put in their place.

Will May set course to the left or to the right or simply plow on like a bull in a china shop?

Anyway I’m now looking forward to the shocking soap opera moment where your favourite hero or villain gets killed off in a twist you didn’t see coming. Role on June 8th. If only to get pass the upcoming horror of the next six weeks.

Rather than living in Boris's Ballsup, how about:
^In Brighton we’re working together to oust the Tories. Corbyn and Farron take heed:
The Green party is being realistic about what’s needed to form a progressive government. Elsewhere local parties are stepping up, but leaders need to act^
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/27/brighton-politicians-tories-corbyn-farron-green-party

I don't think the public would like it at all
Think they're channelling their inner Erdogans.

"Boris Johnson's sister joins Lib Dems in bid to block Brexit
Rachel Johnson said after the EU referendum her teenage son told her: 'Boris has stolen our futures'"
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-sister-lib-dems-block-brexit-rachel-a7706191.html

"Government loses bid to supress pollution plan that could drop 'controversial bomb' on election
High Court judge says air pollution has created 'exceptional public health circumstances'"
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/high-court-judge-order-air-pollution-plan-government-publish-controversial-bomb-a7705851.html

Diesel wars coming. Could cause a stir.

UK air pollution 'linked to 40,000 early deaths a year'
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35629034

Here's some further analysis on the pensions lock. There may be trouble ahead (certainly for those that promise to keep it....the affect of compounding and a growing pensioner population is going to make it very expensive for those that commit to it)

Or alternatively we keep working longer as the pension age gets increased.

www.edmundconway.com/2017/04/ditching-the-triple-lock-is-no-silver-bullet-for-the-pensions-crisis/

I came across this blog, via a retweet by Patrick Wintour of the Guardian. Defence issues are definitely going to be an achilles heel for Corbyn

notris.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/corbyn-is-talking-shite-on-syria-again.html?spref=tw

Boris Johnson's sister apparently just joined Lib Dems and might be standing as a candidate

Ah woman you bet me to the fun news...anything that brings Boris down to earth thrills me.

She hasn't been a member long enough to stand as a candidate, but it's a nice idea.

RebelAllianceUK I know that Michael Portillo's family were disappointed in his political choices,( he was called the 'black sheep of the family' for being a tory) looks like the Johnsons are the same.
More incoming
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/27/press-freedom-uk-40th-press-freedom-rankings-election
"There are two other threats. The first is the proposal from the Law Commission for a new espionage act that would increase the maximum jail term for whistleblowers and widen the definition of espionage to potentially include journalism, a proposal not yet rejected by the government. Then there is continued doubt over the implementation of section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act , with a provision that could, if implemented, force publishers to pay the costs of people who sue them, even if a publisher wins.
Increasingly governments are acting with impunity against these sorts of freedoms because they don’t believe anyone cares about them any more. One of most telling examples of this is the fact that the Investigatory Powers Act was passed last year with barely a whimper of protest
A lack of access and declining levels of trust are of greatest concern in the run-up to an election. As with the EU referendum, the danger is that the media gets managed with mugwump soundbites and personality politics, and the real issues – funding for health and social care and immigration among them – get lost.
The expected strong majority for the Conservatives is likely to make things even worse. Freedom of the press was born in liberal democracies. That freedom may have been abused by some, but it should not be jettisoned simply because in the present moment its practitioners happen to find themselves, for a number of different reasons, disliked and distrusted"

Media 'freedom', will be out the window on June10th. ^

And a plaintive plea with polls tipping over back to remain and Merkel and Barnier pointing out Brexit will not be how brexiteers imagine:

^Be bold Labour: promise to abandon this ruinous Brexit
By offering an unambiguous plan to abort Brexit, the party would be back on the side of the 48%^

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/27/be-bold-labour-promise-abandon-brexit

Apparently this is a real exchange from a radio interview with Theresa May, not a joke:

Radio Derby to PM: Do you know what a mugwump is?

PM: What I recognise is that what we need in this country is strong and stable leadership

Can it be true? I was reading an article earlier today about AI sex robots that had considerably more advanced skills in spontaneous conversation.

Can it be true?

I think she's failed a Turing test

Talking about Orwellian attacks on our freedoms, the Investigatory Powers Act and the Digital Economy Bill are the latest in a long line of attacks on them.

I used to work for a telecoms company and friends who still work in the industry (in particular, one who is an electronic communications lawyer and another who used to run an ISP and latterly working in risk management) have been vociferous in their concerns about these new laws.

The Big Brother data retention aspects of the IP Act have already been challenged and found wanting in the ECJ (but who cares, we're getting rid of the ECJ's jurisdiction over us ) and the Digital Economy Bill has just been rubberstamped by parliament without due scrutiny in the rush to clear the decks for the GE.

RedToothBrush Wed 26-Apr-17 10:06:49
Great post there wrt tactical voting and also your conclusion wrt PR.

Motheroffourdragons:
I have spent a lot of time thinking about PR - but convinced myself that FPTP kept UKIP down so PR would not have been a good idea. I think it works as long as you have no extremists, but seeing it in the NL etc - it is coalition after coalition and I'm not sure much gets done, or maybe we have a jaundiced view of it in the UK, I don't know.

PR works very well in Ireland. I don't think British voters really understand how it functions. They tend to be unduly focused on the end result of coalitions and unduly put off by that. But a coalition is actually what each vote represents - you can vote for a straight party line in order of preference and then for another straight party line in order of preference if you wish, and so on until you have filled in 1-10 on your ballot.

It acts as a way for people to express preference for either outright majority or coalition or importantly, unhappiness with the status quo in a perfectly safe way. Giving UKIP your tenth preference is a lot less harmful to the body politic than being faced with a choice of whom to give your one and only vote to.

A genuine protest candidate or two can also build a stronghold in a constituency.

As for what gets done - it tends to favour consensus politics and plenty gets done. You don't get the feeling that you have nailed your colours to the mast in quite the same way as you might in UK politics, but if solid forward progress is what you are after, how does tribalism help?

On the topic of loans, university affordability, etc -

www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jan/21/jonathan-wolff-uk-universities-dont-benefit-from-large-endowments
A couple of months ago a remarkable statistic was floating around higher education blogs. Stanford University has 45% of its academic staff in the humanities, whereas only 15% of its students major in humanities subjects.

How can Stanford afford to keep so many world-class humanities scholars on such a slender student base? Here's a clue: Stanford's endowment is over $17bn, and with a student body of about 16,000, that is over $1m per student.

Harvard, Yale, MIT and Princeton also belong to the $1m-per-student club. Further down the list, the US has more than 60 universities with an endowment over $1bn. The UK has two. No prizes for guessing which. Only a handful here even reach £100m, a level achieved by more than 300 in North America. Few UK universities can match, for example, Muhlenberg College in rural Pennsylvania, with 2,200 students and an endowment of $150m, placing it at about 320th on the North American list.

A large endowment, relative to student numbers, gives extraordinary freedom. A scientist colleague of mine remembers her time in the US when, if she needed some equipment, she ordered it, whatever the cost. No forms, no waiting for months for approval, just a phone call.

Recently Princeton, Yale, Harvard, MIT, Dartmouth and Amherst College have introduced "needs-blind" admission for international as well as US students. As in the UK, admission offers are made without considering the financial circumstances of the student. But unlike the UK, the university picks up the tab if the student's family can't afford to pay. A policy like this requires vast resources – which they have.

We shouldn't forget, though, that in the UK many universities have run successful campaigns to fund new buildings, academic positions and studentships, sometimes drawing in hundreds of millions. And long may it last. But this money is normally spent within a few years of receipt and does not add to a university's endowment...

...Perhaps we shouldn't worry. UK universities are doing pretty well, if measured by the quality of our research and, as we saw, the attractiveness of our universities to international students. Even if half a dozen US universities offer needs-blind admissions, their undergraduate programmes are small.

Endowments enable universities to attract the best students. So does a climate of openness and welcome.

This article was written when Brexit was just a twinkle in the eye of Nigel Farage and Robert Mercer, before it was made abundantly clear to prospective foreign students that they were not welcome in the UK, and before the prospect of an end to EU funding for research.

It's amazing how unimaginable it all was, back in 2014.

An excellent blog post here:

chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/as-eu-finalises-its-negotiating.html?m=1

And right on cue TM is blaming those nasty Europeans because they are apparently putting the interests of their own nations above ours. How nasty of them!

twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/857679252354891776

I wonder if ever before there has been such an unappealing choice of leaders put before the electorate. Neither capable of talking in anything except soundbites. Thatcher and Foot (and even Kinnock) seem like heavyweights in comparison.

Thanks math very interesting. I think that most of Cambridge's and Oxford's endowments are tied up in land (this must include the colleges, as they are wealthier than the university itself). The education of every student is heavily subsidised by the colleges, and goes to pay for additional tuition, rent and food subsidies, language course subsidies, bursaries etc. Since a lot of the endowment is tied up in land, it is much less flexible to use. For instance, staff are most certainly not able to buy equipment without filling in a form and waiting a long time for approval (if given at all), salaries are much lower, there are no starter packages (to set up a lab) in many science subjects, etc. This puts British universities at a great disadvantage when recruiting good staff, which is now getting worse with Brexit.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about PR - but convinced myself that FPTP kept UKIP down so PR would not have been a good idea.

I don't think we can really say what the UKIP vote is, or was. How much of it was trying to send messages to the two major parties that people were fed up with being taken for granted by them? I think it is possible that Farage might have won in Thanet, if not for Tory ballot rigging, and Carswell managed to retain his seat, but elsewhere, it's hard to say.

TM is not a fool
She's appealing to the frothers and blaming the EU for acting like...oh I don't know...a powerful bloc made up of nation states?
This will go down VERY well with some
morons voters
The brexit disaster won't be our fault!

The brexit disaster won't be our fault!

That narrative hasn't changed since 24 June 2016.

I wouldn't have had a problem with 17% of MPs (or whatever it was) being from UKIP, if that's what 17% of people voted for. Why should a UKIPer's vote be of less value than anyone else's?

If there was a threat of a Con-UKIP coalition you would expect all that to be hammered out in an election campaign, and you would know in advance which sort of Tory party you were voting for. I'm quite happy about this.

FPTP has little going for it in my opinion other than the constituency link - but with the type of system you have in Scotland you get both (to some extent) and it seems to work well.

The other advantage of PR is that even if UKIP had 17% of the vote and they'd won seats, they could have made the most of the opportunity to show what they do - just like in the EU parliament.

Instead, fear of a voter rush to ukip has disproportionately affected the conservatives and driven them far further right to appease this imaginary risk.

Jessica Eglot @jessicaeglot
Members at Leeds community centre where PM spoke today said they were kept out and Tory activists shipped in...

Rik Kendall @Rikki_Sixx
100% correct. That's my workplace, she didn't arrive until we'd all left for the day. Everyone in the building past 6pm was invite-only.

The press and social media are starting to pick up more and more on May-Bot and the Tory Daleks.

Strong and Stable. Strong and Stable. Strong and Stable. You are the Coalition of Chaos. Strong and Stable. Exterminate. Exterminate.

Every PR stunt May gets a little more worked up and starts becoming like an aggitated dalek who is chasing the Doctor in ever higher tones of voice and frequency in repeating 'Strong and Stable'.

And her Tory minions are repeating it. In much the same way.

It's devoid of humanity. If ToryDalek sticks and becomes more widespread it could be effective with people who are apathetic or waviering. It appeals to emotions and once you see ToryDalek in action you can't unsee it. It plays on childhood fears.

Negative campaigns generally aren't that effective - except if the touch a raw nerve of something emotional. Project Fear failed because it lacked that. The public was emotionally detached from the EU. The Tories are trying to make the EU and immigrants and Muslims the inner fear. It will work with a lot of people but there is a flip side to it that also is important to a lot of people too.

What did i say about repetition being useful so long as it doesn't look too awkward and unnatural?

Exterminate. Exterminate. EXTERMINATE!

Haha! As if on cue I see this:

David Aaronovitch @DAaronovitch 13mins ago
"Can I stop you a moment. I know you've all been told to say 'strong & stable govt' in every interview. But if u do it again I'll hit you."