Westministenders: The Election Car Crash

[RedToothBrush]

I was thinking about how I could sum up the general election campaign and well. This said it all.

Thanks for the new thread, red
Crikey, I'm busy a couple of days and you lot fill a thread !
We might fill another thread just on Thursday evening / Friday morning ...

That NS article is, indeed, a hard read, woman. Much gloomier than an attempt to mobilise the Labour vote would need to be:

Atul Hatwal, who edits the Labour Uncut website, has studied canvassing returns and spoken to many candidates and activists. “The defeat will be greater than 1983, with leading figures such as Tom Watson, Dennis Skinner and Caroline Flint facing defeat while many others, including Yvette Cooper, Ed Miliband and Angela Rayner, are teetering on the brink... We could be falling towards extinction levels.”

JC4PM

Simon Cox @ SimonFRCox
Why does Theresa May imply she'll break ECHR - when she doesn't need to? Re-upping this thread.

From May 3rd
Simon Cox @ SimonFRCox
^May's #1 is "look like a fighter".
So winning is a problem - bc it ends the fight. We know this from her Home Office days. Thread. 1/n^
In 2011 May claimed immigration judges were acting illegally, incl blocking man's deportation bc of his cat. 2/
I asked Home Office if they challenged these 3 decisions: they said yes - but in 2 cases accepted deportation was wrong. May had mislead 3/
May #1 aim wasnt changing judge behaviour. It was "look like a fighter". Her staff leaked 3 cases to press. And she "took on the judges" 4/
Psychology teaches: fighting "poverty" or "disease" is never as interesting for onlookers as fighting a human enemy.May always has one 5/
How did May fight immigration judges? She changed rules on human rights cases: she reinterpreted what the Human Rights Convention says 6/
May's lawyers must have told her: changing rules wont get what she claimed to want, bc ECHR trumps immigration rules 7/
May acknowledged this saying: "if my rules dont change judges, I will ask Parliament to make a law." She wanted the image of "fighter" 8/
Immigration judges did what she knew law required them to do. Tory press claimed they had "defied" her:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9890093/Theresa-Mays-tough-immigration-rules-defied-by-top-judge.html 9/
So, May delayed by 2 years her supposed strategy of narrowing human rights defenses for migrants. Why? 10/
Exh. 2: Othman's case. Aka Abu Qatada. May said his deportation was her top priority. But she took 3 years : why? 11/
Othman opposed deportation to Jordan bc he wd be tried based on statement from a man who'd been tortured before giving it (& later died) 12/
2008: UK Court of Appeal blocks deport: illegal to risk conviction based on torture. 2009 House of Lrds reverses 12/
Othman applies to European Court of Human Rights, so he's still in UK (locked up) when Cons win 2010 election & May becomes Home Sec. 13/
May has 2 options.
Fight case in ECHR.
Get Jordan to not use torture evid, removing factual base for Othman's ECHR case & deport 14/
May fought Othman's case. For 2 yrs. She lost (no surprise: UK courts had disagreed). So then she got Jordan to not use torture evid 15/
And Othman left, voluntarily. Everything suggests she cd have got that result 3 yrs before. Why didnt she? 16/
Was it bc May wanted to win legal pt in ECHR for future cases? Maybe: but House of Lords was on Gov side. So hardly a priority 17/
Maybe May wanted to help Jordan convict Othman on the murder charge. (Without the crucial torture evid he was later acquitted). 18/
But May's claimed priority was to get Othman out: not abstact legal pts or Jordanian conviction. She chose to delay getting Othman out 19/
Keeping Othman in UK served May's need for enemies: him and his lawyers. Bad people she can battle for the British. 20/
Enemy #3 Human rights lawyers asking courts to get Gov to investigate claims of UK Army murder & torture in Iraq
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-tory-conference-speech-applause-attacks-activist-left-wing-human-rights-lawyers-a7346216.html
Enemy #4. UK Human Rights Act. Not a person so less good as enemy. For a decade+ Cons have promised to repeal & replace HRA. May is key 22/
Just like Obamacare, Tories have been unable to write an alternative to HRA. Bc they know any will look worse to voters. 23/
But delay in the change she "wants" is never a big problem for Theresa May.
So. Long. As. People. Think. She. Is. Fighting. 24/
Theresa May has repeatedly said she wants HRA repealed. And repeatedly failed to publish any detailed plans. (Sound familiar?) 25/
Enemy 5#. Non-EEA Migrants. May wrote the rules for 6 years. She headed up department that implements them. She said she wanted fewer 26/
May set target number for migrants: completely of her own choosing. Which she missed, completely.
^Why set a target you can't hit? 27/
May makes rules she cant uphold or enforce, and sets targets she can't hit. Why?^
Fighting is a great excuse for not delivering change. 28/
So long as May was battling migrants, lawyers & judges, media show her in heroic light. Strong! Doughty! Fighting For You! /29
When pols stop fighting: bc they've won, or given up, or (ssh) compromised, then voters ask "what difference has this made to me?" /30
Enemy No 6. Remainers & EU27. See the anger. See the personalisation. See the "fighting talk". See the lack of a plan.
Classic May. 31/
May doesnt want to talk about her past (that would encourage analysis).She doesnt want to talk in detail about future (encourage debate) 32/
May wants voters' minds on her present fight - & present enemy. What/who ever that is. Today its Juncker. Tomorrow - she'll find one. 33/
May's success depends on Tory press (& TV following) clever selection of real human enemies - as proxies for wars on terror& migrants. 34/
Today:
Abstract enemy - Brexit
Human avatar - Juncker
See how angry she makes people. One can almost feel the spittle from this tweet 35/
May's actions arent entirely performative. Her policies do break up families of British citizens - and of refugees & migrants 36/
May could have brought confidence to the lives of maybe 3 million people who have made UK their home. She didnt want to. 37/
But IMO, May has always put "having a fight" above "making effective decisions & policies". She fears the end of fighting. 38/
May will always be looking for a fight. To distract us from the important things she's doing - or failing to do. We must remember this. 39/
When May attacks democratic instits & human rights we shd oppose. But smartly: always thinking how to avoid helping her distract. End. 40/40

Simon is right but... After tomorrow we enter stage two.

Remember Dacre wants elected judges. He wants the ability to influence the law. It's about power not terrorism.

As I said previously it's almost as if Trump wants a terrorist attacks as it can be used to manipulate the system to weaken the US's constitutional institutions.

Think about this. The Daily Mail is so different because?

Which brings me back to this:

lawfareblog.com/does-trump-want-lose-eo-battle-court-or-donald-mcgahn-simply-ineffectual-or-worse

From Feb:

The clearly foreseeable consequence of the roll-out combined with Trump’s tweets is to weaken the case for the legality of the EO in court. Why might Trump want to do that? Assuming that he is acting with knowledge and purpose (an assumption I question below), the only reason I can think of is that Trump is setting the scene to blame judges after an attack that has any conceivable connection to immigration. If Trump loses in court he credibly will say to the American people that he tried and failed to create tighter immigration controls. This will deflect blame for the attack. And it will also help Trump to enhance his power after the attack. After a bad terrorist attack at home, politicians are always under intense pressure to loosen legal constraints. (This was even true for near-misses, such as the failed Underwear bomber, which caused the Obama administration to loosen constraints on its counterterrorism policies in many ways.) Courts feel these pressures, and those pressures will be significantly heightened, and any countervailing tendency to guard against executive overreaction diminished, if courts are widely seen to be responsible for an actual terrorist attack. More broadly, the usual security panic after a bad attack will be enhanced quite a lot—in courts and in Congress—if before the attack legal and judicial constraints are seen to block safety. If Trump assumes that there will be a bad terrorist attack on his watch, blaming judges now will deflect blame and enhance his power more than usual after the next attack.

Be under no illusion. This is not about terrorism. Nor is it about how terrorists are getting away with things because of human rights.

This is about power. Power which will take away YOUR rights and will do bugger all to stop terrorism.

May will pose a direct threat to our democratic institutions and strong and stable Theresa is setting us up for more unnecessary constitutional crisis. Very similar to the US.

Try and get this message out today as much as possible.

I have received my nasty party election leaflet. Wow! No word on what they wpuld do, just demonising Labour. Never seen a pure Lynton Crosby leaflet before.
Labour candidate's leaflet, however, is 6 pages of what she (personally) has done for the area and what her own plans are.

(Tgraph paywall) < I wondered if Tory Central Office forgot Boris in the wine cellar >

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/06/tricephalous-monster-last-boris-let-leash/

"What on earth have they been doing with Boris Johnson all this time?
Locked him in the stationery cupboard at Tory HQ?
Dispatched him on a fact-finding mission to Jupiter?
Aside from the odd cameo on Sky News, plus a column for the Sun about Jeremy Corbyn being “a mutton-headed old mugwump”, we’ve hardly heard a peep out of him since the election was called.

Today, at a community centre in County Durham, the Foreign Secretary was finally permitted to give his first speech of the campaign.
That’s right: his first.
With a mere two days to go.

While Theresa May has toiled miserably through week after week of stilted speeches and agonising interviews, Tory strategists have left their best-known vote-magnet out of the picture.
On the subs’ bench?
He’s barely set foot in the stadium.

No one, I suspect, is more befuddled by this treatment than the Foreign Secretary himself.
After today’s speech, a journalist asked him why he’d been restricted to such a paltry role.
Rummaging distractedly in the upturned tureen of spaghetti that is his hair, Mr Johnson insisted that he’d been “engaging solidly with voters” – and then swerved into a three-minute disquisition on the inadequacies of Mr Corbyn.

Whatever Theresa May and her crew think of the Foreign Secretary, party members still love him.
This was a farcically short speech – less than 14 minutes, followed by only four questions – yet at every mischievous aside, every grandiloquent polysyllable, the faithful were practically mewing with pleasure.

Mr Johnson hadn’t written any jokes as such, but then he hadn’t needed to; simply saying a long or unusual word was enough to get them giggling like schoolgirls
He pulled each whimsical locution from his sleeve with a flourish, like a magician with a multi-coloured hankie.

“Temerarious… great glutinous conglomerate… herbivores at the watering hole… puddle of incoherence… Zaphod Beeblebrox…”

< Again shows this GE is ONLY about strengthening May's personal position,
hence why she kept her greatest rival - and the most popular Tory politician - out of the limelight
Much as most of us here despise him, he is imo the only major Tory who actually increases votes >

The NS article is a depressing read, although a number of thoughts came to me:

1. It must have been written before the latest atrocity - the fact that it might have been prevented had not May cut back the Police has had a lot of publicity. Almost certainly more than she would like.
2. Labour was totally in disarray in the early 1930s yet by 1945 won a landslide in Parliament, despite Churchill's popularity as a war time leader. It could happen again.
3. The Labour Brexit Leave vote, was a vote against austerity and London based politicians and a sense of being unrepresented, rather than being against the EU per se. If May gets her majority and fails with Brexit, which I can't see her not doing, it will be those Labour Leave voters who suffer most, and they could just as quickly turn against her, when they realise that it wasn't the EU causing the problems. A few long queues in Kent and at airports when going on holiday might begin to turn the tide.

Just taking a pew.

BREAKING: Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party, has asked Lyn Brown to stand in for Diane Abbott as Shadow Home Secretary for the period of her ill health.

To cheer us up after the NS read (I haven't fully recovered yet..), did anybody listen to Keir Starmer on R4 this morning?

I thought he stood his ground really well

Ill Health. sigh.

I feel sorry for the poor woman.

Abbott is apparently refuting. But it depends on what the illness is. If it is to do with stress, that would be a natural reaction as she will know her career is totally dead if she has a breakdown now.

Diane Abbott should do the decent thing and stand down for good now. Replacing her indefinitely signals instability to the electorate.

Darling that is a ridiculous statement. Are you really suggesting May won't be holding a reshuffle on day 1 if re-elected? Where is my mate Spreadsheet these days? Is BoJo ever on message?

I do get the sense that there are more than a few in the PLP hoping JC doesn't win only cos they're not that keen on humble pie and can't see any way back to the Cabinet.

Thanks for the new thread, Red. Placemarking!

I really don't think it is a ridiculous statement. On a psychological levels people will vote for stability, especially in light of terrorism and Brexit.

Stating that Abbott is off indefinitely but may come back and resume her position will put some potential voters off as she is incredibly unpopular. Her recent media appearances have been pretty incompetent.

Theresa May will shuffle her cabinet, which we know rationally. But people's choices are sadly not rational a lot of the time.

Diane Abbott has been thrown under a bus by JC & the Labour election team.

I don't dislike her at all - I think she's been monumentally shit as a shadow cabinet member, and she's said many things over the years that I don't agree with, but overall I think she's a genuine person & a fighter.

I really think it's as simple as that she was promoted above her ability & competency - nothing more sinister than that, she's a fantastic backbencher & has been active on numerous causes/parliamentary panels etc over her time, but this was a promotion too far for her (no shame in that at all).

She was caught yesterday by someone who posed as Seamus Milne on emails - the bogus SM tried to draw her out about pulling out of WH & how to elaborate on her 'illness' etc - she seemed to believe she was talking to SM & said quite clearly that she has good health & isn't prepared to lie about her health & tell untruths that would inevitably be exposed.

My take on the Diane 'illness' thing is that Seamus & the team decided to pull her from the campaign, made up the illness, and have now thrown her under the bus with it all - people are now questioning whether she is fit to stand as an MP at all now over this (if she has health problems, should she not pull out of election completely etc).

I really, truly feel sorry for her now - and not because of illness or otherwise, but rather because of the way she's been cut out & sidelined pretty callously.

Wow, someone attacks our country and that makes it ok to shit on someone who is ill. I see the empathy removal program is back in full flow

Nɪᴄᴋ Rʜᴏᴅᴇs‏ @NickRhodes Jun 5
More
Next level trolling from Blackpool Gazette here.
"Half front page ad? No problem."
"What will we run next to it? Oh just some local news..."

RTB this is probably erroneous, but I'll put it up anyway
www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2017/jun/02/tactical-voting-guide-how-to-make-your-vote-count-in-the-2017-election

I think you said a while back that none of the models are perfect, but to follow local information on who to back tactically.

www.theguardian.com/uk

Check the video Anywhere but Westminster further down the page. It explores if the Labour surge is real.

This is the tactical voting source that Ginna Miller is recommending via Twitter:

bestforbritain.org/

Will Black‏ @WillBlackWriter

Daft Tories are actually using my hashtag to smear Corbyn, totally transparent in their dishonesty

#LastMinuteCorbynSmears

If/when May tears up the Human Rights act, it will be to loud applause.
There are loads of people clamouring for human rights to be restricted, and that "monsters" don't deserve human rights. Without realising, of course, that you can't remove a human right from one group of people, and keep it for the wider population. We either all have them, or none of us do.

Saw this on another forum :

On Wed, 07 Jun 2017 10:49:26 +0100, Nick wrote:
> On 07/06/2017 09:34, Norman Wells wrote:
>
> I don't know why Diane and Jeremy fell into the trap of pretending they
> knew every figure.

Indeed. Maybe we should have a new political conventions that whenever
unspecified sums are mentioned, we just substitute it with "£350 million."

A week.

We could call it a Boris ?

Does anyone remember when "The New Statesman" TV programme called £10K "an Archer" ??

Not sure if this has been posted, but this article is fascinating on how the cutting edge of the campaigns (especially the Tory campaign) is happening on Facebook: under the radar, micro-targeted, geo-coded ads: www.marketingweek.com/2017/06/05/mark-ritson-%E2%80%8Bhow-win-election/#.WTfT3xIeOsI.facebook