Westminstenders: On An Election Footing

[RedToothBrush]

Boris Johnson has set out his strategy.

He is challenging remain Tories to put their money where their mouth is, or to shut up.

His majority, soon to be just 1, is fragile but he intends to tough it out.

His Cabinet, is to all intents and purposes an ERG take over of the Tory Party, not unlike the Momentum take over of the Labour Party. And Johnson is looking to purge the party of its liberal wing, whilst pretending that he is liberal to make it acceptable to long term loyal Tories who might still waiver and merely vote for the rosette or like the veneer of respectability.

It has been made clear to Tory MPs that they will have to sign up to a No Deal Strategy should a snap election be called - or face the prospect of deselection. Disloyality will not be tolerated as Hunt's Cabinet backers all found out when they were sacked rather than be allowed to resign as Grayling was.

Instead Johnson reaped his revenge bringing back quitters and disgraced MPs as a deliberate 'fuck you' to moderates and remainers.

His message is clear and made all the clearer by the appointment of Dominic Cummings.

Today the Treasurery opened the piggie bank and told all departments to prepare for no deal. That is what is going to happen.

Parliament can not stop no deal. Johnson will drive it through regardless, even if its technically illegal. The default of no deal makes it an impossible juggernaught to stop without triggering a GE before the 31st October.

Technically speaking there are just 3 parliamentary days left this can be done.

And a GE is no guarentee of stopping no deal anyway. Cummings coming on board spells it out. Its a campaign strategy to reinvigourate the Leave Campaign and make all the promises that were made before. Of course there is no way of implimenting any of these before 31st October, so they just sound nice and people will believe them because they want to believe them. They want to trust and have hope for the future.

Yet with no trade deals and third party status, and crippling gridlock at ports and extra red tape for exporters and importers to deal with, it is inevitable that the economy will take a big hit. And Johnson's promises are expensive. His £39 billion he wants to withhold, is peanuts in the scheme of things and given what he is proposing.

The plan might sound nice, but it doesn't actually add up.

If we want a deal we will STILL have to sign up to conditions that Brussels sets out EVEN IF we no deal.

Meanwhile the US is ready and waiting to fleece us, because we aren't prepared to admit this and are too proud to see that this is a better option than have corporate American feast on the bones of the British economy.

Human Rights and Workers Rights are very much in the cross hairs with this. Health and Safety standards that have been set by London and then imposed on the EU will be burnt.

All the while the EU will be blamed for our own folly.

The worst thing is, people will actually buy it too.

Things are going to get a hell of a lot worse in this country, not because we lack optimism and hope, but because our egos are too big and we have been too idealist rather than recognising very real obstacles and finding ways to overcome than rather than just trying to ignore them. We will find out all those Paragraph Cs in good time the hard way because of the lack of attention to detail.

PFI and outsourcing will look like minor hiccups when the shit hits the fan.

I do hope that the puritians of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats and the Remain Referendum Campaign are happy. This is also their mess. They have spent 3 years naval gazing and still don't understand nor know how to respond. This is where a General Election becomes a very real danger because they are clueless as to how to combat a reunited Leave campaign.

Be careful what you wish for going forward.

@urbanlife since the Tories have fewer than 200,000 actual members, I think we can consider them irrelevant in terms of predicting who the vote electorate as a whole will/won’t vote for.

Always one to adopt a new trend, I’m placemarking with tomatoes. We will have hundreds once they’re ripe, probably all at the same time!

Queen, we're in the same tomato position. Roast with garlic and herbs, blend, freeze as pasta sauce. And we saved the water which came out when roasting to use for making gravy.

There are two groups of disaffected lifetime Tories. Brexiteer ones and Remainer ones.

I know both.

The Remainer ones fear both a Corbyn government and no deal. Those I know are absolutely more worried about no deal - because of the affect on their business and jobs. That's how they fear they will lose their jobs. Corbyn on the other hand means higher taxes. They don't think it will be 'Venezuela'. Mainly because whilst they know Corbyn is far left, they know he doesn't have full support of MPs are Labour MPs have rebelled far more meaning extreme policies are highly unlikely. Plus they aren't Americans who think socialism is communism and are pathologically afraid of it. Indeed many think we do need a fairer system - hence why they are willing to support LDs in the first place!!

They no longer believe its a straight choice between the Tories and Labour cos of the polls. They are somewhat freed from that narrative and are willing to look elsewhere as a viable option.

As for the LDs not being ready for a GE. They have been on snap election standby since before Christmas and pretty much have candidates in place everywhere. They like to be ahead of everyone else on that score. The timing of the leadership change was factored in on this and strategy has been worked for months.

Where its right and whether Jo Swinson is a good leader who will attract voters is another matter, though I think up against Corbyn and Johnson anyone considering LD is likely to think her leadership a lower priority than normal anyway.

The Land for the Many report by Shrubsole, Monbiot et al has been viciously misrepresented in the gutter press, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's where the 'Labour want your house' meme is coming from. Our media have a lot to answer for.

@QueenOfThorns , they look beautiful. I have had such a bad year in the garden for all sorts of non gardening related reasons I am a bit jealous obviously but am vicariously making sauces and salads looking at yours. Well done!

Plus they aren't Americans who think socialism is communism and are pathologically afraid of it

What was interesting was a thread about “why don’t people like socialism” (that’s not the exact title but the gist)

It was pretty clear a lot of posters were mixing socialism up with communism. Made me wonder if socialism needs a rebranding exercise.

@urban you don't know what you are talking about.
I've already spoken about my dad who has land. He rents parts of it out to families who rely on EU subsidies to keep going. When we crash out they will not be able to continue to pay rent and will have to leave. He may well then have to sell the land for housing, in a greenbelt village.

That is far more immediate threat to him. He has voted LD consistently since the ref and will continue to do so. Jo may be new to leadership but she has kept a job longer than BoJo the clown ever has. Don't even consider he knows what he is doing more than her!

wherearemychickens and several of the Monbiot report ideas came from the Resolution Foundation - which aims to reduce poverty and improve living standards in the UK.

lonely I expect your father will be paid by the UK government to offset the issues he has with his land. The government have in fact already announced the package of support farmers can expect to have.

To be fair, brexit is much bigger than your father's reliance on subsidies. It is about everyone's future, not just yours.

If your father can not run the land at a profit, selling is not such a bad idea.

Thanks for the advice Urban, but until we have confirmation that the government will give the exact same funding for the exact same criteria we won't hold our breath.

Brexit is indeed much bigger. Domino effects such as taking land through the back door used to be what Tories threatened Labour would do. My point was that the Tories are loosing friends and influence across a broad spectrum. Building cheap housing on the green belt that is priced out of the market of those who need homes won't help our country in any way.

Re not feeding trolls - do we need a suitable abbreviation that is expanded in the westminstenders abbreviations thread - covering the common leave troller arguments - sovereignty, laws, undemocratic EU etc

Something the equivalent of mrda (Mandy Rice Davies Applies) so that trolls don't get away with spouting guff but it's minimal effort to point at the abbreviations entry.

There is and never was such a thing as project fear. It’s a soundbite made up by the Leave campaign as a catch all to dismiss legitimate concerns about the effects of Brexit.
Whenever anyone trots it out, you know who they are.

Explain the 2017 GE result if Tory voters never stop voting Tory (or any GE where they've not won).

Quite so. Last' night's council by elections produced two LibDem gains, one apiece from Tory and Labour, one Labour hold and one stayed with Independents. The Tories by rights ought to have won three of these.

I own my own house outright and am much more sickened by the thought of losing the NHS and having the quality of my food destroyed. I don't like Corbyn but am quite happy to see him renationalise the railways. I can't see for the like of my why it's OK to have Dutch, German and French Governments owning our transport systems and not our own.

70% of 2017 Labour voters are Remainers
It is losing those voters that is hammering Labour

The ref result split the country in two
Absurd to demand that the 2 main parties both support Leave and ignore the 48% - probably a higher % now

@borntobequiet, I used “project fear” because that’s exactly what fanatical Tories are running at the moment. What are @ultralife’s posts if not (futile) attempts to stir up fear of anything but the dystopian future she’s peddling?

@bellinisurge thank you - the plants themselves look terrible, but there are loads of tomatoes! I have 3 different kinds: normal ones, stripy ones and cherry tomatoes. Do you have any good recipes for what we can do with them?

Hi Also I don’t think I was referring to your usage of the term, sorry if it came across like that.

That’s OK @borntobequiet, that’s twice I’ve misinterpreted what someone’s said - my skin must be uncharacteristically thin at the moment!

You could always make a tomato chutney. I don't have a recipe though.

I wonder why the trolls have appeared? Alexander de Pfeffel has become PM; they are likely to get the UK crashing out, we will destroy the NHS and industry in the process. This only matters for the plebs. What is there for them to be afraid of?

BTW - it just occurs to me, isn't having immigration quotas a rather socialist idea, or even dare I say it 'communist'. It smacks of directed labour schemes and 5 year plans. The Tories are all for letting the markets decide, so they should be opening the borders to whoever wants to come here!

The con man with the keys to the kingdom

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/07/con-man-keys-kingdom

The Conservative Party has imposed upon Britain, at a time of profound national crisis, a prime minister who is spectacularly unfit for the job, both morally and politically
....
Johnson gained access to Downing Street through a travesty of an election that even Vladimir Putin mocked
(though both he and President Trump would have cheered the result)
....
In the 2017 general election Theresa May sought a mandate for pursuing a hard Brexit and was humiliatingly rebuffed:
the Conservatives lost their parliamentary majority, and survived in power only through a squalid deal with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party.
....
The electorate, which was promised a swift, painless have-your-cake-and-eat-it Brexit during the 2016 referendum, has never been asked if it wants no deal.
....
They are a cult whose belief in Johnson and Brexit cannot be shaken by any number of revelations
about his own turpitude, or by the steadily growing mountain of evidence that leaving the EU is actually a monumental act of self-harm.

Their faith cannot be shaken by Britain’s stalled economic growth, sterling’s fall, declining investment and the migration of jobs to continental Europe. Or by the ugliness and social discord that Brexit has unleashed.
Or by the howls of anguish from British industry.

Or by the bemused pity of our former friends and allies in the EU,
or our growing dependence on the goodwill of America’s malign and capricious president.

That Brexit has not delivered the land of milk and honey promised in the 2016 referendum is, in their view, the fault of pusillanimous leadership, a treacherous establishment, perfidious Europeans
- of anyone but their mendacious messiah and the undeliverable promises he made in 2016.
....
Once the party of competence, it has chosen Johnson,
whose two years as foreign secretary were so excruciatingly awful that he airbrushed them out of his leadership campaign

The party of fiscal rectitude, which so vociferously condemned Labour’s “magic money tree” spending plans in 2017,
has installed in Downing Street a man who promises profligate spending

on tax cuts, public sector pay increases, schools, the police, infrastructure and social care
-all to be miraculously financed by the government’s falling post-Brexit revenues.
......
By choosing Johnson the so-called Conservative and Unionist Party, to give it its full title, has greatly increased the risk of Scottish independence:

north of the border, where Johnson’s eccentric Englishman shtick falls flat, he has a net approval rating of minus 37 per cent
and is so profoundly unpopular that Ruth Davidson banned him from the Scottish Conservative Party’s annual conference in May.
....
The Conservatives used to be the party of business,
but ignore the increasingly desperate warnings about Brexit’s dangers from Airbus, Ford, Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover, Unilever, Sony, Hitachi and other titans of corporate Britain.

When did they last have a leader who proclaimed:
“Fuck business”?
....
A recent YouGov poll showed that 28 per cent of respondents thought he would make a good prime minister but 54 per cent a bad one – both figures exceeded those of any other Tory politician.
A remarkable 59 per cent said they would not buy a used car from him
....
some wiser Tories privately admit that in choosing Johnson they have taken an enormous gamble that could well destroy their party.

The rest of us can only hope that it does not destroy the country in the process.

The reason for the Leaver angst and desperate activity, may be that the above is beginning to percolate down to the lower levels of Tory supporters:

"some wiser Tories privately admit that in choosing Johnson they have taken an enormous gamble that could well destroy their party. "

A No Deal Brexit may indeed destroy the Tory party,
so we get years of government by Labour, without effective opposition, under FPTP

I don't know if the prospect of No Deal will bring Corbyn to power, but the reality of No Deal later quite likely will

I never thought that wouldn't horrify me, but it no longer does

Re the immigration points system: the news last night said it was actually introduced by Labour in 2008 and is technically still in operation for certain sectors.

However, it is so clumsy and has to be overridden so many times (see the "Tier 2 visa quotas" for shortage professions where people are told to "just" apply again the following month at a cost of another c£500-£1,000 ) that it's never really worked

Imagine that spread across all countries and the costs that will then need to be shouldered by companies and the NHS

Tip We are getting to the point where with the fruit set and the priority to get the tomatoes ripe that you can stop watering so much, even at all if it is humid. That will delay / prevent blight. I haven’t lost any tomatoes to blight in the last couple of years as a result of following that advice.

Actually Jo Swinson might surprise in an election. At the last match she was up there with Caroline Lucas in her ability to rouse the crowd (and with baby Gabriel in a carrier on her front ) and she is quick on her feet too. Johnston has the populist playbook and a certain wit but it is limited to that and now Corbyn has completely disillusioned the hopeful young voters and lost his chanting status he is just the old 70s left winger..... Some voters still want some truth told to power and are not taken in by empty rhetoric.

The idea of a Corbyn government terrifies them far more than brexit deal or no deal

A Corbyn government will not lead to food and medicine shortages. No deal will.