Westminstenders: Sleaze. The Return.

[RedToothBrush]

The Brexit Agreement is still not signed. The EU are still pissed off with our bad attitude and how we managed to a have better deal on AstraZeneca's vaccines which they don't seem to like anyway.

The Ireland / NI border is still a mess. Both politically and economically. This is apparently something that wasn't discussed pre referedum, with regular Westminstenders suffering from collective delusions over remembering differently and reading madeup stories which just happen to be dated prior to the referendum. Its a sign of how good fake news has got.

The lying architect of Vote Leave is complaining about the lying of Vote Leave's biggest champion and cheerleader, countered with the pm who cheated on his ex wife multiple times and ran off with a younger woman accusing his former aid of being deeply sexist.

The government is embroiled in numerous accusations of lining its own pockets following the brexit power grab by the right wing of the party. Which of course wasn't a worry pre referendum. As of course accountability generally.

In keeping with taking a lead on the world stage, we have seen through our promises to cut back on overseas aid, instead preferring to spend money on trading. This is well represented by our purchasing of 10million AZ vaccines from India with not much sign of sending aid to help with the unfolding humanitarian crisis there.

Our post Brexit foreign policy looks muddled at best. The new world order is a big confusing. We dont mind trading with regimes which have human rights abuses... As long as they are countries which are smaller than us and we can exploit. We don't particularly like China atm because we aren't getting much out of the shitting on others. Plus its not really proving a great opportunity for Westerners to line their pockets like other dodgy regimes because its generally closed to outsiders and this is even more true in covid times.

But don't worry, we will soon be able to go abroad again on our covid passports. The 17th May beckons when the penny will drop that efforts to integrate medical records with passport data which apparently border agencies are working on, isn't ready yet and that doesn't matter because other countries won't be ready to let us in yet, especially since we are outside the EU and EEA and we haven't been great at talking to them. And we probably will still have to quarantine on return anyway. (End of June is still optimistic but more realistic).

We've still to impose customs checks yet because we didn't want to do it in April in case that meant the shops would be empty when they reopened. So we still have that joy to look forward to. Great for EU exporters. Less great for uk exporters. For now.

Of course we have the May Council elections to look forward to, in which it will become apparent just how fucking useless and invisible Keir Starmer is and how Labour policies are not connecting with voters in spite of all of the above. Mainly due to navel gazing and an inability to get beyond their social circle. Any good ideas they do have are promptly nicked by the Tories.

Post Brexit talk of reviewing the Monarchy are also growing in steam...

If we look back it feels like the sleaziness of the early nineties has returned but with no prospect of joining the Eu, no John Smith or Smiling Tony to inspire, no coming Cool Brittania to cheer us up. Just sleaze tolerated and accepted, rather than rejected. And one massive debt than had been largely repaid.

Its hard to see where we go from here. We seem bewildered by geography and confused by technology. Unwilling to invest in science and no longer aligned with the right people to collaborate effectively.

Instead we are more pre occupied with in fighting.

As a friend said to me this week, they had started to watch alternative news channels to British based ones because she felt we had become so inward looking. She felt like our mentality was increasing like the US which simply was unaware of events and ideas beyond our borders. I think its a comment that has so much ressonnance.

Thanks, which makes that article all the more interesting. It is certainly not bigging up the Trade Deal but is instead pointing out its limitations.
However, even if it's Tory, I suspect it's not a fan of Johnson style Toryism.

@Peregrina

Brussels says UK breached trade deal in Jersey fish dispute reported by the FT. The paper which I think is probably the most objective.

And yes, I found out that the Guardian had toned down its language, from gunboat to patrol boat, which gives a very different impression. Of course this blowing up today has nothing to do with Johnson wanting to gain some cheap Falkland style points for today's elections.

Apparently it's a non story France and there were more British journalists there than French fishermen. Who would have thought that.

It is still a military boat and not a law enforcement boat though and quite unnecessary.

If Boris hadn’t blown this up I doubt this particular fishing spat would have made it into most of the U.K. press.

Threatening to cut the electricity off was OTT but not particularly different to Williamson threatening China or Patel threatening to starve the Irish. And French fishermen are going to do what French fishermen do. I don’t think it’s ever needed much more than local law enforcement boats before.

www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-55706114

Where's the Navy when you really need them:
"Brexit: Fishing firms hold London protest over disruption"

Remember this?

It seems that fishermen from all points have a preference for a certain type of approach.

@mathanxiety

www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-55706114

Where's the Navy when you really need them:
"Brexit: Fishing firms hold London protest over disruption"

Remember this?

It seems that fishermen from all points have a preference for a certain type of approach.

Boris Johnson has pledged £23m to help businesses affected by Brexit delays amid protests by fishing firms.

So less than a thousandth of what was wasted on T&T then.

Threatening to cut the electricity off was OTT but not particularly different to Williamson threatening China or Patel threatening to starve the Irish.

This is the response which we should have given to yellowspanner. Not only that Williamson threatening China is a particularly empty gesture given the relative size of the UK against China, and the location of the South China Sea in relation to the UK, but also, in the case of Ireland, threatening to starve them out is particularly crass given that the British Government did exactly that not quite two centuries ago.

But tit for tat behaviour is not a mature way to conduct business.

Well the election results are completely unsurprising and its fascinating watching Labour members and hardcore supporters absolutely bewildered by it. It really shows up the echo chamber effect and how much the public feel lectured to and unlistened to by Labour. The feeling of Labour being corrupt at local politics and marked by internal infighting is having a huge impact too.

Its a very sad and sorry state of affairs but im not remotely surprised.

It is still a military boat and not a law enforcement boat though and quite unnecessary.

This has been badly reported as the two ships sent (HMS Severn and HMS Tamar) are part of the The Overseas Patrol Squadron, formerly known as the Fishery Protection Squadron until 2020.

Remember though that last time the UKIP/Brexit party split the vote, so this seat should probably have fallen last time.

But yes, there are seats that Labour has taken for granted for years, and on that they need to look at what has happened in Scotland.

Having said that, there are many more seats in England that the Tories have taken for granted - there are a number of seats who have only had Tory MPs in the 20th and 21st Century, with Tory Councillors who think they have a god given right to the seat without doing any work for it. Very much like their mirror images in the so called red wall. I know it was a Parish Council, where people often sit without party labels, but those Councillors who were bested by Jackie Weaver were all too typical.

Now if Rishi Sunak were to give a bung to Hartlepool it would be no bad thing, but at the same time, this will get the southern Tories up in arms.

LostToucan - I didn't know that, but my point was about the inflammatory language of gunboats vs. patrol boats. Patrol boats are seen as nice and benign, gunboats threaten war.

@RedToothBrush

Well the election results are completely unsurprising and its fascinating watching Labour members and hardcore supporters absolutely bewildered by it. It really shows up the echo chamber effect and how much the public feel lectured to and unlistened to by Labour. The feeling of Labour being corrupt at local politics and marked by internal infighting is having a huge impact too.

Its a very sad and sorry state of affairs but im not remotely surprised.

Yup. It's almost sad.

Apparently we won't know (W Yorks) all our results for a couple of days.

My ward and in general my part of the city will be very safe Labour, but I don't know how the rest of the city will turn out. As for the Mayor, again I assume the Labour candidate will be a shoe-in.

Let's just say, I did not cast my vote for any of the parties that don't know what a woman is

Let's just say, I did not cast my vote for any of the parties that don't know what a woman is

This is a problem, but although they haven't declared it the Tories/UKIP/Brexit party don't have any time for women either.

I do wish this nonsense could be knocked on the head. I would hope that the sporting bodies might take a lead with chromosome tests - y chromosome and you cannot be female. But that is a debate for another thread.

John Curtice on R4 this morning saying that Labour will have to let go of the idea that it’s the party of the working class (especially as so few people now have links to heavy industry) and reinvent itself as the party of the young.

@LostToucan

John Curtice on R4 this morning saying that Labour will have to let go of the idea that it’s the party of the working class (especially as so few people now have links to heavy industry) and reinvent itself as the party of the young.

Starmer has made sure to alienate the young members that Corbyn brought on board by reneging on the policies he said he would keep, he didnt want the 'far' left in his party so they didnt come out and vote for him, and I love those still trying to blame Corbyn for this mess while ignoring had they themselves not pushed so hard for Labour to be a remain/peoples vote party which gave people the idea of fence sitting, the Labour right just managed to lose a seat Corbyn kept in 2017 and 2019 even with a hostile media and PLP, loving this Starmer bounce

John Curtice on R4 this morning saying that Labour will have to let go of the idea that it’s the party of the working class (especially as so few people now have links to heavy industry) and reinvent itself as the party of the young.

Let us see them do it then. There are plenty of areas to chose from. Housing for a starter. You only need to look at the thread about second home owners and Cornwall to see that housing is broken and this is not an area which the Tories have been able to offer people anything on. Now to go to a place like Hartlepool, which I don't know, I suspect that housing is relatively cheap and that those in work can afford to buy. I do have relatives in the North West and it's certainly the case there.

The idea that he has to balance different factions should not wholly be a problem. Until recently the Tory party was a broad church. I suspect that people voting Tory still think it is.

Surprisngly? Kuensberg made a valid point on R4 today this am

• "how would labour moving back left attract voters prepared to vote conservative?"

What has probably been forgotten that back in 2016/17 there were a lot of UKIP councillors. The 2019 elections saw virtually all of them get wiped out, but there were still a lot of places which didn't have elections in that year. These will now almost certainly be replaced by Tory MPs. Indeed, this vote was the one Cameron was worried about. This tells you what the current Tory Party is made of.

I wish Labour would split and send Momentum one way and get a proper centrist party. One that center left Labour voters and center right Tory voters could all vote for.

Moving further towards Momentum politics isn't going to attract centrists like me (currently a "who might beat the Tories and isn't a knob" voter) and my mother and my grandmother. We are all decent people with similar values but there isn't one party that will get us all.

It's so frustrating. Shouting in to the void about what's wrong with the left, and yet they continue to say "oh, left didn't work. I know, let's go even further left." Ffs.

I wish Labour would split and send Momentum one way and get a proper centrist party.

Well that was tried with the Liberal SDP alliance which became the Lib Dems. However that was now a generation ago, when the Tories was still a broad church with genuine one nation Tories in it - before it lurched to the right as the English National Party. So is it time to revisit the idea?

In the immediate term it's too soon to say. Locally they aren't counting the CC results until Sunday, so we are going to need to wait a few days to see how the political landscape has reshaped itself. Then of course, there is the position of Scotland. It looks as though Sturgeon won't get a majority, but I suspect that will lead to a continuation of the current stasis between Holyrood and Westminster.

Chris Grey has his weekly blogspot out, with some good analysis on sovereignty.

The current hooha on the CI Fishing was all in the small print.

Meanwhile, I'll be suggesting to my local eaterie of choice that they add a local version of Bouillabaisse and maybe a Chowder too to their Menu.

This would also be a good use of any left-over 'Catch of the Day' that was on the Specials Board.

Smacking my lips just thinking about it.

I often think about smacking brexiteers lips too

Really poor effort from Chris Grey this week IMO. Always talking Britain down and the EU up.

We are seeing limits on our expression of "sovereignty" yes because of the size of the EU, but also because we have been insufficinently vigorous in defending it for around 40 years. That's the cause of the problems, changing that does not happen overnight and we are now seeing the first signs of it happening.

Grey's arguement seems to boil down to... 'pull the wool over the eyes of these stupid people who support leave, agree dynamic alignment and lets just go back to the EU deciding everything. The people who supported Brexit and MPs and commentators will be too "gullible and ignorant" to notice'

@LostToucan

John Curtice on R4 this morning saying that Labour will have to let go of the idea that it’s the party of the working class (especially as so few people now have links to heavy industry) and reinvent itself as the party of the young.

Labour will go the way of the libdems, a protest party, if that.

Look even at the height of the pandemic and CH deaths, the tories were always ahead of Lab.

See how they have gone in Scotland?

The tories are becoming a one nation party as the electorate seek answers in right wing politics, which has become the new centre ground..

Did you miss the paragraph about Norway then Louise? How is it that we can't make an agreement with a nation of 5.5 million people? The easy complaint of the EU bullying us doesn't hold because Norway has never been in the EEC/EU. Indeed my recollection is that they stayed out in order to protect their fishing industry, which I suspect matters a good deal more to them than the UK one does to the UK. This is almost certainly going to apply to Greenland and the Faroes also.

Or do you not like the idea that other nations can be sovereign too?

the English electorate

Labour seem to be holding their own in Wales.

In Scotland the SNP seem to be doing OK so far
Scottish National Party 39 (+3)
Liberal Democrat 4 (0)
Conservative 3 (-2)
Labour 2 (-1)
Green 0 (0)
But with Undeclared 81, still a long way to go, although most of those seats look to be in the Central belt, so I don't think they look like natural Tory territory, and more likely to have been Labour, but a Scot can correct me.

I don't actually know the make up of Holyrood. I do remember, was it 2017?, when the SNP virtually wiped out all the Westminster opposition leaving Labour, Tory and LibDem with a seat apiece.

What does this show so far? Well, Independence won't have gone away in Scotland. It's not really an issue yet in Wales.

.