The British Politics Thread - The Bear and Badger

Wookienopants

I have zero faith in the government to act with any integrity at all. They have shown time and time again that they will spin any situation so they can weasle out of it and will lie through their teeth to everyone.

They will survive this. Johnson will get away again and the public will forget about this come GE time

Yossarian

poprock wrote:

acemuzzy wrote:

Prepare for disappointment, basically.

This, this, this.

The UK has allowed the Tories to lock themselves into Number 10. There isn’t a scandal that could get rid of them. They’re Teflon. A bit like when Trump boasted that he could shoot someone dead in the street and still remain President.

Gray’s report and the Met’s investigation could damn the entire Cabinet and destroy public trust in them completely … but the Conservatives would still win the next General Election.

The best you can hope for is Johnson being ousted as leader. That’s it. The great British public aren’t going to vote Labour, or any other opposition, into power. Not for a very long time yet.

Nah. People probably said the same about the Tories when Thatcher was in power. All political parties fail eventually, it’s probably the only thing in politics that can be relied upon.

poprock

Yossarian wrote:

People probably said the same about the Tories when Thatcher was in power. All political parties fail eventually, it’s probably the only thing in politics that can be relied upon.

You need a credible opposition for that, so ‘eventually’ is the key word there. The press have successfully destroyed Labour and it’s going to take years - maybe a decade - to rebuild.

Yossarian

The old line about oppositions not winning elections, it’s governments that lose them comes to mind here.

poprock

I guess I just don’t have the faith you do. I think there’s a mentality of ‘I hate them but there’s nobody else’ among the majority of voters. And I don’t see that changing in a hurry. Certainly not because of a cake.

davyK

Benjamin Zephania said that in an election no matter who you vote for the Government gets in.

Yossarian

Highly apposite article from YouGov today:

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/01/27/are-public-beginning-think-labour-could-govern

Rev

What a fucking joke.

poprock

Yossarian wrote:

Highly apposite article from YouGov today: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/01/27/are-public-beginning-think-labour-could-govern

Being wrong about all this would make me happy. But I don’t see it happening soon.

acemuzzy

The Tories won't call an election of they think they're going to lose. They'll have to in try years anyway, but that's a long time in politics, and they have the media in their pocket, so a Labour win still feels wishful at this stage.

monkey

This suggests the toilet of history has already been flushed on the Johnson turd.

monkey

Love some of those cliff-face drops in popularity.

Also notable though is just how much time most PMs spend being pretty bloody unpopular. Thatcher was nearly always unpopular. Just a couple of spikes before election time (thanks Rupert)

May went from about +20 to around -30 in just one press conference.

Funkstain

Johnson isn't politics as usual though, is he. He's Trumpism, inasmuch as the ultra partisan style of our current politics means net approvals are less meaningful: a smallish majority of voters will always disapprove (as can be seen by his v low approval rate even in his beginning), and hardcore minority will always approve; and in either case it means little with regards to his future, which was not the case before.

Don't get me wrong - there is cut through, erstwhile supporters are becoming disillusioned. But it's not enough anymore - he has so many actual Member of actual Parliament backing him despite knowingly (in some cases..not sure about Raab et al) looking and sounding ridiculous, because they know they can rely on the support of the ultras (anti woke, anti labour, anti immigration, anti EU, all those anti people).

For Johnson to go, he'll have to be forced. For him to be forced, you need enough of his current political enablers and supporters to abandon him, even condemn him. We're nowhere near that happening.

Yossarian

acemuzzy wrote:

The Tories won't call an election of they think they're going to lose. They'll have to in try years anyway, but that's a long time in politics, and they have the media in their pocket, so a Labour win still feels wishful at this stage.

Obviously, a couple of years is a long time in politics, but it’s not looking like the next couple of years are shaping up to be much good for whoever is in government. Continued fallout from Brexit, cost of living crisis, chancellor (and potential PM) who is more concerned with balancing the books than investing to improve lives. Plus, the damage done to Johnson, should he stay on, isn’t going to be forgotten that quickly.

Things can change, of course, but right now it feels to me like there is more chance of the Conservatives losing the next election than there is of them winning it, particularly if Johnson clings on to power.

acemuzzy

Yep him clinging on is definitely helping Labour's election chances - every cloud etc!

monkey

He’s got to go. He’ll do anything to win the next election if he stays. Absolutely anything. Too dangerous.

Fwiw, I’m optimistic he will. I think the report is bad, the Met have probably been given evidence of criminality (not parties) that they couldn’t justifiably ignore and that the anti-Johnsons in the Tory party are keeping schtum at the moment. When the report drops, confidence vote, and he’ll lose.

But I’m swinging between optimism and despair pretty routinely at the moment.

dynamiteReady

Funkstain wrote:

Johnson isn't politics as usual though, is he. He's Trumpism.

Yeah. It's absolutely amazing how brazen he is.

I reckon he sees himself as an Alexander the 6th kind of figure, and considers it to be his place in history.

Yossarian

He can’t do much without the party behind him, and party discipline is fucked. I don’t see how he gets any authority back whatever happens next.

mistercrayon

How can you say it’s fucked if he’s still there? The amount of line toeing and redefining has been ridiculous.

Yossarian

All the leaks for a start. A party with discipline doesn’t leak like a sieve.

LivDiv

Funkstain wrote:

Johnson isn't politics as usual though, is he. He's Trumpism,

The guy who lost his second election to Biden, the most uninspiring man in polotics.

Funkstain

Yossarian wrote:

All the leaks for a start. A party with discipline doesn’t leak like a sieve.

It's true. But you need to more than leak. You need to come out publicly and say: enough is enough. This man has besmirched our politics for too long, has undermined what there is of our constitution to the detriment of all politicians. He must go, here's my letter.

They are not coming out publicly and saying that. They are hoping that someone else will. Not enough will, imo.

This doesn't change the fact that his authority is fucked. But so what? So was Trump's. Remember the man cares nothing for policy, nothing for work, nothing for his masters, the electorate. it's about the damage he can do to what's left of politics' reputation, politicians' reputations, our reputation as a country, our ability to care for people in our society. This needs braver politicians than ours to step forward and do something about it. Look at the Republicans in the US for a guide on brazen cowardice.

Funkstain

LivDiv wrote:

Funkstain wrote:

Johnson isn't politics as usual though, is he. He's Trumpism,

The guy who lost his second election to Biden, the most uninspiring man in polotics.

Trumpism is shorthand for the ultra partisan politics, and surely you don't think it died with that crook's presidency, do you?

mistercrayon

It didn’t even start with his presidency imo.

Funkstain

Well no of course not. This most recent form of it, in the US, was probably originally embodied by Gingrich

Yossarian

Funkstain wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

All the leaks for a start. A party with discipline doesn’t leak like a sieve.

It's true. But you need to more than leak. You need to come out publicly and say: enough is enough. This man has besmirched our politics for too long, has undermined what there is of our constitution to the detriment of all politicians. He must go, here's my letter.

They are not coming out publicly and saying that. They are hoping that someone else will. Not enough will, imo.

This doesn't change the fact that his authority is fucked. But so what? So was Trump's. Remember the man cares nothing for policy, nothing for work, nothing for his masters, the electorate. it's about the damage he can do to what's left of politics' reputation, politicians' reputations, our reputation as a country, our ability to care for people in our society. This needs braver politicians than ours to step forward and do something about it. Look at the Republicans in the US for a guide on brazen cowardice.

This isn’t about whether or not he’s going to go, I can’t call whether he’s going to be no-confidenced or not, it’s about how much damage he can do if he continues, which is limited if the party is no longer united behind him.

Funkstain

He does damage BY continuing and having his choice of cabinet in place. His policies (such as they are his...) are generally easily passing parliament, with only the Lords providing any resistance to horrible shit like the policing bill - if his cronies and supporters were more hard working and better prepped, Lords could be bypassed even more easily.

His agenda (again, inasmuch as it is his, I don't think he has the first clue about any of the bills) is fine with the Tory party. It's simply about the risk he poses to their re-election chances, and whether a challenger truly fancies their chances of replacing him; nothing more and nothing less. and at the moment I see no evidence of organised rebelling and ousting. In any case it wouldn't change the direction of policy anyway. It only removes his stink from our constitution and improves the odour of politics as a whole

Diluted Dante

mistercrayon wrote:

How can you say it’s fucked if he’s still there? The amount of line toeing and redefining has been ridiculous.

Because they have to be fairly sure that he won't win a confidence vote before they trigger one. Thatcher and May went despite winning them, but do you believe Johnson would go even if he only won by one vote? I don't.

Yossarian

Funkstain wrote:

I see no evidence of organised rebelling

https://metro.co.uk/2022/01/28/sue-gray-report-boris-johnson-could-scrap-national-insurance-rise-16005398/

Funkstain

Him going is a net positive for the country. We still have horrible bastards in charge, but those horrible bastards have finally shown that they're not going to support a degenerate who destroys politics for his own purposes with no shame, integrity or even goal other than survival.

Howdy, Stranger!

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