Ed Davey Elected Leader of Hated, Failing Party

Ed Davey has beaten his rival Layla Moran and been elected leader of the Lib Dems. But according to an article in Monday’s I by Nigel Morris, ‘Liberal Democrats to crown new leader as party hits ‘rock bottom’, the Lib Dems are still in major trouble with the electorate. The article states that the British public may still hate them for joining the Tories in the coalition government under David Cameron and their leader, the noxious and duplicitous Nick Cligg. The article runs

The new Liberal Democrat leader, who will be crowned this week, will inherit a party whose fortunes remain at “rock bottom” following a succession of dire electoral performances, the polling expert Sir John Curtice has said.

The party’s support has fallen to a 50-year low amid signs that it is still being punished for its part in the Tory-led coalition government of 2010-15.

Sir Ed Davey and Layla Moran are vying to become the Lib Dems’ fifth leader in five years, with the victor facing the daunting task of carving out a distinctive niche for a party at risk of being reduced to a bit player on the political stage.

The winner also must decide how to respond to moves by the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, to steer his party towards the political centre ground.

Despite their initial optimism that they could attract anti-Brexit voters, the Lib Dems won just 11 seats in last year’s election, and two polls this week showed them languishing on 6 and 7 per cent support.

Sir John, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, told I: “There was a brief moment last year when it looked as though they might be able to turn around their fortunes on a wave of Remain discontent with Brexit, but by polling day in December most of these voters had slipped through their fingers.

“As a result, the party finds itself still at rock bottom and having to start from scratch in persuading voters of its relevance and message.”

Although its vote share edged up to 11.6 per cent in December, it finished the night with two fewer MPs and suffered the embarrassment of its leader, Jo Swinson, losing her seat, plunging the party inito yet another leadership contest. Lib Dem insiders predict a close finish as Sir Ed, who has been acting leader for nine months and served in the Coalition cabinet, faces the insurgent appeal of Ms Moran, who has been an MP only since 2017.

Voting closes on Wednesday, with the result being announced on Thursday.

Mark Pack, the editor of Liberal Democrat Newswire, said the party had some grounds for optimism, including increased membership, a growing local government base and stable finances.

“We cannot afford to be blase about the situation, but there is material for a new leader to have a decent opportunity,” he said.

“One of the clear needs is to communicate the positive vision we have for the country. People just don’t notice we are around. The new leader has to make voters feel we are relevant.”

Mike in his report on Davey’s election reminds us that this is the party of mischief. The Lib Dems targeted the Labour party in various constituencies with misleading graphs and polling figures claiming that Labour couldn’t win there. Davey and Moran have also adopted some of the popular Corbynite policies, like increased taxes for the rich and Universal Basic Income, that Starmer has dropped like the good, corporatist Blairite he is. There’s therefore a real danger that some Labour voters may go over to the Lib Dems, thus weakening opposition to the Tories even further. Because after the Lib Dems’ betrayal of their supposedly liberal principles to join the Tory government in the coalition, you really can’t expect them to honour their promises one bit.

And some of the centrists in the Labour party are also worried about the fate of the Lib Dems. A few weeks ago, Labour MP Ayesha Hazarika was in the pages of the I arguing that Starmer should work out some kind of partnership or pact to save them. Why? She confessed she liked them, and wanted to create some kind of anti-Brexit opposition bloc. I have no time for Hazarika. She seems to me to emblematic of much that is wrong with the Labour party under Starmer. She comes across as a Blairite, and I think her media prominence is entirely due to the fact that she is a young woman from an ethnic minority. Her parents are Indian Muslims, and according to Wikipedia, she went to Laurel Bank, a private girls’ school in Edinburgh. She’s thus a very privileged ex-private schoolgirl, who really doesn’t have anything to offer the working class. But due to her gender and ethnic background, she represents diversity and liberal values.

In fact, it could be argued that centrist, Labour MPs like Hazarika are a particular liability to the Labour party. The Tory media are currently whipping up White resentment against current affirmative action programmes and the anti-racist political consensus. You only have to look at Alex Belfield’s wretched output on YouTube, in which he posts rant after rant attacking ‘left-wing snowflakes’ and their attacks on Britishness and Whites. Such as attacks on the singing of ‘Rule, Britannia’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ on the Last Night of the Proms, and an announcement by Channel 4 that one day next year will be entirely given over to Black presenters. And one of the other far-right websites on YouTube has put up a video on the ‘Demonisation of the White Working Class’.

UKIP’s core support came from older, White working class voters, who felt left behind by the mainstream parties. Blair and Brown turned the party away from its working-class roots to concentrate on getting the votes of middle class swing voters. They rejected traditional Labour policies and embraced privatisation, the free market and the destruction of the welfare state. But nevertheless they complacently believed that the working class would still support them as they had nowhere else to go. There is clearly a need to increase the representation of women and ethnic minorities in politics and parliament, but the selection of privileged, Blairite MPs like Hazarika threaten to further weaken parts of working class support for the Labour party. Because if working class voters don’t see Labour offering them anything except more poverty, and appearing to favour the BAME community instead, then some of them will respond to the barely coded racism of the Tories.

As for the Lib Dems, they are treacherous and completely unprincipled. They’ve shown that, whatever they may say about being a centre party and pulling the Tories in a more moderate direction when they were in government with them, they actually did anything but. It was Nick Clegg who wanted to raise tuition fees, for example. Cameron was prepared to give in to the Lib Dems, who had pledged not to raise them. Clegg, Cable, and Swinson have all shown that they are simply another neoliberal party of deceit with nothing to offer Britain’s working people except more poverty and despair. Instead of being given a life-line, the party should die.

And it would only be a good thing if the Blairite faction in the Labour party died out with them.

See also: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/08/27/ed-davey-elected-leader-of-the-party-of-mischief/

 

 

 

MPs Condemn BoJob’s Attempt to Control Media at Briefings

This is another article from yesterday’s I, for 5th February 2020. The piece, ‘MPs from all parties raise concerns over ‘Trumpian-style’ media ban’, by Nigel Morris and Hugo Gye, reports that MPs from all parties are condemning the attempts by BoJob and his polecat, Dominic Cummings, to decide which journos should be rewarded with access to the PM at lobby briefings after Monday’s mass walkout. The article runs

Downing Street face cross-party anger over a “Trump-style” attempt to restrict access to a briefing on Boris Johnson’s Brexit policy to a small number of favoured political correspondents.

The exclusion of reporters regarded as critical of the Government prompted an emergency debate in the Commons, and the Cabinet secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill, is under pressure to investigate the “deeply disturbing episode”.

I understands that Downing Street is reviewing its policy of staging selective briefings on policy.

Senior television and newspaper journalists walked out of Downing Street en masse when No 10’s director of communications, Lee Cain, insisted that only a handful of reporters would be admitted to a “technical briefing” with David Frost. I was among several titles that Downing Street attempted to exclude.

No 10’s tactics on Monday caused dismay among senior Tories and other MPs alike. One Tory MP said: “It makes us look like control freaks.”

And senior Cabinet minister Michael Gove endured an uncomfortable appearance on BBC’s 5Live programme when he refused to answer whether he would have joined the walkout when he was a journalist.

In the Commons, the Cabinet Office minister, Chloe Smith, insisted it was “entirely standard practice” to arrange such briefings and that the Government was “committed to… the principles of media freedom”.

The SNP MP Pete Wishart said Ms Smith’s “self-justifying nonsense” would not “get her off the Trumpian hook”.

Tracy Brabin, the shadow Culture Secretary, said the decision undermined the traditional neutrality of civil servants.

The Labour leadership front runner, Sir Keir Starmer, said: “The actions… are deeply disturbing. Banning the media from important briefings… is damaging to democracy.”

A No 10 source said: “We reserve the right to brief journalists which we choose whenever we wish to.”

There is nothing normal about BoJob’s crew trying to dictate who does or does not attend press briefings. Zelo Street showed that in a couple of pieces commenting on Guido Fawkes’ attempts to spin this line a few days ago. Chloe Smith is wrong, and Peter Wishart, Tracy Brabin and Keir Starmer are right.

The end result of this attempt to impose highly authoritarian control over the media is the rigid censorship of totalitarian states like Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. As for Johnson believing in the principle of media freedom, well, he may do so in principle, but he has very blatant contempt for the idea in practice. With luck this means that the media will become much less docile and compliant in their support.

Perhaps they might even start to take the idea of the journalist’s responsibility to the hold government to account seriously again.

Scared Johnson Now Reduced to Throwing Coarse Insults at Labour

Oo-er, Johnson must be getting scared! I have a rule of thumb that someone is winning an argument when their opponent turns to ad hominem insults or profanity. And by this standard, Johnson is losing, as today he hurled a coarse insult in Labour’s direction. Speaking at a manufacturer of electric vehicles today, our comedy prime minister was expected to make a speech referring to the ‘groundhoggery of Brexit’, the ‘horror show’ of a Corbyn government propped up by Nicola Sturgeon, and described the prospect of second referendums on Brexit and Scottish independence as ‘political onanism’. Onanism is a rather elevated term for masturbation. It comes from Onan, one of the figures in the Old Testament. ‘Groundhoggery’ simply comes from the film Groundhog Day, whose hero is condemned to relive the same day over and over until he finds some way of breaking the cycle.

The I’s Nigel Morris, in his article on the planned speech, ‘PM: I’ll pour cold water on Labhour’s Brexit ‘onanism’, said that Johnson would ‘risk accusations of resorting to crude insults’. Yes, he has. Mike put up a piece about it this morning, titled ‘Boris’ obscene insult with cement the nation’s opinion of him’.  Michael Rosen, the Children’s Poet Laureate, tweeted

Dear Dominic
Are you absolutely sure that I should drop one of these obscure obscenity bombs every few days?
Horatio pro fellatio
Boris

And the Independent commented that this wasn’t the first time Johnson had resorted to off-colour language in public. He described money spent on child abuse inquiries as ‘spaffed up the wall’, gay men as ‘tank-top wearing bum-boys’ and referred to the President of Turkey in a limerick with a word rhyming with ‘Ankara’. How statesmanlike! And I have to say, I find his smear of gay men rather bizarre. They’ve got a reputation for being rather well-turned out, otherwise we wouldn’t have the show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, in which two gay men advise a straight bloke on how to dress better. And from what I remember, the tanktop was never an exclusively gay fashion. It appeared in the ’70s, and all kinds of men and boys wore it without any thought that it had anything to do with homosexuality. I had one. Lenny Henry had a joke about how he had one, and wondered why he couldn’t pick up women at the disco when wearing it. And it’s a bit rich for Johnson, who was educated at Eton, to make sneering remarks about homosexuals with the reputation public schools have for homosexuality.

Johnson was also expected to say that while Britain was admired and respected around the world, foreign countries would be baffled by our failure to get Brexit done. Mike concludes his piece by stating that

the leaders of those other countries that have caused Mr Johnson such concern will be even more “baffled” if he wins an election with language like this.

Boris Johnson’s obscene insult will merely cement the nation’s opinion – of him

Quite. Johnson is increasingly showing himself to be an incompetent buffoon, who can only stave off attacks on his government and conduct in office through coarse insult. And it belies the confidence the Tory press claim they have in a Conservative election victory. Today’s Times had its leading headline on the front page proclaiming that the Tories were 14 points in the lead over Labour. But yesterday’s I reported that there was confusion among politicians over the whether polls could be trusted.

Johnson’s little bit of crudity suggests he and his chief advisor, Dominic Cummins, don’t.

To paraphrase the old movie poster for the David Cronenberg remake of The Fly, they’r afraid. They’re very afraid.

Make them so and vote them out on December 12.

Corbyn Warns of Disastrous Consequences of Tory Election Victory

The I newspaper on Tuesday carried a report about what Jeremy Corbyn was expected to say in a speech attacking the Tories’ real plans for the country after Brexit. The article by Nigel Morris, titled ‘Corbyn: Tories plan Thatcherism on steroids’, ran

Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit plans will erode food safety standards to American levels to allow maggots in orange juice and rat hairs in paprika, Jeremy Corbyn will claim to day.

He will accuse the Prime Minister of plotting to unleash “Thatcherism on steroids” by using Brexit as cover for pushing an ideological agenda of selling off the NHS and slashing workers’ rights.

Mr Corbyn will insist Mr Johnson wants to strip away consumer, employment and environmental protections as he negotiates a free trade deal with President Donald Trump.

“Given the chance, they’ll slash food standards to US levels where ‘acceptable levels’ of rat hairs in paprika and maggots in orange juice are allowed and they’ll put chlorinated chicken on our supermarket shelves,” he will say in a speech in Harlow.

“And given the chance, they’ll water down the rules on air pollution and our environment that keep everyone safe. They want a race to the bottom in standards and protections.

“Given the chance, they’ll run down our rights at work, our entitlements to holiday, breaks and leave.”

The Labour leader will also claim that Mr Johnson’s Brexit plans would allow American pharmaceutical companies to bid for NHS contracts at a cost to the taxpayer of £500m a week.

Mr Johnson has denied the health service would be ‘on the table’ in po9st-Brexit trade talks with Donald Trump.

However, Mr Corbyn will say: “What Boris Johnson’s Conservatives want is to hijack Brexit to unleash Thatcherism on steroids.”

He will say that the Conservatives want to take Britain out of the EU because they knew voters would back a return to the politics of the 80s.

“Margaret Thatcher’s attack on the working community of our country left scars that have never healed and communities that have never recovered,” he will say. “The Conservatives know they can’t win support for what they’re planning to do in the Thatcherism. So they’re trying to do it in the name of Brexit instead.”

This is all absolutely true. Thatcher led an attack on Britain’s working people through privatisation, anti-union regulation and her attack on the welfare state. She want to privatise the NHS, but was prevented by a cabinet revolt. And the Tories back then made it very clear that they wanted to destroy the welfare state, because they considered it an obstacle to workers getting jobs. At the same time, they despised and attacked workers’ rights, on the grounds that they’re a burden to employers.

The result of his is massive job insecurity and a highly prejudiced and hostile benefits system that has seen millions of unemployed, poor and disabled people denied the money they need to live on. 250,000 people are kept from starvation only through food banks. 14 million households are in poverty. Millions of workers are trapped in a gig economy, where they don’t know if they’re going to have work tomorrow, and have no rights to basic pay and entitlements.

Some of the blame for this must lie with New Labour. But they were following the agenda set by Thatcher. And while the Tories have said that the NHS is ‘off the table’ in debates with Trump, they held six secret meetings with American negotiators in which it was very much included.

Thatcher is a great, molten idol to the Tories, but they recognise that she is bitterly unpopular in some areas. It was most obviously demonstrated in the parties that broke out in some parts of the country when she died. Her ideological legacy, neoliberalism, has been described as a ‘Zombie economy’ – it’s failed, but it’s still being propped up and kept alive somehow by the political and media establishment. And the Tories are using Brexit to push their attack on workers’ rights. As I’ve said before, the Tories hate the EU not because of the single market, which they actually quite like, but because of the Social Charter which lays down basic rights for European working people. That’s why they want to leave the EU: so they can get rid of this, and really start exploiting people.

Corbyn is telling the truth. Don’t believe the Tories lies. Get them out on December 12!

Corbyn to Set Up Workers’ Protection Agency

The I today has a report on Corbyn’s pledge to the TUC at their Congress in Brighton to expand workers’ rights, including setting up a Secretary of State for Employment Rights and a Workers’ Protection Agency. The article, on page 9, by Nigel Morris, runs

Labour would put power “in the hands of workers” by implementing the bigtgest expansion of employment rights in British history, Jeremy Corbyn has declared.

He promised radical action to transform everyday lives by driving up wages, improving job security and giving staff more say in how their companies are run. Mr Corbyn announced that a labour government would set up a Ministry for Employment Rights with the remit of improving pay and conditions of workers across the UK. it would also appoint a Secretary of State for Employment Rights and a Workers’ Protection Agency to enforce rights and standards in the workplace.

Reiterating the party’s pledge to repeal the 2016 Trade Union Act, he said unions would gain the right to organise in workplaces, while union representatives would be given extra protection against dismissal. 

The Labour leader received a succession of standing ovations as he outlined his plans at the TUC Congress in Brighton. He told delegates: “It’s Labour’s historic mission to transform people’s lives, and that transformation begins in the workplace.”

This is precisely what Britain’s working people need after four decades of Thatcherite attacks on trade unions, job security, employment rights, and pay freezes and the introduction of zero hours contracts. I also predict this will draw the massive ire of the Tories and the right-wing press. You can expect that this is going to be greeted with the usual accusations that it will damage the economy by making it too expensive to employ people, and a repeat of the lie that Corbyn’s some kind of Commie.

A Ministry and Secretary of State for Employment Rights and Workers’ Protection Agency comes very close to some of the ideas I put forward in my book For A Workers’ Chamber, available from Lulu. This argues that as parliament is dominated by millionaires and employers, its high time workers were also given their representation in parliament. This proposal doesn’t do that, but it should give working people the voice and protection they need.

250 + Companies to Leave UK for Holland Due to Brexit

According to yesterday’s I for Thursday, 24th January 2019, the Dutch are claiming that more than 250 firms currently based in the UK are planning to move across the North Sea to them due to Brexit. The article on page 10, entitled ‘More than 250 firms plan to relocate from UK to the Netherlands’ by Nigel Morris and Benjamin Butterworth began

More than 250 companies are looking to follow Sony by moving from the UK to the Netherlands because of Brexit, it emerged yesterday.

The Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA) said that scores of companies with UK headquarters had expressed interest in relocating, and the number was expected to rise.

Many business chiefs have been dismayed by Theresa May’s refusal to rule out leaving the European Union without an agreement, leaving Britain immediately operating on World Trade Organisation rules.

The article then goes on to list some of the companies moving. They were Sony, Panasonic, which moved last year, P&O, while the car maker Bentley was stockpiling parts.

It quote Michiel Bakhuizen of the NFIA as saying

“The number of businesses we are in contact with for a possible arrival is growing. At the start of 2017 it was 80. At the start of 2018 it was 150, and now it’s more than 250.

“This increase will continue and it is not strange, because there is great uncertainty at the moment in Britain. And if there’s one thing that’s bad for business, it’s uncertainty.”

One of Tweezer’s little minions said in reply that it was clear that companies around the world would continue to invest in Britain and its people. Against this was the Labour MP Rupa Huq, who backs a second referendum. She said

“This shows the shrinking appeal of Britain as a decision-making base for top companies as a result of Brexit.

“The Japanese were supposed to be a top ally for Brexit, but time and again they have been shocked at the scale of self-destruction.” The below the article was another which also listed other firms leaving the UK. These included the Japanese financial houses Nomura Holdings and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group; HSBC, which is moving its HQ from London to Paris; Barclays and Bank of America, which are moving to Dublin, MoneyGram, which is going to Brussels; the European Medicines Agency, which is going to Amsterdam; the European Banking Authority is going to move to Paris, while the German engineering company Schaefler is going to close two of its plants, in Plymouth and Llanelli.

Brexit is going to be a disaster for Britain. but it’s going to be great for rich financiers like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage, because they can move their investments around the world without worrying about losing profits. It’s the rest of us, who depend on manufacturing and trade in goods for our jobs and businesses, who will take the real hit.

We were lied to by the leaders of the ‘Leave’ Campaign, who were chiefly members of the Tory right. Well, it’s high time to kick the Tories out of office and put in someone who really can clear up this mess: Jeremy Corbyn.

Labour Wins in the Council Elections

I’ve had a look at the election results according to the I newspaper today, Saturday, 7th May 2018. The I’s attitude is that all the parties are claiming the results are good for the, with the exception of UKIP, who seem to have been decimated. The headline on the front page is ‘Everyone’s A Winner…apart from UKIP, who lose more than 100 seats’. And no bad thing either, in my opinion. Their attitude is that Labour did well, but didn’t make the spectacular gains that were expected. The lib Dems have also increased their share of the vote, and look like they may hold the balance in determining which party gets into power, just as they did at the 2010 election.

The article ‘All Three Main Parties See the Bright Side Despite Setbacks’ by Nigel Morris on page 6 states

A BBC projection of the English local election results put Labour and the Tories each on 35 per cent support, with the Liberal Democrats on 16 per cent. Repeated at a general election, the United Kingdom would be heading for another hung parliament, suggesting that public sentiment has barely shifted since Jeremy Corbyn wiped out Theresa May’s Commons majority last year.

It would also suggest the Liberal Democrats could decide which party leader was handed the keys to Downing Street, as they did in 2010.

After declarations from all but one of the 150 authorities holding elections, Labour had gained 59 seats but lost control of one council overall. The Tories recorded a net loss of 31 seats and two councils, while the Liberal Democrats gained 75 councilors and four councils. however, the night ended in disaster for the UK Independence Party which was virtually wiped off the electoral map with the loss of 123 seats.

The article then quotes a polling expert, John Curtice, who said that the Tories had gained a small swing from Labour since the seats were fought four years ago, but that it was impossible to say in this situation that one party was ahead of the other and that it was a draw.

The article also states that Labour failed to gain some target constituencies in London, such as Barnet, Wandsworth, Westminster, and Hillingdon, but still retained its dominant position in the capital. It gained Plymouth, and became the largest party in Trafford in Greater Manchester. However, it performed ‘weakly’ in Dudley, Derby and Redditch, which the I declared suggested that it did badly in pro-Brexit areas.

The I also noted that as well as gaining Plymouth and Trafford, Labour also took Kirklees in West Yorkshire, but also lost Nuneaton and Bedworth. The Tories increased their majority in Barnet, which has been blamed on the anti-Semitism allegations against Labour. (p. 7).

On page 8 there’s the election results. Labour has 73 councils, the Tories 46, Lib Dems 9, and there are 21 with no overall control.

Labour also has 2,299 councillors, the Tories 1,330, the Lib Dems 536. There are 96 independents, 39 Green, UKIP 3, and one councillor described as ‘other’.

Labour and the Tories are neck and neck at 35 per cent in the projected share of the national vote, Lib Dems at 16 per cent, and 14 per cent ‘other’.

While this isn’t the spectacular landslide people were predicting and hoping for, it’s still a good, solid election result, especially considering the massive vilification of Corbyn and the attempts to undermine his leadership and programme through the anti-Semitism smears.

There is, of course, much room for improvement, especially if the Lib Dems are expected to decide who gets into parliament through a coalition. Cable has said he won’t go into coalition with Labour. I’m not surprised. For all he cited the supposed anti-Semitism in the Labour ranks as his reason, the reality is that the Lib Dems are now a Thatcherite party little different from the Tories. They were all too keen to go into coalition with the Tories in 2010, and, despite their claims, did absolutely nothing to hold the Tories back from their extremist policies. In fact they were more extreme when it came to the tuition fee increases.

We need to smash both Tories and Lib Dems to get a Labour government we deserve and Corbyn in No. 10.