Rolling Brexit Links/UK politics in the neo-Weimar era

on anti-immigration views among BME voters

https://twitter.com/judeinlondon/status/746625153858142208

so disheartened by these useless fucks

might have known that little whey-faced shit Jones would be a legitimate concernist when push comes to shove. I'm finding Corbyn + McDonnell's latest compromises to populist dross harder to take. I'm seriously thinking of getting shut of my membership, I didn't join for some kind of neo-Blairism with slight leftist concessions.

on anti-immigration views among BME voters

https://twitter.com/judeinlondon/status/746625153858142208

― lex pretend, Tuesday, January 10, 2017 1:32 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this runnymede report on BME attitudes to immigration (from Dec 2015) is interesting, seems to broadly concur with the above analysis:

http://www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/Race%20and%20Immigration%20Report%20v2.pdf

Third is that there are indeed concerns about the benefits system, and many Black and minority ethnic people do refer to pressures on public services. Here there is perhaps more variation among different BME groups who are after all becoming much more diverse than they were even a decade ago. Many BME people too are concerned about the ‘fairness’ of the welfare system, although some also interpret this to mean that it is often unfair that they have to consistently ‘prove’ they are (equally) British or that their children have equal entitlement to public services and benefits.

Another more general way to put this is that while BME people may often appear to hold similar opinions and attitudes on immigration to those of the white British majority, their experiences often mean that their reasons for holding those opinions differ. So, for example, there are concerns about the fairness of benefits for new migrants, but this is often framed by older migrants in terms of the unfairness of newer European migrants getting access to benefits that older Caribbean, African or Asian migrants didn’t receive. There needs to be a much clearer positive affirmation that naturalised British citizens are equal to British-born citizens, not just in terms of rights but in terms of contributing to a national identity and to public debate, and interms of access to benefits as well.

those Congolesa Rice tweets are excellent

so good, that is the first person I have followed on twitter now. I'm getting there very slowly.

I think i've probably mentioned in the past that an "Australia-style points-based system of immigration" has been sold as a tough crackdown to white Brits but sounds pretty good to settled migrants in the UK whose family and friends overseas are being forced to migrate to Australia rather than the UK, for study or work, by a British immigration system that is perceived as being massively stacked against them in a way Australia's isn't. Trusting racist politicians to bring in more equitable rules for non-white migrants under any circumstances is obvs very naive though.

Guardian main story: Corbyn backs maximum wage.

Comments below are hidden till clicked on, except the top GUARDIAN PICK which they've highlighted.

It says:

"Corbyn in a nutshell. Everytime you think he's exhausted the bounds of ridiculousness he exceeds himself in turning a real and pressing issue into a farce."

In fact almost every commenter below the article savagely attacks the idea.

The Guardian Pick comment in full:

"Corbyn in a nutshell. Everytime you think he's exhausted the bounds of ridiculousness he exceeds himself in turning a real and pressing issue into a farce.

We can all agree the market fails in the ludicrous rewards it provides for some jobs, while others struggle. That's why you advocate a progressive tax system - by all means argue for greater taxes on wealth, income, inheritance, property, windows, stupid cocktails, red trousers, whatever. But it's economics GCSE that maximum wages don't work - set it extremely high and it's completely pointless, set it at a level it would actually have an effect and you run into all sorts of problems about incentives, departure, competition.

For God's sake. Enough. Get us a proper left-wing party back, not this ludicrous farce."

I don't know whether JC's policy idea is good or not but I find it somewhat unfortunate that the G has picked out just one comment and it is this highly polemical one.

I did Economics GCE, we possibly decided having everyone on the same wage was a dis-incentive but a maximum wage?no.

not sure why suggest something abstract like a maximum wage when you could just propose taxes that have the same effect, and would seem to frame the matter in a way that has a lot more public appeal.

conventional wisdom is that you must never mention taxes I guess

The thinking would be that basing income inequality countermeasures around tax risks more people feeling they're losing out and/or that highest 'earners' are most adept at avoiding tax whereas salary caps (or better yet pay ratios) could be seen to be a more direct approach.

he's rolled back on it now anyway, it seems.

Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Chairmans

it's an idea that is trump-level in its economic sophistication

Congolesa Rice has just ripped Jones to bits, and totally discredited the so-called data he was paraphrasing about BME voters in that bullshit Graun piece. I've never liked him so it was some fun reading.

or at least his analysis of the data was either incompetent or dishonest.

Hopefully there's a Scottish Congolesa Rice out there.

I have just been reminded that this song & video mention and show Neil Kinnock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_QSMTtUQYY

wonder if Neil is the only Labour leader to have appeared on a picture disc?

http://images.eil.com/large_image/XXX-45902.jpg

I own that disc soref!

I must admit, the extent of 'acting' that NK is doing even on that picture feels somehow dangerously excessive, kind of 'postmodern politics' -- I mean even today, I can't imagine Theresa May doing that. Though I suppose I have quite often seen Barack Obama (a great actor and comic) do such things and can almost imagine Sadiq Khan getting involved in fictions in such a way.

It strikes me that a maximum wage isn't actually going to benefit workers or the public purse in any serious material way. I can see it benefiting shareholders quite a lot though.

It's a bit like Ed Miliband's fuel price freeze, it's one of those policies that people on the street say is a great idea in the abstract but no one trusts them to be able to deliver it in any case. And that was a lot more workable than this is.

corbyn's barmy maximum wage brain fart catching hell on the one show

Conrad are you against the maximum wage policy, or, for that matter, the 'top salary as multiple of lowest salary' policy?

I quite like the second one, at least, but what do I know - do not have GCSE Economics.

I just turned on THE ONE SHOW to find out more but of course had just missed it

it's an idea that is trump-level in its economic sophistication

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 10 January 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Trump won #thanksForPlaying

I don't know about workability - its politics. But he doesn't appear to have followed it through - the populism needs bullshit, chutzpah with some bits of truth in there.

Is this Milne's attempt at a cacophony type strategy? Like keep changing the message but maintain the noise or something.

I doubt it, but I like the idea that there's a strategy.

If it is, he didn't clear it with Owen Jones first !! :O

I think it's fair to say it wouldn't be a good strategy, if it were one (which I'm sure it isn't).

Jones keeps saying that repetition is the thing (he keeps ... repeating it) and sounds like he knows what he's talking about (though exactly what his credentials are for assessing campaign / electoral strategics, I'm not sure).

After 18 months of basically avoiding TV is he now going on every programme that will have him?

It sounds like they've basically given him license to say what he wants, which might not be a winning strategy but stoked for the madness.

this is hardcorbyn

pf a maximum wage as messaging seems designed to avoid saying - as someone else said - "tax". I like tax. let them "earn" whatever they like and take it from them in tax. as a message it seems duff and prompts e.g. the question "well how much?" and drives directly to the perverse feeling among some people who will never earn more than e.g. £25,000pa that they cannot risk jeopardising their future cash when they manage to realise an e.g. twentyfold increase in their salary and also the idea that these people "earn" money by "working" "hard". the multiplier thing is a better message one which suggests - as you said - the job creators having to drag the proles up with them. I hope there's a strategy too.

"Labour is not wedded to freedom of movement for EU citizens as a point of principle, but I don’t want that to be misinterpreted, nor do we rule it out."

- leftist firebrand Jeremy Corbyn

Conrad yes I agree I prefer the multiplier thing!

I think people have been saying for quite a long time, JC should go on TV more and get messages across directly. They also say, he is likely to come across as friendly and calmly droll (etc) on TV in a way at odds with the perceptions promoted by his enemies.

I broadly agree with this. Visibility a good thing on balance.

Not saying any of it will win GE (never have done) but I would like him to maximise whatever particular degree of success he can have.

this seems otm

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/01/jeremy-corbyns-immigration-policy-isnt-muddle-it-mess

Labour’s line on immigration is actually very clear. Corbyn is saying that the Labour party doesn’t particularly care about the right of EU citizens to move freely within the EU area but is prepared to accept it if that’s the cost of a good standard of access to the single market.

What the leadership is trying to do is at once appeal to people who want immigration to go down without taking the economic hit that a hard Brexit – the only way to avoid the free movement of people – would represent.

Labour’s halfway-house position on immigration in particular and Brexit in general risks leaving them as the party of nobody, the middle-of-the-road option. And we know what happens to people in the middle of the road: they get run down.

The last bit is very stupid. Halfway house in the middle of the road.

Maybe he can live on a traffic island.

there was no room on the verges

up near the Ainley Top Junction on the M62 is a house smack in between two motorway lanes, not a Halfway House but a good one if you are an Eddie Stobart truck spotter.

I don't necessarily agree that JC should be on TV more. He doesn't always come across as friendly and droll to me, it usually seems to involve people asking him sometimes non-hostile questions and him wittering and refusing (or being unable) to engage. His TV performance after the brexit vote is a good example.

He's better than May on TV but then he's been on TV more than her seemingly. I don't remember quite how much TV Cameron did before 2010 and he may even have been technically "good" (tho not as good as Clegg) but it certainly nosedived in his last four years as PM.

jc has styled out his maximum wage as a 20x cap on any company w a govt contract. not bad tbh

I like Corbyn, but he is generally not good on tv imo. the friendly and droll thing comes across when he's chatting informally with broadly sympathetic/like-minded ppl, but this is not really much help and is probably true of most ppl anyway.

not a great start to 2017 for the Corbyn project, all things considered

https://twitter.com/GreenJamieS/status/818929930243145728

hard to find takes on the momentum debacle that are not totally tendentious.

what i understand is that all people who were purged from the labour party will be expelled, as will all current members who haven't joined labour yet if they don't before a certain time. which seems to be a bit of a night of the long knives (or icepicks) for the trots.

The bureaucrats always win, they can't conceive a politics they don't own. Counterpoint: they're the only people who care enough to run the world