love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

I suppose it's the sort of garbage you're expected to come out with but still *boak*

Who reckons this was the plan all along? Allow masses of public money to be spaffed up the wall siphoned to Dom's mates, and then revert at a convenient moment.

― glumdalclitch, Thursday, 18 June 2020 bookmarkflaglink

A Tory's mate is always getting hold of public funds. Surely the main takeaway is the government's inability to stand up a track and trace app, therefore making a 2nd lockdown more likely if the NHS is totally run down by winter.

I don't think it's the plan, it's just a consequence of the standard operating model being to spaff the money you spend on anything to your pals and then move on. Covid's proving a real problem for this model because it's staggeringly obvious when you're fucking up, so you now also reluctantly, belatedly, have to attempt to do something which might actually work. Which you've forgotten how to do, so you also outsource that and then embarrass yourself.

It'd be interesting to see how much of this has been driven by data privacy issues. The Norwegian court just ruled their centralised system illegal this week.

Aside from the legality there's absolutely no chance of anyone downloading it if they can't assuage privacy concerns.

Palantir are actual evil, when I found out they were involved in this there was no way I was going to use it

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/18/man-rescued-by-uk-black-lives-matter-protester-is-ex-police-officer

He is described as a Millwall FC fan on the website of a local village club where he volunteers.

A fellow member of the club said Male was “a patriotic Brit, England through and through”.

Michael Gove says NI>GB border controls in Boris Johnson's deal shouldn't be implemented as they will anger unionists https://t.co/ptxTZwz04T

— Jon Stone (@joncstone) June 18, 2020

do not waste this time

some discussion of upcoming labour together postelection report, one interesting thing I saw which I don't think I've read elsewhere is they think Tories got 2m previous non-voters to vote for them in 19, ppl have commented that the tory vote didn't change much overall but may well have been lots of traffic in either direction cancelling each other out

they think Tories got 2m previous non-voters to vote for them in 19

must've been all those people under 25 door-knocking all over the country like in the videos we saw all over social media

oh wait

Thanks wreckers

The report doesn't criticise Corbyn personally but "the fact is he lost us a lot of votes"

Disunity was a huge issue, with ChUK MPs defecting denting his ratings massively

PV ultras will not like it, apparently, nor will those who want Corbyn to be held responsible

10/10

— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) June 18, 2020

with ChUK MPs defecting denting his ratings massively

yet they couldn't keep their own voters

when a brilliant MP like Joan Ryan walks from the Labour Party then questions have to be asked about the leader!

if the leader can't command the respect of Gapesy then you might as well give up.

report will blame Corbyn, ignore 2017 and overemphasise the scale of defeat ... yawn.

Do you agree that Boris Johnson/Keir Starmer...

Is best to negotiate with the EU:
Johnson: 39% (% who agree)
Starmer: 31%

Is able to stand up for Britain's interest abroad:
Johnson: 40%
Starmer: 34%

via @OpiniumResearch

— Britain Elects (@britainelects) June 18, 2020

even when Starmer is having public thoughts of necrophilia with Vera Lynn, the gbp still prefer a Tory to him and he's not even had a concerted campaign of hate against him yet! Fucking two-time loser in the making here.

those are questions for headbanging cultists, not mild mannered legal beagles

The 2019 defeat taken in the context of the long term decline of post Blair Labour tells a different, or at least one a bit more complex than Corbyn's fault.

Argh it's raining on my phone and my posts are getting even shitter!

If Starmer was a beagle Labour would be 20 pts ahead!

report will blame Corbyn, ignore 2017 and overemphasise the scale of defeat ... yawn.

That thread gyac linked to is worth reading in its entirety - it suggests the report does none of those things.

EXC: Here's an overview of Labour Together's inquiry into 2019 election defeat, overseen by MPs incl Ed Miliband, per source

It addresses threat posed by Boris Johnson, Labour's relationship with working class, what went wrong under Corbyn and long-term trends since Blair

1/10

— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) June 18, 2020

I'll check it later because of rainy phone syndrome

was listening to a bbc report giving a very bland history of De Gaulle's wartime exile in Britain and his bbc speech to Vichy France, some bollox to do with Macron's visit. It didn't include all the mutual mistrust, questions of De Gaulle's legitimacy and the absolute murderous hatred between him and the British govt. It's almost like some things never really changed!

Says biggest factors in election loss were Brexit ‘by a country mile’, Corbyn's unpopularity and too many policies.

Predictable enough. The last one is still the most infuriating in terms of audience rejection.

Labour lost 1.7m Leave voters and 1m Remain voters.

Bit surprised it wasn't the other way round here though.

Tories succeeded in turning out 2m more non-voters - mainly older white men, "leave minded", wanted to "Get Brexit Done" and/or stop Corbyn from being PM

I guess there was always the question of whether Brexit-voters could be bothered to turn up for another GE with just a little more persuasion and scare-mongering that it might not happen. I wouldn't have thought social media played any significant role here* and it all came through trad media and word of mouth in precipitous Labour seats. 2 fucking million though...

If they didn't hit the ceiling on that the big post-Brexit issue for the far right recruiters might be black people crossing into the UK by boat. Might not play so well up North but Farage is already well into this and will be PM in another ten years.

*but apparently Tory party destroyed Labour on Facebook - fair enough as Labour went after young new voters

was listening to a bbc report giving a very bland history of De Gaulle's wartime exile in Britain and his bbc speech to Vichy France, some bollox to do with Macron's visit. It didn't include all the mutual mistrust, questions of De Gaulle's legitimacy and the absolute murderous hatred between him and the British govt. It's almost like some things never really changed!

Did it mention his speech in Edinburgh with its fulsome praise for Scotland as France's oldest ally... against the English? He left out the last bit out but everyone knew what he meant.

by the time De G relocated his govt in exile to Algiers, Churchill was trying get parliament to end all British support for him. Hence there was genuine gratitude to the BBC from the Fourth Republic, who commissioned some crappy painting to thank them for their invaluable propaganda services, but not so much goodwill towards the British establishment!

lol why the fuck does Question Time still exist?

What? I thought this was Friday!

apparently not

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/18/radical-proposals-in-lib-dem-policy-review-suggest-shift-to-the-left

The Lib Dem review into why they should continue to bother seems to hint again at repositioning themselves somewhere between Labour and the Greens, which is probably good news for the Tories.

Lib Dems really know how to leech off Labour voters, in this case the disaffected young Corbyn left wing.

Whether shouting "Plastic Bags!" will do anything to counteract remains to be seen.

innocent kids who don't know what a Lib Dem is almost as important a section of their support as Graun journalists

The LibDem brand is so fucked it's impossible to see this working except among people who don't remember the coalition. They're probably going to do something dumb like elect Ed Davey anyway.

It's nice when you've got the luxury of switching between supporting policies that kill the disabled and then doing lip service for ones to play to easily impressed Corbynites, like switching football shirts. wankers!

I have a policy winner for them - universal basic scampi fries

surely universal braised squirrel stew

i would desert people's socialist Kerr Starmzy for UBSF tbh

tbqh, i can't see the Corbyn left wing switching to the Lib Dems vs staying in Labour / switching to Greens / staying at home.

Their best bet has always been to position themselves as the less garish face of British conservatism and doing anything else will kill their base.

idk they have a peculiar base

i mean for one thing whatever they position themselves as everybody except naive 18 year-olds knows they're Tory Zero

they were a moderating force during the coalition years, things would have been at least 0.00001% worse without their triumphant carrier bag charge!

probably some pensioners died of the Rona because of re-using carrier bags!

Another interesting thread about Labour’s 2019 performance

Thread:

We've published our report into why Labour lost the 2019 election (and the 3 before that). I'll post highlights and a link to the report below. /1

For the quick version there's a good write up here in @HuffPostUK courtesy of @paulwaugh: https://t.co/S9II5tYhfB

— Mike Buckley (@mdbuckley) June 19, 2020

i don't believe the headline there for one second, at least not in terms of the conclusions drawn

Level 3 dudes, Level 3!

50 new hospitals now is it?

How on earth could the Tories outdo Labour on NHS pledges unless without severe confirmation bias in play?

yeah nobody voted Tory because they thought they'd do more for the NHS, but the bullshit might've worked as a good "I Was Brave" sticker for idiots who were gonna vote for them anyway