brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
More importantly there's no option for mutant strain etc.
Political polling
- Thread starter brogdale
- Start date
Zapp Brannigan
Built like a steakhouse, handles like a bistro
That's our PM you're referring to I presume?
mauvais
on reddit or something
I'm not sure how much I want to blame that. Living in the north, I confess I'm somewhat sceptical of how much this strain's emergence has been a game changer and caused all sorts of 'new' problems that it feels like we've been living with here for all of 2020 anyway, which is probably inaccurate. Nonetheless I feel like if we (public and/or gov't) had everything or indeed anything else right, we wouldn't be so hostage to the external in the first place.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Exact correlation of rugby-supporting and Tory-voting areas. That’s a Pope shiting in the woods, Sherlock.
ska invita
back on the other side
shockingly bad poll for Labour considering the circumstances and advantageous position they find themselves in
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Surely 1 in 3 wanting 'more of this'. Labour are in power in Wales after all.1 in 4 people in Wales wanting more of this; FFS
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
My bad...yep.
Bit beer blurred.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Likewise why is this a shocking bad poll for Labour ska invita ? They are polling almost the same that they achieved in 2016. Considering they've been in power since 1999 and been fucking abysmal during the pandemic I think those polling figures are pretty much what one would expect.
ska invita
back on the other side
Wot no northern independence poll?
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
This could be just a puff piece playing down expectations but the current polling would seem to back it up to a certain level
Monkeygrinder's Organ
Dodgy geezer swilling vapid lager
Maybe people just haven't realised Corbyn isn't in charge any more. As soon as word gets out that Labour are electable now they'll be miles ahead.
the seats being contested were last up in 2016 & 2017 - in 2016 Labour took 31% of the vote and the Tories took 30% - national polling had the tories with a slightly bigger lead than now, so I wouldn't expect to see a huge change there. The 2017 locals were a bloodbath for Labour though, I'd expect to see them take a load of them back.
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
The good ship HMS Federalism sank with the loss of virtually all hands in 2016. Auld Gordy Broon was one of the few rescued, and the nurses humour him by listening to his visionary plan for a federal Union, in whatever care home for failed politicians he washed up in.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
I don't get it, what happened in 2016?
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
A referedum to leave the European Union that resulted in Scotland's desire to remain in the EU being ignored. Thereby closing the door on any half baked notion of federalism as a means of maintaining the union.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
The UK does not have a federal structure, so a move to a federal republic would in fact mean the end of the UK. Neither United nor a Kingdom.
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
Well dur. The fact remains that people saw federalism as a solution to the problems of a fracturing union in 2014/16. I didn't think that stating federalism (which Brown still punts) being off the table would be such a controversial point.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Leaving aside the interests, political objectives and the addiction to elite third way neo-liberalism of the Scottish political class I wonder how true this claim is.
To put it another way, is it correct to characterise the citizens of Scotland as pro-EU? Or that the vote in Scotland in 2016 was anything much more than delivering a kick to the establishment as the vote to leave was in England and Wales?
To put it a final way, isn’t it more accurate to characterise the impulse for independence in Scotland as more about how Scotland sees, understands and interprets its past and its future rather than any assumed lost sunlit uplands in the EU?
There is a general ‘feeling’ among certain elements of the UK that the EU is somehow about Europe, modernity, progressive liberal values etc. Whilst some of us think that’s based on zero evidence and a fundamental misunderstanding of what the EU actually is to deny that such a mood exists would be wrong. I accept that some of these feelings will intertwine at some level with the popular support for independence. But are we suggesting that there is more substance to support for the EU in Scotland than that?
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
A vote 62-38 in favour of remaining in the EU would seem to indicate that. After all, it was the whole elctorate voting, not just the "elite third way neoliberals of the Scottish political class". A vote to "kick the establishment" by, er, voting in line with how the establishment saw EU membership at the time? How would that work?
I'm not sure what evidence was convince you of any 'substance', really, if a huge pro-European vote by a whole country's electorate isn't sufficient. A bizarre post to be honest.
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Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
In terms of your first question. In England and Wales was widely perceived to be a vote against the interests of the establishment... ‘if they are for it, we should be against it’. In Scotland the situation was different, the SNP consistently raised the spectre of Scotland votingto remain and the overall vote being out. They made plain their view that this would trigger a fresh crisis with the establishment and form the conditions for a second independence vote. A vote to remain in Scotland therefore had dual meanings.
On your second point, I’m sorry if you find it ‘bizarre’ to query a statement (yours actually) that the vote in 2016 to remain in Scotland has torpedoed any possibility of a federalist solution. I really don’t think it does....
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
How is federalism possible after Scotland voted to remain within the EU by a substantial margin and England / Wales voted the other way (with Brexit therefore happening against the settled desire of the Scottish electorate, which was simply set aside and ignored?) How is it possible to accommodate two diametrically opposed outcomes within a federal compromise? The only way to do that would be to have a federal Scotland as part of the EU which is not on the table in Brussels and certainly very much off the table and in the most inaccessible bin in Westminster.
The impulse of the current Westminster government is to undo and roll up the devolution settlement altogether, not to accommodate it further through federalism. In that sense Gordon Brown's attempt to re-animate the cryogenically frozen corpse of federalism is as much wishing on a star as Lexit was. Federalism became fatally ill after the 2014 "Vow" was revealed as little more than a substance-free PR exercise, and killed completely by Brexit.
I described your original post as 'bizarre' as it was full of logical inconsistencies- that, somehow, Scotland was not really that pro-European despite the referendum result, and that a massive pro-EU vote was somehow anti-establishment. It was a young Cristiano Ronaldo of a post- lots of fancy step overs but you ended up tackling yourself.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Cracking ‘step over’ jibe at the end. Even I laughed....
Anyway, the logic of your argument is that the Scottish working class is either more predisposed to the rotting carcass of the EU superstate, or that it must be more beguiled by its dubious charms than those of us in England and Wales. I don’t buy either line. I don’t buy exceptionalism arguments either. The logic you’ve applied is the footballing equivalent of a long punt up the park by Tony Pulis Stoke outfit..superficially effective.
Do you at least accept that the EU referendum was widely viewed in Scotland, by some people, through the lens of the wider campaign for independence? Do you acknowledge that it was carefully and skillfully (and effectively) crafted in that way by the SNP?
I also don’t buy that federalism as an idea is dead. I think the opposite is actually true and that it’s going to become an increasingly popular idea in England and Wales as the authority of Westminster and ‘London’ continues to decompose. But the problem for the idea in Scotland is that those who might effectively argue for it are either dead (a Labour movement grounded in the working class) or are the class enemy who have given propulsive force to the SNP and allow them to govern consequence free in the first place (the Westminster political class).
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steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
Yes of course- there is a crossover between being pro-EU and pro-Scottish independence. I don't think the SNP had to do much 'skilful crafting' as it has been their line since the 1992 General Election- "Independence in Europe". I always thought that a nonsensical line and have said so for a long time. The reality is that when it was crafted the SNP had 4 MPs, there was no Scottish parliament, and frankly they could say what they liked about Europe back then- nobody cared. But here we are, nearly 30 years later, living in a political reality that would have been seen at the fanciful edge of fiction back then.
For many the EU referendum was a pragmatic calculation. The pragmatic calculation of the overwhelming majority in Scotland was that staying in the EU was a better bet. Five subsequent years of spiralling chaos, endemic corruption and the UK becoming an international laughing stock in pretty short order suggests that the Scottish vote may have been the right calculation. One doesn't have to be an FBPE fanboy to argue that. The EU is deeply flawed, racist, corporatist; in need of fundamental political re-boot/reform/shift if it is to go in even a moderately progressive direction in the future. That's wishing on a star too, though, as is anything vaguely to the left of Michael Howard-style conservatism these days, across the continent.
Wait, federalism isn't dead, but those who might argue for it are? I'm afraid that's one step-over too many- a raging Fergie has just told Mike Phelan to get the subs board out.
To be serious, federalism is of no interest to anyone in Scotland presently. I agree with the broad thrust of your statement. The demise of Labour that will accelerate in England is already turbocharged in this country- big Jum Murphy, late of the Henry Jackson society, with his skeletal grin on podiums across the country next to Rooth the Mooth and whoever leads the Liberal Democrats these days hasn't been forgotten. Labour may be struggling down south but it's a rotting corpse up here.
Federalism may well be a way for England and Wales to escape its current fate of being a Second World War museum run by the type of people we fought that war against.
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Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Now I’ve recovered from the terrifying spectre of seeing a leering Pulis I can agree with your point steeplejack about the SNP and the collective dream state in Scotland that’s allowed it hegemonic status. A status accompanied by a seemingly widespread nostalgia laden myopia that overlooks its true nature, ambitions and the fact that, at its core, the SNP leadership project is a neoliberal Scotland cloaked in radical language.
When I talked about the dead labour movement in Scotland I wasn’t specifically talking about the Labour Party (although it is indeed dead). I was thinking more about the production of an industrial working class culture that was distinct. In my view it’s death was necessary for the rise of the SNP and the subsequent channelling of hope and energy which has gone into the independence movement.
Would a strong Labour movement - advancing class demands and able to exert pressure to achieve them - have charted a different course? We can only speculate. But what we can say is that it’s demise, and as you suggest the withdrawal of the elite from the post-war moral economy and the subsequent deindustrialisation in Scotland, that shattered the nexus of social democracy, Scottish nationalism and Unionism on which the old order was built. That’s why I say that federalism, as an idea, isn’t dead, but there is nothing to hand - with agency and social weight - that could advance it in the now there. I think here it’s an idea that is coming....
When I talked about the dead labour movement in Scotland I wasn’t specifically talking about the Labour Party (although it is indeed dead). I was thinking more about the production of an industrial working class culture that was distinct. In my view it’s death was necessary for the rise of the SNP and the subsequent channelling of hope and energy which has gone into the independence movement.
Would a strong Labour movement - advancing class demands and able to exert pressure to achieve them - have charted a different course? We can only speculate. But what we can say is that it’s demise, and as you suggest the withdrawal of the elite from the post-war moral economy and the subsequent deindustrialisation in Scotland, that shattered the nexus of social democracy, Scottish nationalism and Unionism on which the old order was built. That’s why I say that federalism, as an idea, isn’t dead, but there is nothing to hand - with agency and social weight - that could advance it in the now there. I think here it’s an idea that is coming....
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
There’s too much football. I glazed over.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Steeplejack started it...
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