brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Wake up Sheeple!
Political polling
- Thread starter brogdale
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JimW
支那暗杀团
That really is an indictment of the weakness of Starmerite opposition to my mind, as there's obviously all sorts going on where policy is impacting people's lives in ways I'm sure they're very interested in but no-one's making the case that it could be done differently, hence leeway for stumbling through a crisis as most people put up with what they think can't be helped etc.
perhaps, although from what I've read on the topic it's an issue that faced Corbyn too, who for all his faults did try to make a case that things could be done differently.
JimW
支那暗杀团
True, I suppose another part of it is the general complexity of a lot of stuff that means things like backdoor NHS privatisation can be kept sufficiently obscure to a casual look.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
Is backdoor NHS privatisation really that complicated? Couldn't it reasonably be compared to outsourcing, with the exception that while the actual work is farmed out to Tory donors, it's done under the NHS "brand"?
I dunno, I just don't buy the idea that it's somehow too complicated a concept.
I dunno, I just don't buy the idea that it's somehow too complicated a concept.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
It should surely be an easy issue to frame though; it's being done to cut costs, not for the benefit of patients...
Sure - and I think there's a general feeling that it's a bad thing. But the whole thing about doing stuff by the back door, a bit at a time is that each individual sell-off of services is difficult to oppose or often even detect. People are still accessing the services through the NHS, and if the service becomes poorer, it's the NHS that people grumble about rather than the myriad of companies providing the various services as they simply aren't very visible.
Dom Traynor
Tino Pai
I wonder if it's also a sense of general exhaustion and unwillingness to engage with politics, especially bad political news. I know that since before Brexit I've struggled to pay attention to any political detail outside my immediate area of interest and I am literally in a full time political job. Not because of whats happening politically which has been mostly shit with the odd highlight since the decline of the post war consensus; but more down to 24 Hour news and social media overwhelm.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
What's less impressive, for Survation, is that they had them on 38% each last time; clearly an outlier from the tracking.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Only 29% really, on 66% approx GE turnouts.
Smangus
comatose at a desk
You've never met the people I'm surrounded by......
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
I wonder if this is still in the shadow of brexit. There was an active feeling of alienation against Westminster and the whole political class that motivated a lot of voters in 2016 or at least a general feeling of grievance that shaped that vote. Theresa May managed to put herself on the wrong side of that feeling as did Corbyn. In a sense, the period through to the 2019 gen election was one of waiting for someone to capture that mood, right or left (and of course there was no chance of a left populism in Britain). Johnson's government is still the 'answer' to that moment and has a fair wind still. Labour have just ceased to be force of any kind, ideological or political, so that helps. So, what resentment there is about Covid mismanagement has nothing to hook onto. We're in a weird situation where 5 years ago people used to resent government(s) for their ills, now they don't. I can't quite express it, but we somehow live in a world of non-politics. Not in the way the Blair governments meant there was a neoliberal consensus amongst the parties, but a disconnect between the shitness of life and what we thing about government.
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brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
I think there's a great deal of truth in what you say.
I've long suspected that the more hollowed-out the state becomes, the less folk feel any incentive to determine who manages it's decline.
Stephen Bush in today's NS mailout says something about the whole covid mismanagement thing, and it's likely lack of purchase on public opinion (I think I agree with him looking at the yougov reaction to the Cummings stuff):
I suspect that the problem for Cummings - and for any opposition party that thinks there is political joy to be had out of relitigating the mistakes of the past 18 months - is that just as people often want to move on past a period of ill health or personal trial in their personal lives, the country as a whole would, I think, be happier never to think about 2020-21 again. To not revisit the terrifying moment when the government had not only visibly lost control of the outbreak but the Prime Minister himself looked like he might die from it, leaving an overwhelmed government looking even more rudderless. To not think about the Zoom funerals, the overwhelming pressure of looking after children and working from home, the financial worries, and the seemingly never-ending month of January 2021.
As aggravating as that may be for people who think, arguably rightly, that the mistakes of the last year matter and will make themselves felt in a new set of mistakes over the coming years, Johnson's biggest asset is surely that most people just want to never again think about the year just gone.
I suspect that the problem for Cummings - and for any opposition party that thinks there is political joy to be had out of relitigating the mistakes of the past 18 months - is that just as people often want to move on past a period of ill health or personal trial in their personal lives, the country as a whole would, I think, be happier never to think about 2020-21 again. To not revisit the terrifying moment when the government had not only visibly lost control of the outbreak but the Prime Minister himself looked like he might die from it, leaving an overwhelmed government looking even more rudderless. To not think about the Zoom funerals, the overwhelming pressure of looking after children and working from home, the financial worries, and the seemingly never-ending month of January 2021.
As aggravating as that may be for people who think, arguably rightly, that the mistakes of the last year matter and will make themselves felt in a new set of mistakes over the coming years, Johnson's biggest asset is surely that most people just want to never again think about the year just gone.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
I think if you couple what killer b quotes above with the defensiveness of the huge swathes of people who voted Tory in 2019 (because of Corbyn. or Brexit or whatever) and who, deep down, know that they are complicit in this, that they have enabled this Government. No one wants to admit to themselves (or others) that they fucked up big time here, do they? Far easier to double down. Just like a bigger. more real version, of the shit you see on Twitter. It's too hard, when all this is framed by (and bound into) values and identity.
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
I do wonder how the more administrative/less populist governments of May, Cameron on even Brown would have coped with Covid. Not so much how would they have handled Covid itself, more how would they have fared if they'd have fucked up as much as johnson's lot have. There'd have been the usual fair wind that all governments get at times of national crisis, but the relationship between voters and government would have been different. I suspect they'd have attracted more blame and those government's would have been seen as responsible for, y'know, government stuff. Johnson's lot somehow avoid getting judged as a government.
They did get judged as a government in the latter parts of the first two waves, before the vaccines changed the script. I expect this kind of pattern to be followed everywhere tbh: as the crisis subsides (assuming it does...) the governments which are scoring poorly at the moment will start to see their popularity increase. I don't know how much of it is to do with populism.
Monkeygrinder's Organ
Dodgy geezer swilling vapid lager
I think part of it is that no-one is really articulating what the outcome should have been if the government had handled it better tbh. What would be a good outcome from a situation like this? I know a lot on here will think that's an obvious question but it's really not IMO.
I'm inclined to agree with Wilf that Boris has a new populist relation with a section of the public. But I think part of that is that he's seen as someone who gets things done, and the Tories are the party that's willing to invest and to kick start the economy. I think these narratives are being undermined at present (especially the first) and that however much people want to move on, the headlines will seep through regardless.
I think the Tory sleeze problem is very different to the mishandling of coronavirus. The cronyism still looks like the government getting things done and doing up No. 10 is just Boris being Boris.
Not sure what the ultimate result is going to be. Labour look so bad at the minute it's hard to see them pressing home any advantages.
I think the Tory sleeze problem is very different to the mishandling of coronavirus. The cronyism still looks like the government getting things done and doing up No. 10 is just Boris being Boris.
Not sure what the ultimate result is going to be. Labour look so bad at the minute it's hard to see them pressing home any advantages.
yeah, we aren't even top ten in the deaths per million anymore. basically every country that feels comparable to us has fucked up badly - so if everyone has fucked up, the 'we tried our best' claim probably sounds reasonable to most people, even while they recognise there was a fuck up.
strung out
💩 🤣 🍆 💦 🧐 👻 🐝 🐈⬛
Just speculation, but it makes me wonder how much closer Trump would have come to winning if the vaccination programme in America had been 6 months further along.
Monkeygrinder's Organ
Dodgy geezer swilling vapid lager
Even aside from the vaccination programme if he'd made even a half-hearted effort to look like he was dealing with the pandemic I think he would have won. Johnson has shown it doesn't take a lot for the incumbent to get a boost from that situation even while messing it up, but Trump couldn't even manage that.
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
Yes, I think that's right and probably fits with your notion of a proportion of the population still engaged in political news - when the tories fuck up, there will be some movement in some part of the electorate, but not enough. That Labour could only get to parity or a couple of points ahead in the lead up to the 2nd wave was telling. At that point there was sustained, real time plausible information that delay and confusion in government was killing people. Not a retrospective thing, something visible in the daily case/death figures. The levers between these events and public attitudes towards government are not what we might expect. Some of the levers are broken and others are producing counterintuitive results.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Thats part of my thinking when it comes to the risk to Johnson if new variants spoil the sense that the pandemic is coming to some kind of end.
Vaccine stuff was a significant boost for Johnson. If or when that starts to erode, again due to new variants or gradual changes in the virus, the landscape may end up looking quite different.
I dont have a prediction about when or if that will happen, or to what extent, so I also lack pandemic political predictions at the moment.
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