tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post4013866225203529709..comments2024-03-29T07:14:55.029+00:00Comments on All That Is Solid ...: Explaining the Tory Leadership RacePhilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-46569906717588430782022-07-14T11:24:33.117+01:002022-07-14T11:24:33.117+01:00I agree with posters who say Sunak is the choice o... I agree with posters who say Sunak is the choice of the UK capitalist Deep State, and the Big Bourgeoisie generally , and their fully paid for professional political class of corrupt Tory MPs in the majority . And Sunak, although economically illiterate ('big ideas' - Freeports and UK becoming a cryptocurrency 'hub' FFS ! ) , is at least sane, unlike so many candidates. I predict though that the profound racism , and 'Daily Mail-ish' hatred and jealousy of rank and file Tory members for someone so over-privileged and tax-dodging and so deeply family connected to the fully globalised Big Bourgeois class , will NEVER be chosen by them as the Leader of their Party. On that, I think the far Right neoliberal nutter , Steve Baker, today, is quite correct. The Westminster MSM and Parliamentary bubble simply doesn't 'get' the mindset of the , quite elderly, Daily Mail and Express-reading, majority of their tiny member base out in the shires. I saw this very vividly in my recent local North Shropshire by-election. There was no way the very traditional North Shropshire Tory voting base was going to vote for a rich, Asian, Birmingham, lawyer, with no ties to the very parochial world of North Shropshire. And they didn't. Such was the arrogance of Tory HQ not to realise that localism and racism are alive and well amongst Tory voters - even if a few non-white MPs occasionally get parachuted into safe seats.. I think a white woman amongst the ghastly candidates will win - I just hope it ain't the insane , warmongering, Truss. Old Trotnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-3520775833755264222022-07-14T02:08:17.252+01:002022-07-14T02:08:17.252+01:00«the loss of EU regional and social funds»
I desp...«<i>the loss of EU regional and social funds</i>»<br /><br />I despair when as an europhile I read anti-brexit arguments so blatantly ridiculous: the UK overall was a net payer! So the issue is *obviously* not how much cash the other Eu countries were donating to the poor region of the UK, but the non-cash and political benefits purchased by that net payment to the the EU budget.<br /><br />As to this statement on the blog:<br /><br />«<i>meaningful levelling up programmes, which have been reduced to crude electoral bribes.</i>»<br /><br />The Conservatives (and not just them) are dedicated followers of the "Westminster model" of politics, as everybody should have figured out long ago<br /><br />Stephen Bush "Politics" 2018-03-16 (NEW STATESMAN):<br />“One Tory minister in a safe seat told me that when she used to ask Osborne for something, he would first ask her how big her majority was — and then reply, with a smile, that it was too large for her enquiry to be worth considering.”<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homes_for_votes_scandal<br />“Eight wards were selected as 'key wards' - in public it was claimed that these wards were subject to particular 'stress factors' leading to a decline in the population of Westminster. In reality, secret documents showed that the wards most subject to these stress factors were rather different, and that the eight wards chosen had been the most marginal in the City Council elections of 1986. [...]<br />In services as disparate as street cleaning, pavement repair and environmental improvements, marginal wards were given priority while safely Labour and safely Conservative parts of the city were neglected.[...]<br />In 1990, the Conservatives were re-elected by a landslide victory in Westminster, increasing their majority from 4 to 38. They won all but one of the wards targeted by Building Stable Communities policy.”Blissexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-66693946399895389032022-07-13T23:31:25.795+01:002022-07-13T23:31:25.795+01:00Boris Johnson seemed to take it as a given that th...Boris Johnson seemed to take it as a given that that was his last Prime Minister's Questions, perhaps even as an MP, since he is determined to have a Resignation Honours List, and no one would put it past him to ennoble himself. And when Johnson said that his successor might be elected by acclamation, then he could have had only one possible candidate in mind.<br /><br />This was always going to be Rishi Sunak's moment. The disappearance of <i>Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl</i> from BBC iPlayer is a track-covering confirmation that, since it was broadcast when he was not quite 21, Sunak must have been handpicked as the generational voice of the haute bourgeoisie when he was still in his teens. Yesterday, the tribal elders of the Tory Deep State were out in force at his campaign launch. A few hours later, needing 20 votes to stay in the race, he turned out to be 20 votes ahead of his nearest rival.<br /><br />It has ever been thus. No one becomes Prime Minister in his early forties by any means than this. There are still those who keep up the pretence that Tony Blair was politically "a late developer", but it is quite some late developer who becomes an MP at 30 and Prime Minister at 43, the age at which David Cameron also attained the Premiership, in his case after a mere nine years in the House of Commons. Sunak would beat all of that, though. An MP of only seven years' standing, he is all of 42 years old.David Lindsayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-53057882214233878072022-07-13T18:04:21.595+01:002022-07-13T18:04:21.595+01:00I wrote a reply on ny blog.
If cutting tax, why c...I wrote a reply on <a href="https://davelevy.info/the-tories-the-leadership-tax-and-brexit/" rel="nofollow">ny blog</a>.<br /><br />If cutting tax, why corporation tax, it's not what businesses want today?<br /><br />Where will those MPs who need the levelling up program go? I can't see an obvious place but I point out that levelling up budgets are adversely effected by Brexit and the loss of EU regional and social funds. But no Tory is going to point this out. Dave Levyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15866852367225901999noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-80535287123244382732022-07-12T17:51:37.029+01:002022-07-12T17:51:37.029+01:00«We would need a lot of workers so sending people ...«<i>We would need a lot of workers so sending people to Rawanda is a criminal waste of a key resource - people.</i>»<br /><br />It is very easy to get a lot of workers in the "free markets" way: just pay them better than other countries. I am pretty sure that plenty of canadian, german, norwegian, japanese and swiss workers would emigrate to work in the UK if wages here were better than in their countries.<br /><br />What I think you are implying is that "We would need a lot of [lower wage] workers".Blissexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-38997478092652644942022-07-12T16:30:02.616+01:002022-07-12T16:30:02.616+01:00And just to confirm that the coup was done to put ...And just to confirm that the coup was done to put a "whig" globalist in power in the Conservatives, rather than wait for Starmer's successor to be competitive, here is "The Guardian"'s Simon Jenkins praising and endorsing Sunak as the Liberal thatcherite of choice:<br /><br />https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/12/why-labour-party-tories-rishi-sunak<br />“<i>Sunak remains the only candidate to have conveyed a steady competence in one of the toughest offices of state. His straight-talking and lack of evasive cliche in public have been a breath of fresh air. His final days at the Treasury saw him adamant in weighing the needs of public spending against the dangers of deficit and indebtedness. He fought Johnson’s plea for tax cuts to aid his personal survival. Sunak’s calm intelligence is desperately needed at this critical juncture in British government.</i>”<br /><br />I guess that the long term plan is EFTA/EEA membership, which might be a silver lining (at least for us "Remainers") in this farce:<br /><br />https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/07/07/lord-michael-heseltine-boris-goes-brexit-goes/<br />“<i>If Boris goes, Brexit goes, says Lord Heseltine<br />Tory grandee says Prime Minister’s departure likely to lead to shake-up in relations with EU</i>”<br /><br />https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/08/boris-johnson-lies-brexit-exit<br />“<i>Voters are already beginning to join them, even as Starmer insists that the subject is essentially closed. The politicians might not want to say it, but this week is a milestone in the fate of Brexit. The prime author of Britain’s exit from the EU has fallen: the standing of his calamitous project is heading the same way.</i>”<br /><br />The farce of using comically stupid trivialities like this for a palace coup:<br /><br />https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/08/boris-johnson-lies-brexit-exit<br />“<i>they should let the cameras in so we can have one of those post-toppling-of-the-dictator videos, showing the golden wallpaper and the £3,675 serving trolley.</i>”<br /><br />To bring about a major political change is rather depressing.Blissexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-29727341219454597732022-07-12T16:03:51.812+01:002022-07-12T16:03:51.812+01:00I caught the tail end of a report on this. I only ...I caught the tail end of a report on this. I only paid attention when the correspondent claimed that the Tory party electorate numbered 80,000 or so. The last time I read an estimate it hovered around 120,000 - 140,000, but nobody seems quite sure. Whatever the actual number, if, and when the party actually declares this, it points to the cataclysmic decline you have been writing about for some time. <br />I saw one symbol of this at the last GE when the Tory candidate was out leafleting on his own. No, he didn’t win.Kennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-41722128620641587482022-07-12T12:25:46.093+01:002022-07-12T12:25:46.093+01:00«I too thought the 'tax cuts'»
The main &...«<i>I too thought the 'tax cuts'</i>»<br /><br />The main "ask" of tory voters is "better" property prices, and all candidates don't mention that because it is a given: a Conservative leader, just like a New Labour or LibDem leader, will do whatever it takes to support and increase rents and prices of property. The same for more "affordable" wages.<br /><br />So the various Conservative candidates have to find something else on which to "differentiate" their appeal, and the major thing that Boris did that annoyed tory voters was to increase taxes (even if only on workers, not rentiers), and since the current candidates are running as "not Boris", they think that is an issue they can use.<br /><br />BTW the differentiator that New Labour is instead going to use is "integrity", because they also of course give for granted that property prices must become "better" and wages more "affordable", and I cannot imagine any differentiator for the LibDems, because they have given up on both PR (since 2011) and EU membership (since 2019).<br /><br />«<i>have no appeal for the many</i>»<br /><br />As to "the many", no other major party represents their interests, so the Conservatives don't need to compete for their votes. Also the Conservatives have an 80 seat majority with 43% of the votes, so all they need is to motivate their existing voters to turn out, they don't need to appeal to new voters.Blissexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-21575383837462231662022-07-12T12:24:51.854+01:002022-07-12T12:24:51.854+01:00We can only hope that their collapse is swift and ...We can only hope that their collapse is swift and final. Sadly, the party of the nearly dead is run by the undead and as all horror fans know, trying to finish them off terminally is very tricky. You think you have ended them and back they come, lurching out of the grave and tottering towards you, rotting face in a rictus grin. Sunlight, garlic, silver, fire - we try them all and yet back they come. Only a stake through the heart made of unicorn ivory dipped in virgin's blood will finally end their relentless march.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-43285745353769444962022-07-12T12:04:44.087+01:002022-07-12T12:04:44.087+01:00«Older people pass away, and their voters are not ...«<i>Older people pass away, and their voters are not being replaced like for like among the under 50s - and aren't likely to when it's their turn to retire.</i>»<br /><br />Sometimes our blogger forgets that it is not old age as such that motivates to vote Conservative, but rentierism, and that therefore in first approximation the number of tory voters is proportional to the number of property owners, not of old people, and that properties are inherited. That will still shrink the number of property owners, because:<br /><br />- When properties are inherited they are often sold for the proceeds to be split among multiple heirs.<br /><br />- But those proceeds are often used as deposits to buy new properties by the heirs.<br /><br />- But even with those deposits many properties are too expensive.<br /><br />- That can be countered by buying smaller rather than fewer properties.<br /><br />But still I think that in the long term property ownership will become more concentrated, because only property owners and their heirs will be able to come up with the deposits to buy properties.<br /><br />The other mechanism that might reduce the number of tory voters is that the second category is those deriving their rents not from property but from pensions:<br /><br />* The number of people with relatively good fixed income "final salary" pensions is shrinking, because such schemes have been mostly closed.<br /><br />* Even if fixed income pensioners will shrink, more pensioners are relying on variable income from share-based personal pension accounts. These have more of an interest than fixed-income one in general growth, but they conversely also have more of interest in growth of profits at the expense of wages.<br /><br />* The overall number of would-be pensioners however is still increasing, because of longer lives among women and the middle classes.<br /><br />* However more and more older people will have to continue to work longer because their share-based personal pension accounts will be too small to retire on.<br /><br />* Demographics also might indicate that the ratio among voters who work and voters who draw pensions might increase.<br /><br />Overall I think that the percentage of pensioners, especially fixed-income ones, among voters will slowly shrink.Blissexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-60836492400084534772022-07-12T11:52:24.462+01:002022-07-12T11:52:24.462+01:00A1 dear Phil. I too thought the 'tax cuts'...A1 dear Phil. I too thought the 'tax cuts' have no appeal for the many. Also, a lot of that 'debt' is money created by the Bank of England, it does not have to be repaid, just taxed away if inflationary. To kick start the economy we need massive state investment in the obvious things that will create useful work for many all over the country and soak up the cash preventing inflation from local money supply. We would need a lot of workers so sending people to Rawanda is a criminal waste of a key resource - people.Robert Dysonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05512326175916762262noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-72690822355202025342022-07-11T23:32:04.469+01:002022-07-11T23:32:04.469+01:00Yes, I know the collage has Steve Baker in it (who...Yes, I know the collage has Steve Baker in it (who isn't running) and not Priti Patel (who is). Blame the image source.Philhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.com