#396

Although this is a good point

1 Like
#397

There’s only one possible explanation:

Time travelling Russian hackers. And they chose to only travel a few days into the past.

5 Likes
#398

Best August pun I can think of is ‘Aw gads!!’ which I guess is channelling the Wodehouse-like farce we live in to a degree…

#399

god he’s such a cunt

even his wife must be getting fed up of spending lockdown with him

#400

Enjoyed reading that. Thanks.

I didn’t quite come to the same conclusion as your tl;dr, and there were a couple of bits I thought were wide of the mark, but I’m gonna sit on it and then re-read to digest properly before saying owt else.

#401

wasn’t mine - that was in the original post!

glad you liked it though, I was expecting it to spark more debate than it has done

The whole bit about how Labour used to provide an identity for workers to unite and that with the fragmentation of work, that has vanished made a lot of sense to me.

I can’t remember what it was (a conversation/an article) but somewhere it was pointed out to me that Labour had been losing vote share for decades in the seats that they lost for the first time in December.

Dennis Skinner for example - here’s Labour’s vote share in Bolsover

image

It wasn’t only Brexit that caused this, it was a trend already, just it was 2019 that the balance finally tipped to the seat being lost

2 Likes
#402

Quite like this one tbh

1 Like
#403

I’m not sure it’s saying anything that isn’t accepted wisdom on the left, though? People have been banging the drum about declining union membership for ages and how that’s made a more diffuse working class less able to leverage its collective power, which is exacerbated by our piss poor discourse around class struggles in general in this country.

Similarly, it’s not news to anyone that nationalism/Brexit/identity politics (urgh)/culture war is being leveraged by the right and the populist rhetoric it uses is better suited to communication in 140 characters or less than explaining why government money isn’t the same as household money and why your enemy isn’t the nice Polish lad next door.

There’s also been a lot of talk after the 2019 GE about how Labour’s voter base is really inefficiently distributed and how this is disadvantageous under FPTP

So… yeah that’s all fine and everything but it’s nothing new, I think?

3 Likes
#404

^this, kind of

I’d argue that the discussion has gone further than the points in wiggy’s C&P. It doesn’t, for example, look at the changing age profile in the so-called ‘Red Wall’ seats.

Labour are still, overwhelmingly the party of workers (essentially the under 65s), but workers are increasingly concentrated in larger cities, and Red Wall seats are increasingly made up of higher proportions of retirees. In fact, the share of the Labour vote has gone up amongst the working age population in comparison to earlier elections.

#405

It was late when I read it and forgot to reply by morning.

I think the main thing that’s not directly addressed, although it’s kind of talked about in all the identify stuff, is how from Thatcher’s government’s onwards, individualism has become the clearly stated socially acceptable norm in the country. It certainly ties into the identity stuff, but to my mind it runs far. deeper than that; we’re taught from a young age that everyone earns exactly what they deserve, that if we just work hard enough we’ll be a success and that social security isn’t a safety net for the less fortunate, but something that encourages for scroungers to not try and better themselves. The rhetoric of individualism is endemic everywhere and it’s used to divide collectives on a daily basis. YOU might be a white Brit, but THAT white Brit is living on YOUR taxes. YOU might be a member of Unison, but THOSE tube drivers are striking again.

Yes, the modernisation of unions and left-wing politics are in part the tools we can use to try and reverse that, but I think it’s important to recognise that the problems of identity in the UK go far further than just the idea of identifying in groups and the failings of many unions to keep themselves relevant, otherwise we’re not engaging with the whole problem.

7 Likes
#406

Not keen

#407

Might do a poll actually

The August Politics Thread should be called

    • Aw gads!!
    • Hail August(us)!
    • Other (state below)

0 voters

#408
  • The August Politics Thread

0 voters

#409

No Aug(justice)ust no peace! (The Aug(September)ust politics thread)

2 Likes
#410

this - i find the stupid titles really confusing and annoying. no offence

1 Like
#411

agreed

also we’ve been saying we should make the politics threads on here more inclusive, having the thread title look like a mad excel formula surely doesn’t help that :smile:

6 Likes
#412

This is fair enough actually new thread here

2 Likes
#413

I’m disappointed that it looks like I’ll never find out who Justine No Peace is.

3 Likes
#414

One thing that might be somewhat new in the is the specific focus on, what Marx would call changes within the forces of productions and then subsequently relations of production that have arisen in post-industrial capitalism and the effect on the decomposition of labour and class consciousness more broadly.

For one thing it suggests that this is why broadly you’re seeing a similar effect in advanced economies where old social democratic institutions have failed to adapt to the changing nature of work, where as right-wing populists can pay lip service to ideas of economic nationalism whilst still essentially rubber stamping neoliberal economic policy.

#415