This was a good one:
https://twitter.com/richard_littler/status/1046322039114674176
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Worth looking at the linked article list at the bottom of the article there. Delicious.
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Hell Is For Heroes were amazing, and as good as this report is, it doesn’t compare to the Schlosberg/Eno/Chomsky supergroup that now needs to happen (recursive ambient post-hardcore)
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Re: immigration specifically care workers :
'Former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith predicted the UK benefits system would remain a “massive pull factor” for unskilled workers coming from the EU to compete with Britons.
Asked about the warnings of shortages in sectors like care homes if this was cut, he said investment in new technology to monitor people in their own homes was needed to reduce dependency on cheap labour.’
Does he literally think there will be a team of robots visiting old people and wiping their arses?
What does he think care workers do, I can’t begin to fathom how clueless he is
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‘Poll watch’ in the 22 September issue of The Week had this:
52% of Britons would now consider voting for a new centre-ground party at the next general election, up from 43% in April. 25% said they would not, down from 34%. A third of voters would support Labour splitting up as a party, including a third of those who backed Jeremy Corbyn in the 2017 general election.
BMG/The Independent
“Consider” will be doing an awful lot of heavy lifting there.
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Not as much as Ally Fogg seems to think.
It’s the lowest of all possible bars to set.
You struggle to name which of the Tories are the worst, and then IDS strides in to remind you that he’s an impossibly cruel, hateful and cynical dark elf directly responsible for the death and misery of tens of thousands, and he’s right now actively plotting more. He should be in an unmarked grave.
Weird how it’s always framed this way, rather than about the Conservatives, who by any fair measure have at least as serious ideological fractures. Makes u think.
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Sure. The “death of the centre ground” or whatever has been severely overplayed (and it remains so in his tweet). There are many ways you can carve this up but ultimately judge people on what they do rather than what they say (in a survey or otherwise). Last election a) turnout was the highest in 20 years and b) 82% of said turnout voted for the top 2 parties. Also the electorate are, in general, smart and they know how FPTP works.
Yeah I mean it’s not entirely worthless but… every responder’s going to have a different idea of what a ‘New Centrist Party’ is going to look like. If one does emerge then you can fairly posit that 50% of said responders would go “fuck that” simply based on it either being led by a former Conservative or a Labour MP.
I’d like to raise an objection.
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Ha - nailed it (although it’s an easy point to make tbf)
“In all of these examples the new party has ended up getting far, far, far less support than hypothetical polls suggested they might. It doesn’t follow that this would always be the case, and that a new party can’t succeed. I suspect a new party that was backed by a substantial number of existing MPs and had a well-enough known leader to be taken seriously as a political force could do rather well. My point is more that hypothetical polls really aren’t a particularly good way of judging it.”
Quelle surprise
Sounds suspiciously EU worker-y.
He’s not the only one
From a very small sample size, but I spent the weekend with some old school pals, all but one of whom have no real interest in politics. Literally all 4 of them said whilst they hated the Tories, Labour was now too left wing, they didn’t know who to vote for, and they were all bemoaning the lack of a centre party.
Obviously I drunkenly shouted at them that corbyn-labour would be centre-left in much of Europe until they changed the subject. Doing my bit for the cause.
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