Even a fair and accurate analysis of current political life:
Sir Tony Robinson, the actor and a former member of Labour’s ruling body, has quit the party after 45 years over Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, anti-Semitism and Brexit.
Sir Tony, best known for playing Baldrick in the hit comedy Blackadder and as presenter of Channel 4 programme Time Team, is a former vice-president of actors’ union Equity and served on the NEC from 2000-04.
He tweeted: “I’ve left the Labour Party after nearly 45 years of service at Branch, Constituency and NEC levels, partly because of its continued duplicity on Brexit, partly because of its antisemitism, but also because its leadership is complete s—.”
Bit late though, to do a Ronald Reagan.
Anything that damages ZaNu is good–tho’ the little whinging remainiac bastard can fuck straight off to Hell –or Boff’s Island–for all any decent soul cares.
Re: “duplicity” over Brexit, I assume he means not being duplicitous enough. Corbyn has already watered down his 2017 manifesto commitment to honour the referendum result, but that’s not enough for the luvvies and Metropolitan wankers who want EU forever.
Re: anti-Semitism. I’ve mentioned before that I think this accusation against Corbo is politically motivated bollocks, but it’s true that large parts of the #woke left hate Israel, and it’s also true Labour is the party for Muslims.
It doesn’t matter who their leader is – unless they expel the Free Palestine crowd (which is a sizeable chunk of their activist base) and tell the 85% of Moon cultists who support them to fack off, Labour’s coalition is gonna contain a not-insignificant percentage of Jew-hate. I dunno why this is supposedly more newsworthy than the sizeable percentage of Labourites who hate Christians, heterosexuals and white men in general, but there you go.
Re: leadership, it’s definitely regrettable that our choices for PM are currently a compulsive liar or a peevish garden gnome, both of whom would fail an IQ test, but I’m not convinced we’d be better off with the likes of Cameron, Milliband, Blair, Brown, or any of the other sociopathic muppets who’ve been tilting at the job over the past 10 years or so.
Do we really need better liars? There’s nothing fundamentally different about May or Corbyn (the Marxist revolutionary stuff is massively overblown btw, he’s more Wolfie Smith than Che Guevara).
They’re just less well equipped to put a convincing face on the agenda of the British establishment. An agenda that seeks to turn our country into a rainy, shitty, authoritarian province of a global shanty town run by unaccountable bureaucrats and multinational megacorps.
We’re better off with the Great Unmasking that Brexit has provided. Both Labour and the Conservatives need to be replaced by politicians who will do what voters actually want, so englittering the turd isn’t in our interest.
It occurs to me that the almighty thumping that the Tories have got at the locals, and the even greater one they’ll get at the Euros will have told Grandpa Death one thing, the last thing he needs to have is his (or Labours) fingerprints on the corpse of Brexit.
Its obvious that the (senior at least) Tories have decided on a death ride over Brexit, and if he’s got an ounce of sense he’ll keep well away from it. Yes it’ll cost him some votes, because he’s got his own euro split going on, but its not existential to the survival of his party, whereas the Tories may cease to exist as a party if they don’t deliver a real Brexit.
My prediction is he’ll string May along as much as possible without giving her diddly squat and when push comes to shove vote against her Deal and claim she was intransigent in the negotiations (and its not as if anyone would disbelieve that!). He’s going to force the Tories to contest the Euros, and get a hiding of Biblical proportions, and ultimately make them decide on their own between No Deal or not leaving at all, both of which he thinks is electoral suicide. He’s right about the latter, but wrong about the former, but I can’t see them having the balls to do it, so they’ll most like choose oblivion.
Jim is right about Corbyn’s likely choice. There is nothing for him in co-operating with any tory, much less one as hated as the incumbent PM.
Jim – He’s right about the latter, but wrong about the former, but I can’t see them having the balls to do it, so they’ll most like choose oblivion.
Probs. And good riddance to them.
Can anybody name one thing (apart from Blairism) the last decade of Conservative-led governments has conserved?
Thank God for Nigel Farage.
She is a marvel, isn’t she?
Robinson is probably just waiting till McDonnell has his internal coup and takes over, then he will rejoin the party and claim his resignation was simply part of a cunning plan.
Steve,
I do wonder if this is symbolic of the current state of things.
Seems to me that 45 years is roughly the era of the metropolitan liberal elite. People like Richard Curtis and Tony Robinson first got into TV in the late 70s. They, eventually took it over and set the agenda. They gave prominence to people with their social and economic views.
The internet has allowed a lot more political voices to be amplified. Parties that are more about the provinces. Not obsessed with feminism, racism, the environment. As well as the general sell-out of the provincial North by Labour who thought they were just morons and their votes were guaranteed, you got parties appearing who started stripping votes away.
That’s the struggle Corbyn has. If he fails to deliver Brexit, Labour loses the provincial North with someone like UKIP taking the seats. If he delivers, he loses the metropolitan vote.
The only hope the Conservatives have is electing Raab, who is about the one person who understands that their future is as classic liberal party.
She is indeed, Mr Lud. Looking at her biog, she probably reached the peak of her competence as Chairman of Education at Merton council. And past that, has been the beneficiary of the Tory Party’s need to pad itself out with some female representation in accordance with current fashion. She’s likely the least talented person to serve as UK Prime Minister since the post was first created. A job she got simply because she wasn’t one of the other, more suitable but contentious, candidates contesting for the role.
She should hand her cabinet seat over to the No 10 cat & let an individual with knowledge & experience take over.
Steve: “Can anybody name one thing (apart from Blairism) the last decade of Conservative-led governments has conserved?”
Yes. Pest bird species.
And now the landowners are beating the shrubbery and forcing Gove into the waiting guns over it.
“…partly because of its antisemitism…”
It’d be really odd if JC was anti-semitic, as he was put into his position by Momentum, an organisation founded and funded by Jewish millionaire Jon Lansman.
Perhaps he bit the hand that fed him?
Yes it’ll cost him some votes, because he’s got his own euro split going on, but its not existential to the survival of his party, whereas the Tories may cease to exist as a party if they don’t deliver a real Brexit.
I’m not so sure. Labour has a split between the working class supporters, who provide the voting fodder and support Brexit (on the whole), and the middle class who run the party and viscerally hate it. Once the working class actually wakes up and realises the modern Labour party actually despises them and their country, the game is up. The odds on them doing so though are slim because they are generally stupid and tribal.
I know Glasgow deserted Labour en masse but that was a migration from one socialist party to another, the SNP. Nothing really changed.
“Labour has a split between the working class supporters, who provide the voting fodder and support Brexit (on the whole), and the middle class who run the party and viscerally hate it.”
I think the split is less in terms of seats than votes, ie the middle class lefties will get him quite a lot of seats in the urban south, and the majorities are so big in the north that he can afford to lose some of the white working classes (and probably replace them with more Islamic types, of which there are increasingly plenty, esp up north).
Whereas the Tories have no core vote, who vote out of pure tribal loyalty. And as such are incredibly vulnerable to the shoal of fish suddenly all turning at the same time and heading somewhere else. I think Corbyn realises this – the Tories are dead set on antagonising ALL their natural voters, he only risks antagonising half of his, he’s got voters in each camp, so whatever happens he’ll keep half of them. The Tories could end up with none. And that might be enough for him to squeeze through as victor in a GE.
If Jizz signs up to Treason’s treason–it seems she has swallowed ALL ZaNu’s demands– he will have lost 5 to 6 million votes and aligned himself with his supposed worst foe. If a shitedeal is signed that just means its a GE instead of MEPs. Unless Jizz is going to support every piece of Tory legislation then the DUP can block everything. Now if a CU means her backstop crap is dead the DUP doesn’t have to bring her down but it also means we can leave a CU with far less trouble. Whoever replaces her from among the Tories will have to do that.Or exist until 2022 unable to pass anything in the HoT, being kicked constantly by the EU ( as per FFC’s plans) and watching British politics unravel. Jizz would be no better off–keeping the Tories in until 2022 will hasten the already coming end of disintegrating Labour.
Also Jim–you forget that remainiacs are gen prosperous middle class leftist scum . They may kiss EU arse–but like our own dear Facepainting Turd they won’t want Jizz’s dirty fingernails in their prosperous hides from day one after any GE. Given Jizz’s treason they could have turned out to vote for Labour councils on Thurs–but they didn’t.
“I’m not so sure. Labour has a split between the working class supporters, who provide the voting fodder and support Brexit (on the whole), and the middle class who run the party and viscerally hate it. Once the working class actually wakes up and realises the modern Labour party actually despises them and their country, the game is up. The odds on them doing so though are slim because they are generally stupid and tribal.”
Paul Embery of the fireman’s union is quite good on this subject. As he recently pointed out – Hampstead or Hartlepool. Blue Labour is all over Corbyn and pushing him to a corner, he needs a Tory Brexit before the crack in his own party destroys him.
I suspect that a large part of Corbyn’s support within the Labour Party genuinely is antisemitic.
(In case of doubt, I reject entirely the disgraceful argument that anyone who issues a breath of criticism of Israeli government policies is thereby an antisemite.)
But then I reflect on one episode in this sorry story. Ken Livingstone was a politician who – as far as I could tell – had never uttered a word of truth in public. Then his career was brought to an end when he spoke, albeit approximately, a truth about one aspect of pre-war Zionism and Nazi policy.
I must admit I yelped with glee. Was this very wrong of me?
Jim/Rob,
I think you overestimate Labour loyalty. There used to be deep rooted loyalty. Households of loyal supporters decades ago, but you’re onto the grandsons of miners now.
Labour lost their majority in Bolsover. First time since that district council was created 40 years ago. They elected quite a few independents: a former bricklayer and a childminder. Local people in their 50s. Probably people that the people in the wards actually know.
I know a load of the local politicians and UKIP are the nearest people to being working class.
The BBC fawning all over LIbDem increases and skirting over the massive increase in Independents is just another nail in their coffin.
The real story here is 600 seats given to people who supported none of the major parties
“I think you overestimate Labour loyalty. There used to be deep rooted loyalty. Households of loyal supporters decades ago, but you’re onto the grandsons of miners now.”
Well how do you explain the current level of Labour support? Yes they’re down, but not by the same as the Tories. I reckon Labour can count on 30% of the vote pretty much whatever the policies, and whoever the faces at the top are. A decent campaign and a ‘Free ponies for everyone’ manifesto can easily push that into the low to mid 30s and in the current climate that could easily be enough to win a GE if the Brexit Party and Tories split 50% of the vote between them in some manner.
Incidentally you may be right about the white working classes losing their tribal Labour loyalty, I think however the losses have been replaced by the ethnic tribal (in the actual sense) Labour vote instead. Hence why the Labour vote holds up regardless.
“Well how do you explain the current level of Labour support? Yes they’re down, but not by the same as the Tories.”
Labour voters lean more towards remain, plus Corbyn is carefully sitting on the fence. When he is forced off it, the support might really change.
“Incidentally you may be right about the white working classes losing their tribal Labour loyalty, I think however the losses have been replaced by the ethnic tribal (in the actual sense) Labour vote instead. Hence why the Labour vote holds up regardless.”
That’s quite possible. I’m very much talking about the old areas that haven’t seen much enrichment.
BoM4 – The only hope the Conservatives have is electing Raab, who is about the one person who understands that their future is as classic liberal party.
You’re more optimistic about the Tories than I am; I don’t think they have a future. Their window of opportunity has closed, the life-clock is blinking, and the Sandman cometh.
They say a coward dies 1,334 times before his death. Even now, senior Conservatives like Gove are taking time off from promoting disastrously unpopular policies and selling our country to the Red Chinese to witlessly burble that what voters ackshually mean is that they want Mrs May’s humiliating NeverBrexit Agreement signed into law. The 1922 committee of useless old farts continues to be as worthless as the Conservative Party at large.
These people will never get it. They’re out of touch, and we’re out of time. The council elections were just a teaser for the almighty kicking they’re going to receive in the European and General elections. And this time, they won’t be returning, Nosferatu-like, from the political crypt.
Abraham once hondelled God into agreeing to spare Sodom if as few as ten righteous could be found there. There simply aren’t enough worthwhile Tory MP’s to rescue them from the wrathful smiting they’re about to receive.
A decent PM –had we the prospect of one–needs to smash the migrant vote with the 100-years-until-you-or-yours-vote rule backdated to 1/1/1997. That ends ZaNu.
As it is Tory shite could have dealt with the Labour postal vote fraud and boundary advantage had said Tories not been useless shite.
Still don’t see Jizz winning. Even a Tory/Brexit Party split could co-operate to keep ZaNu out. BluLab scum may be loyal to their EU owners in the teeth of the prospect of Marxist rule. But to stay loyal when the actuality can only be staved off by a real Brexit is a feat beyond them. They would concede Brexit before UK Venezuela was upon their arse.
Steve,
“You’re more optimistic about the Tories than I am; I don’t think they have a future. Their window of opportunity has closed, the life-clock is blinking, and the Sandman cometh.”
I think there’s still just the simple thing of the gravity you attract in an FPTP system.
Personally, I won’t vote for them. The rot is just far too deep now. I don’t care about “but Corbyn”. We’re going to end up in Corbynland under this lot anyway. They keep adding more nannying, more big state projects, more eco bullshit. They aren’t ideologically opposed to large government, they’re just reducing the debt, and once it’s under control, they’ll spend more. I’d rather go for Gotterdamarung. Destroy the Conservative Party so someone better can take their place.
I voted UKIP in the locals as I had a candidate. And then today, I stumbled across Gerard Batten defending Carl Benjamin AKA Sargon of Akkad over his “wouldn’t rape” tweet as satire. He said that it depended on context and all that good stuff. Contrast that with the fucking Tories who dropped Roger Scruton, a man who used to smuggle books into Czechoslovakia under the communists, without even asking him about his words. So, yeah, I think they’re going to get a bit of help off me in the absence of another party that I like.
Steve: “Can anybody name one thing (apart from Blairism) the last decade of Conservative-led governments has conserved?”
Badgers with TB, BBC, Foxes, GiftAid, Grey Squirrels, High & Increasing Taxes, Windmills…
…and Farage
Daily & Sunday Express now Woke & Remain
Joins DM, Telegraph & Times to be yet another Guardian
I expect Left will still assert msm is overwhelmingly right-wing
I think there’s still just the simple thing of the gravity you attract in an FPTP system.
Yarp. But I’m thinking FPTP is a bit like a dam. It’s an impediment, not an impenetrable barrier.
So you’re thinking along these lines: Personally, I won’t vote for them. The rot is just far too deep now. I don’t care about “but Corbyn”.
My friend, so are millions of your fellow citizens!
Institutions always look permanent, until suddenly they aren’t. The Whig Supremacy. Scottish Labour. The Austro-Hungarian Empire. Lehman Brothers. The popularity of Jimmy Savile.
The evidence that the Tories are facing an extinction-level event, rather than just an electoral cycle driven ebbing of popularity, lies in the fundamentals. They’re haemorrhaging members. Their fundraising is in the toilet. Their activists are on strike.
This is a far, far worse situation than they faced in 1997, because the Conservatives are now completely estranged from their own supporters and no reconciliation is possible between what Tory grandees (lol) want and what voters will tolerate.
They have, as their new friends at Huawei might say, lost the mandate of heaven and now face not merely a reduction of popularity, but an existential crisis where they can no longer convincingly justify why we need a “Conservative Party” at all.
It might still take a couple of electoral cycles to completely flush away the shit, but as Edward I observed, a man does good business…
No flowers.
Steve’s analysis is hard to fault. A quick gander at Reuters earlier shows that at some Scottish Tory away-day delegates were “warned” that a compromise was essential and various “high-ranking” ministers were talking about a compromise with Labour (not sanctioned by anyone, including the EU) being imminent. They talk as though the membership and the broader electorate are likely to lap up whatever pap they are served.
This is flannel created by politicians for their own breed and for their own comfort who still believe that you can disguise a pig with lipstick. This game is over barring the fun bits.
Can’t see any advantage for Corbyn I’m supporting May, if she gets deal through she goes and he has a much better chance of pushing for no confidence and a GE (maybe defeat at queens speech if they get around to having one). A new leader will be much harder to derail as party will give him/her a chance.
The longer this drags on the better for Corbyn and Labour, never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake and so far Corbyn has let May stitch herself and her party up so why change that
BNiC–correct. But how thick is Jizz. If you let shite like Starmer con you then the answer must be mega-thick. Keeping the Tories in–and with a CU instead of the backstop the DUP would have no explicit reason to bring them down in exchange for the IRA’s bum chums in ZaNu–until 2022 will not enhance his or his vile gangs prospects one bit. More time and more reasons for ever escalating internal ZaNu-strife and collapse.
Oi, Pcar! Can you sing it to the tune of “These are a few of my favourite things”?
Badgers with TB, the Beeb, and old foxes,
GiftAid and Grey Squirrels and Taxes so toxic,
Windmills and Trannies and Gay wedding days,
At this new Tory world I just wonder and gaze.
I see McDonnell was laying the groundwork for Labour pulling out of the talks today, though possibly he’s also putting pressure on May to concede more, she really has no idea about negotiation and the skills and tactics involved so I guess it’s worth them trying it on
@dearieme May 5, 2019 at 12:45 pm
“These are a few of my favourite things”
I’m still laughing; wonderful, thank you.
@BniC May 5, 2019 at 6:11 pm
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell on BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show 05/05/19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfxVRBB1vPA
The Andrew Marr Show 05/05/19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUr2ngZONMU