Would Heseltine have done that?

I suggest you listen to the Peter Hennessy interview with Heseltine, you can see his vision for the country there.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07m5gwm

Johnson has already said that he wants to model his vision on Heseltine, somehow I don't think he is up to it, but he might well surprise us.

I thought it despicable that Johnson's first celebratory visit was to Sedgfield, Blair's seat. Rubbing salt into the wound like that is not Heseltine's style.

They disliked Corbyn as a leader, also seeing him as a possible security risk and not a good ambassador for the UK internationally.
They did not believe Labour's huge spending promises could ever be paid for.

I agree with this. I was discussing a slower long term shift of the traditional Labour heartlands away from traditional socialism.

Yes I heard Heseltine, I agree with him and have already moved on. For me I will benefit from continued Conservative government to the extent of a six figure sum, from a heafty inheritance. Which I would almost certainly not have had if Corbyn had got in and removed the tax free allowance. But for me it was worth the sacrifice if the health of the society were to be restored. I am not all that concerned about Brexit provided a sensible approach is adopted*. I was expecting it to happen at some point, perhaps in another 10 or 15 years. But I still think it is a mistake and a poor strategy for our long term future. I agree with the your assessment of the Labour front bench, but I don't see them as any worse than the Tory front bench, just the opposite side of the political divide.

* I will be entitled to a Scottish passport, so I expect to get an EU passport when Scotland leaves the UK.

As an aside I believe that if Heseltine had become PM the world would be a different place now. The best prime minister we never had.

Well said.
I hark from Yorkshire, but have picked up the southern sensibilities and to a degree live amongst the privelidged classes now. I am a bit out of touch with the north, my knowledge now is of the east. There is not much depravity around here compared to the midlands and the north. However there is a profound difference from the truly privelidged regions of Surrey, Berkshire, Hampshire etc. Here the issue is more to do with the influx of Polish people. I suspect that over 90% of the voters who voted in my polling station voted leave and primarily for this reason. On reflection I realise that socialism of the kind proposed is not favoured by many outside metropolitan Labour supporters.

I really do think the blue collar workers are waking up to things. The problem for them is that you don’t realise that they are.

Edit: so much so that we can’t even define them.

Yes, you have a point, in the constituencies we are discussing the situation is complex. Because the large industries they used to work in have gone and some people have picked themselves and their communities up and become more prosperous, but many haven't. Others think their deprived neighbourhoods are the normality with no idea of the large belts of prosperity in the affluent areas, predominantly in the south.

It is imerging that the reason these areas supported Johnson is, apart from "get Brexit done", is that they feel that the Labour Party has moved away from them moving further to the left with a metropolitan ideological socialism and don't anymore represent them.

Your observation of my ignorance is misplaced, I am well aware of the situation. I have been putting the case from the position that leaving the EU is a bad idea, that the Tory party was incompetent in carrying it out and that a more left wing government would be a good idea at the moment, following 10 years of austerity. I'm not partisan.

It can be difficult to convey the subtleties of a situation to people looking in from elsewhere. The Tory party is the sort of party which always returns to the centre and consolidates with pragmatism following the crisis. The only reason that they lurched to the right was due to the failure of Theresa May to secure a majority in 2017. This left her a lame duck dependent on NI politicians and held hostage by the ERG ( the hard right anti EU faction in her party, there are about 20 or 30 of them).

Now Johnson has total freedom and clear space to fashion and restore a "one nation" Conservative party in the centre ground.

Also I should point out that Johnson will turn on a sixpence on any of his promises, if it suits his purpose and everyone knows it. He now has free reign for a number of years, or at least until he gets snarled up in the EU negotiations etc.

I guess the question is whether people voted for SNP to have another referendum or did so in order to give a big middle finger to Labour.

Scotland is drifting away from England politically, so there doesn't seem to be a point for Labour, or Conservative party's there anymore. This mirrors Northern Ireland, where there are none.

Following this debacle the independence of both from the UK has dramatically increased.

This is what I wrote,


Are you familiar with British politics?

Johnson got into power on the backs of the poor, to whom he made populist promises. Let's see if he forgets all about them now he's in control. Andrew Niel regarded as the most erudite commentator in the UK, asked Tory's repeatedly through the night what they will do for these poor people and received no answer and little comprehension of the issue.

I'll qualify it by saying blue collar voters rather than "the poor".

I disagree. Show me some evidence..

I can have a look later, but I thought people think that a snap referendum would be 52/48 the other way. Media commentators have been saying this for over a year. Also why are the brexiters so vehemently against it and have been saying that the people who were making the case for a confirmatory vote, where doing it to stop Brexit. Surely they wanted more democracy now that we are better informed.

Its the power of populism. I say this more in reference to the overwhealming feeling amongst these voters that Corbyn is the Devil incarnate. There is also Brexit and I have some sympathy as I have said before, with the anti immigration vote, because I have seen the towns where you can walk down the street and only hear people speaking Polish

I wasn't talking of any mandate for a second referendum. Only what would be the likely result. You should consider that there would be a campaign before the vote and that the demographic would have moved on( the young reaching the voting age).

The Tory's didn't need to mention Corbyn, or their socialist policies much, as the anti socialist ideology is quite widespread already. But it is what they were banking on. Interestingly there is a weakness in Labour's approach which has become evident today. That they were banking on the poor and those concerned about public services etc, but forgot the slightly better off in their traditional seats, "the managing", rather than "the just about managing". These people really didn't want socialism and had become supporters of New Labour, they thought the party had left them and moved to the left.

The lack of holding Tory's to account during the campaign is unfortunate, but their strategy was honed down to two or three slogans, so they avoided the media. It was populism what swung it.

I guess they chose Brussels over their own country. What a shame.

Not at all, I acknowledge that you are looking on from afar. But for Scotland, it would give them autonomy, to be free of a Westminster with overbearing control, little accountability and little concern for the plight of the Scott's. They would join the EU as an independent country cooperating with 27 partner countries.

This is not something they wished to do, but rather is a remedy to a chaotic destructive Westminster.

Boris can and probably will swing back to the center now and stuff the far right Brexiteers he no longer needs with a softer trade deal etc.

Agreed, Johnson will take the path of least resistance, which will be a softer Brexit, probably along the lines of May's deal, because anything harder will throw up some intractable problems. Including the destruction of the Union, although that may be lost already.

Also the working class are as I said earlier going to have quite a hangover.

So it’s the stupid poor responsible for this?

You didn't answer my question?

Right, so you have no faith in the voters.

Are you familiar with British politics?

Johnson got into power on the backs of the poor, to whom he made populist promises. Let's see if he forgets all about them now he's in control. Andrew Niel regarded as the most erudite commentator in the UK, asked Tory's repeatedly through the night what they will do for these poor people and received no answer and little comprehension of the issue.

Congrats to everyone in the UK!!

No not the UK, but Great England. The poles spell it out that NI and Scotland will leave to remain in Europe. Johnson will be the last Prime Minister of the UK. We will be known as Boris Isles.

Yes, you're right about the will to get it done, rather than more dither. It is important not to forget that the master stroke of Johnson's advisors is to conflate Brexit with domestic issues and the threat of a socialist government. If we had had a second referendum on leaving the EU, we would have voted remain, this is widely known and is the reason why brexiters were vehemently against a second referendum.

It was won by disenfranchising voters who wish to remain in the EU via the electoral system. So we have a Brexit election piggy backing on and doubling down on a domestic issue general election. Focussing on the fear of a socialist government. It has worked, but it will betray and anger more than half the population. We are in for a rollercoaster ride now, which will probably result in the break up of the Union with the pieces breaking away, rejoining the EU.

Let's get Scottish and Northern Irish independence done.

Yes that's inevitable now, can Blojo call England Great England, or will it be little England?

Just got home, it's not looking good, I agree populism and duplicity has hoodwinked many people and won the Tory's another five years. It looks like this was the goal and Brexit the means. The blue collar workers who gave him victory are going to wake up to an almighty head ache in a few months, or certainly in about a year. Blojo's premiership will finish the Tory's for good, along with the change in the demographic.

Yes, that's how they do it. They just reel off phrases, designed to roll off the tongue as slogans. These phrases encapsulate everything that ticks the boxes of the target audience. It doesn't matter if it's nonsense, or if the representative of the opposite party points out that it's disengenuous etc. Their audience doesn't have the time to check it. "Just get it done", " the will of the people"

In my polling station it's busy so far, should be one of the highest turnouts for a long time.It turns out we are about 400m outside a quarantine zone around a highly contagious bird flu epidemic. I hope we don't get quarantined.

I'm not going to try and explain the BBC bias now as I will be running a polling station in the morning and have to get up early. What I will point out though is the way the BBC reports the bluster as fact, without question. Because it is a public institution assumed to be impartial people will believe what is reported as truth if it is not qualified or challenged. Also they don't expose the double speak, where Tory's say one thing and then the opposite so that they can appeal to two opposing constituencies at the same time. I know that Channel 4 does this from time to time Sky doesn't and nearly always challenges such tactics.

Interestingly Laura Kuensberg was reported to the electoral commission today following her appearance on Politics live, I missed it unfortunately. Basically she was dissing Labour by claiming that postal votes which have already been opened to be counted were showing a poor turnout for Labour. A clear infringement of electoral law, she has been criticised the most for pro Tory comment.

Anyway it's very exciting, I can't wait to see the results coming in tomorrow night.

Brilliant.

Yes, I like to get involved on social media as I am interested in current developments in politics.
The problem with the BBC (With whom I have made a complaint about this), is that they try to give equal weight to what is said by each side in the debate, with very little in the way of challenge and they are very slow in adapting that approach to its exploitation by the Tory's. So what is happening is the Tory's bluster and use double speak, along with crowding out the opposition by talking over others, or refusing to stop talking in a short limited time slot. The problem with this is that their news broadcasts are dominated by lines and slogans from the Tory's which are opportunist, disingenuous, hollow promises, duplicituos etc.. as though it is the accepted truth. There is a lack of equivalence in what messages are shown, or to what degree they are true representations of policy. So basically they are being played by the bully in the room. Secondly they are slightly endemically anti socialist and anti Corbyn, in comparison to their slight endemic pro Tory stance. This distinction is subtle and can be seen in their whole approach to the issues. An example the other day, of which there are many was in reference to the spending announcements of the party's they referred to Labours plans as "give always", while describing the Tory's plans as "spending plans".

Whereas Channel 4 has far higher standards of reporting and addressing issues. They repeatedly win awards for reporting. Sky also has high standards and I can't see any evidence of bias, indeed it's quite refreshing after the BBC. I always watch Channel 4 news and All out Politics on Sky for the most objective presentation of politics.

I strayed onto the Facebook page of a racist brexiter this morning. Here are a few examples of what we, as moderates are up against. The last post is in reference to the recent London Bridge terrorist who was shot by the police.

The degree of social media deception, has reached new heights now. In reference to the story of the boy being treated for pneumonia on the floor of A&E. First, a senior Tory source told senior BBC and ITV political editors that a Labour activist outside the hospital had punched Matt Hancock. Top media journalists rushed outside to discover that nothing had happened. Meanwhile it had been tweeted nationally on major media platforms. Shortly afterwards this photograph of a tweet was widely distributed on Facebook and was all over twitter.


This illustrates the degree to which the Tory's are terrified of a major gaff. Also it has blown their cover, exposing their manipulation of the media and social media.

Here is one I received about a month ago, suggesting that to buy back parts of the NHS which Blair(apparently) sold off, would take 1 trillion pounds.

I keep my Facebook details and links to other sites to a minimum, so get very few adverts and
forwarded posts.

There is a social media battle going on, I came across one yesterday claiming that the stunt with the boy being treated on the floor for pneumonia yesterday was a momentum plot to discredit Johnson. There is a sophisticated propaganda machine producing this material, it is particularly widespread throughout the Red wall. Once you are tuned into it you can spot the people who are infected straight away. The give away is that they are rabidly anti Corbyn, as though he is some kind of bogeyman. You see lots of them on BBC coverage, because they like to go to leave seats and interview them (part of the endemic BBC bias). It's obvious that they have been corrupted because no innocent bystander would be so vehemently anti one candidate simply from observing the campaign as presented on the TV media. If you want impartial TV coverage you have to watch Channel 4, or Sky News.

Yes that is why my handle is Punshhh, that is my cartoonist signature.

I will post some of the propaganda later.

Yes, the decision by Swinson and the SNP to gun for an election was a very risky strategy (although it might have been harder to secure the extension without it). The Labour strategy of keeping Johnson hostage in No10 was working, it was only a matter of time before Johnson would slip up big time. Now we have a dangerous election which is playing into Cumming's hands. I'm watching Swinson viscously attacking Labour again now on TV.

I think that she is desperate to distance herself from Labour, because it would alienate the Tory swing vote. I think she is right to do this and she can smooze with Labour after the election if it's a hung parliament.

Yes, the election messages are out there now, it's only slip ups that we're looking out for. Johnson nearly got caught using the word "coloured" the other day(in reference to immigrants) but it turned out he actually said "talented", but the recording was ambiguous. Interestingly, his petulant behaviour in the leaders debate on Friday didn't fall into this category. He could still fall flat on his face though. I think there are a large number of undecided voters who will still be making up their minds. There is an army of momentum canvassers going around in marginal seats. A friend of mine is out every day in Norwich North and North Norfolk. Whether it's working is difficult to know.

Do you get lots of adds and targeted posts on Facebook, or other social media? I get about 30 a day, targeted for Labour, or tactical voting sites. I suspect that other people are getting entirely different messages.

You make good points, but as I said, we are opening up a big debate/can of worms here and could spend a while playing ping pong. I will reply to your two main points and then I think we should go back to the subject. On housing, it is a liability because it is a bubble (as you say, it is only on paper) and due to issues like housing essential workers in cities etc, it becomes an unnecessary impediment. Also the amount of money made by banks such as Santander on unnecessary high mortgages, is like a tax on a shortage of housing.

The debt you mention does not factor in the growth of the real economy intended by Labour, which as I have pointed out is quite disfunctional at the moment. Also it may be appropriate to raise taxes for the good of the country.

I don't think you are considering the problems in the housing market. There are many as I mentioned in my last post. For example, a whole generation coming of age for whom home ownership is an unobtainable dream (unless they are fortunate enough to inherit while still young, or their parents help them out), while they are having to spend a large proportion of their income on rent. I'm not going to get into this here, but bring it back to my initial point. The wealth sitting in the inflated house values is a form of congestion, like our roads, or like being obese. It ceases to be a dynamic aspect of a healthy real economy, but starts to become one of the problems holding it back. And while we continue to fail to address the lack of house building which has caused it, it is only going to get worse. This is just one of the economic issues presided over by the Tory's, as I mentioned before, resulting in real poverty and deprived neighbourhoods and an increase in the social divide between the rich and the poor.

To address the issue of privatisation, I had already pointed out that the privatisation of essential services undertaken by the Tory's, is not a pretty picture and does not insulate the provision from capitalist profiteering, exploitation and cherry picking. I agree that nationalised provision can become inefficient, but that is only really a management issue and is free of those capitalist issues. I agree it does require a capital investment to bring them back into public ownership. But this along with the other capital investment proposed by the Labour Party, is not funded from tax provision, but rather by issuing government bonds, a one off capital investment. The 86 billion day to day running costs of the economy which would be paid for by tax receipts has been fully costed." Large inefficient public monopolies" would not be there to generate wealth, they are there to provide essential services, like water, power and travel infrastructure.

In reality the economics of this is a large complex subject, we could easily stray into deep water.

Bringing it back to Brexit, it turns out there is going to be a border down the Irish Sea, according to Johnson there is nothing to see here, just get it done.

I suggest you talk to your friends and ask them what'd they'd do if their salaries suddenly doubled. I think they'd be talking about new cars, houses, buy-to-let investment, long-haul holidays, maybe even private schools; before they got around to offshoring any of their extra money.

I was talking about people further up the wealth scale, there are 850,000 millionaires in the UK, (if you include property assets 3.6 million). I don't dispute your point here, also I think that most of the creaming off of wealth is done by corporations*.

Who do you think keeps luxury brands afloat. Yes the ultra-rich may go that way, but I think only a small proportion of their income would go to tax havens, most of their wealth will be in property and shares. Not that I've any evidence - but then who has, either way?

Again I don't dispute this, but what I want to focus on is where money is taken out of the real economy for a period of time. For example, a lot of money goes into property, which then sits there for a long time, rather than being spent on products and services provided by small businesses, or in the local economy. The high house prices are due to other issues, where insufficient houses have been built for decades. The selling off of council houses without replacing the stock. Such failings in the market and state provision has caused a property price bubble, which brings a whole host of problems with it. Or in my example in my previous post, the wealthy person doesn't spend the money, it sits in a bank account, again it is not being used in the real economy.
Another problem in the real economy is the way in which the government bailed out the banks in 2008 and then spent the next 10years making the poor and disadvantaged in the country pay for it with crippling austerity. Whether austerity was required or not, it starved the real economy of money.

How do you think they got rich? So Labour's attempted wealth-redistribution is not as easy as it seems. The only way to avoid this trickle-up effect is communism..

No, that is not what is being proposed. What is being proposed is a larger Social Democratic State like the Northern European countries.

What I think is important is what I call, the money go round, circulating around the real economy alongside a sensible public provision of essential services.

On a more Brexitey note I see the Brexit Party MEPs are deserting Farage's sinking ship - polling now 2-3%. He explains: " well, they're ex-Tories so it's not surprising." How many of his crew aren't ex-Tories? As I guessed, the Tories are mopping up the Leave vote..

Yes, you were correct, I don't think Farage will withdraw though**, which was my fear. Interestingly the squeeze on the Brexit party seems to have gone as far as it can now. While the Labour squeeze on the Lib Dems does seem to be continuing, or at least, there is some more slack to take up. Not to mention the effect of tactical voting, which is difficult to gauge.

*an interesting development in the NATO summit, was the row between France and the US over clawing taxes off the large internet corporations. France is going to impose 3% and in return the US is threatening 100% tariffs on key French exports. The UK will get mired in this row from a far weaker position when begging for a US trade deal.

** due to the amount of money the Brexit party has spent on electioneering, if they were to reduce their number of candidates beyond a certain point they would fall foul of the rules on the maximum amount that can be spent per constituency. Meaning they could go to jail. Farage would not relish ending up in court again like he did following the 2017 election.

I don't have figures in ref' to John MacDonnell, I was describing economic ideology, rather than figures. Let me illustrate with a thought experiment.

Let's say there is an average group of people, one of which is wealthy (earns enough probably from investments, that they can save a significant proportion of their income). Now let's say the government gave each of them £20,000 and then came back a few months later to see what happened to the money. The people who are not wealthy would probably spend the money in short order in their local economy, probably on a broad range of products and services. The wealthy person would probably put it in a savings account, or if they are clued up, some kind of investment designed to avoid capital gains tax and then forget about it. This person wouldn't spend any more than they were going to before they received the money, as they already have all the money they need for day to day living costs. Like any of our 150 billionaires for example.
I expect I don't need to describe the ways in which corporations move wealth offshore, as this is well documented.

I apologise for my strong language in regard of the vox-pop people. I do talk about this a lot and my language has become more direct. What I mean by them being mistaken, is that many of them think that voting in that way their circumstances will somehow improve. This is where I suggest they are mistaken, simply because a Tory Brexit will evidently not improve their circumstances. Also, I am saying that the right wing media and populists convinced them to vote to leave the EU, not to vote Tory. They are now voting Tory to get Brexit done, because this same media has told them that democracy would be broken if it does not happen.

I'm not ignoring the middle ground, I just don't see it as relevant in this campaign. Personally I would be happy with a LibDem government, although I have moved to a more socialist position as a result of the damage done by the years of Tory cuts. It has become so extreme that I think Labour's policies are the only ones sufficient to redress the balance. My priority is to throw the Tory's out, Brexit or not, although I would prefer revoke, I would be happy with a sensible soft Brexit.

You mention 2008-2010, well for a start New Labour was Tory light, they certainly weren't socialist. Gordon Brown was spectacularly disfunctional, but he inherited such a poisoned chalice from the credit crunch, I don't think anyone would have survived long in that position. You should not understate the severity of the fallout from the credit crunch, it was the genuine cause of the circumstances which made the Tory's choose austerity. Also the debt has increased over the last decade.

If you listen to John MacDonnell, he is claiming that by putting money into the pockets of ordinary people in the economy, it generates prosperity and growth in the real economy, resulting in a benefit to all. It is the opposite of the Tory capitalist ideology of capitalism generating wealth with a trickle down effect, which has been shown to be an illusion. In reality people of wealth and corporations siphon the wealth offshore and make those at the bottom more deprived, with greater inequality.

Regarding the hope voters and protest voters. I know their hearts are in the right place, but they are mistaken, which is understandable due to the "vile" poison spread by the gutter press and nationalist populists, who have taken advantage of them.

There is a row between the US and the French over measures to claw back some tax from offshore corporations. The French are putting a 3% tax on revenues and the US is threatening 100% tariffs on key French exports. This is going to become a big row when the UK goes begging for a US trade deal.

Yes, it is difficult to understand why millions of poor and deprived people are going to vote for Johnson. The poor voting to keep the rich in power and keep them poor. I watched a vox-pops documentary on Chanel 4 news yesterday, where they invited 10 people from a working class area of Birmingham who voted leave. They were all people who had voted Labour their whole lives (they were all around retirement age). They were saying they couldn't trust Corbyn, they don't believe his pledges to rebuild the public services etc, because they have swallowed the narrative that we all have to struggle to get by and there isn't any money available to put things right. The Tory austerity mindset. Johnson was a lovable rogue who couldn't put a foot wrong, he was going to give them leadership. All of them said getting out of the EU was more important than any other consideration. And yet as soon as Johnson implements his hard Brexit, they will be hit hard with baked in austerity and exploitative capitalism, deregulation and stripping of what few workers rights they have left.

Another Chanel 4 report today is about the use of social media by Arron Banks. Apparently he was sold the contact details of all the UKIP supporters prior to the referendum. About 140,000 of the most Euroscepticsl people in the country. Banks set up Vote Leave, a political organisation which he used to groom all these people and gain access to all their extended contacts. Creating a countrywide social media campaign influencing millions of susceptible people. Once the referendum had happened he started a campaign of entryism infiltrating the Conservative party. Trying to deselect MPs who were pro-EU.

Johnson said that the idea that the NHS would be on the table in a US trade deal, is Loch Ness monster, Bermuda Triangle nonsense, conspiracy theories believed by crackpots. Yet more contemptuous divide and rule narrative.

The "working class", deprived neighbourhoods ( traditional Labour heartlands) who have fallen for the lies and snake oil salesmen, will shrug this off. Continuing to believe that Johnson is a lovable rogue, who is giving us some leadership. It's not certain that they will shrug off Trumps duplicity though, because the right wing gutter press they read, has been anti-Trump up until now.

"We're not interested in the NHS, you could hand it to us on a silver platter and we wouldn't be interested".

Trump.

Yes, I should point out that the vile propaganda is being spread by the gutter press, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Sun and now we can probably include The Daily Telegraph.

Regarding candidates withdrawing, I'm not sure, but I would think, that if they won and refused to take office, it would trigger a by-election and it would not be included in the number of seats for the party which they represented. Or if someone else wins in their seat, it would make no difference. I have been worried for some time that the Brexit party would pull all their candidates the day before the election. But It's looking now as though this won't happen. Although if the Tory's do really badly over the next week, they still might do that.

Johnson is showing his true colour's in the scrabble to politicise the terrorist attack last Thursday. Blaming it on legislation brought in by the last Labour government ten years ago. No shame, no apologies, just promises to bang people up and throw away the key. Oh and more tax cuts of course.

I'm looking forward to a photo of Trump with his arm round Johnson's back. The puppet master.