On Seven Political Musing

[danieldwilliam]

A few political musing, or perhaps economic ones.

1) Those jobs in Swindon at the Honda plant are not coming back even if we change our mind about Brexit and seek to rejoin. Once the factory shuts they are toast. Particularly if the other car plants inthe area also close. The skills base and the supply chain will be taken up by some other firms in some other parts of the world. My rule of thumb for headline job numbers is that for every 1 job in a big factory there is 1 job in the supply chain, either upstream or downstream and for every 1 job in the total supply chain there are 1-2 jobs created selling stuff to the people working in the main supply chain. So 3,500 jobs at the plant probably means another 3,500 jobs in the factory's wider supply chain and between 3,500 and 7,000 jobs in the wider economy. As a rough order of magnitude for sizing purposes.

You want them back - ten or twenty year process, 25% chance of any noticable success.

2) The last time a small group of centre-left Labour MP's left the party it lead to a three term radical Labour Government. The three term radical Tory government in between was probably a price worth paying.*

3) If 7 of your MP's, including a former Shadow Cabinet Minister and contender for the leaderhip leave your party citing anti-semitism as a reason and you still don't think you have a problem with anti-semitism then, whomever else has whatever other problem you have a problem with anti-semitism *and* a problem understanding how politics works. I'm exasperated but not surprised that the current Labour leadership haven't worked out that the Labour Party is more prone to splitting than anyone else and that even if your supporters are wrong about you being racist hypocrits you probably need to address their legitimate concerns.** Had I still been a member of the Labour Party I would have resigned yesterday after seeing the behaviour of the Young Labour twitter account.

4) Former Labour MP's currently sitting as independents are now the fourth largest party in the House of Commons, after the Tories, the Labour Party, the SNP and before the Lib Dems and the DUP.

5) Labour MP's quitting the whip and not backing Corbyn as Prime Minister is exactly how I've thought Corbyn doesn't end up as Prime Minister. In the event of a snap election the Labour Party (as well as the Lib Dems and Greens) are going to have think carefully about running candidates against the 7 resigners. In the event that Corbyn does end up as Prime Minister *** we may be looking at the first time in British history that every new Prime Minister in a century is a genuine candidate for worst Prime Minister Ever.****

6) I don't think the resignation from the Labour Party of Umunna et al effects how the Brexit process plays out in any clear way. They were always going to vote against the whip if needed. It might encourage other pro-Remain pro-People's Vote MP's to vote for a second referendum or revocation of Article 50, either inside or outside of the Party. It might persuade Tory Remainers that Corbyn will never become Prime Minister even if they No Confidence May.  Or it might not. I still think we are in the early stages of a process of a preference vote between 1) No Deal 2) May's Deal, 3) BINO / Norwayesque 4) Significant Delay 5) Remain with a side order of May attempting to delay that process so as to narrow the field without causing more of a public fight in her own party.

7) I still think betting against the Tory Party splitting is the sensible bet.

 

*that's a joke.

** also a joke, sort of.

*** Not a joke, but certainly risible.

**** Definately a joke, it's definately David Cameron. Even if Corbyn decided on a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament through a process of nuking our own nuclear submarine base, it's still David Cameron. And when you think that David Cameron is the least worst current politician who went to Eton, well, have a think about that.

(The other two political muses are stuck on an over crowded Borders train.)
 

Comments

[cmcmck]

How far is Swindon Brexit and how far Diesel do you reckon?

Don't, just don't get me going on that overprivileged bag of horse shit Cameron!!

And as to the anti semitism/racism/transphobia within my former party (I resigned some years back over Iraq and the Kelly Affair having been a member from sixteen years of age) how much more 'la la la, we can't hear you' do we have to put up with, especially those of us who are trans women of Jewish and Romani ancestry?

[danieldwilliam]

It's very difficult to tell how much of the Honda plant (or the other plant curtailments) is Brexit, diesel, global trends, electrification. However, every other car plant in the world is facing those issues, only the ones in Britain have Brexit added to that list and, as the old joke goes, I don't have to outrun the lion, Carruthers, I only have to outrun you.

It's exactly "la, la, la, I can't hear you." As if that makes the problem go away or makes you look like you are doing something serious about it.

I don't know if the Labour Party is institionally anti-semitic. I do know that blaming a Jewish bankers' conspiracy for the world's ills is an easy trope for the left and that eliding Anti-Zionism, with Israel and then Israel with Jews is also easy and that if someone keeps telling you that you have X problem than, you probably have at least some X problem and you also now have a second problem of not listening.

Dealing with anti-semitism in the Labour Party ought to be easy. Being agin that sort of stuff is sort of what the Party is for. It's not like the Tories where Anglo-centric British nationalism is a core part of the offering.

[cmcmck]

At least with the Tories, you know to avoid like the plague as they simply do what it says on the tin and always have, but what Labour is about, given my working class council estate origins and being the granddaughter of colliers, is a betrayal to the overprivileged metropolitan elites, pure and simple.

Corbyn is a West Midlander (comes from around here,- in Shropshire indeed) but long ago sold out the the London way of thinking.

[alithea]

I agree with all of this, especially Cameron, who I, a person who doesn't swear much, loudly declared an f*ing coward when I heard the news he'd immediately resigned after the referendum result was announced. He has replaced Blair as the first against the wall in my fantasy revolution*.


*Fantasy because I don't actually want anyone (/any more people) to die. But if I did, he'd be first.

[danieldwilliam]

If only Cameron had fucked off before he ruined the country and not after.

90's Blair looks better and better every day. Three terms of competent centre-left government has a lot to commend it and his foreign policy failure mostly lead to the deaths of Iraqis and not British citizens being killed in a food riot.

Current Blair is probably best left in the pickle jar.

[alithea]

I think Blair's government contributed to the current anti-immigration trend and also Labour being rather too authoritarian for my liking, but admittedly my knowledge of British politics has a big gap in it prior to Thatcher because a) I wasn't alive and b) I only studied up to the formation of the Labour party in the 20s at school.

[danieldwilliam]

I think you are right about the Blair government. Absolutely dead right on the authoritarianism and centralisation. The Tories did some during the 80's and 90's but Blair's government was full of centralised target setting and centralised budget setting (for English local councils, clearly if you were mostly focused on Wales or Scotland a somewhat different picture.) If you compare Birmingham City Council under Joseph Chamberlain to the powers and ambition of a City-Region Mayor I think 1890's Birmingham corporation has more self-determination.

As for immigration - the best that can be said of the Blair government is that it encouraged immigration without taking on and winning the ideological fight about whether it was a good thing in itself or a net good thing when the economics were taken in to account or what. And heaven forfend that different parts of Britain or England should be able to influence UK immigration policy.

But fewer kids growing up in poverty is probably a net win.

[alithea]

Yes, I concede it was a net win, I'd have just preferred a Lib Dem government, but while we have FPTP that was never going to happen anyway!

[danieldwilliam]

I was for a time hopeful that the Lib Dems would end up in coalition with the Blair / Brown Labour Party and that the former would pull the latter towards a more liberal and decentralised policy agenda and the latter would pull the former towards a more redistributive economic agenda and together they could face down the right-wing press.

Sadly not.

And I think it will be ten years or more before the opportunity comes round again.

[alithea]

Me too, on both counts :(

[mountainkiss]

I agree with this thread and would add that he has significantly contributed to the public loss of trust in institutions, through the management of the Iraq war. But I also agree that his positives are significantly underestimated as well.

[danieldwilliam]

That is a good point on Blair, his handling of the Iraq War and the loss of trust in institutions.

[alithea]

Another good point, yes.

[skington]

If Blair had only had two terms, he’d be remembered as one of the heroes of the European Left: a mixture of the huge, Constitutional stuff that left-wing parties tend to do (minimum wage, devolution in Scotland, Wales and London), as well as solid growth in spending in education, the NHS, and bringing the railways back from the brink that Thatcher and Major left them in. That he also had major foreign policy triumphs - Kosovo, Northern Ireland - as well as truly radical stuff like soaking the privatised utility companies for all they were worth, is remarkable.

Now, all governments run out of ideas (exhibit A: Jospin by 2002 after 5 years of cohabitation); and arguably New Labour was too afraid of the Tory press to try to change opinions while the wind was with them: while pro-European, Tony Blair never tried to explain why the EU was a good thing, and too often money was raised via stealth taxes or short-term gimmicks like PFI. Still, had it not been for Iraq, I think people would have a lot more time for Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown would have had a better chance at getting elected.

(Consider also LBJ, who would be in the pantheon of American presidents if not for Vietnam.)

[danieldwilliam]

I agree, on both Blair and LBJ.

[alithea]

Oh entirely true, it was the Iraq war that really did for me, and it's a great shame on many fronts.

[skington]

I left the party over PFI, which is rather geeky of me, but yeah, Iraq was the big one. What was especially galling was that it wasn't just people like Robin Cook who were speaking out against going to war in Iraq; it was people like Jacques bloody Chirac.

[alithea]

I haven't actually ever voted for them, I was too young to vote pre-Blair and was a Lib Dem supporter when I lived in England, but I can understand leaving over PFI. The way New Labour chose to try and widen access to university also has a lot to answer for given it's resulted in dumbing down courses and poor students still be shafted now Student loans aren't what they used to be even before it was compounded by tuition fees.

[notasupervillain]

Hear hear!