On Warming Up the Loyal Base for a Change of Tack.

[danieldwilliam]

Political parties put a lot of effort in to making themselves the Good Guys in their supporters and activists minds. This involves making the other political parties look like the Bad Guys, and closely linking themselves to key ideological touchstones and policy platforms and creating some element of tribalism.

With this in mind I am viewing the public ruminations by the likes of Sturgeon and Swinson that a Government of National Unity, perhaps lead by Corbyn, perhaps not, not as the exercising in public of some internal dialogue and more as warming up their base over a two week period to accept a deal that they have already agreed with the Labour Party.

Not certain about this, but, I think the pronouncements are more internal party PR than public debate.

Comments

[andrewducker]

I'm looking forward to hearing how today's meeting goes...

[cmcmck]

I'm reminded of the French Revolutionary term: 'Committee of Public Safety' and that scares me witless!

[danieldwilliam]

More than the current arrangement?

[cmcmck]

In that I know what comes after.........

Although I'm more familiar professionally with the Protectorate.

[miss_s_b]

This makes an amount of sense...

[danieldwilliam]

It is partly provoked by reading your earlier post about GNU and thinking through the process I would need to go through to get people ready for a GNU.

[miss_s_b]

I guess we'll find out reasonably soon. They can;t keep stumbling on like this forever... can they?

[danieldwilliam]

Other people will act if they don't act themselves.

Who those people are and what they do is an exercise for the reader but I guess options range from some non-sanctioned VONC, a Labour Leadership challenge through to an actually lethal IRA attack.

[miss_s_b]

It's all so terrifying...

[danieldwilliam]

Difficult to put these things back in the box once they are out.

[miss_s_b]

Indeed

[cmcmck]

You find yourself wondering if we will all be defined by the way we voted in that
£$%^&! referendum in future?

It's that or people disengaging en masse from political involvement on the grounds that 'they' (whoever 'they' may be) don't listen and neither is a pleasant thought.

[danieldwilliam]

I honestly think that depends on whether we end up staying in the EU or not.

If we end up staying then there are none of the ill-effects of leaving. Thousand of people won't die. We won't see massive disruption to our supply chains, or food riots, or any of that stuff and the economy will grow rather fast for about two years as all the uncertainty and downside risk evaporates. This will become a nasty but short period of a near miss. Sure, some Brexiteers will blame Remainers for the missed opportunity of leaving but comparatively few people will have suffered irreperable loss.

If we do leave, we have years of Brexit not working out as Brexiteers hoped and therefore years of things like t-shirts with slogan "Don't blame me, I voted Remain" and years of Brexiteers trying to pretend that they still believe it will be awesome if only Remainers prayed hard enough. That's the best case. If No Deal happens and is as bad as I fear we have two generations of Remainers complaining that Brexit killed granny and Brexiteers complaining that Granny was a Traitor who refused to believe that being malnourished and inadequately medicated could be sorted out by believing in Britain enough.

Also, 20 years of uncertainty about Northern Ireland and Scotland.

[notasupervillain]

I don't think "Corbyn as PM" is a realistic option. It gives political benefit to a caretaker leader, and much more benefit to one leader than the others in a "Unity" government. I see it like when you get a "caretaker" leader for a political party after one leader steps down before the next is chosen. In that case, you find someone minimally controversial, with no ambition to lead in the long term. Corbyn is ... not that.

[danieldwilliam]

Yeah.

Was chatting to a guy in the office about the GNU.

And we arrived at the view that a GNU put in power to do Brexit related X, Y & Z would have to stick pretty clearly to doing X, Y & Z. It was the additional stuff of doing A, B & C that we thought would be problematic. Especially if that A, B & C were in response to emergancies.

And Corbyn is probably most at risk at doing controversial A's, B's and C's because, as you say, he's got amibition to the fully elected, non-caretaker, PM immediately after the election.

[notasupervillain]

I like the idea that any caretaker PM would be someone who's not running next election.

Though Bercow would be a controversial choice :P