British Politics Guide

[Raphael]

However, annoyingly I can't right now find any evidence for this account. I'm sure I've seen old diamonds for other parties, but I can't find any right now. [unfortunately, search terms like party names, 'election', 'campaign', 'diamond', 'sign' and 'lozenge', 'history' are all way too common to give anything usefu].l

Ah yes, that feeling when you want to find out about something on the internet, but there just doesn't seem to be any combination of words that convinces search engines to give you what you want...

[Salmoneus]

I'm sure you'll all be glad to hear, we have a new political party!

It's the Birkenhead Social Justice Party. I don't know, but the name suggests it's not envisaging much of a national future for itself. It does (/will?) have an MP in parliament however: veteran Labour MP Frank Field has resigned in protest at Labour's antisemitism and founded his own party to help promote the left-wing, socialist, social justice policies he's committed too. The party will stand on a "social justice platform".

His social justice policies so far have most notably included: wanting to virtually scrap all welfare, and in particular all non-contributory entitlements (such as disability benefits); opposing New Labour's idea of abolishing income tax for the lowest-earners; slashing public spending; lowering taxes; severely restricting immigration; compulsory conscription for all young people even in time of peace; restricting access to abortion; and leaving the EU as soon as possible at any cost. He's Chairman of the King James Bible Trust, says that "Mrs T" is his political "hero", and worked freelance for David Cameron's government. The Daily Telegraph, a Tory-supporting paper, once named him one of the most influential "right-wingers" in the country, presumably to his puzzlement, as, as you can see from these policies, he's actually a staunch 'social justice' socialist. Unlike the MPs who left to form TIG/CUK, Field could not be described as a Blairite - Blair dismissed him from the New Labour government for being too right-wing.

[Ironically, he actually nominated Corbyn to lead the party - explaining that he was doing so only because he thought Corbyn would damage the party badly enough that it would have to commit to cutting public spending in order to survive]

Coincidentally, after he defied the Labour whip to oppose the idea of Britain entering some sort of customs deal with the EU after Brexit, he was subject to a vote of no confidence by his local party. But that's entirely coincidental and nothing to do with his principled decision to fight for social justice in a new party.



[to be fair to the man, he has always been active in the charitable sector, particularly on the issues of hunger and climate change]

[Travis B.]

Why doesn't the guy just become a Tory?

[mèþru]

From what I understand, he's ideologically... unique rather than being a Tory. Economically, he seems to believe in small government but also strong unionism and mutual benefit groups as well as being against big companies. He's also a big social conservative.

[zompist]

Meanwhile, the Conservatives have announced that they'll be eliminating the whole "market economy" thing. In order to deal with Brexit, the government will commit to buying agricultural products, in unlimited amounts, at prices fixed by the government (and then presumably destroying most of it). Aside from the usual questions about whether the government should be distorting the economy by propping up failing businessness by providing economically-unjustified prices year after year (and not just subsidies, but an outright promise to buy), there are also concerns that this might lead to massive culls - because farmers know they can get a high price if they slaughter their animals this year, but may worry about the guaranteed price being abandoned, or lowered, in future years. The fact that most of the meat from the slaughtered animals would then just be burned adds a somewhat grotesque element.

Wait, what? This sounds like a plan to combat a recession... but isn't the UK's problem that it's not self-sufficient in food? Meaning that any agricultural products are already going to be bought, because the country needs far more than that anyway?

[mèþru]

Your problem is that you are using facts. Boris Johnson said there will be food for everyone, so there will be.

[Salmoneus]

Meanwhile, the Conservatives have announced that they'll be eliminating the whole "market economy" thing. In order to deal with Brexit, the government will commit to buying agricultural products, in unlimited amounts, at prices fixed by the government (and then presumably destroying most of it). Aside from the usual questions about whether the government should be distorting the economy by propping up failing businessness by providing economically-unjustified prices year after year (and not just subsidies, but an outright promise to buy), there are also concerns that this might lead to massive culls - because farmers know they can get a high price if they slaughter their animals this year, but may worry about the guaranteed price being abandoned, or lowered, in future years. The fact that most of the meat from the slaughtered animals would then just be burned adds a somewhat grotesque element.

Wait, what? This sounds like a plan to combat a recession...

Yes. Or, in theory, prevent one.

but isn't the UK's problem that it's not self-sufficient in food? Meaning that any agricultural products are already going to be bought, because the country needs far more than that anyway?

The joy of the modern world economy is that you can have not enough food, and yet still be reliant on exporting food...

I don't know the details, but I would assume that the UK - as IIRC it has since time immemorial is a big exporter of lamb and beef, but a big importer of staple crops, not to mention a wide range of vegetables and almost all fruit (and, looking it up briefly, a massive importer of processed foods, which means we may have to learn to cook...). We also probably export a range of less essential crops and crop products - things like oats and rapeseed and whatnot.

So if demand for our lamb and beef and oats and whatever from the EU falls dramatically, the farmers who produce it will be out of pocket. At the same time, our food will be considerably more expensive, because we import so much of it... but we can't just substitute our spare beef for our missing wheat.

There's also the lag problem. Even if, for example, cheese farmers can in the longrun recoup the loss of their european markets by getting camembert eaters in the UK to give up their now-more-expensive camembert and discover now-cheaper wensleydale instead, it'll take time, and farmers may not have the financial reserves to wait for that substitution to happen.

[Salmoneus]

From what I understand, he's ideologically... unique rather than being a Tory. Economically, he seems to believe in small government but also strong unionism and mutual benefit groups as well as being against big companies. He's also a big social conservative.

He's in some ways emblematic of Labour's problem in its heartlands. Not in the sense of being representative, but in the sense of representing the extreme point of a more general issue.

Labour's heartlands used to be working-class, unionised, no-nonsense salt-of-the-earth people. That electorate were generally socially relatively conservative - they were fans of ordinary decent people, personal discipline and hard work - but they were also very left-wing, supporting their trade unions over their employers and wanting their government to do the same. They also saw themselves as the downtrodden, and sympathised with the downtrodden around the world, supporting independence and equality, but generally skeptical of military interventions.

Over time, however, many of those voters have, if not become right-wing exactly, certainly become less left-wing. The unions are mostly gone, and the overton window has shifted. Mrs T made everybody a homeowner, poverty has declined, and immigration has increased (strong redistribution is more appealing when its to you and your friends than when it's from you to anybody who wants to come get it).

The question of what to do with these people has been a massive one for Labour. On the one hand, as Labour moved right with New Labour, a lot of these, let's call them Heartland Workers, viewed New Labour with great suspicion, not just because they moved right, but because they became, as the buzzword of the era had it, kind of 'metrosexual' - cosmopolitan, urbane, cultured, namby-pamby, disconnected from 'real people'. The Heartland Workers became the core of grumbling Old Labour on the backbenches.

But the old economic messages didn't appeal as well. For a while, the BNP did very well appealing to these people by doubling down on their social conservativism (while generally retaining an economically left-wing platform). More recently, the same sort of approach has split Labour over Brexit and tempted many of these people to support UKIP or the Tories.

What Field represents is the endpoint of the drift that begins with the question "what if you remain traditional Old Labour, while at the same time abandoning all their economic policies because nobody cares anymore?"

For the US context: imagine an old West Virginia Democrat, but then imagine that the Republicans are still run by George HW Bush. In the US, that populist vote and the Republican party have effectively drifted into alignment with one another. In the UK, the populist vote has drifted right, but the Tories haven't socially or aesthetically made the move to welcome them (in theory, that's what May's ministry was meant to be about, but it was hijacked by Brexit).

Field himself actually was a Tory when young - he quit over apartheid (a big rallying cry for the generation of young activists who went on to become New Labour). And he is open to cooperating with the Tories. But after 40 years, I don't think he'd be willing to imagine himself being a Tory.


What's more, his voters mostly wouldn't accept it. His seat is on Merseyside, the most fanatically, dyed-in-the-wool Labour area. They may not be socialists there like they were in the time of Militant, but they know damn well that they're not Tories.

It's worth remembering that while the US has become much more polarised over the last few decades, the UK went through a huge depolarisation in the 1990s in terms of the political discourse... but not necessarily in terms of tribal affiliations. The level of hatred that a lot of people have toward the Tory Party is so great that for many people the fact that they basically share Tory policies line-by-line has not yet even remotely suggested to them that they should vote Tory. Let alone that they should BE Tories.

I don't know but I suspect that, aside from political calculations, Field really believes he's still representing, as he puts it, "social justice", and probably doesn't trust the Tories to share his concerns. The fact that many of his methods - lift-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps, avoid-the-moral-weakness-of-handouts - are traditional Tory ideas probably doesn't bother him. And the fact that he's a dinosaur in his illiberalism certainly doesn't bother him, because he's from long before people assumed there should be any connexion between 'left-wing' and 'liberal' in the first place (he's Labour damnit, not SDP or Liberal!).

[chris_notts]

This why the full IHRA definition of anti-semitism is unsuitable, despite the media claiming that even criticism of it constitutes anti-semitism:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... tism-fears

Apparently now even fund-raising for Palestinian children is problematic because some members of the fund raising organisation accuse Israel of apartheid policies (which is objectively quite true), and Labour councils are afraid to support fund raising for children growing up in one of the biggest concentration camps in the world.

[MacAnDàil]

Re Sal on food exports and imports: Maybe there's diet rearrangement in order: oats classed as non-essential? yet staple crops likely includes wheat? They're both cereals, and oats is clearly the better one for for protein and fibre intake. Then again, I may be wrong in what is counted as staple crops.

[Salmoneus]

Re Sal on food exports and imports: Maybe there's diet rearrangement in order: oats classed as non-essential? yet staple crops likely includes wheat? They're both cereals, and oats is clearly the better one for for protein and fibre intake. Then again, I may be wrong in what is counted as staple crops.

Well, perhaps. Although I would say, I was just guessing there - I know the UK is one of the world's leading producers of oats, but I don't actually know our net balance of trade in oats.

Oats actually have less dietary fibre than wheat, however. And they have more than four times as much fat.

More importantly, although oats are currently half the price of wheat, this is largely the result of the very low demand for oats. About 20 million tonnes of oats are produced each year, compared to 755 million tonnes of wheat. The UK alone consumes about 1/20th the world supply of oats, an amount already rapidly increasing year-on-year before Brexit (the government predicted an 8% rise year-on-year in 2018 alone). We use 16 times as much wheat as oats; even just using oats to replace the wheat that we import would triple the amount of oats that we eat. Oat prices would increase considerably (and four of the top ten producers of oats would remain within the EU). There's also issues of substitutability: it IS possible to make oat bread, and oat pasta, but very few people do - there is neithe a culture of eating these products nor the industrial capacity to make them in the required amounts, and we can't just have porridge for every meal. At best, this would be a multi-decadal transformation.

Price, incidentally, is the other big aspect of our food balance of trade. British products are often better than those from the continent, unfortunately. This means they're priced much higher. The success of our lamb and particularly beef production is masked in our net exports, because we also import a lot of those things. Essentially, we export top-quality lamb and beef across the EU for the elite market, and buy cheap lamb and beef for our own masses to eat. Which is something to be proud of in a way, but is a problem if trade decreases - because if everyone's dining on prime fillet of organic Herefordshire beef, that means everyone's having to spend a lot more money...

[MacAnDàil]

There are other recipes with oats, like skirlie and leek crumble. But yeah, it won't necessarily happen overnight.

[Salmoneus]

The other thing I meant to say about meat: meat is particularly an issue because the EU has very high tariffs on meat imports. AIUI, trade in cereal crops will probably mostly be affected just by logistics problems, but meat exports may be severely affected by the imposition of tariffs.

[Travis B.]

Yet another example of how Brexit will just be great for the UK... and now with the threats of no-deal they seem to be set on not just merely shooting themselves in the foot but rather blowing off the whole leg.

[Salmoneus]

It's not a threat. There will be no deal. No deal was ever possible.

It's conceivable that parliament might try to stop it, and may even bring down the government. But even if they did that in september, there'd just be no time even to set up the mechanisms for negotiating, let alone negotiating.

[we may, however, be in an interesting constitutional state: if parliament votes down the government in a VONC specifically because there's a majority to stop No Deal, and fresh elections are called... the government will still go through with No Deal. By convention, the government cannot make any substantive new decisions once we're in purdah, but since No Deal happens by the government failing to stop it, the government doesn't HAVE to make any substantive new decisions. Indeed, creating purdah would even potentially make it HARDER to stop No Deal, which would indeed require a substantive decision!

Specifically, the House doesn't return to sitting until the 5th September. If it called a VONC immediately and defeated the government, the government would then have two weeks to offer a new leadership that could gain confidence. If it failed, there would then be an election - I don't know the rules off the top of my head, but usually it takes about six weeks to call an election. No Deal happens on October 31. Meaning, it's probably not physically possible to stop No Deal now, without massive constitutional novelties (like the House trying to legislate without the government and nominating its own negotiating delegates and so on, and I just don't see that happening in so little time).]

[Nerulent]

What are the chances of the government just postponing it again (and again and again)? Or is No Deal on 31 Oct basically inevitable now?

[Moose-tache]

What are the chances of the government just postponing it again (and again and again)?

Approximately 100%.
Before, during, and after the deadline extension Boris Johnson and European leaders will insist on not extending the deadline. This will cause both the upcoming deadline extension in October and all the ones after that to come as a great surprise to everyone each time.

[Salmoneus]

What are the chances of the government just postponing it again (and again and again)? Or is No Deal on 31 Oct basically inevitable now?

Approximately... 5%? It's possible there may be another postponement, but extremely unlikely.

Boris Johnson just won the leadership on a platform of No Deal, with the explicit promise of leaving on October 31 no matter what - he even almost entirely ruled out the possibility of extending by a week or a day if there were still some tiny i's to dot on the otherwise perfect deal. If he reneged on that, he'd be replaced as leader.

The conservative party has recently been absolutely hammered, to a historic extent, by the Brexit Party, because it demands No Deal and people didn't have faith that the Tories would deliver it. That's why they chose Johnson, to reassure those voters. Since it became clear Johnson would be the leader, the party has reclaimed ground from the Brexit Party - they're currently all the way back to 32% [with Labour still being crushed on 22%, only slightly ahead of the Lib Dem] and hoping to call a general election. If the party reneges on its promises, it will lose 10-15% support overnight, probably endure mass defections by MPs, and face being obliterated as a party.

Meanwhile, it's impossible to overstate just how pissed off European leaders are with the UK, and with Johnson in particular. Even before Johnson took over, the EU side were, on camera, describing the British as "pathetic" and "insane". We only narrowly secured an extension last time, and only because we could offer the possibility of change - a new PM at the very least, and the option of a general election or a referendum to change the arithmetic. This time, we'd be coming back and saying "we wasted that chance, give us another, although we have no plans to do anything with it!" - and that would need the agreement of every single EU member state. Conceivably, if we'd had an election and a Labour government, they might get an extension on grounds of things having changed. But it's very unlikely the EU would give a second extension to the Tories (other than, hypothetically, a dot-the-i's extension of a week or two if a new deal were being made, but that's not going to happen).

The EU just doesn't care that much about whether there's a deal or not. And the government party in the UK wants there not to be a deal. So there won't be a deal.

------------------------------------

As I've explained, there can't be a new government before Brexit Day, and it's unrealistic to think that Parliament could negotiate a deal without a new government. Parliament could command the prime minister to negotiate a new deal, but it couldn't force him to be succesfull, so it would only be a token gesture.

The only deal it's possible to reach is the Withdrawal Agreement, and that was repeatedly defeated by massive margins even when the government was pushing it as hard as possible. This time it would have to be imposed AGAINST the will of the government. The only way it could pass would be if Labour were willing to agree to a deal that had been arranged by a Tory, and that's not going to happen - sure, it's the future of the country at state, but that's not more important than disagreeing with the Tories on all issues. AND such a vote would have to be held against the wishes of the government, which would a constitutional innovation - and Johnson can always just dismiss parliament if they try to do it.

So there is a route, but it's very unlikely we'll get there.

[chris_notts]

I still don't get the Conservative strategy here. I assume that:

1. Given the Fixed Term Parliament Act, it is more or less impossible to have an election before Brexit day
2. Therefore, by the time of an election the people will know what the consequences of a No Deal Brexit are, because they'll have lived it
3. Both sides can be split into hard-liners and less extreme floating voters who lean one way or the other

Let's consider how a No-Deal Brexit might turn out and how those floating voters might move. I'll do 3x2 possible scenarios, and ignore their probability for now. The dimensions are:

Brexit outcome: neutral to positive (Brexit+), short-term negative disruption (Brexit-), long-term negative disruption (Brexit--)
Floating voters / vote share / MPs won in an election: move to Con (Con+), move against Con (Con-)

This gives:

Brexit+

If Brexit is a success, I can imagine that the Conservatives will want an election as soon as possible to win back Brexit party voters and wipe the floor with a divided left.

Brexit+, Con+: if you believe in Brexit+, this seems like a completely plausible scenario. If the Conservatives make a success of Brexit, why wouldn't their vote share increase? They'd have neutralised the Brexit party, at least in the short-term, and won over some of the previously fearful remainers

Brexit+, Con-: Possible (Churchill lost after WWII afterall), but apart from general government incompetence hard to predict

Brexit-

If Brexit cause short-term disruption but with a fast recovery, I imagine the strategy should be to try to hold on and stay in government until the disruption is over. Voters have short-term memories, so it might work, but given a government majority of one I can imagine that avoiding losing crucial voters immediately after the self inflicted wound would be very difficult.

Brexit-, Con+: could happen either with passage of time, or if the Conservatives run the kind of nationalist campaign previously confined to the fringes and manage to paint the EU as the evil EUSSR oppressing the UK. But for many people the buck stops with the government, so this is hard to imagine. A winning strategy might be to slightly increase vote share by net gains from the Brexit party, and rely on the left being split to get back in. But would a government which won with under 30% of the vote have any legitimacy whatsoever?

Brexit-, Con-: seems very plausible if the floating middle desert the Conservatives, and the government collapses resulting in an election within months of No Deal.

Brexit--

Honestly, if we're talking a multi-year depression following Brexit then I really struggle to see any fast route to Con+. Even if they go full nationalist, I don't think there are sufficient extreme nationalists in the population if the middle deserts the Conservatives. In almost every case, a government going into that election under a severe recession is going to suffer, and in this case for many the blame would be obvious. I'd discount Brexit--, Con+ as implausible.

So based on the above, the main routes to victory are:

1. Brexit goes well
2. Brexit is slightly bad and the Conservatives successfully blame the EU + the left remains split, Cons win on a record low share of the vote with zero legitimacy

What would happen next under (2)? If the Cons continue their drift to the right, as seems likely, an extreme economic agenda combined with a record low share of the vote doesn't seem promising for future election victories. A programme of radical change requires widespread support, or it will destroy its architects when it fails.

Then there's the fact that almost nobody who knows what they're talking about believes in the Brexit+ scenario, apart from a few snake-oil salesmen dug up by the ERG. It's hard to imagine an instant severing of decades long trading arrangements not resulting in at least a short-term downturn. In fact, the short-term downturn scenario is the optimistic one. So we have:

Brexit+ = probably good for Con, but very unlikely
Brexit- = possible but unlikely route to a "normal" victory if the government can somehow stay together for a couple of years post brexit. Otherwise, possible route to a terrible pyrrhic victory, major sustained win seems unlikely.
Brexit-- = almost certainly terrible for Con

So... to me, it looks like the current strategy is more likely to result in a bad long-term result for Con than a good one. What's the strategy? What am I missing?

[mèþru]

There isn't one. Some are doing this out of ideology, some are doing it out of self-profiteering. I doubt at this point that most Conservative Brexiteers are doing things out of a strategy to benefit the party.