#tory party imploding

[fingertipsmp3]

This is the spiritual successor to Four Seasons Landscaping. To me.

[exopelagic]

okay so labour won big why am I actually fucking terrified seeing the reform numbers

[memecatwings]

yeah im at the political circus do you want anything?

[oifaaa]

Trying to be happy that the tories are no longer in power but seeing how many votes reform got and knowing that if the tories do implode (which they might) they'll be replaced by an even further right wing party it's looking bleak lads but hey atleast we might get the trains nationalised

[faracus]

Many conflicting feeling this morning now uk election results are in

1. Hooray, the Tories are out at long last!!!

2. Erm ok, so what are Labour actually going to do now? The main reason people gave for voting Labour was to get the Tories out and thats not a policy, Labour will lose seats at the next election if they don't make significant changes to how the country is doing. This isn't going to happen with the policies in Labours manifesto.

3. Woo, Reform got far fewer seats than exit polls suggested and the Green got more than exit polls suggested.

4. Fuck, Reform got a huge percentage of votes, thats going to drag all the major parties even further to the right.

5. On the other hand it means those all across the political spectrum not just those on the left might start calling for proportional representation rather than first past the post, this will help all parties except Labour and the Tories, so yay for actually left wing parties having a better chance.

6. Yay Corbyn kept his seat as an independent against Labour despite the media coverage saying this was unlikely to happen.

7. Fuck the seat I live in is still a Tory seat despite it being much closer than any time in the last 100 years, on the other hand it was only so close because of Reform.

8. Damn, i was hoping (but not expecting) Lib Dems would be in opposition to Labour rather than the Tories. That might have helped drag the country back to the left but realistically that was never going to happen.

9. Looking at the vote share Labour really didn't win this election, they only got 1.6% more of the vote than in 2019. The result is only because of the Tories imploding.

[patrice-bergerons]

On one hand i am like you expect me to WORK on a day when the Tory party is spectacularly imploding but on the other hand the Tory party spectacularly implodes every other month so giving us time off for it might just drive the company to bankruptcy

[lhs3020b]

The General Election Fallout Post

Hello again; I, uh, forgot to visit Tumble Dot Com for a bit.

Anyway, I'm back. For now, at least.

And yes, Election Day has been and gone. So let's start with some anti-Tory schadenfreude: ROFL, LMAO, LOL, get fucked, idiots. Good riddance, rust in pieces, you will not be missed.

Unfortunately, the overall political picture is - well, let's be honest, for a massive anti-Tory defeat it's ended up more bleak than I would have considered likely.

Unfortunately, the Tories didn't quite collapse in the way I hoped - they had a very bad night, but they're still the official Opposition, so the party will survive as a corporate entity. And that means we'll probably get it back at some point, which I'm not exactly thrilled about.

Meanwhile Labour managed to produce the most flimsy landslide anyone's ever seen. I say flimsy because actually, they took fewer votes than they did in 2019 - remember how our good friends the wise and all-knowing centrists assured us that that was a true sin unto the ages, and we should all hang our heads in shame and never be seen in public again? Yeeeeaaaaah. Your boy Keith did worse, guys. Meanwhile, Labour's fraction of the actual vote-that-was-cast was ... actually not great, either, at 34%. While he won, it's clear he's not loved.

Yes, that's right, their performance is barely a percentage-point better than 2019. And, uh, about 10 percentage-points down on what the Very Serious And All-Knowing Opinion Pollsters claimed it would be. So yes, there's been another fuckie-wuckie from the pollsters; unfortunately, as they technically got the headline result right (if none of the details), I suppose they'll get away with it :(

(Rewards for failure; it's very on-brand for the 2020s, isn't it?)

The only reason last night's landslide happened was because the Tory 2019 voter-coalition disintegrated (though, not as far as the pollsters claimed it would - honestly, we're overdue a period of silence from those guys).

In fairness yes, Labour get to form a government and yes they have a huge majority. But, what they pulled off yesterday will only work once - there will be no second Tory collapse - and their economic plans in particular have some ticking timebombs under them. A hint: what if the GDP Growth Fairy doesn't visit these sceptred isles after all ... ? How will Starmer's leadership ratings cope once their fiscal rules force them to deliver another austerity budget? What will they cut? What public services or government departments will simply stop?

TBH I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if, even one year in the future, Starmer's ratings and his party's have imploded. Yes, I'm fallible and I could be wrong, maybe they'll land another massive landslide in 2029 - but I'm worried about the future.

This brings us to Reform, Nigel Farage's latest vanity vehicle/puppet party-shaped object.

Unfortunately, a lot of the ex-Tory vote went to Reform UK, and if there was any question that Refuck are actual full-fat fascists, then I think the recent mini-scandal put paid to that. (For those who don't know, some Refuck activists were recently caught on camera by Channel 4 News, literally calling for asylum seekers to be machine-gunned, demanding a police pogrom against LGBTQ people, and so on. In as many words. No dog whistles, no coded remarks or anything like that. It was literally - and horrifyingly - what it sounded like. A call for deliberate, directed State violence against minority groups. Centrists, please, if you can't see that for what it is, then please consider why that might be!)

So, given that Refuck have won 5 seats, we now have actual, unambiguous fascists in Parliament. And that was something that had never quite happened before - our politics could often be an awful cesspit but even during the worst parts of the post-2016 crisis we hadn't quite tipped off that ledge.

Not now. Yay us, I guess?

You can tell I'm not enjoying this post anywhere near as much as I wanted to, can't you?

Anyway, fuck the Tories, fuck their ex-MPs, fuck their remaining ones and as for the people who still voted for them in spite of everything, honestly, what's wrong with you? (Seriously - why? What do you see in them? They've done nothing for you. They spent lockdown pissed on expensive wine and laughing at you. Why are you still supporting them?)

The other news is that the Lib Dems are back. They've done a surprisingly-efficient job of turning votes into seats - in fact it looks like they barely wasted any votes anywhere, and so have managed to get from 12 seats to 71 - yes, 71! - while taking only about 12% of the vote. Well, credit where it's due, I suppose. And much as I will never forgive the Coalition for setting us onto the path of ruin that we're on, nonetheless during the campaign Ed Davey was the only person who actually seemed to be enjoying himself. It seems to have worked out - the LDs have had their best election result since the 1920s.

If you want to look for some (possible) rays of light in this mess ... well, the Green Party did relatively well. Their vote went up, and they now have four MPs, vserus 1 in the previous Parliament. (Full disclosure: I voted Green. I don't think they're perfect, I'm not a stan, but Sir Keith's "changed" Labour Party has obvious contempt and loathing for people like me so ... fine? We'll go our separate ways, then.) Much to my surprise, they came second in my constituency, which I genuinely hadn't expected. Apparently my vote was less wasted than usual, it would seem. And the Greens' growth happened in spite of them being resolutely ignored by the entire print and broadcast media, so apparently they don't need the media to keep making progress. It is possible that their growth could continue, and maybe another election-cycle might give us back a semi-worthwhile left-of-center opposition party ... but here I am committing the Sin of Optimism, aren't I?

Also, well, lots and lots of Tories are miserable today. Grant Shapps has had a case of the slaps, Rees-Mogg has been time-warped back to the 18th Century (honestly he'll probably be happier there, it's for the best for everyone) and Liz Truss got yeeted feet-first into the Sun. (Sorry, Sol.)

Also a lot of bootlicking newspaper opinion columnists are having a proper meltdown today, and that is genuinely funny. They certainly deserve no sympathy.

So yeah, the overall picture is a) good riddance to Sunak, b) fuck the Tories and c) oh dear goodness, it's somehow all still a mess.

[duchessofostergotlands]

I’d love to be a fly on the wall wherever Keir Starmer is hanging out these days. The Tories have for a long time had one thing the Labour Party didn’t: a veneer of stability. They could stab each other in the back in private but they’d coordinate it so that publicly their fights would be quashed very quickly while Labour spent years gradually imploding in front of our eyes. Now we have a rare window where the Tories are in a very public, drawn out civil war and have lost their biggest selling point and all Keir’s got to do is just not fuck it up. His team must be watching him like a hawk

[pipperoni32-blog]

The Legacies

By Jessica Goodman / 3 stars

**Set to be released July 25, 2023**

Wealth, influence, legacy. A missing mother, an early summer party that led to secrets and divided loyalties. An outsider, somehow with a spot among the elite.

There are a lot of things going for this book. The look into a privileged society, generations of opportunities and legacies. School traditions, and the coveted induction to the Legacy Club. An unknown dead body discovered on the night that was supposed to change their lives forever.

Told from the point of view of three girls: BERNIE - the it girl. The one everyone knows, destined to follow in her mother's powerful footsteps. The one whose life is all together, everything in place. Until her mother disappears, just when she needs her the most. ISOBEL - Bernie's best friend. Or at least, she was, until the party. Now Isobel doesn't know how to act around Bernie, now that she's keeping something from her. She drowns her uncertainty with pills and alcohol. TORI - the scholarship student who shouldn't be there. Who no one noticed, until suddenly she was nominated to be one of them.

Everyone has secrets and a story to tell. Can they make it through the week without their lives imploding irrevocably? If they even make it through the week alive.

There were a lot of things I really liked about this story. However, the characters fell a little flat. Their personalities didn't manage to shine through, and really make me connect with them. The plot kept me involved and got me through.

[outdoor-scot]

Not being the “bad guy” isn’t enough to beat the far right.

Who would’ve thought the Democrats would lose an election after taking political strategy advice from a Labour Party that won 33% of a low turnout vote against an imploded Tory party.

[vecran]

Nearly 20 million people DID NOT VOTE on Thursday.

Labour and the Tories received less than 17 million votes together.

I know the voting system isn't just based on number of votes, but the turnout at pretty much every constituency shows that the largest political party by far is the people who feel like no one in party politics represents them. If Labour put even half the effort into winning these people over as they did bending the knee to racists and transphobes, they'd actually have a convincing mandate that won't be undone next election when Reform inevitably implode as all protest parties do.

[figureinthedistance]

Try not to get invested in electoral politics but its hard not to feel very depressed by the tories imploding just as the labour party becomes a shell of itself. Especially bc its so demonstrably a case of the tories falling out of favour rather than labour gaining more support so in a world where labour managed to hold onto a semblance of the ideals it stood for for decades it seems quite possible it would have still gotten its landslide victory

[theoptimisticpatriot]

Labour in Scotland - turning point or breathing space?

(First published on LabourList 23rd October 2023)

Labour’s stunning victory in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election opens the door to many more Scottish Labour MPs.

Recent polling shows voters in Scotland prioritise getting rid of the UK Conservatives over choosing a unionist or independence MP.  Tactical voting might bring further gains.

A major Labour recovery would, however, confront the party with a huge judgement call. Is this a turning point? Or is it a breathing space? Is it a return to ‘politics as usual’ in which the constitutional question is marginal, or is it a window of opportunity to re-think a better union?

Labour should not be complacent even if it wins big

An extraordinary series of events propelled the SNP forwards: dissatisfaction with Labour in Westminster and Holyrood, mass mobilisation during the Indy referendum that consolidated SNP leadership, the divergence from the UK government over Brexit, and dislike of the Tories. SNP momentum might well have stalled even if the leadership had not imploded.

If, though, we want a stable and popular union we should not be complacent. Support for independence remains at 47%. Former Ed Miliband advisor Ayesha Hazarika has warned: “Starmer will need to show the people of Scotland that a Labour government can deliver for (Indy supporters) and fast before the Holyrood elections in 2026. Those Scottish elections could well place the future of the union centre stage again.”

A new report by the think tank IPPR suggests that a stable union will need change in every nation, including making a shaper distinction between the governments of England and of the UK.

The idea of the union is by no means dead. Support for the principle of social and economic solidarity across the UK is strong, (even if voters are rather less keen to share their national tax revenues). Nor is there support for wide policy variation (which does not mean voters don’t want devolution). Other studies suggest Scottish voters want more than a simple choice between unionism or independence.

On the other hand, many voters feel their nation receives less than its fair share.

Voters think other nations get too much

Scotland tends to complain it gets too little while England thinks Scotland gets too much. Authors Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones characterise this as a ‘union of grievance’. More than half of voters in each UK nation support either independence or are ‘union ambivalent’, meaning that support is qualified by other considerations.

Wales has the most  voters who back the continued British union. Scotland has most independence supporters and fewest ‘union ambivalent’, England the least independence and the most ambivalent. English Leave voters were prepared to see the UK breakup  to ‘get Brexit done’; but many English Remain voters thought that ‘losing faith in the union’ would be worth it to remain in the EU.

Most voters in England, Scotland and Wales favour Irish re-unification – far more than in Northern Ireland itself.

Only a small minority of voters see Britain as a single state with a single government. Support for ‘muscular unionism’ – asserting the union over its nations – a term associated with May and Johnson but first used to describe Scottish Labour policy, is limited in every nation and the very idea divides supporters of both the Labour and Conservative parties.

Crucially ‘there is no single British national identity with a shared understanding of the union…but….multiple versions of Britishness across the state, each associated with different and at times contradictory visions of the state’. The ‘British’ in England were generally Remainers, but being British in Scotland and Wales meant the opposite.

Those who prioritise their Irish, Scottish and Welsh identities are notably more pro-autonomy and pro-European than their devo-anxious and Eurosceptic English counterparts. The union simply cannot be held together by asserting the importance of a shared British identity or the power of the UK state.

Labour must advocate in each nation for each nation

Studies of  Welsh and Scottish elections suggest Labour success in Wales and SNP dominance in Scotland rested on each party’s ability to present itself as best for the national interest.

In England the Conservatives mobilised English identifying voters over 20 years. In each British nation, Labour must be the best advocate for the nation within the solidarity of union, not just an advocate for the union.

The restiveness of Scottish voters will re-merge unless Labour can refashion both a devolution settlement and a new relationship with the UK government that really delivers for Scotland.  Welsh Labour that has long advocated a ‘union of nations.’ In England the debate has not yet begun.

Labour’s new England membership card, which has no space for a St George Cross, symbolises a party that rarely speaks to England and does not distinguish Britain from England in politics or in governance. This very Anglo-centric British unionist outlook is a problem for the union and for England.

The IPPR report highlights ‘the tendency of the present UK Government (and those seeking to form the next one) to announce policy initiatives for ‘this country’, an entity whose borders are only very rarely specified’. How, it asks, ‘can the UK government avoid being regarded as an English government asserting its will over territory on which it currently does not enjoy a political mandate?’

Building a popular stable union means enabling Scottish Labour to stake its claim as best party for Scotland as well as supporting the union. Welsh Labour should continue doing the same.  But both rely on Labour also having the courage to be the best party for England and not just for the union.

Turning point or breathing space? There may not be long to decide.

John Denham

[hjohn3]

Not If, But When…

As Labour Close In On Power, Is Keir Starmer Ready For The Country He Will Inherit?

By Honest John

MAKE NO MISTAKE, as the dust settled on the local election battlegrounds last Friday and the sheer scale of the Conservative defeat in England became clear, this was the moment that the end of Tory rule at some point next year changed from being theoretical, speculative or hopeful, into certainty. We really should not be surprised. The sweeping out of Conservative councillors (1,061 of them) and the tumbling of Tory controlled local authorities (48 of them) across the length and breadth of what was, as recently as this month, described by commentators as an instinctively Tory nation, is at one with what opinion polls, by elections and local elections have been predicting for nearly eighteen months now. The collapse of Tory support at a scale and pace completely unforeseen in December 2019, has been happening in real time in front of our horrified eyes as Boris Johnson descended into his final disgrace, Liz Truss’ ludicrous premiership imploded in a disaster that would have been funny if it hadn’t been so damaging, and the hapless Rishi Sunak presides over scandal, incompetence, racism and non delivery, even of his unambitious and disingenuous “five promises”. But what makes this Tory rout more devastating than previous defeats this Parliament was not just its scale, but where the damage was inflicted and what it said about an electorate, almost gimlet eyed in its determination to inflict as much damage as it could on the Conservatives. Not only did Labour surge back into contention in the red wall and Leave voting areas that giddy right wing commentators had declared had permanently realigned to Johnsonian Conservatism just three and a half years ago, but the Liberal Democrats swept aside Tory dominance of southern councils that had been blue for over fifty years. All this spoke of tactical voting on an earth shifting scale - a movement of political tectonic plates that will propel Keir Starmer into Downing Street in 2024, ready or not. The Sunak mix of calm government and raw populism that had the right wing press cooing its admiration and trumpeting the “narrowing of the polls” has been revealed as a chimera. Even before last Thursday the national average Labour poll lead had been restored to nearly 17 points and Britain Elects’ latest General Election modelling put Labour on 371 seats, the Tories on 194, the SNP on 37 and the Liberal Democrats on 24: a Labour majority of 92 seats. It is no longer if, but when.

However, the electoral mountain the Tory win of 2019 erected remains a huge challenge for Labour: the Conservatives hold 162 more seats than Starmer’s party - a larger seat discrepancy than that faced by any Opposition since William Hague’s Tories following Tony Blair’s landslide in 1997. The possibility of a hung Parliament, although increasingly unlikely, remains a strong possibility, but this is thin comfort for the Conservatives. With the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, Plaid Cmyru and the Greens all on the political left, the notion that a Labour minority government, probably with at least 120 seats more than the Tories in 2024, being unable to agree a King’s Speech of national repair and reform is fanciful. If those on left of centre are at last beginning to believe an end of what will be 14 years of ruinous and complacent Tory rule may be in sight, the question must be asked: what will Keir Starmer do with the power that is unstoppably heading his way?

The country that Starmer will inherit is deeply troubled, divided and pessimistic. Ten years of austerity economics has sucked growth out of the economy, depressed living standards and impoverished public services; the entirely self destructive process of leaving the EU has left a toxic populist legacy, a diminished economy and a set of unmet promises and deceptions; the casual corruption of the lazy, incompetent and cynical Boris Johnson has debased politics and fed public disaffection towards the country’s leaders, and the catastrophe of Liz Truss’ experiment in tax cutting fundamentalism has caused lasting damage to Britain’s credit worthiness and mortgage markets. This final collapse of the market driven ideology of neoliberalism has left Britain with the lowest growth of the G7; an NHS that can barely provide the most basic level of service in a timely way; a criminal justice system that can no longer cope with crime; sewage pumped into our waterways by under- regulated privatised companies and an asylum and immigration policy as ineffective as it is cruel. Faced with a level of inflation Brexit Britain was utterly unprepared for, this exhausted soap opera of a government have no answers and the British public will require transformative action of the Labour administration that they will eventually put in its place.

In the run up to this year’s local elections however, Starmer exhibited the very worst of his over-cautious, timid and duplicitous political persona. Seemingly unable to trust the electorate or to articulate any form of political vision, the Labour leader again let it be known he was opposed to Proportional Representation (apparently a “long standing” opposition) despite during the 2020 Labour leadership campaign, he implied the precise opposite. The following week he confirmed Labour had “moved beyond” the Party’s commitment to the abolition of University tuition fees (another pledge to Party members in 2020), citing the changed economic circumstances caused by the Ukraine war and the after effects of the Truss/Kwarteng mini-budget - an argument very similar to that used by Jeremy Hunt in his justification for what is effectively Austerity 2.0. This follows on from similar dropping of promises to renationalise the utilities and to support trade unions in their campaigns for better pay and conditions. All politicians make judgements about how to secure wide support in order to win an election. Labour politicians have to do this more than most owing to the structural disadvantages Britain’s institutional, media and electoral systems present to any party of the left. However what is worrying about Starmer’s reduction of Labour’s commitments to what feels like minimalist tinkering, is not simply its political dishonesty - it implies a failure to appreciate just how fundamentally the last thirteen years of reckless and incompetent Conservative rule have damaged not just the British economy but the very fabric of the country itself. Both Harold Wilson and Tony Blair were fortunate: Wilson inherited a broadly uncontested mixed economy which the liberal Tory governments of Eden and Macmillan had managed reasonably well; Blair inherited a growing economy from John Major. Starmer will inherit a shrinking economy, a crisis of growth and productivity, failing public services and, post Brexit, a complete absence of any coherent trade or industrial strategy. What will be required is not minor tweaks here and there but complete reform of Britain’s approach to economic management, its constitution, its relationship with the EU, the sustainability of its public services, particularly health and social care, and its national cohesion. The task awaiting Starmer is more akin to that faced by Clem Attlee in 1945 than his more immediate predecessors. Instead of articulating the size of the task ahead or even giving the impression he recognises that there is one, Starmer implies that he simply wants the voters’ support to introduce a government of improved, and more efficient, political management.

The Conservatives are likely now to collapse into a cauldron of infighting and redefinition. With Brexit’s palpable failure, the ERG is reforming itself into the sinisterly entitled “National Conservatives” in an attempt to mainstream the English nationalism and anti migrant racism that was the bedrock of the Leave campaign and what they believe was fundamental to the Tory 2019 electoral success, into the Conservative Party as a whole. If that sounds like proto fascism, that’s probably because it is, and it is as inimical to historic Toryism as Militant was to Labour’s traditions of gradualist socialism. This movement will be challenged by Liz Truss’ supporters’ adherence to exaggerated Thatcherism, organised within the “Conservative Growth Group” convinced liberal wokery rather than the terrified bond markets, destroyed her premiership. There may even be an attempt by One Nation Toryism to make a comeback given the running out of road of its upstart rivals. Perhaps the Tories will finally break apart and the Right will remain fatally split between nationalist, liberal and free trade wings, but that is unlikely. It will be back and it will again worm its way into power, from which it will, if history is anything to go by, take decades to remove. What could prevent this is a Labour led settlement that not only repairs the damage of the Tory years but sets a path for long term growth and social justice; economic dynamism within a planned economy and constitutional reform, including PR, for the whole of the United Kingdom. Such a settlement could keep the Tories out for a generation and Keir Starmer will have this possible future in his hands. He will, therefore, now come under increased scrutiny from the media but he will also become the recipient of expectations from a cautiously hopeful electorate. The days of dropping policy and ruling things out are suddenly and emphatically over. It is time for Starmer to start telling the country what he will do, rather than what he won’t.

The British public have spoken, and it is time for Keir Starmer to do the same.

8th May 2023

[patrice-bergerons]

I posted 8,638 times in 2022

1,050 posts created (12%)

7,588 posts reblogged (88%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@mr-iskender

@witchmd13

@malcolm-f-tucker

@thankyouforbeingsowrong

@bryndeavour

I tagged 5,599 of my posts in 2022

Only 35% of my posts had no tags

#james bond - 530 posts

#itv lewis - 352 posts

#00q - 269 posts

#daniel craig - 203 posts

#q - 109 posts

#itv endeavour - 105 posts

#skyfall - 101 posts

#fic rec - 98 posts

#no time to die - 89 posts

#tma - 86 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#(which as a side note james' shift answer combined with his later i would legalise the lot comment makes me think he does know something but

I sent 1 gift in 2022

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

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299 notes - Posted June 3, 2022

#4

We honestly don't appreciate Leonard Cohen's "I already wrote the story now you want me to title it?!" approach to album naming

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382 notes - Posted January 13, 2022

#3

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382 notes - Posted November 13, 2022

#2

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484 notes - Posted October 10, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

the struggle between wanting boris gone asap vs knowing that the more he clings onto power tooth and nail the more spectacularly the tories will implode quite possibly wreaking long term damage on the party hhhhh

5,642 notes - Posted July 6, 2022

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[thelastlynx]