Solid Workers

In his best possible universe, Boris Johnson's zipping up and down the country and going hard on no deal would have seen the Tories romp home with barely any effort in the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election. Unfortunately for them, their safe seat is now a Liberal Democrat gain and sundry Tories are going to have to spend the day putting a brave face on things. Did no one think about poor James Cleverly before voting? By-elections, as second order elections, see all kinds of things come into play. It is quite normal for voters to register a protest and go against their usual inclinations, or allow local issues to sway their choice. And so by-elections either say very little about the state of national politics, or a great deal. Stunning insight, eh? Brecon and Radnorshire, usefully for the purposes of this write up, is an interesting one. But before we go anywhere, let's deal with some of the silliness put about by the Liberal Democrats on the Labour vote. As folks can see, it...

Here's the state of play in early July. We have a Tory leadership contest seemingly careening toward no deal which, to be blunt, will be the biggest preventable peace time disaster in British political history. Yet scrutiny of the candidates is superficial and interest in the contest is warned off thanks to its being mind-crushingly dull. It hasn't captured the public's imagination, and even when you tune in to 24 hour rolling coverage you get the sense of a story featured out of obligation than "newsworthiness". Even those habituated to the plod and grind of everyday bourgeois politics would find more jollies in a mini-fridge instruction manual. Politics is institutionally boring, and its marrying to arcane ceremony works to make it unappealing. It's almost as if it's a deliberate ruse designed to exclude, alienate, and ward off mass participation. Politics however shouldn't be more entertaining. After all, fascism, among other things, is said to b...

They might turn their backs when Ode to Joy is played, but they certainly won't turn their backs on the salaries, perks, and very generous expense accounts. Nevertheless, the Brexit Party's miserable stunt in Strasbourg earlier can be considered an unqualified success. It led the news across all channels, upset swathes of people they like upsetting (liberals, centrists, leftwingers), and no doubt provide for a frisson of smug satisfaction among the BXP fraternity sat at home. Indeed, in another context and with quite different politics involved, the likes of Nigel Farage and his right wing cheerleaders might call it an example of virtue signalling. For instance, I wonder what they made of Liberal Democrat MEPs who sat there during their silly little protest wearing 'Bollocks to Brexit' t-shirts? Yes, it was disrespectful of EU institutions, and yes it does remind the bloc of nations of how petty minded and unserious the UK can be. A reminder set to be repeated once B...

Boris Johnson continues to dominate the news for all the wrong reasons. Following that bust-up he has come under withering fire from ... Jeremy Hunt. His pathetic refusal to answer straight forward questions from Iain Dale at the Tory party hustings in Birmingham on Saturday, and pulling out of a leadership debate scheduled for tomorrow evening has seen Hunt chide him for refusing to participate in a proper contest. This builds on Hunt saying " don't be a coward " to the frontrunner, and outperforming Johnson in the public perceptions stakes. That crashing sound you might hear are the wheels coming off the Bottler Boris bandwagon and careening into his polling figures. This really wasn't supposed to happen. The whipping operation overseen by Gavin Williamson was designed to exclude Johnson's most dangerous rivals and leave behind the wet blanket. Yet here he is, the proverbial worm that turned taking Johnson to pieces and with the former London mayor giving off ...

Assuming the Boris Johnson bandwagon is unstoppable , and his numerous equivocations, evasions, and downright lies, how are we supposed to get a handles on his intentions if his utterances cannot be trusted? Getting some Kremlinology in, Paul Goodman over at Conservative Home speculates that if Boris Johnson's cabinet is filled with no deal Brexiteers, then he means to keep his promise about leaving on 31st October. He goes further and argues Johnson's choices must be with an eye to fighting an early general election on a no deal manifesto if the government continues to face deadlock or no confidence. This requires "ruthlessness" and quick movement, apparently, but how likely are we going to see a general election before Brexit? No doubt some in the Johnson camp, as well as a few Tories, were buoyed by recent polling suggesting Johnson would take the Tories to an overall majority and completely nullify the Brexit Party threat. However, Tory MPs have reason to be war...

In their 1994 study of the Tory party membership, Patrick Seyd, Jeremy Richardson and Paul Whiteley came to the surprising conclusion that despite the success of the Thatcher years, the membership were, in the main, distinctly non-Thatcherite and much less extreme than the "swivel-eyed loons" referenced 20 years later . Well, if a certain YouGov poll of party members is anything to go by, we've gone way beyond even that . In case you haven't heard, 63% would rather have Brexit if it meant Scotland leaving the UK, 61% if it meant severe damage to the UK economy, 59% if Northern Ireland left, and 54% prioritise Brexit over the continued survival of the Conservative Party . The only thing that is not an acceptable price to pay is Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10. Interesting. Okay, so what is happening. How have we gone from a party whose official mythology paints it as level headed, and pragmatic in the pursuit of power to, well, outright psychopathy? Stephen Bush suggests ...

It doesn't matter how Farage spins it, defeat for his Brexit Party in the Peterborough by-election is an unexpected setback for his vanity project. In many ways, he couldn't have asked for a better by-election scenario. It came a fortnight after EU elections in which Farage did very well , cleaning up in those elections in, um, Peterborough, too. It's also a seat where 60% of the voting public supported Leave, and all this took place in a context where Brexit overdetermines all things political. Throw in the supposition the main parties are in disarray, how the former Labour incumbent Fiona Onasanya, was turfed out in disgrace for doing bird, and the revelation Lisa Forbes liked some dodge Facebook posts five years ago, this was Farage's show to lose. And lose he did. Media domination and hype wasn't enough to get the Brexit Party over the line. They did well, certainly, but second place counts for nothing. Don't buy this "we didn't exist eight weeks ...

While everyone loses their heads over the expulsion of Alastair Campbell, let's consider weightier matters: what Nigel Farage's Brexit Party is going to do next. After all, here we are two days after the election results and the media, including the BBC, seem to have forgotten already that the Brexit Party steamed to the top of the poll with 31% of the vote and had 29 MEPs returned. We know there is something of a bias against in-depth coverage of the Tories compared to Labour, but seeing the commentariat carry on as if the near total displacement of the mainstream right by a fringe outfit is nothing less than astonishing. Their loss. The problem facing Farage now is how to keep the bandwagon going and, unfortunately, there are forces at work making life easier for him. Having seen the wipe out coming, the Tory leadership contest is already heavily conditioned by the Faragist insurgency before Sunday night's disaster hit. For instance, it was surprising to see Jeremy Hun...

The EU election results are in, and seldom has the electorate been so sharply contrasted. 37% of voters commuted to and from the polls on Thursday, while 63% found something else to do. In other words, despite being the most hyped and talked about EU elections ever around the polarising issue of our time, a firm majority stayed put. It's difficult to say how many of those who did vote out of party loyalty/civic duty, but for the turn out to climb by one-and-a-half points is pretty pitiful. Yet, judging by the commentariat and the Twitterati, this is immediate evidence both parties need to abandon their current Brexit positions. For the Tories, as exactly how Theresa May got the Tories in this mess in the first place. And Labour? Oh Labour, Labour, Labour. Of course, seeing the party vote melt away in London and everywhere of significance was pretty grim. Even saying see ya to Gerard Batten, and the pathetic result for Yaxley-Lennon was scant consolation. But as night follows day...

What do Change UK and the Brexit Party share in common, apart from ego and a celebrated associations with dairy products? They are, in a manner of speaking, throwbacks to ages past. There is something about them that cuts against the grain of 20th century politics, let alone the situation of the 21st. Despite some political distance between the two, there is no role in either for the rank-and-file. Indeed, there isn't even a rank and file. You can't join Chuka and friends in their slapstick campaign for a second referendum. You can't join Nigel Farage's touting for the most stupid and ruinous of Brexits. You can give money, add yourself to a contact list, and go along to a campaign rally ( or not , in CHUKa's case), but all the time you are a bystander. Hand over the dough, freely donate your time, but your input, your talents, your opinions (especially your opinions) are not wanted. In the Brexit Party, Farage's word is The Word. What the policies are, i...

It took two years, but it's looking like June will be the end of May after all. Better late than never! As we look forward them to subsequent leadership election, can we hazard a bet or two? We cannot be sure who all the runners and riders are yet or who's going to come out top, but Boris Johnson is already the favourite and if his name goes forward to the membership, he'll probably win. Yet there are hurdles aplenty before he gets there. To his mind and those of his fans, he's still the bumbling, jovial character who unseated Ken Livingstone from the London mayoralty. For others, he's deceitful, lazy, and utterly opportunistic. Or, if you like, a void with floppy hair empty of everything save self-glorification and social advance. And that's just what a significant chunk of the parliamentary Conservative Party think of him. If he doesn't get to the last two who are put to the party membership, then it's anyone's guess who'll come out on top. N...

Populist politics is back in a big way. Nigel Farage's Brexit Party is upsetting the polls based on a very simple premise: Leave won the 2016 EU referendum, and the parliamentary elites are taking your Brexit away from you. Crude, not strictly speaking true, but effective . How do you beat Farage, then? How can the populist surge be pushed back and the Brexit Party made as irrelevant as, say, Change UK? Unfortunately, there's no quick fix - an effective counter to far right populism doesn't begin in the period immediately prior to a set of elections. This we know, or at least should know. We are, after all, talking about the collective wisdom - a term I'm using advisedly - of mainstream politics. How to get to grips with populism? On Populist Reason by Ernesto Laclau sounds like a good place for, well, precisely the reasons why his most famous work, co-written with Chantal Mouffe, got the brickbats. In their Hegemony and Socialist Strategy they provoked a great deal...