The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[snowychap]

 

[bickster]

2 minutes ago, snowychap said:

 

 

[HanoiVillan]

FWIW I agree 100% with what @KentVillan has argued in the thread. The connection between 'being angry about statues coming down' and 'wanting a 'clean break' Brexit' and 'offering a limited path to immigration for subjects of a former colonial outpost' is romanticising our imperial past, and it is that that elite-level conservatives are largely in agreement about. Johnson clearly has a 'romantic' view of Britain's history (which is not at all incompatible with being a racist view - think of him reciting 'The Road To Mandalay' in Myanmar for example), and so it is no surprise that he would push this idea.

I doubt it will ever be a particularly salient policy for the mass of Brexit voters one way or the other, firstly because I suspect the take-up of this would be very small, and secondly because it's very unlikely that the media will decide to push being angry about it as an attack line.

[snowychap]

6 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

FWIW I agree 100% with what @KentVillan has argued in the thread. The connection between 'being angry about statues coming down' and 'wanting a 'clean break' Brexit' and 'offering a limited path to immigration for subjects of a former colonial outpost' is romanticising our imperial past, and it is that that elite-level conservatives are largely in agreement about. Johnson clearly has a 'romantic' view of Britain's history (which is not at all incompatible with being a racist view - think of him reciting 'The Road To Mandalay' in Myanmar for example), and so it is no surprise that he would push this idea.

I largely agree with this but I think we ought to hold fire with what actually happens on the particular subject of BNOs from HK.

I agree that there are, in places, the connections that you and @KentVillan have drawn but there also needs to be viewed the nature of a UK government to make expedient announcements at one time that don't hold water much beyond a short period and are, in future, largely rowed back from.

UK governments (regardless of the particular political bent of the incumbents - though it's obviously, mostly, been Tories) have a history of not being trusted on the topic. They have hung people out to dry for all sorts of reasons, varying from what might be most convenient, to some perceived political machinations to outright, utter disdain for the people involved.

Never trust a UK government and, specifically, never trust their 'commitments' to anything regarding citizenship or nationality..

[HanoiVillan]

Yes @snowychap it is reasonable to be cautious about whether it will actually happen. It might not do, for all sorts of reasons. I'm just saying it's not at all surprising or inconsistent, ideologically-speaking.

[KentVillan]

It's worth pointing out as well, that an enormous chunk of the "ordinary Brexit" vote is middle class, reasonably well educated people, who formed the original Eurosceptic bloc.

These are precisely the people who buy into the romantic myths of Britain's imperial past, and always have.

I know Twitter isn't representative, but read the replies on this Tweet (from lots of people with  in their handles!) to see how different the perspectives are from the Brexit right:

Unfortunately, this latest move actually reinforces all the old divisive narratives about lazy, criminal immigrants who sponge off the state, by setting the HK Chinese against our other immigrant communities.

It's old-fashioned, divide-and-conquer politics, which the Tories have been experts in executing for 200 years.

[snowychap]

45 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

It's worth pointing out as well, that an enormous chunk of the "ordinary Brexit" vote is middle class, reasonably well educated people, who formed the original Eurosceptic bloc.

'An enormous chunk' allows you a great deal of leeway. I'm not quite sure that I agree with the conclusions that you take from this or other data.

49 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Unfortunately, this latest move actually reinforces all the old divisive narratives about lazy, criminal immigrants who sponge off the state, by setting the HK Chinese against our other immigrant communities.

It's old-fashioned, divide-and-conquer politics, which the Tories have been experts in executing for 200 years.

I'm much more sympathetic to your take here.

[KentVillan]

3 minutes ago, snowychap said:

'An enormous chunk' allows you a great deal of leeway. I'm not quite sure that I agree with the conclusions that you take from this or other data.

Okay, I'll be more precise. 60% of Leave voters were social grade ABC1. The prevailing narrative about the Leave vote being driven by uneducated, uninformed people is wrong, and it informs some of the other perspectives in this thread about racism and immigration.

[snowychap]

2 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Okay, I'll be more precise. 60% of Leave voters were social grade ABC1. The prevailing narrative about the Leave vote being driven by uneducated, uninformed people is wrong, and it informs some of the other perspectives in this thread about racism and immigration.

Fine. Thanks for being more 'precise'.

There a number of issues with this - not least the issues with classifications of social grades which I always find obectional but also the shit about 'uneducated, uninformed'.

If you'd also like to give us all of the data supporting your precision then we could all investigate things.

This might well all be the case (and I'm not sure that I've ever said anything different) but there's certainly a differnt tone when you talk in terms of actual percentages and proportions and data as opposed to 'enormous chunks' &c.

 

[KentVillan]

Yeah I hate all that ABC1 stuff as well, but pollsters still use it and it's the only way of getting anything approximating class / affluence from their data.

Quote

The view that Brexit was a product of middle class opinion is strongly associated with Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson’s recent book Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire and is repeated by many others such as academic Gurminder Bhambra and journalist Joyce McMillan.   They cite the statistic that around 59% of total Leave votes came from ABC1 (associated with the middle class) whilst 41% came from the lower three social categories (associated with the working class). Bhambra argues that ‘the evidence suggests it was the backing of the white middle classes that secured [Brexit]’. McMillan despairs at the association of the vote with the working class, stating that ‘In vain have experts pointed out that nearly 60 per cent of Leave voters belonged to the ABC1 class and income groups’.

https://discoversociety.org/2019/07/03/brexit-working-class-revolt-or-middle-class-outlook/

I wasn't disagreeing with anything you'd said. It was more in response to @bickster's point about whether Leave voters have nuanced views on migration, but then you rightly queried whether "an enormous chunk" is a meaningful unit of analysis 

 

[chrisp65]

 

 

Who is running this shit show?

Apart from the minor detail that pubs are not all reopening on the 4th, only in parts of england, why would the treasury be telling people to get down the pub and grab a drink.

In a pandemic.

50,000 dead and rising.

 

 

 

[Chindie]

Yeah, but unlike the pub, you can't have a good time with 50,000 dead people.

Unless you're Jimmy Savile of course.

[HanoiVillan]

Just so we're clear, he doesn't believe in gestures:

Got that? No gestures. That's always been his rule, throughout his political life, which is why he's known for substance over style. Like when he wrote that academic paper about how to get more communities involved in sport:

Or the time he addressed that international vexillogical conference:

Or that treatise he published on the principles of good design:

Very principled lifelong commitment to avoiding gestures.

[ml1dch]

21 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Just so we're clear, he doesn't believe in gestures

DEFINITELY.  NO. GESTURES. 

None at all.

Zilch. 

 

[Seat68]

Sadly no pictures of him with a banana. 

[chrisp65]

 

 

 

I think this has at least in part been prompted by a couple of references from Johnson to the UK Westminster and devolved authorities needing to work together and previously that he was going to work closely with the other nations.

They haven’t heard from Johnson since the 28th May.

 

 

Edited July 3, 2020 by chrisp65

[blandy]

6 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Just so we're clear, he doesn't believe in gestures:

 

So I'm wasting my time making the gestures I do whenever he appears on the Telly.

[Sam-AVFC]

 

[StefanAVFC]

Clearly someone couldn't wait until 6am

[Brumstopdogs]