Interesting Links for 25-09-2016

[andrewducker]

Thelonious Monk Creates a List of Tips for Playing a Gig: "Don’t Listen to Me, I Am Supposed to Be Accompanying You!" (tags: music jazz advice ) Corbyn wins: what next? (tags: labour politics uk ) To ship bikes safely put a picture of a tv on the box (tags: bicycles shipping transport safety ) US Naval Academy to name its cyber building after

Comments

[gonzo21]

Given what has happened over the course of the last 12 months, I'm genuinely surprised they're not 20 points behind.

And while the government is profoundly divided, they've somehow managed to portray themselves as being not that divided at all. They've done a good job of keeping their stabbings behind the scenes, and putting out a unified and competent face to the public and media.

Contrast with Labour and the farcical chicken coup, the shenanigans of Angela Eagle. (And somehow she's still refusing to meet with constituents or release pictures of the alleged brick attack that probably never happened.) The inept handling of the voter purge and the attempts to rig the results.

But no, I mean, I don't think Labour can win in 2020. Under any leader. Another New Labour leader would be a repeat of the Brown and Milliband disasters. Corbyn will probably lose too. Labour need the Tories to self-destruct the country with Brexit to have any shot at winning power again.

They certainly can't do it anymore by triangulating onto swing-tories in middle-england though. That worked once, it won't work again. Things have changed. They can no longer rely on the old-labour core vote to stick by them while they chase the soft tory voters.

I mean, we had Corbyn speaking out about racism towards immigrants yesterday. Would any other of the Labour leadership candidates have had the guts to stand up and say hey, you know what people of Middle-England, immigration isn't actually a bad thing for this country?

[danieldwilliam]

Yeah, so far the Tory's have managed to keep a facade of unity. I expect this will start to break down once they start actually having to put their policy in to practice and therefore decide what their policy is. Not all of them can be winners once Brexit means A Detailed Plan for the UK's foreign and economic policy and constitution after we cease to be members of the European Union.

I think the days of triangulating on to soft Tories in middle-England are gone too. Mostly because the right of the Labour Party doesn't have a structured or principled base from which to triangulate and reach out for those voters. The economic strategy of Blair which was largely right in the 90's is not right in the 2020's and important parts of it turned out to be wrong (e.g. the speed of new job creation in areas of the country which had seen industries close down). You can feed soft Tories crumbs if you know how to bake the cake. If you don't have a firm foundation then you have nothing really to offer.

I hope I'm wrong about Corbyn. I'm not averse to the general drift of lots of his politics. It may be that the wheels come of the Tory's Brexit chariot more quickly and more explosively than I think and Corbyn starts to look good by comparison. Time will tell.

[gonzo21]

Oh yeah, so far after months of government strategy meetings, apparently all they're able to tell us is still 'brexit means brexit', and a sort of.. stony silence when anybody asks yes, but what does that actually mean? I agree, as soon as it starts to get out what, exactly, it means, the wheels are going to come off many many wagons.

(The other worrying thing is most of the smart people in the foreign office have apparently taken early retirement over the last few years, and there's not much functional efficient and capable civil service left in some really key parts of government.)

I really hope you're wrong about Corbyn too, because I genuinely do think he's our last best hope of saving British politics, and averting what I see as the almost-inevitable rise now of English Fascism.