General British politics discussion thread

Aegir wrote: »

Why would you get arrested? There’s no law against protesting. There is a law against failing to obey a lawful instruction of a police officer.

Aegir wrote: »

I was using abortion clinics as an example, that’s all.

No one is stopping anyone from protesting. These laws put boundaries on what you can and can’t do when you are protesting.

Hence, you can stand outside an abortion clinic, UKIP office, KFC or whatever you like and stand there waving a big banner saying “ down with this kind of thing”. What you can’t do is start shouting at people going about their lawful business in a way that intimidates them.

Something a bit suspicious about Javid announcing via video he has Covid-19. Do people normally reveal to the public via a recorded video they have contracted the virus, a few hours after a positive test? It has all the hallmarks of some sort of 'dead cat' PR stunt.

Why not just a short press release saying 'The Health Secretary has tested positive for Covid-19 and will self isolate for ten days'. It's a bit weird to see him appear on video almost as soon as he tested positive making a big announcement about it.

I'm a bit mystified that a lot of people seem to be interpreting that kuennsberg piece with Starmer as another hitjob. It's nothing of the sort, rather an obviously very carefully choreographed piece of film in which the groundwork is being laid for the long anticipated purge of the left which now finally appears to be gathering speed. Of the 12 "former labour voters" cited in that film, at least one appears to have never been a labour voter at all. In general, i don't detect much animosity towards Starmer from kuennsberg and many of her colleagues, it's the labour left they have a visceral enmity towards and that will always be only thinly veiled.

Possibly he wants to distance himself from the decision to open everything up on Monday, regardless of whether he agrees with it or not. Or he may have simply caught Covid-19 again. I agree it looks suspicious, but then again everything they do looks suspicious!

Would you adam and eve it? Gove, Sunak and Johnson were all "randomly selected" for a testing pilot that means they don't have to self isolate if pinged or returning from a non green list country. Meant Gove was able to go to the football match. What an incredible stroke of luck that was. Meanwhile, over 1.5m of the general public have to isolate because they are mere plebs and the pilot isnt open to them.

Ye gods. That must be smashing their own record for quickest u turn ever. After Jenricks lamentable efforts to defend it on marr earlier, looks like they saw the writing on the wall and immediately launched into damage limitation mode.

You'd have thought the cummings debacle would have alerted them at this stage to the fact that nothing infuriates the public more than the sense there's one law for them and another for a small privileged elite, but here they go again anyway, blundering into it with eyes and ears firmly shut. The sense of entitlement is off the charts, they learn nothing and simply assume they can get away with any old nonsense to fob the little people off with. And probably having a good laugh about it at the same time.

Poor Jenricks.

Himself and Schapps always get wheeled out to defend this nonsense and then get promptly shat on from above when the inevitable U-turn happens.

Interesting bit of analysis on RTE a while ago that 'Freedom Day' is aimed solely at Tory backbenchers and the right wing press - all about them keeping them happy and on board.

Thus we have the bizarre situation where even considerable numbers of Tory voters are uncomfortable with the ditching of masks, ending of restrictions etc.

Excellent article here on the state of play in UK and how it got to this point. All very sinister when laid out like this even if many here won't be surprised when reading it.

The politics of lies: Boris Johnson and the erosion of the rule of law

This paragraph itself is very apt not only when considering Johnson but also the US version of the incompetent leader who thankfully, for now at least anyway, is in the past.

"In any case, the actual lies are only part of the problem; the bigger issue is the blurring of the truth behind the bullshit, as the American philosopher Harry Frankfurt deduced as far back as the 1980s. If you lie, you must know the truth, and keep an eye on the facts as your reference system. That way, truth ultimately retains its validity. The bullshitter, on the other hand – and Frankfurt believed this to be key – is indifferent to the truth; he simply takes liberties with truth and facts. He is not interested in “reality”. He is only interested in making his claims stick. He manipulates everything to suit his cause, in order to hide the fact that he is up to no good. He obscures the facts as points of reference and by so doing undermines the political culture of a democracy that depends on the distinction between what is true and what is false."

Did the Javid thing blow up in their faces? There was no need for him to make a big dramatic public announcement he had Covid, he could easily have covered it up and the media would have been none the wiser (it's the middle of summer). Instead the whole stunt seems to have resulted in terrible publicity for Johnson.

But apparently he didn't even wait for a PCR test result before making his video address to the nation. I can't help think this was some sort of a Tory publicity stunt that went badly wrong. Even if Javid tested positive, he could have made a lowkey announcement by press release, followed all correct procedures and self isolated for a week or ten days. Johnson being forced into a public U-turn about isolating at Chequers and taking a huge amount of flak can not have been part of any Tory script.

The whole thing was a bit odd. Javid said he conducted a test on himself at home on Saturday morning and within a couple of hours posted a video announcing to the nation he had Covid (without even waiting for a PCR result to confirm it). It has the hallmarks of some sort of a PR stunt which went wrong (even if he actually has Covid) as it ended up with Johnson being attacked from all sides yesterday. It's possible that Javid didn't think through the implications for Johnson having to self isolate when he released the video.

Agree with most of that but Javid clearly says on the video he took the lateral flow test on Saturday morning and then released the video shortly afterwards (unless he is lying about when he even took the test). Whatever the intention behind the video, it seems to have gone a bit pear shaped. We can assume Johnson being attacked by all sides yesterday and even by the English right wing press can not have been part of any Tory media spin.

I honestly don't have any great opinion on the Javid video. Seems he might have waited until the pcr test was confirmed before making it, that's probably fair.

But I don't see that as very relevant to what transpired with the pm and Sunak the next morning. That bit is really simple. Guy tests positive, close contacts get pinged, they all isolate. Couldn't be simpler. Except they tried to bring a complication into it, got called out and forced into another humiliating u turn. That really is the long and short of it from what I saw anyway.

It's been a very bad weekend for Johnson anyway. Criticism coming from all quarters, 'Freedom Day' being a damp squib and lots of bad press (not that this will have any effect on Tory voters it seems).

Always good to end by blaming someone else

How could Starmer stop anything that has happened since Covid or how does anything Johnson has done since lockdown. How can a "weak" opposition be blamed for the choices being made