davelevy.info

I went to see “This House” last weekend, it’s the second time. Last time was before the Euro-referendum, and with Mrs. L who like me had lived through the period; this time I was with my boys, one of whom said it was a poor history lesson. 😣  ( I still think it’s better than that.)

Firstly, the lines on the last EU referendum are both funnier and sadder than last time.

Secondly, I felt that their treatment of the Northern Irish politics and vote was a trivialisation and also inaccurate. This time, perhaps because of the re-opening of the issues around the Union as a result of the EU referendum, despite an attempt to tell a different story the crucial importance of devolution to that government is in the spotlight.

The play tells the story of the steady erosion of the Wilson/Callaghan government’s four vote majority for various reasons, including several deaths, a fake suicide and crossing the floor (Prentice) and the defection of Sillars and Robertson to the Scottish Labour Party, a name unused by Labour at the time.

The vote of confidence was held after Labour had failed to get an Act on Devolution through Parliament. This was partly due the opposition of large parts of the Scottish PLP, a conversation well represented in the play. Less well represented was the politics of Northern Ireland leading to the abstention of both non-Unionist Northern Irish MPs, one of whom came to London to abstain in person.  The vote of confidence was lost by one vote.

The Government fell due to its inability to command a majority on Devolution and a failure of vision on how to keep the UK together; the policies on Northern Ireland split their polity with the Unionists voting against the Government and the nationalists abstaining.

These centripetal forces are being uncaged today. It’s not going to be fun.

ooOOOoo

The play is almost silent about the September election that didn’t happen and the Winter of Discontent. But it’s telling a different story

Oh yeah. Ed Miliband was sitting next to me, but didn’t ask for my advice, and I didn’t offer it. …

This article in the Jacobin, despite having a picture of Trump, is about those Cities and Mayors in the US who reject Trump’s plans to deport so-called illegal immigrants. While municipalities in the US have much stronger legal existence and powers than the case in the UK, is this a route that UK Councils should be taking? I have voted for two Mayors recently, and if Sadiq Kahn were to take measures to declare London a Sanctuary that would be a tremendous beacon of hope for the EU citizen residents of London. …

On Monday, I listened to one of the local NUT reps. talk about the funding crisis in Education in Lewisham and last night I questioned my local councillors on this issue. Just to remind ourselves,  here’s the 2014 manifesto in which promises were made. Also there’s a meeting tonight about Forest Hill school cuts.

 …

Labour’s Peers in debating the Article 50 bill have voted down an amendment to stay in the single market, because it seems they want to prioritise immigration controls and the “will of the people”.

Adam Bienkov writing in Business Insider, says Labour’s Brexit spokesperson Baroness Hayter said that voting otherwise would have defied the will of the people on immigration. She told the House that accepting the single market amendment would be acting,

… as if the referendum had not happened and the result was not for leaving.

Also

We cannot simply airbrush free movement from the referendum decision,

NB I have not checked the accuracy of the quotes in Hansard, but I agree this is shameful.

  …

Not really. Labour beat UKIP in Stoke and lost to the Tories in Copeland in Cumbria. While I have been known to say that one’s enough when it comes to majorities, neither of these results are good. Obviously Stoke is better result than Copeland. I was unable to visit either seat although local comrades did. The expected blamefest has started.

Personally, I’d like to start with this,

I have pointed at work publicised  at the LSE and now reinforced by John Curtice in the New Statesman and the Guardian that Labour’s best chance of electoral victory (or best chance to avoid oblivion) is to court the Remainer vote. This is sort of picked up by Paul Mason in his blog,

Mason makes the point that it was Jamie Reed, the retiring MP that lost the seat, but the Labour vote in Copland (and the whole of the country) has been in decline since 1997. The New Labour governments lost 5m vote between 1997 and 2010, much of this one can assume based on the strategy of ignoring the organised working class. The assumption was they have no where to go; contemporary history suggests that they do. I originally thought that the 3m votes lost between 1997 and 2004 were Tories and LibDems returning to their natural home, it seems now that it was the working class on a route somewhere else via originally abstention. Any way, here’s the numbers from Copeland over time….

There can be also little doubt that Labour’s indecision or lack of clarity on both the EU and Nuclear power must have caused problems in Copeland. Mason is interesting and clear on Brexit, pointing out that the price of Shadow Cabinet unity has been dodging the question as to what to do if the terms offered aren’t good enough. …

I have just written to Jeremy Corbyn stating that despite having voted for him twice, I am exceedingly disappointed that he, or his closest advisors seem to think that there are acceptable terms under which we might leave the EU. I think the leadership’s tactics over the article 50 bill in the Commons let us down, and I reminded him that Labour policy is to seek a second mandate if the terms negotiated by the Tories are unacceptable to us. I predict that he’ll lose support in the Party if he gets this wrong, and that not only right wingers or moderates as they seem to like to be called will leave the party or switch to other parties over this. …

I spoke to a friend yesterday. [S]he is an economic migrant, probably would have been a refugee if they hadn’t found work, has been here for decades, is not a citizen of the European Union, in the delightful language of immigration law, they are an Alien, but they are married to someone who is i.e. a citizen of an EU member state ! [S]he said they’re going home i.e. to their spouse’s home;  they now feel unwelcome in the UK. What have we become? …