Chilling Effect

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Lauren Townsend, a Labour Milton Keynes councillor and cabinet member has been blocked from standing as a Labour MP for her own seat. This was allegedly done for showing support for an opposition party by ‘liking’ a tweet from Nicola Sturgeon on her -ive covid test. Aydin Dikerdem found that candidates who have been approved for the selection have also liked tweets from other party members. As he said, this should be a permitted act of free speech. The decision to bar Lauren is biased, probably improper, potentially based on unlawfully and unfairly obtained data and designed to create a chilling effect. She had been nominated by several unions which should guarantee her a place on the long list, how long will they put up with this?

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We want our star back

We want our star back

The Rejoin EU movement held a national march today, the Evening Standard reported that it was well attended by 15,000 people, and @femi_sorry who took a film of the march and posted it on twitter at 12 times speed, so not as large as others.

I’d love to thank the interpretive dancers performing to ‘ode to joy’, the car and van drivers that supported us, and the one builder who told us to “fuck off”. …

Brexit’s over, it’s just about the mopping up now

Brexit’s over, it’s just about the mopping up now

Phil, of a different Bias, has released a new video, spurred by his observation that the Brexiteers have retreated from “Take back Control” to “Save the Pound” because if we were to rejoin, they think we’d have to join the Euro. This probably isn’t the case. Phil points out that Sweden has agreed to join up and did so in 2002, but hasn’t yet done so and has no plans to do so. This article looks at the issues of economic policy governance, the opt-outs, trade friction and immigration. It concludes with the proposal that, "The Truss Government was an ERG Govt, it’s fall marks the end of Brexit..", although we are unlikely be allowed back in until we can offer a substantial and believably long-term majority in support of re-joining the EU/ There is more overleaf ...

Do victims of a cyberbreach need to prove harm?

Do victims of a cyberbreach need to prove harm?

I have just posted to my linked in blog, on the reference from the Austrian courts as to whether victims of a data breach need to prove harm for compensation.

The Advocate General is not so sure, although on my CIPP(E) course the instructor was clear; a breach of rights is a harm.

I look at the GDPR, the DPA 2018, which confirms that in the UK, ‘“non-material damage” includes distress.’.

I conclude by noting that, “My experience in tracking the citizen’s panels of the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) is that Europe’s citizen’s, the children and grand children of facist and stalinist societies are looking for greater enforcement, not less.” Politicians in the EU are under pressure to go in the other direction.  …

Crisis, what crisis!

Crisis, what crisis!

Some aspects of this are hard to understand, here's my attempt. The UK has been in a balance of trade deficit for decades. For most countries it is the main factor in determining foreign exchange rate between sterling (GBP) and other currencies. In the case of the UK, there is significant additional incoming flows buying sterling quoted stocks, bonds and gilts. Sterling has been falling ever since Brexit, in my mind as a result of a drop in confidence due to Brexit and the growing relevance of the balance of payments deficit; the fear of inflation has added to that recently. This article looks at the history of bond prices and interest rates and warns that increasing interest rates may cause mortgage defaults. I conclude, "A triple whammy of inflation, pension losses, and mortgage payment increases, suddenly the UK seems a lot poorer than it was. " The full article and diagrams can be seen overleaf ...

Summary impressions of #lab22

Summary impressions of #lab22

 #lab22 was very quite and extraordinarily managed. There was some good chairing by Alice Perry and Dianna Holland, and some dreadful chairing by the rest, Wendy Nichols, Angela Eagle and Gurinder Singh Josan. Does Starmer’s speech sum up what we’ve become?, a mild social democracy domestically (but to the right of Callaghan on public ownership if not on wages and collective bargaining), an atlanticist foreign policy (differing from Ed Miliband & Corbyn), and a vicious internal management regime suggesting continued bad behaviour if they get into government where they’ll control, the Dept. of Justice, Home Office, and the intelligence services.

I make this conclusion from Starmer’s speech; Conference wants more but we’ll see what the front bench does; front benches of both factions have a habit of ignoring what they don’t want. The silence and de-emphasising of benefit cuts is also worrying as is the silence on the hostile environment.

My other fear is that no Labour Government has ever been more left wing than its manifesto, is what they want enough to build a more equal society and do the leadership want that? It could have been worse, many of us were fearing a full on blue labour manifesto and I am not yet cleat that the debt fetishists are in retreat. …

Left Right power

The two key votes on which the relative strength of the factions can be measured are Card Vote 7 reported in CAC2, and in my article, “The Rules debate”, and the vote for the National constitutional committee reported in CAC4.

On CV 7, the pro-CLP vote consisted of 42.2% of the CLP vote, versus 56.8%. For the NCC vote, the Momentum/CLGA candidates got 28.5% of the vote, which was only open to CLP delegates. This is very disappointing and a significant collapse from 2021.

Momentum claim that they won the battle of ideas, we’ll see.

I usually look at the the attendance numbers; for CV7 there were 293,621 votes. The Labour Party reported 432, 213 members as at the qualification date. The reported membership includes those in arrears, which I estimate as 28K. This means that 68% (of the membership) or 72% (of members in good standing) of CLP votes were cast in CV7. Thus I calculate that 101,000 votes missing based on my estimated membership number. This represents about 172 CLPs as far as I can tell and 27% of the membership in good standing. I estimate that 15,000 of those missing will be the London Parties whose delegations were prohibited or Parties suspended. …