Gordon Brown and the "Bigoted Woman"
Gordon Brown and the "Bigoted Woman" - Oh, and NEVER Vote For A Tory Clown! ☝️🤡🚫
Gordon Brown and Jeremy Corbyn basically suffered from the same problem - uneducated, naive, aging voters.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/apr/28/gordon-brown-bigoted-woman
Do you all remember?? That case which got Gordon Brown in trouble in the media, because it was recorded?? In 2010? Gillian Duffy, aged 65 at the time? Asked Brown (probably quite innocently actually - that was the way she came across! 😏) where all the immigrants were "flocking from"?? Gordon ruefully afterwards remarked to his aides that they shouldn't have set her on him because she was a "bigoted woman". Someone left a recording device on... 😬 (But how did it get to journalists?)
It was bad of Gordon, however: he should have been more sympathetic towards Ms Duffy, including of course when speaking to her directly. Now Jeremy wouldn't have had that problem! 😄 But Gordon is no Jeremy. Hmm. Maybe they should've let Jeremy do "meet the public" this time! They might have told *him* what their worries were!
But anyway, without such voters in various parts of the country, Labour would have almost certainly won in 2010.
Though I for one definitely felt then that the New Labour project was, at the least, getting tired and running out of steam. Identity cards? That house-selling certification thing? New Labour couldn't think of more voter-appealing policies than that? Obviously by 2010 they couldn't. Here it was a complete contrast with Corbyn's Labour! But the underlying problem with the voters was the same... They want someone to punish for immigration! At whatever cost to themselves.
Jeremy Corbyn was stymied this time in 2019 by precisely the same thing which stumped, and felled, Gordon Brown in 2010.
(It's amazing to me that no journalist as yet seems to have made this point and parallel. I shall have to have a search on the Guardian website. Maybe nobody wants to admit it because THAT would be admitting that a New Labour representative and a "Marxist" had - AND STILL HAVE - the same problem!! But of course Jeremy Corbyn WOULDN'T have had it, if the more neoliberal wing of his party had allowed him to be clear about Brexit: and embrace the Leave option, which there was also a Left case for. But they *didn't*: so he had to embrace the fudge option. No choice. Really, he was given no choice!! IT WASN'T CORBYN'S FAULT. 🤷)
I still think that a "soft" Brexit would have been fine; and no Brexit would also have been fine for the UK; and a second referendum would have allowed the country to see if they REALLY wanted Brexit. WHAT is wrong, after all, with MAKING SURE, of a decision that is probably final, and almost certainly couldn't be repealed for generations? Nothing, in my considered view. Of course, it would disappoint those I call Brexit fetishists, who so WANT to Leave, they don't care if it just squeaks through... And a "squeakthrough" = democracy. According to these fine right-wing "democrats"! **Not on massive referendum questions, not in my book!!** 😏
I tell you what we need, to stymie all the mad fetishists, on ANY possible referendum subject. This would put a spoke in their wheel of useless obsessions, which "profit not".
Firstly, we need MASSIVE electoral reform, and not just everything tilted towards the Tories as it is at present. (And didn't (New) Labour see that it COULDN'T rely on the first-past-the-post system long-term? That RELYING on urban areas and ex-industrial areas for a Labour majority was INCREASINGLY a gamble!)
We need Proportional Representation. Take it to the courts if necessary. (Sturgeon is.) Stupid fucking Tories. We can't continue with an unfair system biased towards the Tories, where so many people's votes "don't count". THAT'S not democracy!!
Secondly, we need a clause saying that ANY future referendum, on ANY subject, needs a 5%+ majority to pass it. Simple as that. No more stupid fucking tiny majorities on massive issues. WHATEVER the issue. (Yeah, I know that might include a PR referendum! 🙂 BUT WHO SAYS WE NEED A REFERENDUM TO GET PR??!)
For me, Brexit was highly unimportant: whereas a Corbyn Labour government was paramount! Brexit was just a piece of fluff. It was, however, a piece of fluff I felt and feel could be dangerous, especially if Trump gets hold of it!! Why give people like that the chance?? As is my thesis, many voters are naive and frontal-lobe-challenged, if they don't see this danger...
Unlike Labour MPs, I feel no compunction about insulting people and calling them stupid! 😏 I like insulting people who annoy me! (Though I wouldn't set on the poor Gillian Davises of this world: I have other targets in mind.)
Anyway. But I actually don't like yelling at my elders! Never have. (I myself am middle-aged now.) But were I one of those younger people who knew their older family members HAD voted Tory, possibly for the first time ever - it would certainly be a very tense situation around the Christmas dinner table this year! And the sprouts would taste VERY bitter! 😏
I have been a critic ever since my schooldays. Particularly if I consider people or things criminally stupid. No point flattering in cases like that. That's why I would hate being an MP! 😄
(And we also need ONE US import I think: the idea of "mid-term elections" for MPs, to keep them accountable, and to stop Tory nonentities hogging seats when they're really unpopular: as in the time of John Major.)
But Remainers, you know, I DO feel your pain.. Even though I feel that the Remainers influential in Labour did lose us the election! Simple as that. But I share with you your skepticism towards the option of Leave. I don't see what possible good it can do the economy. It is nationalist bunk. And it might lead to the persecution of people already here. And what if British people DON'T want to do a lot of necessary jobs?!
As for Boris' "Australian-based points system", pff! That is a bureaucratic nightmare and farce. Might as well call it their System For The Importation Of Doctors And Nobody Else! 🙄 I read up about this years ago. It leads to the persecution of European people over there, as much as anyone else. White people putting white people in detention centres. There was also one British business and motivational writer, John G Holland, whose audio recordings I have a few of - he was over there years ago basically to promote a book: they said he had the wrong visa and stuck him in a detention centre with refugees and boat people for months! A Brit! Who didn't even want to emigrate to Australia, in Australian detention! He used the time to write another book and put those persecuted people's stories in it! So much for your stupid idea, Boris!
I honestly think now there'll be more Remain voters who'll leave the country, if they're financially mobile, as you might call it (so YES, UK: there may well be a "brain drain": and you will lose many highly-trained and well-off, high-spending people: FAR more - and better - people than the few spoiled Alan Sugars and such who threatened to emigrate in the case of a Corbyn win) and they might go to the US, Australia, New Zealand or somewhere: after all if you are to live under American trade rules you might as well go to America!! 😄 Than *ever* there would have been Jews who would "leave in the case of a Jeremy Corbyn win," hysteria, hysteria!! 🙄 That latter is a tiny fraction of people, to be quite frank. Whereas the Remain voters constitute approximately half of the country. We shall never know exactly how many now: as there will never be a second referendum to count them. (That would have been an INTERESTING referendum, too, from a scientific pov: count how much public opinion has changed on a single issue over the span of four years!)
But, depending on how many people still feel strongly about their Remain choice, which anyway must be a lot of them, that is a heck of a lot of pissed-off people! Rather than a fraction of a minuscule ethnic minority.
It's a basic ideological break between people that'll last generations, though, won't it, attitudinally: a bit like that between Cavaliers and Roundheads in the 17th century!
The Remainers are hardly likely to take it completely lying down! There'll be more mass demonstrations outside Parliament!
Well: obviously there WERE - and are, a vast amount of people - a majority in certain areas, who are for Remain: just like there are a majority of people in those Northern areas who voted Leave. (I suppose the Remain votes basically split between the LibDems and Labour. Some voters, like me, didn't care that much either way as long as we got a Labour government! Sadly, we didn't.)
There were enough people who committed to making massive demonstrations outside of Parliament earlier this year! And the youth of England are much more for Remain than their parents and grandparents. No wonder Jeremy Corbyn felt he had to try to bring together both sides!
I wonder how that scorn on the part of Remainers (and I forecast plenty of storms ahead! Electing a Tory is no way to pour oil on troubled waters!) will make all the Northern towns feel?? The ones that have got their wish. Maybe they don't care what anyone else or those in other areas think, feeling so left out for years as they do. Maybe however it will be the start of a war between demographic groups. Sort of "town vs gown" thing. Provincial towns against university ones. Thickies against eggheads. You get the picture!! 😏 Well, seeing as the hub said: "the poorer and more low-skilled job you had, the more likely you were to vote Leave"... Even they have admitted that Leave was the choice largely of the uneducated! So. 🙄
So, incidentally: probably not very many doctors, teachers, or nurses; and maybe not many people in a public sector job: which form a large part of the backbone of Labour's support, voted Leave. But people who used to have a decently-paying industrial job, and don't any more: maybe it was them voting Leave - and Tory. **No survey has asked the right questions, to pinpoint all this! Basic overall percentages are pretty useless!**
As well as, of course, a bunch of bloody basically lumpen right-wing chavs!! 🙄
Of course, it will be a TEST of the hypotheses: "Brexit will be good for the economy" or "Brexit will be good for working people", when we actually do it! (It will depend what sort of Brexit, as well! BoJo now promises a better deal - but he hasn't left himself much negotiating time. Watch the clown trip over his clown shoes!! 🤡)
The remarks of I think it might have been a member of the Upper House, satirising Brexit as Alice falling down the rabbit hole, to a magical wonderland of new trading opportunities, she hopes! come to mind! 😏 We're about to fall down the rabbit hole!! Potion labelled DRINK ME coming up! Let's hope it's not Koolaid laced with cyanide...
And it's also going to be an intergenerational war - starting now, I very much hope! ☺️👍 I very much hope the youth in their masses are FURIOUS at having their rights and their future and their economic prospects sold out by their DINOSAUR 🦖🦕 older relations and other such in their community!! Time for a Christmas confrontation, I think!😏 🎄🔥
Michael Moore, the renowned US documentary filmmaker, TV series producer, writer and activist, informs us in his books that Thanksgiving (a holiday which I believe the Americans favour over Christmas and see as their real family get-together time) is often a time of political uproar! As it is the time when different branches/twigs of the extended family meet and clash!
Well: why don't we overcome our British emotional repression and ruin a few Christmases?? *I* would, if I were young and knew how I'd been robbed! PARTICULARLY of a Labour win and free tuition, never mind where the Brexit rabbit hole leads!
Anyway: whatever Boris Johnson thinks, this outcome will NOT promote peace and harmony in Britain, and in the fullness of time he will come to reap his whirlwind of unrest and Union breakup. Whereas Corbyn would have promoted peace, and satisfied (nearly) all the miserable and discontent. Oil on troubled waters. But you fools rejected him... You rejected your Messiah and you chose the robber... 😏 (Another suitable analogy to draw at Christmas, and it will be even more so at Easter!!)
*You* voted Clown 🤡, UK - see what nasty unintended consequences you get, morons!! Boris the Blundering Blond Elephant 🐘 in the National China Shop! 🙄
