‘Show of strength’ June 20, 2024
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A prominent loyalist on bail accused of possessing guns and ammunition was present during a UVF ‘show of strength’ at the weekend.
Winston ‘Winkie’ Irvine was pictured with hundreds of loyalists at a parade in east Belfast on Saturday to remember a UVF man killed by republicans.
Concern has been expressed at an “incredibly disturbing” show of strength by a loyalist paramilitary group on the Newtownards Road.
Police say they are reviewing footage of the parade which saw more than 1,000 people, many of whom were wearing white shirts, ties and black trousers, lining the route for an annual memorial event.
And:
Tensions within the UVF have been simmering since last year when the group’s east Belfast leadership, including its alleged former commander Stephen ‘Mackers’ Matthews, were stood down.
The decision to remove several senior command figures is believed to have been taken by the UVF’s Shankill Road-based leadership.
Over recent years the UVF in east Belfast has been linked to the drugs trade and other criminality and it is regularly targeted by police.
Matthews denies any link to either criminality or the UVF.
Lots of pranks, little light June 20, 2024
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Not sure what to make of Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, and his idiosyncratic approach to the current UK election campaign. As the Guardian notes:
Ed Davey, the leader of the Lib Dems, has had a busy week. On Monday, he conducted an interview on a spinning teacup in a funfair; on Wednesday, he tumbled into a pool at a Warwickshire water park live on the BBC – then, on Thursday, he was dressed in a linen suit and panama hat in a makeover on ITV’s This Morning.
This gameshow approach to politics is hardly new for Davey or his small party, lying fourth in election polling. A fortnight earlier, Davey fell off a paddle board into Lake Windemere in Cumbria five times in 15 minutes at a campaign event with party colleague Tim Farron.
It was intended to highlight the dangers of sewage being dumped into the lake, though it did not stop the party leader repeatedly falling in. One of the five dunkings, he admitted afterwards, was deliberate – the other four presumably accidental.
Lib Dem insiders argue bluntly that the approach is necessary, because the most serious risk for the party, behind Labour, Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s Reform, is simply not being in the national conversation.
The rationale for this stuff is as follows:
Falling into the water or riding in a fairground, they add, grants Davey the right to be heard on other issues, though it helps, with Labour so far ahead, that the party is not burdened with the prospect of forming even part of a government.
Sean Kemp, a Lib Dem head of press during the 2010 election, said that for the party’s leaders, “dignity has to be less important than coverage sometimes”. It is also helpful to keep any journalists in the travelling press pack entertained, he added, because “they are often grumpy, thinking they are not where the story is”.
I’m not hugely convinced. If the only way the party can build attention or support is through stunts like those I’d suspect it conveys a lack of seriousness, even a sense of desperation. Davey can argue that he wants to maximise LD seats in the next parliament. Is that working? Difficult to say. The graph of polls suggests a small up tick for the party a date general polling sees it nudging into the low double digits. Perhaps Davey can think that some reward for getting wet multiple times, perhaps it is. But small enough reward.
The projection are a bit more cheerful. According to Electoral Calculus the LDs are on course to see their numbers increase from 15 to 63. This in a parliament where by the same projection the Tories might be as low as 80. Even if one reels that back a little way and the LDs had 50 odd MPs and the Tories were over 100 that would still be a solid enough result. But, it would still leave them locked out of power.
It must be beyond frustrating for the Liberal Democrats that a party that has no elected representatives in Westminster, that is Reform UK, is the focus of media attention. The press hangs on Farage’s every word, Davey is reduced to falling into water, and not just once but five times, to get even a little bit of attention. But then this also demonstrates the manner in which political activity is reduced to a sort of faux presidential style. Reform isn’t even much of a party.
The Liberal Democrats – not an outfit I’ve any affection for whatsoever, particularly after they entered government with the Tories in 2010 – can at least point to being that. For better and worse. Davey’s approach may indeed be calculated to try to soften that sentiment with some voters.
“I was sceptical about this approach at the beginning,” said Ayesha Hazarika, a broadcaster, Labour peer and former adviser to Ed Miliband. “But, as the stunts have continued, I think the Lib Dems have found their place, in what has been a pretty boring and joyless election campaign.” Hazarika said that Davey is helped by the fact that falling into water reflects the behaviour of a “centrist, cringey, well-meaning dad”, which Davey, the leader of a middle-of-the-road party, has to be. “It looks like he is living his best life,” she added, creating perhaps a modest halo effect, to soften the party’s image to voters.
For the past nine years, the Lib Dems have been recovering slowly from the impact of their 2010 to 2015 coalition with the Conservatives. The party’s popularity was shattered when Nick Clegg entered government with the Tories, most notably after u-turning on abolishing university tuition fees.
And it’s not as if Davey himself doesn’t have issues (and ironically his political positions are fairly much of a piece with the Clegg leadership, being on the right of the LDs).
Earlier this year, Davey was forced to apologise for his own role in the Post Office scandal. The party leader, a business minister between 2010 and 2012, said he was “sorry I did not see through the Post Office’s lies”, as it wrongly prosecuted post office operators for mistakes that were in fact down to a faulty IT system.
Perhaps the name of the game is survival. Nothing more, nothing less. The five years in coalition with the Tories brought them disaster, dropping from 57 MPs to 8. At the last election they had just 11. And the hope, however distant, that come the next election after 2024 they might be in a position to build upon whatever gains they get this time around.
It’s a contest! That GP leadership race. June 20, 2024
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Minister Roderic O’Gorman and Senator Pippa Hackett are both in the race to become the next leader of the Green Party.
Senator Hackett, who is Minister of State with Responsibility for Forestry, said that the results of the local and European election sparked her interest in running for party leadership.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Drivetime she said that the party needs a “fresh start and a reboot”.
Ms Hackett said she can provide a different perspective that can “make the party relevant and relatable outside of Dublin, as well as inside”.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Six One, she described herself as an “unconventional green” being a beef and sheep farmer from Offaly.
After three Dublin based leaders in the last decade, it is time for a female leader, she said.
Third prize – five years as leader, second prize – seven years as leader, first prize – ten years as leader. Because really, who would want to rebuild the party again? Clearly not Ryan and Martin. I don’t blame them. 2016 to 2020 was no doubt a dispiriting experience even if a sort of kind of Green wave propelled the party to its highest ever number of TDs. But four or so years later that wave doesn’t look like it’s about to return, new leader or no.
It’s interesting the two stalls the two candidates have set out. Hackett as seen above is going on the ability to reach the places the party seems to have been unable to. O’Gorman by contrast is running almost on a party administration and election maven ticket.
Consider these statements from his supporters.
Green Party TD for Waterford Marc Ó Cathasaigh said he will be supporting Minister O’Gorman, adding that he has a “lifetime of experience, knows the party root and branch, and can tie together two founding principles of our party – facing the environmental crisis while respecting social justice”.
Green Party TD for Dublin South Central Patrick Costello has also said he will back Mr O’Gorman, saying the party needs someone with experience as “we face into a tough election”.
One could see the appeal if one was a TD about to enter an electoral environment where the party is facing a hostile electorate. Now, perhaps not entirely hostile – the GP wasn’t wiped out at the local elections. But few can be looking forward to the next few months.
I’d have thought basic logistical problems would tell against a candidate who was a Senator (Paul Culloty raised that issue yesterday here). Then again, having a person with farming experience would certainly be a novel spin on matters.
In all of this I can’t see any particular ideological divide – perhaps others are better placed to determine that? Some TDs I’d have thought leftish are on one side, some on the other. Any great school of Ryanist thought appears to simply not exist as such, or perhaps more accurately has been integrated so well into the body of elected reps that it’s near enough indistinguishable in terms of defining actual factions. Similarly with Martinist thought.
Another fine mess the Tory campaign has got itself into June 19, 2024
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Really, you’d have to wonder about the Tories and their campaign.
One of Rishi Sunak’s close protection officers has been arrested over alleged bets about the timing of the election.
The officer was arrested on Monday on suspicion of misconduct in public office, the Metropolitan police said in a statement.
The news comes a week on from the Guardian’s revelation that Rishi Sunak’s closest parliamentary aide, Craig Williams, had placed a £100 bet on a July election just three days before the prime minister named the date.
As a result of that incident, the Gambling Commission conducted a wider investigation and found information that led to the decision to investigate the officer.
The Metropolitan police said they were contacted last Friday by the Gambling Commission, which informed the force that it was investigating alleged bets related to the timing of an election by a constable from the Met’s royalty and specialist protection command.
Inept organisation, terrible polling, all manner of external events crowding in and this – can’t catch a break.
History fails and other comments from the not political zombies June 19, 2024
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Some of those Reform candidates are quite the catch for that ‘party’ (it’s not a party as most of us would understand the term with no democratic structures). To the degree that the ‘party’ has had to say this:
Reform UK says its general election candidates are free to express views that “are not shared by all their party colleagues” as they are not “political zombies”.
That’s always a good sign, isn’t it? So what have the not political zombies being saying?
fresh details emerged about social media posts linked to Reform UK candidates.
An account in the name of Lee Bunker, the party’s candidate for Exeter, asked in a post in 2018 when will they “be deporting Diane Abbott” in response to Jeremy Corbyn tweeting about immigration deportation targets.
And in 2022 it said “migrants are bringing in diseases” in response to a Sky News story about a man who died after staying at the Manston migrant processing centre in Kent.
Reform UK candidate Angela Carter-Begbie called King Charles “weak” and claimed he was under the control of global financial elites.
As first reported in The Times, Ms Carter-Begbie, who is standing in Queen’s Park and Maida Vale, also questioned the King’s loyalty to Britain and said she was “not a fan” of the Monarch.
Mr Bunker and Ms Carter-Begbie have yet to respond to BBC requests for comment.
Their patriotism is quite something. For example, I had to laugh at this:
Reform UK has defended one of its candidates who said Britain should have “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality”, saying the comments were “probably true”.
The row prompted the Conservatives to directly criticise Ian Gribbin, the party’s candidate in Bexhill and Battle, who was reported to have written on a website’s comment section: “Britain’s warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people.”
You know someone’s in trouble when it’s the Tories trying to take a moral high ground.
In July 2022, Mr Gribbin posted on the Unherd website: “Britain would be in a far better state today had we taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality…. but oh no Britain’s warped mindset values weird notions of international morality rather than looking after its own people.”
The same month he wrote: “In Britain specifically we need to exorcise the cult of Churchill and recognize that in both policy and military strategy, he was abysmal.”
This is the same A. Hitler who invaded a large number of states in Europe and broke multiple agreements in doing so? Does this expert in matters historical believe Hitler could be trusted at his word? Does he think that allowing Nazi Germany to consolidate its gains on that continent would have left Britain in a more or less exposed position in 1939?
As for Churchill, while I’m no fan, it seems curious that Gribbin would believe himself, a man it would appear from his track record with some deficit in military and political leadership experience – at least as far as one can tell given his CV he’s not had to oversee the defence of Britain during a global war across a number of years – superior to Churchill. It’s not that Churchill was great or beyond criticism. It’s that Gribbin seems peculiarly unprepared for such a task and his opinions on same seem thin.
Then we get to his views on women.
The previous month he criticised women, writing on the site’s message board: “Do you think you could actually work and pay for it all too like good citizens?
“Men pay 80% of tax – women spend 80% of tax revenue. On aggregate as a group you only take from society.
“Less complaining please from the ‘sponging gender’.”
He added that women are “subsidised by men to merely breath (sic)”.
In January 2022 he posted: “Men pay 80% of tax. Women take out 80% of expenditures.
“Square that inequality first by depriving women of healthcare until their life expectancies are the same as men, Fair’s fair.”
In December 2021 he wrote female soldiers “almost made me wretch (sic)” and were a “total liability”.
Reform claims this was all ‘tongue in cheek’. He’s a keeper, and no mistake.
In the run up to the invasion of Ukraine, he praised President Putin, writing in January 2022 that he had “shown a maturity of which we can only dream of”.
He “understands the bonds that create more stable societies; the hypocrisy of the West is preposterous as we stare in the face daily the enormous economic equalities created by our deluded neo liberal ideas”, he wrote.
In February, Mr Gribbin wrote “if only the West had politicians of his class”.
Uh-huh.
Amusingly Reform attempted to walk all this back under the idea of ‘offence archaeology’ and even more preposterously: “They were written with an eye to inconvenient perspectives and truths. That doesn’t make them endorsements, just arguing points in long distance debates.’ Right. Yeah
Even better is this;
“His historical perspective of what the UK could have done in the 30s was shared by the vast majority of the British establishment including the BBC of its day, and is probably true.”
Really? The small fact that that perspective was proven completely wrong at the time by the events initiated by that character with the initials AH, that it actually delegitimise a generation of Tories, something that makes his thesis blindingly and obviously incorrect seems to have evaded the named spokesperson.
But really, the overall impression is of yet another bunch of people whose opinion of themselves is far too high and have little or no connection with reality. All online edgelord stuff. Astoundingly, or not:
The BBC later said Gribbin had apologised for the “old comments and withdraw them unreservedly and the upset that they have caused”.
He said his “mother was the daughter of Russian Jews fleeing persecution” and he had been “upset at the way these comments were taken out of context”.
There’s a real political angle to this. Farage et al sought to ‘distance themselves’ but for it to drop just after Sunak’s debacle at the D-Day events, small wonder the Tories were out in force to condemn. Not that one suspects it will do them much good.
A ‘legal lacuna’ June 19, 2024
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underlined the legal lacuna in which such protests can take place. While they had been criticised for allowing such protests to take place — also outside the homes of Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, Minister for Equality Roderic O’Gorman and others — many gardaí believe their hands are tied. They say there is no specific legislation banning protests outside the homes of politicians and others. Added to that, they say, the Garda is obliged to uphold people’s right to protest, once that protest remains peaceful, even if it is outside a family dwelling.
And:
“You look at that group the other night and it’s obvious they were doing it just to show nobody could stop them — for the sake of it,” said one member of the force. Other sources said, though the appearance of masked men was seen as sinister by most people in society, there was very little they could do unless there was a breach of the peace. One garda said “wearing a balaclava or scarves or hoods to hide your face isn’t illegal”.
As noted in comments there’s also the dynamic that these events are tailor made for those holding them. They appear for a few moments, get their photographs and video for social media and then – whether interrupted by the Gardái or not, head off. But, it’s still fundamentally in intrusion and – as noted, most people see it as a sinister one.
There’s been some moves towards legislation that might allow Gardaí to intervene more robustly. But wouldn’t bet on that getting to the books. Which leaves what precisely?
From Tomás Ó Flatharta: New French popular front (uniting trade unions and entire significant left) – against Marine Le Pen and Putin’s fascism June 19, 2024
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Cover for an early election? June 19, 2024
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Was thinking about Eamon Ryan stepping down as Green Party leader, with Catherine Martin doing likewise as deputy leader, and it struck me that an excuse, or rationale if you prefer, for the Coalition going early to the polls would be the fact that now two of the three leaders have been replaced.
It’s not exactly a commanding reason but it’s perhaps a bit better than no real reason at all. Does it provide enough cover for the new Taoiseach who has been adamant the government will go the full term? Or perhaps none of this really matters with the electorate. To judge by the local and European elections, both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are in fine fettle ahead of the elections insofar as their diminished support has not reduced to the levels that some polls had suggested (Fianna Fáil, in particular, appears a little more robust).
What you want to say – 19th June 2024 June 19, 2024
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As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.
File under: Least surprising Farage news ever June 18, 2024
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Reform UK has published its manifesto. They plan tax cuts which they say will cost £70bn; however our analysis shows that they’ve miscalculated, and the actual cost will be at least £93bn.
Reform UK says it will fund these tax costs with £70bn of savings and additional revenue, but it provides few details. Their proposal to change Bank of England reserve rules is over-stated by at least £15bn, and the cost would likely fall on businesses and consumers, not banks.
These two factors mean that Reform UK’s plans have a total unfunded cost of at least £38bn – about twice the unfunded cost of Liz Truss’ ill-fated 2022 “mini-budget”.
We hope other estimates become available soon, but for the moment this is the only currently available estimate of the impact of Reform UK’s proposals. We asked Reform UK for the calculations they had used; they did not respond.
But this points to the reality that Reform UK isn’t a serious party in the sense of a party of governance. It can pretty much make up any figures it likes and people/voters can love them or ignore them or hate them. It will not be in any position at any time in the next few years to contest for state power. Farage has admitted as such. He suggests entirely openly that the next election again is what he is looking at. A good showing this time out is something he feels he can build on.
Perhaps the Tories will be so badly wounded by this election that Reform will step into the ‘opposition’ seat, some say. I find that implausible. The Conservatives, even if they came back with the lowest projected figures, would almost certainly be ahead of the Liberal Democrats and so would be the official opposition. And all Farage’s huffing and puffing won’t make a bit of difference to that. For all the noise he might try to bring to this, it’s difficult seeing (even if he wins a seat himself after his seventh or eighth previous failed attempts) how he could really impact. Sheer force of will and personality is unlikely to tell against the embedded networks of influence (and privilege) that the Tories represent.
And I wonder if Farage is really built for the grind of opposition in Westminster. His function seems more like that of a gadfly, stirring up trouble here and there. This isn’t to say he’s not influential – clearly he is, and his fingerprints, along with others in various parties and groups, including the Tories, are all over the catastrophe that was Brexit. What’s more remarkable is that he managed to evade the responsibility for that. Then again, because he’s not an elected politician he’s never had to stand over his own decisions. That was left to the hapless Tories as he waxes lyrical about Brexit betrayed.
Even that points up the sheer emptiness of so much around him and Reform UK. A party that is essentially a business proposition, shaped to provide him with a platform, but even now, even buoyant as it is in some polling, unable to mount a real challenge politically. He deciding first not to engage with the election in order to help Trump, then changing his mind and going for a seat.
I wonder if underneath it all he might be concerned that he might actually win and be diminished by the day to day grind of being an opposition politician.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 