Vote Labour in England today

Please vote Labour in England today, if you haven't already done so. Yeah, I know, they really are a party of the rich at national level and the middle class at local, but they are still a better option than the Tories. It means gritting your teeth and voting for some pretty unpleasant characters who have nothing in common with you either culturally or economically, but they are the best we have at the moment.

A lot of people think that all the parties are the same at heart,  and that may be true, but it's also not the point. Labour is the one party that has to listen to the claimants and McJobbers because we are the bulk of its voting core. Tony Blair defied the millions who marched in opposition to his war against Iraq, but he backed down from his plan to cut disability benefits when a few claimants in wheelchairs chained themselves to some railings in Whitehall.

The Tories are the party that gets turned on by the thought of cuts to social services. They are the party that is ideologically committed to ensuring that there is deep blue ocean between the working and middle classes. In short, the Tories are the party of the pissants who want to stand on their anthills and piss on the people below them. 

Labour does not have that nasty voting core, so has less interest in pandering to pissantery than the Tories. I suppose in a nutshell, you have more chance of getting a better deal out of life with Labour than the Tories.

I know that it's not much, but if you don't get out and vote then all you do is allow the pissants to gloat tomorrow. If you do vote then tomorrow they will feel like shit.

Making pissants feel like shit is just a good in itself - so vote Labour today.

Labour and Tory conspire together in yet another seat

Following on from the Thanet South love-in, yet more evidence emerges of the quite shameless way in which Labour candidates ally themselves with their Tory counterparts so that both parties can keep their snouts in the public trough. It's happening pretty much across the board in Scotland where what is left of Labour's membership is being encouraged to get the vote out for the Tories in the three border constituencies, but at least they don't allow themselves to be photographed doing it all that often.

In England Labour doesn't seem to care who knows that there is now a seemingly official alliance between Labour and Tory to squeeze UKIP's political nuts. Take the photo of Claire Jeffrey, who is the Labour candidate for Folkestone and Hythe and Damian Collins the sitting Tory MP as a case in point.

You see, it really shouldn't matter to a socialist if UKIP do well in that seat because in spite of all its protestations, UKIP really is the voice of Poujadist Britain. In  a nutshell, the core Kipper vote really is the self employed, the small business owner, or the lower management arsewipes that you find in larger firms. In other words they  are part of what I call the aspirational scrote element in society, and are as far removed from Labour's core vote of McJobbers and claimants as it is possible to get.

It is in Labour's interests to encourage the Kippers to stay loyal to their suburban dream so as to split the right-wing vote. Every seat that UKIP takes from the Tories reduces the chances of Cameron having anything approaching a majority when the dust settles tomorrow night. Not only that, but the higher the UKIP vote, the greater are the chances that Labour can slither though the middle in many a seat to grab it for themselves. 

In Scotland Labour are now dismissed as the red Tories, and the working class in the central belt are swinging behind the SNP as a result. Obviously in England there is no left alternative to Labour, but that's not to say that working class people can't sit on their hands tomorrow and not vote at all.

With idiocy like this all Labour does is encourage people to think that there really is no difference between the two main parties, and ignore the vote tomorrow. The only people who gain from that are the Tories.

Why are Labour so fucking stupid as to help the Tories like this?

Eddie Izzard flops in Glasgow

Damn, when I heard that there was chaos on the streets of Glasgow today I really thought that one of those Bastille moments had arrived, but it was all piss and wind.

The media bigged it up as one of nationalist mobs running riot, but as you can see it was just a forty strong press pack, about the same number of Labour hacks and half a dozen protesters. Most people were just going about their business, ignoring Eddie Izzard, the dress wearing weirdo who had been produced as meat for the baying mobs or something. Anyway, another English comic died a death in Glasgow...

I suppose that the hacks got a story, but it's a pity that it had only a tangential relationship to the truth. A bit like the time last September when they reported that Miliband had been hounded out of a shopping centre, something which I could call bollocks on immediately as I happened to be there and saw what happened. 

Sorry comrades, but if you were building up your hopes on the basis of dodgy hackery in action, then I have to tell you that the revolution has been postponed pending the arrival of more than half a dozen people.

Tories & Labour need to stop working together against the new politics of Britain

With thanks to Wings Over Scotland for these photos, which seem to show the Tories and Labour sharing a pitch in East Renfrewshire yesterday.

Here is David Montgomery canvassing for votes near an unmanned Labour stall.

And here is Jim "Spud" Murphy standing at the same stall a short while later after Montgomery has abandoned the pitch.

Now it may be that all this is coincidence. Murphy may very well be a teetotal vegetarian weirdo, but we have to assume that the rest of his crew are fairly normal people who left the stall to grab a wee heavy and a nip to keep out the cold. Montgomery may have seen his chance and darted in to that spot to do a bit of electioneering of his own, unbeknown to the Labour team who were sat in the local boozer. It is equally possible that fairies live at the bottom of gardens...

You see, this isn't the first time that Labour and Tory have been caught cuddling up to one another. They did it in Thanet just the other day when the two parties' candidates were actually photographed arm in arm in opposition to UKIP:

What seems to be happening is that neither party is able to get to grips with the fact that 21st Century political activity is going to be different from the 20th century version. Given that politics in the 20th century was not the same as politics in the 19th you would think that this point would be obvious, but they do seem to have trouble understanding the changes that have taken place.

The two former big boys want to force people back into the mass market politics that dominated the last century. However, the people are not willing to accept that, and the old parties are unable to come to grips with the plethora of new parties that are being created to represent the new politics.

The Tories are going to have to wake up to the fact that the newly prosperous, Mondeo driving, grandsons of Alf Garnet are not going to accept a party that is run by and for the traditional upper middle class. They want a party of their own, and UKIP fits the bill. The Tory Party is going to have to accept that there is a new party that sits to their right and work with it, or face years in opposition.

For its part, Labour has to accept that its decades of dominance in Scotland are now over. It may also have to accept that new, religiously based parties like Respect are going to have a major role to play in Northern English depressed mill towns. 

That is not to say that the big two should stop opposing these new forces. It is quite legitimate for the Tories to stand against UKIP and for Labour to oppose the SNP. However, it is ludicrous for the main parties to stand together in opposition to any new force.

So Labour should put forward its policies in places like Thanet and leave the Tories and UKIP to hammer it out between themselves. It is possible that Labour may even come through the middle and grab the seat. The Tories should do the same in Scotland and leave Labour and the SNP to have their separate battle.

To do otherwise is to give yet more ammunition to the charge that Labour and Tory together form a kind of conspiracy against the British people who are crying out for change.

It is that, more than anything else, that has led to those circumstances coming about in the first place.

Why you can stop worrying about a Tory victory, part two

In the first part of this post I looked at Cameron's options that would enable him to cling to power like a leech to a corpse even with 300 seats. The conclusion was that he couldn't remain in office, and that Miliband, who I gave about 250 seats would take over as Prime Minister. The assumption that Tories make under such circumstances is that Labour would be out of office within weeks, but I want to argue now that Miliband's position would actually be far stronger than such doomsayers imagine.

Let's not forget that politics is above all about allocating resources, and a minority Labour government would immediately have a lot of resources to allocate to its new chums. For instance the assumption has always been that the DUP would side automatically with the Tories, but the Ulster party has made it quite clear that they are more than willing to listen to offers from Labour. What they want is money, of course, and Labour will be in a position to shovel some of that their way. Couple the DUP with the 3-5 seats that the Alliance, SDLP and Lady Harmon who are all ideologically in tune with Labour, anyway, should grab, and that is a potential 12-15 votes that Labour can count on in any motion of confidence, all for a measly few million.

For Plaid Cymru in Wales who are also a Labour leaning party, their three or four seats can probably be locked in  with more powers for the Welsh Assembly, maybe even by raising it to the Welsh Parliament, along with some more funding. The deal with the Welsh along with that of the Ulster parties could be along the lines of we give you this, and you vote for us on government bills as and when required. In the interim, you can all say what you like, just so long as we are not expected to listen to you.

The same is true for George Galloway of Respect and the Green's Caroline Lucas. Galloway hates the Tories more than he hates Labour, so a bit of what the Americans call walking about money to spread throughout his constituency may keep him happy. Lucas may be even easier to placate. Something for Brighton Pavilion and the chance to introduce some Green bill, which may or may not pass depending on circumstances could be her price.

Labour could probably even have UKIP on board if it was willing to give the Kippers a vote on Britain's membership of the European Union. Sadly that is unlikely to be on offer, so I shall put UKIP on the Tory side of the Commons for the moment. However, stranger things have happened in politics, and Labour was once the party that opposed the EU, but that was when the party had a real ideology to back its moves. Today it is a managerial machine, so it is hard to imagine a scenario that allows Miliband to offer a referendum to Farage.

The only potential problems that Labour faces are with the SNP and the Lib-Dems, who I put on 50 and 30 seats respectively for this debate. The SNP have made it plain that they want to lock the Tories out of office, so keeping them onside should be relatively easy. Money will form a part of it, but for the rest Labour is going to have to negotiate its major bills with both the SNP and the Lib-Dems. Compromises will have to be made over that legislation, but it is not the end of the world for that to happen, and in a crunch vote Labour may be able to rely on the support of one, discount the opposition of the other, and still get the bill passed.

Finally, Labour on about 250 seats is a Labour that has been reduced to its core vote in the big cities and council estates. That vote is basically made up of local government workers, people doing the McJobs who often rely on benefits to make up their wages, along with all the other claimants such as the unemployed and disabled. It would have actually lost seats to the Tories, probably in Southern England and the Midlands. If Labour can then go on to govern without the support of the aspirational scrote vote that Tony Blair worshipped when he wasn't sucking up to the super rich, then Labour's position could be fairly solid in the longer term as well.

It really all relies on Labour losing the big swinging dick attitude and being willing to compromise and negotiate with other parties; parties that are already in tune with Labour and who hate the Tories to begin with.

Why you can stop worrying about a Tory victory, part one

It seems as if the week before every general election the party that is most likely to win has a wobble that leaves it shaken and uncertain. Usually these wobbles are self-induced, and certainly the one that Ed Miliband created on Thursday night when he tried to distance Labour from the SNP. This has led to a loose bowel moment for a lot of people, so let's get into reassurance mode and point out that Cameron is unlikely to remain Prime Minister for much longer, and Miliband is pretty much the racing certainty to take his place.

How can I be so sure? Well  just look at some possible scenarios, and to create them I want to be as conservative as possible and extenuate the positive for the Tories and play up the negatives for Labour.

We'll put the Tories on near 300 seats next Thursday, the Lib-Dems on 30, with UKIP getting five and let's allow the DUP to grab an extra two so that gives then ten seats. For its part, Labour can have about 250 seats, the SNP 50, and the minor parties ten. On the surface that means Cameron is going to wander back into Number Ten courtesy of the Lib-Dems.

However, the Lib-Dems are his only option and if they decide that having just lost about half their MPs they would rather rejoin the human race than continue supporting Cameron and refuse to play ball then the Tories are doomed. Not only that, but the Lib-Dems would have to vote for a Tory Queen's Speech, as an abstention would mean that it fails to pass. Under those circumstances Nick Clegg has Cameron's pecker firmly in his pocket, so the best that the Tories could hope for would be a Cameron led government that is in office but not in power.

To make matters even nicer, any Cameroonian Queen's Speech that did not contain a pledge of a referendum on the European Union would not be supported by UKIP, and any that did would fail to get Lib-Dem approval. Think about it for a moment: Nigel Farage has one of Cameron's balls and Clegg holds the other, and they are both able to squeeze them tightly.

It is possible that Labour could abstain on the Queen's Speech, but that is unlikely. Forget the SNP reaction, as Miliband would be torn apart by his own party. If Cameron is foolish enough to even proceed with the Speech, then Miliband has no option but to lead his troops into opposing it.

Under those circumstances Cameron would have to resign, and he would have no option but to advise The Queen to send for Miliband to form a government. Of course, Cameron could then oppose the Queen's Speech, but if his party does that then all hell will break loose in the markets. The Tories take their orders from the forces of darkness that control capitalism, and are unlikely to offend their dark masters in that way.

Faced with a Miliband government and having failed to lead the Tories to victory on two occasions, Cameron's position would probably be untenable. It is possible that dear old Boris will become the new leader by acclamation, but it is equally as likely that the Tories will need a bout of internal blood-letting before a new leader emerges as capo de tuti capi. 

Coming up in an hour or so I want to look at Miliband's options under those circumstances, but for the moment, sit yourselves down, let me put the kettle on for you and then make you a nice cup of shut the fuck up and stop worrying. Cameron will pass into the history books this month.

Miliband's brain fart has probably cost him Scotland

I suspect that Friday 30th April 2015 was the night when Labour threw in the towel as far as Scotland was concerned and accepted that it had to take the hit next week. That or Ed Miliband had a brain fart of monumental proportions.

If you watch the video clip which has kindly been made available by Wings Over Scotland for us, you can see that Miliband reiterated what has been Labour's policy for an age or more, which is to say a week or two for the rest of us. He said that Labour would not enter into a coalition with the SNP, nor would they do a "deal" with the Scottish party.

He then confirmed that a deal is a supply and confidence arrangement, which left his audience under the impression that everything had been ruled out. Certainly that is the way that Scottish social media are reporting it, and they are outraged by what seems like a betrayal from the leader of the main British anti-Tory party.

However, if you think about it, Miliband was not ruling out all types of deals. For instance he was careful never to mention case by case arrangements, which is how the Scottish government operated until 2011 when the SNP won their first ever overall majority. It's messy, and supply and confidence would be better, but if that is the way that Labour wants to proceed then that's the way it has to be.

You may say that this is over analysing the use of language, but then just remember how Bill Clinton got away with telling porkies about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. He denied having sex with her, which was sort of true as his defence attorneys had conveniently got the judge to agree to a check list of definitions as to what sex actually was. Thanks to that, having a girl on her knees sucking his cock did not count as sex.

Then we had the whole debate about what "is" means. He had stated to his aides, "There's nothing going on between us," which of course was the literal truth as he was sat in the Oval Office talking to them at that moment, not having her deep throat him. You see? It's the difference between "is" and "was" and that was enough to save Slick Willy and his willy.

Compared to all that, Miliband's strangled use of language last night comes over as an exercise in straight talking, but I wish that he had not felt the need to go into political speak. I wish he had said something like the following:

 Look, we are all civilised people and we all know that Tories really are lower then vermin. We have to keep those creatures as far away from power as we can so that we can all enjoy a better future, but unfortunately the Scots don't believe us. They remember Blair and how traditional Labour communities were left to rot, so they are voting for the SNP as a safety net. They don't believe that Labour has changed, but I can assure you that it has. We will work with the SNP in the short term so that the trust of the people of Scotland and the rest of the country can be regained.

Had Miliband done that he might even have regained some trust in Scotland before the election and saved some seats. As it is, the SNP is now pretty much odds-on to grab all Labour's seats, and probably take all the others as well, in a kind of two-fingered gesture to Westminster.

I am not quite sure what Miliband's strategy was last night, so will leave it as a brain fart, something which we all have from time to time.