Sue Bastone

Chartered Librarian,FCLIP. Reader, Writer, Storyteller. SLA trustee. Passionate about access to culture for everyone. Personal account, my own views.

[BBC Radio 4 Today @BBCr4today]

Every Monday over the next 6 weeks this summer, you can hear the #R4Today weekly guide to children's literature.
Author Frank Cottrell-Boyce & librarian Jennifer Horan will be recommending books on different themes - this week it's history.

See their recommendations below 📖⬇️

[Sue Bastone @Libbooklover]

Please support this! The much beloved Kate Greenaway medal needs to keep her name

[Tamsin Rosewell @autumnrosewell]

KATE GREENAWAY MEDAL
Lecturer, historian & librarian, Dr Rose Roberto, and I have created a petition to request the restoration of Kate Greenaway's name to the illustration award. Read our piece & sign the petition here: https://t.co/APd8hSmkbe

🎨Please share #KateGreenawayMedal

[Tom Palmer @tompalmerauthor]

Win a #FIFAWomensWorldCup @Lionesses bumper reading pack. Inc. @SheKicksMag and two signed @race_rocky books. Please just RT to compete. Deadline tomorrow at 10 p.m. In the post to you - maybe - on Monday! Thanks!
#Giveaway #Competition

[Sue Bastone @Libbooklover]

#SLACelebrates Thank you to everyone involved in a fantastic evening celebrating SLA Awards @uksla

[Sue Bastone @Libbooklover]

#SLACelebrates Congratulations Bridget Hamlet, winner SLA Secondary School Librarian of the Year 2023

[Sue Bastone @Libbooklover]

#SLACelebrates Congratulations Sally Hamerton, winner SLA Primary School Librarian of the Year 2023

[Sue Bastone @Libbooklover]

#SLACelebrates Congratulations Swindon Youth Festival of Literature, winner of SLA Community Award 2023

[Sue Bastone @Libbooklover]

#SLACelebrates Congratulations Colham Primary School London winner of SLA Enterprise of the Year Award 2024

[Sue Bastone @Libbooklover]

Long but well worth reading

[Edwin Hayward @edwinhayward]

Here's how the future is going to play out...

(Long - please expand the tweet.)

1. The Tories will keep on wrecking things faster and faster as the GE approaches. They'll act like irresponsible teenagers who know they don't have to clean up in the morning after a wild drunken binge.

Why?
A) It's their last chance to firehose cash at their friends and cronies.
B) It's an opportunity to further feather their own nests before they're out of office.
C) It stuffs Labour even more - we'll return to this soon enough.
D) The more chaos they cause and the more scandals they trigger, the less chance there is of any one case of wrongdoing being investigated.

From a Tory POV, the best stuff to break is anything that's unfixable. For instance, the closure of all train ticket offices. Once those have been turned into coffee concessions and the staff fired or moved elsewhere, both the facilities and the expertise will be gone for good.

2. Regardless of actual policies, Labour will win the GE on a desperate tide of people wanting to Get The Tories out. However (and this will prove vital later) their future freedom to manoevre will be severely limited by the bright red lines they've been laying down on stuff like Brexit.

Related aside: Remember, the losing party has a blank slate. The electorate thumbed their noses at the manifesto, so they have total freedom to bin it. ("Nobody liked what we had to offer, so we need to do something different.") But this isn't true of the winning party. Even though pledges do get broken and manifesto commitments forgotten, they are still constrained by what they promised to win office.

3. Labour will start trying to fix the stuff the Tories broke. It will prove very expensive. Mending stuff is always more expensive than breaking it. It will be slow going too. And Labour will be trapped by the need to be "fiscally responsible" in a way the Tories never would, because our mainly RW media is waiting to tear them a new one if they spend as much as a single brass penny without accounting for where it came from.

Related aside 2: Is the political playing field level when it comes to British media? Absolutely not. It's totally unfair. But this is a known known, so Labour have to find ways to win - and win repeatedly - despite being hobbled by the press.

4. Labour will try to Make Brexit Work. The RW tabloids will tear bigger strips off them than usual, painting even minor concessions as a Great Betrayal. (If you're not paying attention, you need to realise that the tabloids pillory Labour every. single. day. So this will be a ramping up rather than a different attitude.)

Related aside 3: Since anything Labour does to "undo Brexit" will be portrayed as a betrayal, no matter how insignificant, they might as well take huge lumbering steps rather than teeny tiny ones. It won't make the tabloids more rabid than they're inevitably going to be.

5. Make Brexit Work won't. Work, that is. You might as well try and put the toothpaste back in the tube after you brushed your teeth with it. Brexit is inherently unworkable by its very nature. The small improvements won't be nearly enough for Rejoiners, will infuriate still-Leavers, and will barely move the dial on Britain's Brexit problems.

Related aside 4: Young voters who came of voting age since the referendum already break 86/14 in favour of Rejoin. By the time we get through a first Labour term, anyone under 32 will be overwhelmingly keen to re-enter the EU.

6. Meanwhile, Labour will also have to spend more and more and more to keep stuff from literally falling apart. Think sewers, water pipes, collapsing schools, crumbling hospitals. The legacy of Tory underinvestment has played havoc with already fragile infrastructure. Again, stern questions will be asked about where the money is coming from.

7. The rump of the Tory party, whatever's left after the GE wipeout, will sit on the sidelines laughing and jeering. "Typical Labour. Always spending money they don't have." They will point to every single broken thing, claiming they're all Labour's fault - and the RW media will amplify the message.

8. If they're very lucky, Labour will go into the GE-after-next with the overall situation in Britain slightly better than when they took office. We'll only be knee-deep in metaphoric (and maybe literal) sewage, rather than thigh-deep.

9. The Tories and RW press will continue their tag-teaming attacks. ("Same old Labour. Can't be trusted with the economy. Can't get anything working. Can't even fix Brexit, despite all their lofty promises.)

10. GE2: Electric Boogaloo.
Labour are stuck. The taunts about their flagship Make Brexit Work policy hit home - because they're true. And that lubricates the way for all the other lies the Tories and the RW media are spinning about them to slip down like honey.

If Labour pivot towards SM/CU/Rejoin to try to win GE2, they might as well tattoo "we wasted the last 5 years and prolonged the damage because we didn't know what the hell we were doing" on their foreheads. They may pivot anyway, because the alternative is even worse. This is where those bright red lines (remember them?) will come back to bite them in the fundament so hard, they won't be able to sit down for a month. The press will scream "U-turn" and again it will be absolutely true: a U-turn so big, it's visible from the Moon.

Related aside 5: There's no Get the Tories Out vote in GE2. Why? Because they're already out. The impetus to keep them out won't win over disgruntled voters who already lent their votes to Labour once with gritted teeth, despite Labour not doing what they wanted on things like Brexit and PR.

11. Labour lose GE2. A one-term wonder, and they're done. The Tories do what they do best: they blame all Britain's ills on Labour, and start wrecking the country afresh with a clean slate. Heck, they're still bleating about the "No money left" letter today, so we know exactly how this stuff plays out.

Related aside 6: From the standpoint of history, being PM is perhaps 100x more important than being Leader of the Opposition. A place in posterity for eternity is the grand prize that even very rich people can't buy (though their wealth can certainly help towards attaining it). So Keir Starmer won't be nearly as disappointed as you might imagine. If he makes it a full term, that's already longer than May, Johnson, Truss (!) and Sunak managed. His standing is assured. Put another way: his incentives are not our incentives.

12. Another ruinous decade or so of Tory rule. (We know how hard it is for Labour to win. They need the Tories to mess up so badly that a tide of outrage carries them over the finish line. That tide is unlikely to rise again over a term dominated by constant reminders of "Labour's failings" playing out 24/7 in the RW press and on RW TV and radio.)

Deep breath. Have a coffee and a biscuit. You've earned them. We've seen the problem. Now it's time to tackle the solution.

Scroll back up through the scenario above. Notice how Brexit runs through it, like a vein pumping poison.

That's why Labour need to change their fundamental attitude towards Brexit, and they need to do it now - not just before the GE.

Stop ruling things out. Not saying you won't do something isn't the same as saying you will do it. Read the previous sentence a few times - it does make sense. Think along the lines of "Labour will do whatever it takes to mitigate the damage Brexit is causing Britain". The actual message can be polished by the pros. It's the intent that matters. Without the red lines on SM/CU/Rejoin, anything becomes possible.

By making the change now, it blunts the moaning in the media. Why? Because it dilutes the impact of the u-turn over a year or more, rather than concentrating it into the last month of intense scrutiny just before the GE.

The other vital ingredient is PR.

Simply put, PR is the only hope we have of achieving any sort of long-term stability.

Why? Because many of the problems Britain faces will take 2, 3, 4+ election cycles to fix. And they need fixing. But the only conceivable way of unlocking the time to fix them is to form long-term partnerships in the national interest. In other words, PR.

PR rids us of the short-termism mindset that has dragged Britain down for decades. Though the exact balance in Parliament will change from GE to GE, even under PR, a coalition will almost certain be possible without involving the Tories or other RW parties. It is better to have a share of power forever than absolute power for a few years before the other lot come in and undo everything you worked towards.

Related aside 7: Don't think of GEs in terms of a 5-year cycle. When the party in power changes, their first year is spent trying to pick through the mess and understand what's going on. And the final year of every 5-year cycle is focused on the next GE. So there are really only ever 4 (and more often 3) years of actual governing possible under FPTP in every 5-year election cycle.

Summary: Labour needs to adopt a completely different attitude to Brexit (stop ruling stuff out, and make the change now) and move to introduce PR.

Phew, we're very nearly done. Congratulations on making it this far.

In parting: You may disagree with what you just read. You probably will. But please take a big step back and evaluate whether your disagreement is because it's just too horrible to think about the real world in the stark terms I painted above. Also, please consider whether your support for a particular party is blinding you to the reality of what they can hope to achieve in a short 5-year (really 3) period in office.

Thanks for your interest, and have a great day.

(P.S. If you found the above interesting, please RT to share this with others.)

[Sue Bastone @Libbooklover]

@SmithyWFC85 @bbctennis I know but only interviews no real tennis

[Sue Bastone @Libbooklover]

@bbctennis what dreadful coverage! Deliberately avoided radio as couldn’t watch tv during the day. Looked forward to Today at Wimbledon. No tennis. Just interviews. Supposed to be on until 10. Very disappointing

[Sue Bastone @Libbooklover]

Fantastic @plaa_uk Award ceremony @pearson today. Congratulations to winner Megan from @AbbeyfieldEDU.
Thanks to @uksla @bcb567 and everyone involved. Worshipful Co. Arbitrators proud to support.

[Alison Tarrant @fictious_cat]

I've had a great day with @NickPoole1 working out a way to get more people talking about the benefits of school libraries as part of @GreatSchLibs. While we hatch our plans this poster is a great reminder (and available to download from https://t.co/htmkdDb06y)

[Sue Bastone @Libbooklover]

@TheRepairShop what’s with the new condescending voiceover? Explaining things we can see for ourselves! Noticed it last night on @MasterChefUK !

[Sue Bastone @Libbooklover]

Great to hear @NickPoole1 putting the case for public libraries on @BBCFrontRow tonight. We are all desperately hoping for an improvement in funding for libraries which can have life changing impact on literacy

[Miranda McKearney OBE @MirandaMcK]

Every time, this quote☀️

[Sue Bastone @Libbooklover]

So exciting to be a judge for the #NE category of the latest @PearsonSchools #MyTwistOnATale comp! My huge congrats go to Lleyton for winning 🙌 Read it now & the rest of these brilliant tales at https://t.co/r8z1om0ryk #Represent!

[Sue Bastone @Libbooklover]

Latest Storytime with Granny
https://t.co/aBLoYtlpY4

[Sue Bastone @Libbooklover]

https://t.co/kLFO0G3eKl

My February blog - please RT if you enjoy!

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

Russian Embassy, London