Valerie Fairbrass

Interests: my granddaughter, my allotment, walking, films, crochet, yoga, 19th century publishing

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

First Jeremy Hunt admits he didn't deliver productivity increase he promised in 2013, saying he will deliver the productivity increases he has promised in 2024 🤷‍♂️

Then Amol Rajan says, "This is a country ravaged by economic shocks, at best drifting, at worst stagnant. We all know about it's potential. But we've had 7 quarters of falling GDP per head. We're hooked on foreign labour. The birthrate is collapsing. Many public services are creaking. Councils are going bust. Those are facts. Has your budget even come close to meeting the scale of challenges this country faces?"

Jeremy Hunt, "I believe it has.. And by the way the overall characterisation that you've just given of the British economy is unworthy of the BBC"

Amol Rajan, "I'm putting to you facts about this country"

Jeremy Hunt, "We have grown faster than the three largest European economies since 2010"

Amol Rajan, "Real average wages in this country will not return to 2008 levels till 2026. That's a staggering two decades of pay growth. It's not about what I think, these are the facts. People want radical change and I suggest to you that you're not delivering it"

Jeremy Hunt, "I don't face your pessimism. We have a plan. It's working"

[Alex Taylor @AlexTaylorNews]

This is moving

After a decade of relentless French-bashing from the UK's Brexiteers, huge sections of its press and its sundry PMs - France answers this 👇

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Krishnan Guru-Murthy, "When did they announce we're all going to have seven bins?"

George Eustice, "The government hasn't"

KGM, "Sunak claims he cancelled government plans. Is he just making stuff up?

GE, "I can forgive a bit of rhetoric"

KGM, "So it was nonsense?"

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

The “Dance of the thousand-hand Quanyin” is possibly the most famous and most spectacular visual display in which geometry and synchronization create a kind of effective optical illusion
https://t.co/ITXnHp1RDx

[Visegrád 24 @visegrad24]

After Russia voiced its opposition to Zelensky speaking at the United Nations Security Council, Albania’s President Edi Rama told the Russians that there is any easy solution to issue:

“Get out of Ukraine and Zelensky won’t have to take the floor”

[Saul Staniforth @SaulStaniforth]

When Michael Gove was Tory education secretary and expected all schools to be above average in their performance.

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Burley, "You say, coming over on a small boat is illegal."

Cleverly, "Yes."

Burley, "So why don't we arrest them?"

Cleverly, "Because.. because.. uh uh uh.. the.. the.. the.."

[Sanny Rudravajhala @Sanny_Rudra]

Spotted in a cafe in Felixstowe. Constituency: Suffolk Coastal. You can guess their MP…

[Chris Packham @ChrisGPackham]

In 30 mins on @BBCTwo we conclude our #Earth series . 4.5 (ish) million years in 5 (ish) hours . Only the BBC could/would do this & get the support of >200 scientists @OpenUniversity I’d say it has been the greatest story ever told , and I’d say my final PTC is one of the most important I’ve ever given . . . @bbcstudios

[Mariana Mazzucato @MazzucatoM]

“Oxford Street disorder: Braverman wants culprits hunted down”. My take: Invest in public swimming pools, well run youth clubs, community centres, mental health programmes, summer activities. Care for youth. Cost of inaction greater than cost of action. https://t.co/RGlJtampSz

[Pam Ayres MBE @PamAyres]

The Crooked House, The Crooked House,
Somehow caught alight,
The Crooked House, mysteriously
Bulldozed in the night,
Little wonky pub, where folk forgot about their trouble,
Funny and familiar,
And flat.
Reduced to rubble.

©Pam Ayres 2023

[NHS Million @NHSMillion]

We couldn’t agree with this more.

Please follow and RT to help raise awareness of the important issues facing the NHS.

[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.)

[George Monbiot @GeorgeMonbiot]

It's a new and deadly strategy for shutting down protest. Corporations have realised that any political opponent can be named on an injunction. Once you're named, you can become liable for its costs. So they can beggar you for disagreeing with them.
https://t.co/c9NfVZo619

[Neena Jha @DrNeenaJha]

Remember when they fined a 66yr old man £100 for meeting friends in an allotment to get some respite from his loneliness?!

His statement was a heart wrenching read 💔

They really didn’t give a shit about us did they?! Just partied away, mocking us & taking us all for fools!

[George Monbiot @GeorgeMonbiot]

It sickens me to see how this government has wasted its entire time in office on culture wars, scapegoating and self-inflicted scandals, while, as the current extreme sea surface temperatures suggest, we are racing towards planetary tipping points.

[Alex Taylor @AlexTaylorNews]

My goodness ! Quite the letter in today's @thetimes

(Important to read it right to the very end !) 👇

[Jim Labisko (no longer posting here) @JimLabisko]

Fantastic talk on Natural Capital from @AlisonFairbrass at today's morning session @royalsociety on Recovering nature: building on Georgina Mace's work to ensure a biodiverse and liveable future @ucl @uclbiosciences @TheBartlettUCL @UCLCBER