Nick Johnson

British Politics' Midlife Crisis Why British Parties Can't Make Peace with Their Actual Voters

On the morning of Keir Starmer's conference speech here's a new post on an odd psychopathology in British politics - our main parties don't like the people who vote for them - the dreaded Professional Managerial Class. And so they are acting out like a divorced dad seeking cooler voters. 1/n

Comment: Why are we going backwards on racism in Britain? Black and Asian people have increasingly equal opportunities to reach the top, but a viscerally and unacceptably unequal experience of public space

This country made significant progress against racism in my lifetime - but we did not do so by chance. There is a visible visceral regression in experiencing of overt racism because the toxic fringe with the most extreme views have a sense of permission & impunity
www.easterneye.biz/racism-in-uk...

This isn't hard. Would be nice to hear it like this from the Cabinet but luckily our own MP is spot on, as he usually is!

Why are the American president's claims about autism the first item on British news bulletins?

He's not our president, the advice doesn't apply here and he's not presented any evidence to support his assertions.

So why spread these claims? What make this the biggest story in the UK?

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade

Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’

Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

Sooner rather than later Labour needs a debate about the sense of a strategy that prioritises appealing to Reform-inclined voters over LibDem/Green ones - when it is losing so many more votes to the latter parties than the former. That's Thornberry v Phillipson.

For the avoidance of doubt, my own politics are communitarian, nationalist, economically radical and decentralist. My objection to today’s Blue Labour is that they’ve created a right wing parody of values that matter to me.

What we're doing in the uni sector is shutting off routes for kids with Bs and Cs to do key (and prestigious) subjects, and closing down the ability of young people to go to the local uni just when it becomes ruinous expensive to go way. Will have incalculable consequences for social mobility.

Spending time right now listening to Deacon Blue; listening even more intently to the piano player. As always personal loss I think of, to those who knew and loved James Prime; to the rest of us, sympathy and gratitude.

Here is the chair of @uktradebusiness.bsky.social Committee, @andrewlewinmp.bsky.social, with a quick verdict and a great summary of today's UK-EU Reset deal. Andrew has worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make today happen and deserves huge praise. ~AA

Image from the Financial Times, placing Keir Starmer next to Enoch Powell.

Starmer's language was deplorable.

It was grotesquely offensive, accusing people who have brought their gifts to this country of doing "incalculable" "damage"; & politically foolish, in endorsing Farage's claims of an establishment conspiracy.

But bad analogies with Powell miss the key problem. 🧵

My grandmas were immigrants, my mum & sisters in law are immigrants; my sister & nephews are migrants. My kids study maths, Shakespeare, dance, act & score tries alongside the kids of immigrants. My dad’s life was saved by immigrants. Immigrants have made us richer, wiser, stronger

Win the fight

How about we start celebrating higher education as a nation? How about we start shouting, loudly, of the social good of higher education? How about we talk of the nurses, the doctors, the teachers, the social workers, educated at universities? How about we celebrate the artists, the writers, 1/

Getting Starmer to talk the language of Blue Labour when he sounds so totally and obviously inauthentic doing so is utterly ridiculous. Everyone knows he doesn't believe or feel what he says. It is entirely counter-productive. It repels both Reform-leaners and the centre-left.

100% this. Saw there was a blue Labour MP saying he "didn't care" if universities went bankrupt so long as immigration went down. He might want to look at some of the basic demographics of Labour support (and also look at who the largest employers are in large Labour seats).

When I first started writing novels, I had a notion that one if the things that made badness in the world was “professionalisation”. By which I meant that many entities had a kind of fuzzy cloud of functions in the world beyond their pure ostensible function.

You can't out-Reform Reform. You can't out-Farage Farage. Any attempt to do so simply makes them stronger every time. Why do we have to go through this every time? It's not even a matter of dispute any more.

This is thuggery from Trump and Vance, plain and simple.

They are bullying the brave true patriot Zelensky into accepting a deal which effectively hands victory to Russia. Unless the UK and Europe step up, we are facing a betrayal of Ukraine.

Do we know if there has been any cross-referencing of this with levels of education?