Interesting Day

#1 UK Election. Polling puts Boris 9.5 points up. But “polling” ain’t what it used to be and national polls in a 600+ seat race are more than a little useless. Boris is counting on voters a) wanting the end of the waffling on Brexit, b) not wanting Corbyn anywhere near Number 10. I think he is right on Brexit but I am less convinced that Corbyn is that toxic. Corbyn is certainly anathema to the old-time conservative voter, but to the kids, the ethnics and the tribal, Corbyn is not so scary. In fact, his old school Marxism and refusal to condemn terrorists, whether Irish or Islamic, puts him in stark contrast to the smoother, Blairite, Labourites. Corbyn is not a moderate and there is a sizable fraction of the voting population who will see that as a good thing. We’ll know soon.

#2 The Impeachment Follies. The Democrat’s lame attempt to impeach President Trump has dropped any pretence of bi-partisanship or basic procedural fairness. The articles themselves disclose no crimes, high or low, and are being torn apart in Committee. This weekend I suspect the GOP will be aggressive in attempts to get more moderate Democratic Representatives to either vote against or abstain when the Articles come before the full House. Given that the chances of the Senate convicting, never very good to begin with, collapse with these weak accusations, smart Democrats are surely looking for a way out. Censure is one alternative. Another is to actually defeat the Articles as they stand.

The biggest problem the Democrats have is that Trump is absolutely sure he did nothing wrong and nothing that the Democrats have managed to come up with shakes that position. Worse, the eternally combative Trump actually seems to be enjoying the process. He always knew he would be impeached if the Dems got control of the House and so he is well prepared to counter punch. The GOP may find Trump distasteful but they have rallied round and there is no appetite, on the Articles at least, to impeach a sitting President eleven months from an election.

It is great fun, however, watching the Republicans on the Committee bringing up Hunter Biden’s coke habits and uttering the taboo name of the “whistleblower” who wasn’t. Apparently, the betting is that Mitch McConnell wants any trial in the Senate to be short and sweet with very little investigation or exposure of the Democrats or the deep state they represent. However, the Congressional Republicans are having a grand time smearing the Bidens and underscoring the Democrat’s arrogant disregard for even the minimum procedural fairness. I can imagine Nancy Pelosi hoping that toad Nadler will get this over with quickly.

#3 Andrew Scheer. I didn’t vote for Scheer and I have no interest in the man. His resignation from the CPC leadership for whatever reason is a reasonable outcome of a disastrous campaign. His unfitness to lead was underscored by his willingness to hire Warren “Lying Jackal” Kinsella to go after Bernier with a bogus PPC=Racist campaign.

The CPC will now go through a year or two of trying to figure out how to “move to the center”. How to win the hearts and minds of assorted urban ethnic groups and how to appeal to women. They have plenty of mushy, urban, centerists – of both sexes and all genders – to choose from.

Unfortunately, the likely criteria for winning the CPC leadership will be a) can beat Trudeau, b) will not scare the ethnics, gays, ladies and the easily spooked Millenials. The idea that there might actually be conservative principles such as balanced budgets, limits on immigration, respect for provincial rights and support for a growing Canadian economy, will be largely absent from the CPC beauty contest coming to a city near you.

This is, frankly, a huge opportunity for the Peoples Party and Max Bernier. The brain trust at the CPC, fresh from its success in hiring Warren Kinsella, is going to go all in for the reddest, most inclusive, most climate friendly leader it can possibly find. The logic will be that you have to win in Toronto and places like Alberta and Saskatchewan are always going to be safe CPC territory.

Max needs to present a principled, conservative, platform and start rallying the real conservatives on the Prairies, in the interior of British Columbia and in the many parts of Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes where Liberals and Liberals-lite are unwelcome options.

Could have had Max…and there is no reason why we can’t.

Update: So Boris won bigly. A working majority, many seats taken from Labour. Corbynism rejected and the pound went parabolic. Corbyn manage to lose bigger than Michael Foot – who was a lot smarter and far more fun, though deeply on the left. Momentum is saying it was a “Brexit” election and they are not wrong. But it was a rejection of Corbyn’s waffle on Brexit and his radical leftist positions and the base anti-Semitism the Labour party has fallen victim to. It was also an embrace of the intelligence and wit of Boris. Now he has his own mandate. He can get Brexit done and move on to the real issues facing the United Kingdom.

Andrew Scheer remains “resigned” (eventually). The red and pink Tories are lining up to take the position. The possible candidates are all of pinkish hue and interest me not a bit. I don’t think you beat the Liberals by being a slo-mo Liberal. Max has a huge opportunity.

But the winner of the interesting day was Jerry Nadler adjourning the Judiciary Committee without a vote on the Articles of Impeachment. The scuttlebutt is that he did this to ensure he gets on TV when the Committee passes those Articles.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps Nancy Pelosi has been counting votes and realizes that those Articles enjoy a bare majority of votes in the House. Or worse. They are remarkably dumb and Pelosi has noticed that Trump seems to be saying, “Oh please, Mr. Fox, don’t throw me into the brambles.”

Trump, along with Boris, likes jokes. He enjoys making fun and he has a fabulous sense of humour. It is one of the things which distinguishes the happy warriors on the right from the earnest, po-faced, scolds of the left.

Boris Thwarted

The Decider

In a rather novel decision the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court has decided that its Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, acted unlawfully in proroging Parliament.

While I think the decision is unfortunate because it will interfere with Brexit, I rather like the limit it places on Executive power both in the UK and here in Canada. It effectively sets out a boundary which a Prime Minister cannot cross and that boundary is the right of Parliament to conduct its business.

Quite rightly, Boris wants an election in the face of this defeat. Unfortunately, the legacy of Nick Clegg in the form of the fixed term Elections Act prevents the very natural process of a government, thwarted by the Courts and Parliament, seeking a new mandate. Labour realizes that if an election were to be called it would lose in a big way. The remainers also realize this and will try to legally hamsting a no-deal Brexit in what can only be described as a rump Parliament.

The decision of the United Kindom’s Supreme Court, (a Blairite innovation), combined with the idiocy of the fixed term under the Elections Act, leaves British politics in a quagmire. It completely hobbles Johnson in any negotiation with the EU because he is bound by the remainer’s law requiring him to seek an extension in the event of no deal.

It is not at all obvious what a way forward for Johnson and Brexit looks like at this point. The odious Speaker Bercow has recalled Parliament. But it is not at all obvious how the business of that Parliament is to be conducted.

What had been a minor constitutional crisis has now become a full blown question of governance.

Breaking the impasse is going to require more than just “muddling through”.

Boris could resign and make way for a “caretaker” government but that raises the question, “Headed by whom?”. Corbyn appears to be a non-starter and it is difficult to see how a Lib-Dem Prime Minister could summon a majority. Boris could stay on – as he says he will – and then? It is not clear what he would actually be able to get through this Parliament.

The problem here is “this Parliament” so finely divided between Leavers and Remainers in all their many varieties. The fixed term provision of the Elections Act, a provision which is entirely alien to a Parliamentary Democracy, has actually broken the system. Prior to the fixed term Boris would have simply asked the Queen for an election and, likely with relief, the Queen would have given it to him.

And that may yet happen. The one person in England who is not bound by the idiotic “Fixed Term Parliaments Act” of 2011 is the Queen. And she happens to be the only person in England who can dissolve a Parliament and call an election on her own iniative. Yes, this would be more than a little unconventional but it would be the very opposite of undemocratic. Typically, the Monarch acts on the Advice of her Ministers. And Boris has been loud and clear on wanting an election. But he, legally and constitutionally cannot call an election in the face of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. The Queen can.

In this case the residual power of the Crown is pretty much the only solution to this Parliament’s deliberate thwarting of the result of the Brexit Referendum and its willingness to ignore the manifesto commitments of both the Conservative Party and Labour in the last General Election.

Wheels within wheels

Much outrage at the leaked cables of the British Ambassador to the United States, Sir Kim Darroch. The Intercept, bless its crusading heart, suggests that the cables may have been leaked to force the replacement of Sir Kim with a more Brexit friendly Trump whisperer. Which may be true. But if you want to go deep consider this.

Boris Johnson is about to win the leadership of the Conservative Party and with it the Prime Ministership. Unfortunately for Boris, our old pal Nigel Farage has whipped up a Brexit Party which will almost certainly take enough seats to produce a Tory, or, God forbid, Labour minority. Nigel is the Brexit Party as he was UKIP and he is a real problem for Boris.

The one position on Earth which Nigel Farage wants is to the Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States.

Now Boris who for all his looney behaviour is no one’s fool needs to nobble Nigel without actually appearing to do so. Dangling the plum of the Washington Embassy in front of Nigel’s, easily turned, head might be just the thing to get Nigel to come to a deal on terms favourable to the Johnson Conservatives. (Basically, run hard in Labour held Brexit supporting constituencies and go easy on all but the most remoaner Tories.) Nigel gets Brexit and a seat at the table in Trumpworld. Boris gets to be the Prime Minister in full without having to worry too much about the Brexiteers going a little bonkers every so often.

Win/win.

So who leaked the cables?

The Strange Death of Tory England

Well, not actually “Tory” but I wanted the headline to line up with George Dangerfield’s 1935 classic The Strange Death of Liberal England. Dangerfield took a close look at the political chaos which engulfed England just prior to the beginning of WWI when, he argues, the spirit of progressivism was largely eliminated from English politics. Essentially, the gentry progressivism which had dominanted both the Liberal and Conservative parties since Victoria’s day was crushed between the class politics of the Labour Party, the intractable problem of Ireland (specifically Ulster) and the demands of the Suffragettes. The subsequent mass murder of the British Officer class in the trenches of France meant that there was very little left of the spirit of liberal progressivism by the end of the war.

In a few hours we will find out just how well Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party have done in the European elections. Given that the party was only launched six weeks ago, anything over 20% of the vote will be astonishing but the bookmakers and pollsters are seeing numbers north of 30%. Farange is being seen as the most significant English politician of his generation.

The resignation of Theresa May because of her failure to get a “Brexit deal” no matter how lame through the House of Commons has opened up the Prime Ministership and the leadership of the Conservative Party. The party itself is significantly split between Remain leaning, establishment MPs and Leave supporting Conservative Party members. It seems clear that were it left up to the Conservatives in Westminster there would be no Brexit at all. The country may have other ideas.

Across the aisle, the Labour Party is lurching off in all directions. It is pretty much impossible to get a straight answer from Corbyn as to what the Party’s position is on Brexit. I am reminded of MacKenzie King’s marvellous circumlocution, “Conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription.” Corbyn’s problem is that the more lumpen of his supporters, particularly outside London, are full-throated in their support of Brexit while gentry Labourites cannot imagine who let these dreadful people into the party. Corbyn’s position is further complicated by the rise of a Jacobian ultra faction in the form of Momentum demanding a clear “Remain” stance or, at the very worse, a Second Referendum.

The great Brexit wars in England are as much cultural as they are political. Elites, the media, the academy and some sections of the business community are fervent Remainers as much for social signalling reasons as for any political analysis of the Remain position. Supporting Remain is simply what “smart” people do and who does not want to be smart?

Brexit supporters are more about downmarket ideas like “votes matter” and “politicians should do what they promised to do”. They are immune to the elite argument that the Referendum voters had no idea that Brexit meant leaving Europe or that Brexit supporter’s votes should be discounted because they are all old, white, racists and other clever arguments which make sense in BBC studios if nowhere else.

“Liberal England” died because its political class, smug in its sense of moral and intellectual superiority, could not imagine that the Labour movement, much less the gels prattling on about “votes for women” were even slightly serious threats the liberal, progressive, established order. Within a decade that order was swept away by war and radical political reform.

“Tory England” by which I mean the upper levels of the Conservative Party, the media, the academy and much of the non-Momentum Labour Party is walking towards the same fate. The luvies were quite right to understand the Brexit Referendum vote as a vote against uncontrolled immigration, political correctness and political hypocrisy. But their reaction which was to dismiss Brexit voters as unworthy of the new, enlightened, modern England was a huge, strategic error. That error was compounded by the House of Commons being unwilling to actually reach agreement on a deal to leave the EU.

All of which has given Mr. Farage and the Brexit Party an unprecedented chance to remake the politics of England. First, by providing a measure of the anti-EU, anti-Westminster sentiment in England. A rock hard 20% would be destabilizing, but if the Brexit Party manages 30% or better, Farange becomes the effective kingmaker of the Conservative Party.

The Brexit Party currently does not have any seats in the House of Commons (though that may change). What it does have is a well oiled, motivated, mass organization. How that organization is deployed in the next General Election – which could be coming up very quickly as Labour has promised to welcome the incoming Conservative leader with a no-confidence vote – is very likely to determine which party attains government and which leader becomes Prime Minister.

There are, perhaps, fifty seats in England that the Brexit Party could win outright in a General Election. But there are several hundred more where Conservative or Labour Remain supporting MPs would be vunerable to defeat if the Brexit Party ran a candidate. And there are many seats where Brexit supporting MPs of both parties would be very grateful if the Brexit Party refrained from running.

The current Parliament has refused to implement the clear results of the Brexit Referendum despite have been elected in a General Election to do juist that. For Brexit supporters the tactical defeat of Remainers – either in straight up contests or by running or declining to run spoiler candidates – is Job #1. Farage understands this. The question is which of the Conservative leadership candidates is bright enough to realize that Farage and the Brexit Party are the key to the survival of the Tories in England?

Let’s first see how big a noise the Brexit Party and Farage make in a few hours.

UPDATE: Winner? Obviously Nigel Farage and the Brexit party with 31.7% of the vote and on track to take a minimum of 21 of the MEP positions. Second place to the Lib Dems who provided a refuge for all those decent people who were simply appalled at that dreadful Farage chap and worried about their ability to reach their summer homes in Tuscany. (Greens picked up 3 seats for much the same reason.)

Biggest loser? Right now the Conservatives are running at 9.2% of the vote for 2 MEP positions. Total disaster. But Labour did not do all that much better getting a mere 13.9% of the vote and going down to 7 MEP positions. Where Labour was really beaten up was in London where the metro elite defected in droves to the Lib Dems.

There will be more results coming in but at this point, it is safe to say that neither Labour nor the Tories have much to look forward to in British politics if they stay with the politics of flannel mouth on Brexit. There is much commentary about how the “Remain” vote Lib Dem+Labour+Green was larger than the Brexit vote but in the coming general election run on first past the post, those percentages will be uninteresting.

As I said, the question is whether or not the new Tory leader can cut a deal with Farage to ensure that Leave Conservatives have a clear run at their seats. Which means that leader has to be commited to real Brexit.

If the Conservatives elect another squish leader, the Brexit Party has nothing to lose running strong candidates in close-fought constituencies and hoping i) that rank and file Tory supporters will vote Brexit, ii) that the Lib-Dems, Labour and the Greens will hoplessly split the Remain vote.

A serious Tory leader will have already been on the phone to Farage who is, right now, and for the next few months, the most powerful person in British politics.

 

#FREETOMMY

Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy
‘Cause summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy
Well what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock ‘n’ roll band
‘Cause in sleepy London town
There’s just no place for a street fighting man
No

Hey! Think the time is right for a palace revolution
‘Cause where I live the game to play is compromise solution
Well, then what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock ‘n’ roll band
‘Cause in sleepy London town
There’s just no place for a street fighting man
No

Hey! Said my name is called disturbance
I’ll shout and scream, I’ll kill the king, I’ll rail at all his servants
Well, what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock ‘n’ roll band
‘Cause in sleepy London town
There’s just no place for a street fighting man
No

Songwriters: Keith Richards / Mick Jagger

Street Fightin’ Man lyrics © Abkco Music, Inc

I am not a particular fan of Tommy Robinson. But his lightening arrest, trial and sentencing may serve the larger purpose of putting people in the streets in support of free speech.

5000 in London is not a lot. But it may be enough to bring the Football Lads Alliance (and here is the Vice article) into the street and then the outrage at Robinson’s railroading to prison will have some legs. As will the outrage at the publication ban which a) has cowed the British Press, b) created an international Streisand effect with everyone, including Donald Trump Jr, commenting, c) demonstrated just how lame Facebook and Twitter really are (#FreeTommy should be trending hard…instead it is nowhere).

To date, the regular Brits have pretty much shut up and hoped for the best. Jailing Robinson for essentially standing in front of a Courthouse and then putting up a suppression order to prevent any comment may be the step too far which brings those regular Brits into the streets.

 

Oh Dear!

Brendan O’Neill has farted in The Spectator.

Ah, but these were the wrong kind of working-class people. They were the Football Lads Alliance (FLA), a fascinating grassroots movement founded earlier this year to protest against terrorism and the ideologies that fuel it. These Football Lads had their first demo on 24 June. Thousands descended on London Bridge, site of an Islamist massacre just three weeks earlier, and held a traffic-stopping demo against extremism. On Saturday they had their second gathering. An estimated 10,000 fans brought Park Lane to a standstill. Rival fans, from Spurs, West Ham, Leeds and other teams, rubbed shoulders, held wreaths in the colours of their clubs, and listened peacefully as speakers railed against hateful extremism and slammed the branding of people who criticise Islamism as ‘Islamophobic’.

It was a very rare thing in the 21st century: a march organised by working-class people and attended by working-class people. Thousands of them. Most marches these days are packed with public-sector types, plummy anti-fascists, and Guardian columnists who must maintain their rad cred by occasionally traipsing through the streets with people holding dusty trade-union banners. But the two FLA marches have been different. They have been cries from below. And they’ve been all but ignored. Sure, there has been media coverage, but it has been perfunctory. Despite being big, stirring and novel — people in football shirts gathering in their thousands to confront the ideology of terror! — the demos haven’t trended online or attracted much attention from the ‘voice for the voiceless’ brigade. They don’t want to hear those voices. The Spectator

O’Neill is a bright, youngish, sometimes Marxist who, I am afraid, channels Orwell. He notices things. He notices actual working class activity. A bunch of football fans, aka hooligans, are not a pretty sight to the more enlightened Guardian reading classes. In fact, these are the very people the modern British state is at great pains to exclude from the conversation. They say such rude things. They don’t buy into the denunciation of Islamophobia. In fact, given their head, they would likely pack up benefits queen Islamists and send them back to the shitholes they came from.

Can’t have that.

My righty friends tend to be very pessimistic about the Islamization of Europe. They write the place off as hopelessly mired in political correctness. I am more optimistic. The FLA is a good start, so are the Poles saying the Rosary on the borders.

Europe is far from over. In fact, there is a sense that it has only begun to fight.

Endgame for the Left

When AfD won 13 percent of the vote in Germany the immediate reaction of the very,very, hard left was to attack the victory party.

Of course it was. Because the antifa people are, frankly, idiots. Idiots with fascist tendencies and a propensity for random street violence if they think some icon of the left is under attack.

Viewed on any sort of time horizon, antifa, BLM, SJWs and the rest of the Left’s storm troopers will fade into obscurity in a matter of a year or two. But the damage they will do to the “respectable” left will last for decades.

Radical minorities, splinters, if they are violent enough, will ensure that the left is tainted as violence supporting for a very long time. The more intelligent of the antifa idiots are willing to see this as a very good thing because it will drive the frail, democracy supporting, lefties out of the left.

For the moderate left antifa presents, along with vicious identity politics, the endgame for Progressivism. Empowered, deeply ahistorical, children with no impulse control will deliver election after election the centre and to the right. Which will be fine with antifa; but which will kill a hundred years of serious socialist infiltration. The normals will wake up and begin to fight back.

The most delightful part, from a right-wing perspective, is that the moderate left can’t figure out how to disown the lefty babies of antifa nor can it quite unwind the identitarian idiocy it has done so much to nurture. The wilderness looms large.

Corbyn = Trump

As I write the British election is in the balance. What can be said pretty conclusively is that this election is not at all going as expected. Corbyn and Labour were supposed to lose. Bigly.

But they are not losing, er, right now they are winning. By 17 seats and 6% of the popular vote. Still early but this was not supposed to happen. The polling suggested a Conservative majority. The British MSM were pretty much either pro-Tory or deeply skeptical of Corbyn. But he’s winning.

Why? I suspect for many of the same reasons Trump won. Because people are fed up with business as usual. They don’t want to elect someone who will continue on in the same way. They want to shake up “the system”. In America the way to do that was to vote Trump and leave the “most qualified candidate in history” sitting in the weeds.

In the UK that same sentiment recognized that whatever else Corbyn is he is not “business as usual”. Exactly the opposite.

In the US the election of Trump horrified the political establishment and, as we saw in Comey’s testimony today, that establishment feels entitled to fight back. Comey felt entirely justified leaking his conversations with the United States President. In fact, he was willing to testify that he leaked them to forward the idea of the appointment of a special counsel to look into the nefarious Mr. Trump.

Corbyn’s people and Trump’s basket of deplorables are rather obviously different. The indications are that Corbyn had a very successful night with the young people: promising to end university tuition will do that for a man. Trump had virtually no support in colleges except for the boys who liked taunting SJWs with MAGA hats. No SJW voted for Trump except by mistake, every SJW in the UK – including many former Green supporters – lined up behind Corbyn. We’ll have to see how the rest of the tabs went but the argument that each man came from a radically, and oppositely, polarized base is likely to win out. People who like Corbyn really like him and he’s hated in the same measure. Rather like Trump.

If, by some chance, Corbyn wins we will see much the same sort of reaction from the British political establishment. Including the Parliamentary caucus of the Labour Party. He is not supposed to win and getting rid of him will become Job #1 for Westminster and Whitehall. The Blairites and the permanent secretaries will be on the job.

Like Trump, Corbyn has shown a rhinoceros hide to his detractors. He has survived the non-confidence of virtually his entire Parliamentary wing. He has the support of the militant left of the Labour Party and, so far as he seems to be concerned, that is more than enough.

[As I wrote this May closed within 15 seats and 1.5% of the popular vote…I’ll post this as a hostage to fortune because I think the same anger with the establishment which propelled Trump and Brexit is turning this election on its head.)

Political Junkie 2fer

I’ll write a bit about Comey below but, realistically, the only major stories seem to me to be a) that Comey leaked to the NYT, b) that Loretta Lynch directly interfered in an ongoing FBI investigation for political purposes. The Russia Trump collusion story is dead and the “hope” = order view of obstruction of justice is on life support and failing fast.

Meanwhile, the exits from the UK from Order-Order.com (the comments range from hilarious to hysterical.)

Tories – 314 (-17)

Labour – 266 (+34)

SNP – 34 (-22)

Lib Dems 14 (+6)

Plaid – 3

Green – 1

UKIP – 0

If those hold May does not have a majority. A Lab/SNP/Lib Dem coalition could govern with periodic support from the tiny parties.

Early days but this was not what the polls or the betting markets were predicting.

Update: I suspect this is going to be a long night for the Brits. Having an eight hour time advantage means I can go to bed knowing who won. If any one won.

Imagine the joy of these words: Prime Minister Corbyn…Oh shit.

Meanwhile the pound is down against the dollar and euro but not by a lot, a couple of cents.

Update #2: About the only thing obvious in the UK election is that UKIP appears to be collapsing. Which makes a lot of sense with Brexit in train. It will be a while before any other trend will be detected.

Thinking about Comey I get the sense that Trump, while not out of the woods, had a good day. While Comey called him a liar a few times – mainly about opinions rather than facts – he also said that he did indeed tell Trump he was not the subject of an investigation three times.

For the anti-Trumpists the collapse of the “Russians and Trump collaborated to defeat the sainted Hilly” story is going to be sad. They will keep hope alive with the “Trump fired Comey because Comey would not back off Flynn” story alive for a while but that is pretty thin gruel for an impeachment story, especially as Trump apparently encouraged Comey to look into the activities of his “satellites”.

Politically the loonier Democrats will try to keep the story and the investigations alive; but the danger to the Democrats lies in the fact those investigations are slowly turning to the behaviour of the Obama White House. Unmasking for political purposes is an actual, serious, crime. Telling the Director of the FBI to refer to the “Clinton matter” rather than the “Clinton investigation” is not obstruction in itself, but it illustrates how far Lynch was prepared to go to protect Hilly. I suspect even the loonier wing of the Congressional Democrats will be happy to let the entire thing die when summer recess rolls around.

Update #3: Time for a G&T. The constituencies reporting are all pretty safe Labour or Tory enclaves and 22 to 10 is not unexpected given the seats reporting. The collapse of the UKIP vote puts a lot of Northern and Midlands Leave ridings into play. right now it looks like Labour has a slight edge in picking up that vote. We’ll see.

I have to bet that absent a majority May is gone in a week. But the really interesting question is whether Corbyn will be able to hold on given that the Parliamentary Labour Party thinks he’s a loonie.

Update #4: Again, it is fairly early but Labour seems to be holding a 4-5% margin in the popular vote. Over at Guido’s the comments are even nastier than usual about May’s failings. Apparently, she simply did not connect with the British electorate. Which I can believe given how Boris Johnston was trotted out in the dying days of the campaign having been under wraps for the first month and a half. Now it could all switch over in the next couple of hours; but this election was called when May had a 20-25% advantage in the polls. It is a rare politician who can turn that sort of a lead into a squeaker. And it is not as if Corbyn suddenly became any saner. Nope, if the Conservatives lose or lose their majority Mrs. May needs to be gone by the weekend.

Update #5: Votes are coming in from the South and while Labour holds a 15 seat edge its lead in the popular vote has dropped to 2%.  In other news, odds on Boris Johnston becoming leader of the Tory party which had been 60:1 this morning are now at 5:1. Still 400 seats to go and a lot of those are in the south and the rural bits of England. But now Labout is 20 seats ahead.

Update #6: 492 seats declared. Lab 218, Cons 219, popular vote tied.  This is going to take a while. What is evident though is that Labour is picking up seats and May isn’t. (Although there are Tories in Scotland for the first time in years.) Regardless of how the night turns out I can’t imagine May retaining the leadership.

Update #7: 303 for the Conservatives, 42 to 40 in the popular vote. Does not look as though May will get a majority. She says she’ll stay.

The night was very reminiscent of Brexit where it took several hours for the Leave vote to roll in. The home counties came through. But what Parliament looks like when the dust clears is complicated. Annoyingly, the Lib Dems increased their seat count, though the awful Nick Clegg managed to lose to my great delight. This may have been a “change” election in disguise.

Corbyn looks safer in his seat than May does in hers. He ran his campaign his way and picked up 28 seats. He will have a rather good argument to take back to his caucus. He increased Labour’s share of the popular vote by 9%. The Parliamentary party may not like him but I can’t see him going anywhere soon.

Minimum Damage

In the cold aftermath of a terror attack, it is very easy to want to round up all the Muslims and….

And there is the crunch. Send them back? Not really a viable option. There are several million Muslims in the UK most of whom are entirely blameless, many of whom were born in the UK. “Sending them back” is not any sort of solution. Nor is “rounding them up”. What would you do with millions of pretty ordinary, non-terrorists?

We were chatting about this over dinner. Rather than impossible and extreme solutions, what can the Brits actually do? And, because I run a political philosophy/legal/political science seminar most nights over dinner (my sainted Susan is owed far more than I can ever repay), how can they do it with minimal destruction of civil rights?

At this point, the security services in the UK have a list of around 23,000 people who are “at risk” of terrorism and another list of 3000 people who are suspected of terrorist activity. Inclusion on either list is, I suspect, a fairly hit and miss enterprise. There are, of course, no-fly lists as well. What might a determined government do with this sort of information?

At the outer range of what could be done, every person on the longer list could be detained, questioned and sorted. It would be a massive operation and a massive invasion of the civil rights of the people on the list. 22 dead children and 7 dead Londoners might be enough to trigger the roundup. I don’t know.

What I do know is that such an intervention could accomplish a number of useful things. First off it would likely reduce the size of the list. People wrongfully on the list would, after some fairly light questioning, be removed. It would also give the authorities the opportunity to get the fingerprints, biometric data, internet usage patterns, associates and such like of people already identified as potentially dangerous.

I suspect, after an initial vetting, most of the people on “the list” would be removed from the list and sent on their way. The people who are left would be subject to further, more detailed interrogation and, again, the majority would be deemed not to pose a threat and be sent on their way.

Now for the rest. The Katie Hopkins faction wants to see internment. I don’t. I think internment of people who are legally presumed innocent is wrong and an unacceptable violation of civil rights. But we do not have to intern people to keep an eye on them.

The security services in the UK are stretched to the breaking point. It takes 20 people to keep one guy under 24-hour surveillance.

A reasonable alternative is to seek Court orders for tracking ankle bracelets for the people identified as most likely to be actual terrorists. This might require legislation but it is minimally invasive and avoids the horrors of mass internment. (It would also, in all likelihood, be a treasure trove of useful information. Who sees who when and where.)

Between ankle bracelets and a thorough search of the suspected terrorist’s computers and mobile devices, the security services could gain a picture of what the tiny minority of terrorist Muslims in the UK actually do.

Draconian? Somewhat. Though there could easily be constructed a means for the Court Orders to be challenged by way of bringing evidence of bona fides. The orders could run for a year or two and only be renewable upon application by the Crown.

It is not a perfect system but it would address the need for Britian to protect itself at a minimum cost in terms of civil rights. Compared to internment it is a measured and reasonable response. Compared to doing nothing? The body count may not be high enough for the doing nothing option to stop making sense; but that count is likely to continue going up and as it does the demands on the UK government to “do something” will become deafening.