Nick Tyrone's Blog, page 11

How will long term isolation of most of society affect that society – even after CoVid is no longer a mainstream concern?

Western society is shutting down. Yes, people are complaining about people still being in cafes and pubs in London, but this is temporary. Whether the government shuts this down by legal means in the coming week or not – and I suspect they will – this behaviour will fade out as more people become ill. We are a week or so away from a virtual society; where everyone interacts online and nowhere else.

It is obvious to say that I never thought I’d see this happen in my lifetime. That it is an airborne virus that has caused this is daunting, particularly given it has demonstrated how unprepared our societies are for anything like this. Almost without any real discussion, a CoronaVirus Bill is set to be rushed through parliament as quickly as possible. It gives the government powers that would have been unthinkable even a few weeks ago. No one other than conspiracy theory types think this is being done to curtail civil liberties as a power grab. In fact, a lot of those who will be complaining about the powers this bill will give the government have been complaining for weeks already about how the government hasn’t been restrictive enough thus far.

The problem comes when you consider unintended consequences. Many bills placing emergency powers into the hands of a democratic government have been done with good intentions and still turn out to create horrible situations further down the line. When you make a society less liberal, for whatever reason, it becomes harder to make it liberal again later. Freedom is hard fought and not easily reborn. I don’t have an answer for this by the way. It’s clear the government needs to do something to avoid mass deaths of the elderly and people with underlying health issues. I’m just pointing out that it will be tricky to unwind later.

What if society has to shut down for another month? Two months? Six months? The results of this, social and political, are unknown and unknowable. The economics are easy: for all but a handful of industries that will actually benefit from the crisis, it is armageddon. I think the government had it right when it worried about lock down burnout and people’s ability to get frustrated and flout the rules eventually. If it were a strain of Ebola that had found a way to spread quickly we were facing, things would be different – a measure of fear over one’s own mortality comes into play on a widespread scale. But what happens when a significant chunk of society get tired of staying indoors because of “old and already sick people”. I mean, that’s horrible, but you only have to look at some of the reactions from British holidays makers, easily available online, to think that discounting this behaviour would be foolish. This could get worse as a lot of people get the virus and have a minor reaction and recover quickly. We’ve already seen how quickly people can become selfish in the midst of this crisis. I worry a lot about how this dimension of it will play out.

Will this change British society forever? How and in what ways? I obviously don’t know but my main worry is how the hell the government manages this crisis if it stretches on. Having draconian powers is one thing – having to use them is a whole other problem.

The post How will long term isolation of most of society affect that society – even after CoVid is no longer a mainstream concern? appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

In the absence of politics, there lies this

For the moment, there is no politics. Not really, Sure, some are trying to say the current crisis means that capitalism is dead, blah, blah, blah, but no one is really listening. Almost everyone is hoping the government is doing the right thing, even we aren’t sure they are at times. There has been talk in some quarters about a government of national unity to help the country through the current crisis. If we’re at war, the logic of this follows.

Would be a good thing for Labour, I think, a GONU. Worked for Attlee. Harder to say you’re a bunch of people who are going to destroy the country when you’ve just played an active part in saving the country. But there I go, talking about politics again.

Sunak looks like a much more natural leader than Boris. But that isn’t saying a lot. While I hope the prime minister finds his moment to shine, if only for all of our sakes, he hasn’t looked great so far, has he? I don’t think daily press conferences are going to help him either. Yes, the country is still behind him, as they should be. But he looks tired and fed up – which to be fair, he has for most of his premiership thus far. He likes to be the life of the party, not the chap who has to tell the country their grans are going to die. He’s been thrust into a role he seems to feel deeply uncomfortable in.

It doesn’t help that Jeremy Hunt is on the telly all the time, announcing to everyone “Look, everybody, this is the guy you could have had leading the effort out of this crisis instead!” – which, let’s face it, all but the most ardent Boris-lovers have thought at least once this week already.

I sometimes wonder if the reason that there is so little testing of people in Britain to see whether they have CoVid or not is a conscious effort to keep the official tally of infected low. I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory, but hear me out. If the government were doing this – and I have no reason to believe they actually are, it’s just a completely unverified theory – I think there are grounds to justify it as a strategy. What if there really are tens of thousands of people walking around in this country with the virus? What if there are hundreds of thousands? We have an official number of less than 2,000 and still people are panicking like nothing I’ve ever seen. The country has sold out of toilet paper due to a virus that doesn’t even have gastro-intestinal symptoms. We just went out and bought a bunch of loo roll because we collectively lost our minds. Perhaps doing whatever we can to keep a lid on the panic isn’t the worst idea. Again, I don’t really know what is the right strategy here and don’t pretend to know.

Yes, politics is dead. Yet politics goes on. Long live politics. Stay safe, all.

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In a few weeks time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge.

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post In the absence of politics, there lies this appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

The problem with school closures and general shutdown – it’s more complex than most people are assuming

There are intense calls to shut down schools in the wake of people being urged to avoid pubs and theatres. If the kids can go to school, why are grown ups being asked to stay away from large groups of people? Schools have another problem in the form of teachers either getting ill or self-isolating. Closing schools could become unavoidable.

There is the science to discuss – the fact that kids may still spread the virus amongst themselves, school or no school – but I want to avoid that. I don’t know enough about it to tell you anything meaningful. Yet one dimension that gets played down in all this is how doing things like shutting down schools or all pubs and theatres has all sorts of side-effects that are being minimised. A constant moan is how the government is worried too much about economic matters and not enough about lives. Except that economic matters have a huge impact on people’s lives and health as well.

Imagine that this crisis results in hundreds of thousands of job losses. Could anyone credibly claim that such an outcome wouldn’t have any large-scale health downsides? All right, probably less than hundreds of thousands of people dying of Coronavirus – but I can only say “probably” because it is hard to know. The point is a). all of this is really complicated and b). an economic downturn is not without massive health downsides, some of which could be long-term.

For those still saying that Coronavirus is a symptom of “late-capitalism” and that it would all be better if we lived under socialism, there are several things to say here. One, having a socialism economy does not mean that the economy does not matter anymore or that the government can control every aspect of it all the time seamlessly. In fact, socialist economies that existed in the 20th century were obsessed with how to keep themselves running and often made some pretty horrific economics for human lives trade offs as a result. I know some of you think that socialism solves all problems but the 20th century experience of it pretty much proves that it does not.

You cannot get over the fact that a pandemic presents huge complexity to all governments facing them. There are no easy answers. I know that’s not what some of you want to hear right now – it’s easier or more comfortable to believe that the government is acting heinously on purpose, and that if we just had a better government the answers to the problems would be easy to find and implement. This is why conspiracy theories are so widely subscribed to; it’s pleasant in a way to think that someone amongst us hive of confused human beings is controlling everything, even if they are doing so to evil purposes and pursuits. It suggests that if good people could be put in charge of the same stuff then all of our problems would disappear. Instead of the reality: no one really knows enough to make the right decisions all of the time. Everyone is trying their best to do the right thing but that is often not enough. We are more helpless as a species than we often fool ourselves into thinking.

The upshot here is not to get carried away with weirdly comforting thoughts that the bad guys are screwing things up and if they just stopped this would all go away. It is sadly a lot more complicated than that.

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In a few weeks time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge.

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post The problem with school closures and general shutdown – it’s more complex than most people are assuming appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

In the face of the Coronavirus crisis, it would be utterly mad for Boris not to extend the transition period with the EU. Utterly mad – and here’s exactly why

We were living in strange times before the Coronavirus struck; they are now surreal beyond the imaginings of an objective viewer from five years ago. Lots of people are politicising the crisis, you know, imagining that what’s happening demonstrates the folly of austerity, or shows us what life would have been like under a Corbyn government, or demonstrates that “inequality kills”. I am not trying to add my own addition to this trope here. What follows is not a Remainry rant that is an attempt to halt Brexit in disguise. It is just dealing with the new political reality we are living in.

A no deal Brexit at the end of 2020, or what amounts to it beyond the few things the Withdrawal Agreement covers, would have been a stupid idea even before the Coronavirus crisis – to do so now would be political suicide. While I know almost nothing about epistemology, I do know a little bit about supply chains and Brexit. What we’ve learned over the last couple of weeks tells a lot about people’s inability to stay calm in the face of possible shortages and thus hoard on a massive scale. Almost no supermarket in Britain has any toilet roll, pasta and several other items that have been heavily hoarded over the past fortnight. And that is considering there is nothing actually wrong with the supply chains – at least, not yet – and there hasn’t been an imminent threat of any sort of lock down at all at least until the last day or so. Imagine the hoarding that would happen if the supply chains were heavily interrupted and – here’s the kicker – there was no way to know when they would become able to serve the demand again, if ever. Hoarding would be out of control if these last two weeks tell us anything, and I think they tell us a lot about what is likely behaviour if supply chains were disrupted even a little bit, never mind a lot.

Boris has all the cover he needs to extend the transition period. People will not only understand, no one other than Farage will complain and he will shut up quickly when people pile in on him, telling him to stop being so petty in the face of a national crisis. If Boris doesn’t take the opportunity, it will be one of the stupidest moves in British political history. In fact, I’d rank it even above Theresa May’s “no deal is better than a bad deal” speech and Cameron’s decision to get the EU referendum out of the way as quickly as possible so we as a nation could move onto other things.

I repeat, this is not a plea to stop Brexit. Yes, I’d like that, but that is not the issue. Boris must realise that having a crisis of this magnitude and then voluntarily foisting upon the nation another one less than 12 months later is lunacy. Take the opportunity, Boris. No one will think less of you. It is way, way, way less of a political risk than pushing ahead with what amounts to a no deal Brexit.

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In a few weeks time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge.

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post In the face of the Coronavirus crisis, it would be utterly mad for Boris not to extend the transition period with the EU. Utterly mad – and here’s exactly why appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

The local elections being delayed are massively helpful to Keir Starmer and Labour – so everyone should stop talking about government conspiracies

Following the advice of the Electoral Commission, local elections that were to be held in early May are now going to be held a year on. Same goes for the London mayoral elections. While the year delay probably won’t make a difference to who was going be mayor of London, getting to wait until 2021 to have that set of local elections is extremely helpful to Keir Starmer and the Labour Party.

The reason is simple: the party is in a terrible place right now and Starmer having to face a set of elections only a few weeks into his leadership would have been unideal to say the least. The fact that the NEC had arranged it this way is a testament to the fact that they don’t know what they are doing. Internal polling seems to suggest that Labour were on course for a walloping in May. With the year’s delay, Labour can do more campaigning, with Starmer not having an electoral battle to face until after more than a year in post. It gives him that time to do some much needed housework as well.

The fact that delaying the 2020 local elections until 2021 will be electorally helpful to Labour is obvious and anyone who knows anything about politics would tell you the same thing. The reason I’m bringing it up is to talk about something else that is happening in British politics at the moment, namely the conspiracy theories being aimed at the government. Some of them are downright barking. Apparently, the Tories are taking the approach that they are because they want to cull old people. When you consider that the Conservative Party’s core vote is over-65s, you realise how bonkers a theory this really is.

If the government was playing politics, it could have pushed ahead with the 2020 local elections knowing they were taking place at a time when Labour were in a tricky place and they could electorally capitalise as a result. Instead, they have done the right thing. I know a lot of you don’t like Boris Johnson very much – I’ve never been keen either, as long time readers know – but when you read deceit into everything he does, even when it is apparent he’s trying to do the right thing for once, it is unsightly. I never thought I’d be here in March 2020 having to write something positive about Boris Johnson, but I really think people on the left need to stop being hysterical about Johnson’s motives in regard to CoVid19. Even if you think the government isn’t doing the right things and you wish it were taking more drastic steps, I think you should at least be able to see that on this issue at least, Johnson really is just trying his best. He’s taking expert advice that on its own terms make sense. You know, you can wish for an alternative to a Conservative government while not thinking a Tory government is trying to covertly murder people.

Yes, it’s crazy that they won’t even consider delaying proper Brexit until this whole thing blows over. But that’s a separate issue. Boris isn’t Trump, certainly not when it comes to Coronavirus.

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In a few weeks time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge.

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post The local elections being delayed are massively helpful to Keir Starmer and Labour – so everyone should stop talking about government conspiracies appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Why the way the Democratic primaries are unfolding should worry British Tories, never mind Trump

Only a few weeks ago, the Democratic primaries were looking to unfold in such a chaotic way that Donald Trump’s re-election began to look inevitable. The way that Sanders was fighting with not only every other candidate but with the Democratic Party itself seemed designed to help Trump remain in the White House. And yet here we are, mid-March, and Biden has emerged as not only the frontrunner to get the Democratic nomination but the favourite to win the presidential election. Things have swung massively in such a brief period of time.

Part of this is down to Coronavirus and the subsequent crash of the stock market, obviously. Trump seemed to have been trying to play down the significance of the virus to not spook the markets, only to then overreact in totally bizarre and not entirely effective ways that all but guaranteed a stock market crash. So yes, part of this is down to deus ex machina. But a whole other part of it is down to the centre-left finally getting its shit together and halting its self-destruction just in time. I think the Tories should be looking at what’s happened in the Democratic primaries, see the similarities to what is happening inside the Labour leadership contest and begin to get a little bit worried.

In Britain, the assumption is still that Labour will be out of power for another few election cycles at the very least. Yet beyond the current virus crisis Boris has to deal with – and has taken a controversial way to deal with – there is still a no deal Brexit, looming on the horizon. If you add to this a suddenly competent again Labour Party, Boris could be under a lot of pressure in a year’s time.

I realise that the word “if” had to do a lot of heavy lifting in that last sentence. Yet like in America where collectively the centre-left went, “Right, enough of the bullshit. Time to get behind the best guy and push forward as one”, something weirdly similar has happened in Britain with the Labour leadership contest. The Left were certain that RLB would storm the contest, particularly with Momentum and McCluskey behind her. Instead, Starmer was the one who was able to be the equivalent of Biden – the most sensible person who has the best chance of beating the right-wing incumbent.

While there is still a long way to the White House for Biden and an even longer and bumpier road for Starmer to Downing Street, it is amazing how much more positive it feels for them both as compared to even a few weeks ago. It may all come to nothing, of course – but if was working for the Conservative Party, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

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In a few weeks time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge.

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post Why the way the Democratic primaries are unfolding should worry British Tories, never mind Trump appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

How the Coronavirus crisis has become a political Rorschach test

When I look at the current Coronavirus crisis through the lens of politics this is what I see: Trump failing and being seen to be failing. The Democratic Party starting to unite around Joe Biden in an effort to beat Trump, something the mishandling of the current crisis makes more likely. America will also see that some sort of national health care service is long overdue as a result of all this. In Britain, Boris Johnson’s mishandling of the situation will lead to a surge in support for Keir Starmer once he is finally in situ.

I see all of that because that is what I want to see. That is what I want to happen. Some might say that seeing the crisis through a political lens at all is horribly cynical and that we should view it in humanitarian terms only. Fine, but that’s not the way most people are experiencing the crisis; imagining the political ramifications of it all has become a displacement exercise for a certain portion of the population, in the same way that imaging what impact it might have on sport is a displacement exercise for another group of people. And when people talk about the crisis through their personal political lenses, you just get a read-out of their political hopes and convictions and very little else.

For instance, thinking about it all objectively, it is possible that the crisis, however badly handled by the White House, turns out to be a plus for Trump. Incumbency might be a benefit in a period immediately following a massive crisis; a “let’s not change guard at this difficult moment” type of thing settling in. In Britain, it could make people even more scared of a Labour government than they are already, Keir be damned. The point is, there is no way to know and no one is being – or possibly can be – objective about it all.

In the meantime, everyone stay safe. Or, as safe as you can given it’s hard to know what works and what doesn’t given all of the misinformation floating around. Perhaps the Coronavirus crisis will see a backlash against people taking too much stock in what their Twitter bubble tells them. Now I really am being too optimistic about the possible upsides of the whole thing.

Don’t relish your political enemies getting the virus, please. Whatever you think about Nadine Dorries and her politics, she is a human being and seeming to be happy she has contracted a life-threatening illness is a bad look. Be kind out there, people.

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In a few weeks time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge.

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post How the Coronavirus crisis has become a political Rorschach test appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Boris Johnson wants something out of being prime minister that no one comes away with. Here’s how that will affect his time in Number 10

In a clip born to go viral, Prince Harry is seen walking along a line of waiting participants in that way royals do. He skips past Boris, not bothering to shake his hand or say anything to the prime minister, going on to speak warmly to Baroness Scotland who stands to the PM’s direct left. Boris’ face tells it all – how much he hates being not liked. He is the natural life of the party type and finds it hard to cope with being treated with distain. The pain of being shunned by a senior member of the royal family is clearly very difficult for him to take.

I bring this up because it seems to me Boris has always wanted something out of being prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland that isn’t bestowed on almost any prime minister: he wants to be fondly remembered. This pretty much never happens – allow me to demonstrate. Churchill and Attlee are still widely revered but there is an easy reason for that – one was PM and the other his deputy throughout most of WWII, a war that has become deified in the British mind for some very good reasons as well as some bad or at least, not completely true ones. Take them out of the equation and what are you left with in terms of prime ministers since the Battle of Britain? Eden – associated with the Suez crisis and nothing else. MacMillan – Profumo. Douglas-Home – hardly remembered by anyone. Wilson – the outbreak of the Troubles, the eventual collapse of the Labour Party into factions. Callaghan – rubbish strikes and general societal breakdown. Thatcher – revered by a large portion of the country but hated by a larger one. Major – disowned by Tories and not exactly loved by everyone else. Blair – become a hate figure. Brown – used to be thought of as one of the worst PMs, reputation slightly getting an uptick because of the lameness of what followed. Cameron – Brexit referendum failure. May – complete failure on all levels.

Apologies for that long exercise, but it’s important to point out that all but the most rare of premierships end in total collapse and the legacies of all the prime ministers since Churchill’s second term have been mostly if not wholly negative. Boris clearly thinks he can buck the trend but I don’t see it, partly because he lives in volatile times that unlike WWII probably offer no route to herodom, partly because even if the times do allow for such a thing, Boris isn’t good enough to rise to the occasion.

Why this is important is that while all prime ministers had an eye on their legacies, I think Boris cares about it way more than any PM since Churchill. It is a driving factor in everything he does. Why does this matter? I think it makes things like a no deal Brexit much more likely. He is bound to take big risks because he feels he needs to do so in order to glorify his time in office. He also thinks things will work out for him because they always have done. It’s why I remain convinced his premiership could burn out much faster than anyone predicts – the way he is going through cabinet members already is a demonstration of a fast forwarded premiership that will crash and burn before its allotted time.

In desperately wanting to be liked, Boris is doing what all those who are desperate to be liked end up doing – making people not like them. The need to play the hero is what will be his undoing.

The post Boris Johnson wants something out of being prime minister that no one comes away with. Here’s how that will affect his time in Number 10 appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Despite winning the election, conservative ideology is dying – yet so is liberalism at the same time. What is replacing both is scary

There’s a very good article by Ed West on Unherd today called “Why Conservatism is Doomed” which I highly recommend. The thesis of the piece is that despite winning the general election, conservatism is dying as an ideology as liberals take over more and more of the establishment. I agree with some of the points in it and even the stuff I disagree with made me think. Where I most disagree is that the crisis of conservatism does not equal the coming triumph of liberalism – I think it signals the deepening of a sort of ideological nihilism that is bound to get worse before it gets better.

The first decade of the 21st century was dominated by a politics of technocratic managerialism in politics. Parties across Europe huddled into the centre with anything outside of a small ideological pool considered extreme and therefore shunned. New Labour and Cameroonist conservatism were the dominant forces in Britain as a result. Then came the financial crash and a slow but sure adjustment to this that exploded into life in the middle of the 2010s with Corbyn and Brexit. Everything turned on its head – managerial technocracy was suddenly what no one wanted. The extremes were hunted in for solutions once again.

The problem with this, as we are now experiencing, is that these extremes were shunned for a reason – all of them had been tried in the previous century and failed. This was why for a long time no one on the left used the word “socialism” – the fall of the Soviet Union had rendered the ideology assumedly obsolete. Yet when looking for an alternative to Blairism, all the Left could do was reach for socialism again out of lack of anything else being available. On the Right as well, the attempted use of nationalism and other hard-right forces to further their own means eventually blew up in the Cameroons’ faces as voters continued to reach for something more and more authentically of the New Right. What we have now is anything practical being shunned while the solutions that everyone is championing we already know do not work.

This is what I mean by conservatism’s failure in the face of a populist brand of right-wingism not equalling liberalism in the ascendancy. What we actually have is the abolition of any meaningful ideology. This would be less horrible if it were not for the fact that it seems like most humans need an ideology to guide their actions. Years ago, I recall reading atheist scribes denouncing faith and urging people to get rid of religion and live instead by the light of reason. But it turns out if you rid your society of Christianity, more or less at least, some other quasi-religion just takes its place (this is not a pro-Christian argument, to be clear here; just an acceptance that having no religion doesn’t appear to work as atheists expected). With the decline of traditional faith, the Left has become a religion in Britain, one that sees those who do not accept their faith in full as evil; the Right is becoming more and more like it in this respect, sucked into a game of tit for tat.

The dominant themes of the day are neither conservative nor liberal. Brexit certainly isn’t either, nor is the increasing volume of dogma on either side – the Right and their anti-metropolitan liberal elite rubbish which is fast becoming straight up anti-thought; the Left with its demonisation of those who do not agree to their ever changing demands on what can and cannot be said. We had an election in December in which one side was promising to get Brexit done while promising to spend a lot of public money, while the other side promised to spend a lot of public money and have a referendum “of sorts” to get Brexit done. The idea that the centrism of the 2000s has now given way in the 2020s to a real ideological debate is nonsense – both conservatism and liberalism are on the ropes, replaced by grumpy reactionary nationalism on one end and far-left, socialist authoritarianism on the other.

The hope is that people quickly tire of the non-solutions offered by the likes of Corbyn and Trump and more stable forms of conservatism and liberalism can re-invent themselves. I don’t see how exactly it happens from here, but I think it probably has to. The alternative is too scary to consider.

The post Despite winning the election, conservative ideology is dying – yet so is liberalism at the same time. What is replacing both is scary appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

The way the Left attacks Boris isn’t working. There is another way

Two social media items this week reminded me of how badly wrong the Left gets attacks on the prime minister. The first was an exchange between Dawn Butler and Tory MP Laura Trott about Boris Johnson and whether or not he’s a racist. Butler clearly felt she had won the confrontation as she later posted a clip of it on her own Twitter timeline. But she’s wrong because what Butler and most of the Left do not understand is that the majority of the electorate either don’t believe Boris Johnson is a racist or do not care. This attack line during the general election failed, no matter how many times Labour brought up the watermelon smiles and the letterboxes.

The other was a Tweet by Labour MP Zarah Sultana in which she had a go at Boris, another cabinet member and indeed most of the cabinet for being privately educated. Again, this line of attack flopped at the general election. People just don’t care where our politicians went to school. The Left should understand this because they actually don’t really care either: Jeremy Corbyn, the messiah of their own movement, was privately educated. You can’t hate it that much, really.

The way to have an effective go at Boris Johnson is not to try and paint him as a racist or make a bog deal about the fact that he went to Eton; again, and you have to keep saying it again and again because the Left keep making the same mistake, this line of attack simply does not work. Instead, Labour could try this much more effective critique of Boris: he isn’t very good, isn’t serious, and isn’t the right man for the job. It’s going back to politics 101, but that’s usually effective.

Labour should have been all over the fact that only a few weeks following the general election, Boris had his chancellor walk out on him. Attack the fault lines in the Conservative Party around the economy. Talk about how we’re headed for a no deal Brexit, possibly by accident because of the incompetence of the government. Attack him for having put Priti Patel back in the cabinet after she had to be removed for indiscretion once already in the hardly distant past. It’s all there to be poked at. Instead, Labour are trying to convince us all that Johnson is a racist who went to Eton (which is clearly bad) again.

Perhaps Keir Starmer can inject some sense into all of this. The Left had better hope he can.

The post The way the Left attacks Boris isn’t working. There is another way appeared first on nicktyrone.com.