Nick Tyrone's Blog, page 8

The real problem Boris Johnson has with the Dominic Cummings affair

There has been a hell of a lot of takes on the Dominic Cummings affair already. I was hesitant to add my own for that reason. But this isn’t going away it seems, so here goes.

I don’t want to get into the rights and wrongs of what Cummings did and whether he should be sacked or not. What I’m interested in is wondering why Boris has gone so far to protect Cummings. I tried to imagine a similar situation involving either of the last two prime ministers. I attempted to picture David Cameron letting Steve Hilton give his own press conference, or May doing the same for Nick Timothy. I am unable to summon an image of this because it would never, ever have happened. The old logic went that if a special adviser became the story, they had to go. Even if they had done nothing wrong whatsoever, if they became the story, that was it. Now, they are giving their own press conferences.

Why is Boris doing this? Part of the reason is a desire to re-arrange the rules of the game, in a somewhat Trump-esque fashion. Figure out that some of the old rules have no bearing outside of the Westminster bubble, so they can be ignored and further, it might be good to upend them to make new rules that are more favourable to you. I can see that, but it’s still not enough.

Yes, the prime minister probably sees Cummings as too integral to completing his programme to let go in a practical sense. I can see that. But it’s still not enough of a reason for him to go this far. I think there is a bigger factor that one no one is talking about. Sacking Dominic Cummings would have political ramifications for Johnson that could be huge amongst a group of voters he will be scared to alienate.

One of the things this whole affair has exposed is how deeply loved Dominic Cummings is amongst hardcore Brexiteers. I would go as far as to say that he is the top of the totem pole; the one who is trusted beyond all other political figures, including Boris and Farage. A lot of Brexiteers are saying on social media that they will stop supporting Boris completely and switch their allegiance (back in many instances) to the Brexit Party. Farage is waiting in the wings for this to happen. Boris understands this. You also would have Cummings on the outside again, happy to spin his own version of everything. Given he is a much better communicator than anyone in government, this could become deeply problematic.

So what I’m saying is, Boris has created a monster in Dominic Cummings. The prime minister has built a system around him that simply will not work without Cummings at the centre of it. It won’t work practically or politically. He has made himself reliant on Cummings to a massive degree that is far, far beyond the bounds of what any previous PM had established with not only any special adviser, but indeed any member of their team. Was it a good idea for Boris to have done this? I don’t think so, but time will tell. Boris has taken several gambles already that I thought would blow up in his face that have not in the end. But I do know that he has made his bed and he’s going to lie in it, come what may. Lots of people are saying Cummings going is inevitable. I wouldn’t be sure about that at all.

*****************************************************************

I have a new book out now. 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, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s available here:

The post The real problem Boris Johnson has with the Dominic Cummings affair appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Van Halen and the CoVid crisis

I’ve been writing this blog for over six years now. In that time, I have put out articles that fall into distinct categories. The most common type is me commenting on something politically relevant to the moment; this kind of article garners 90% of its hits in the first 48 hours, and often most of that is in the first 24. Another sort of thing I do here is when I write about some facet of popular culture that has less immediate impact but a long tail. For instance, one of the three most read articles ever on this site is entitled “Five Worst Kiss lyrics“; the day I published it, the piece got no more than 100 hits, and yet it has a googleability that keeps readers coming in steadily so that over a couple of years, tens of thousands ended up reading it. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk on how to run a blog.

On a slight tangent, one of my proudest moments on this site, perversely, came when I had an idea to write an article about The Police, and by that I mean the 80s band. I was interested in the fact that The Police were considered ultra-hip for a large chunk of the 80s, but the lameness of Sting’s solo career had such a powerful effect it had changed opinions on The Police retrospectively. I was trying to encapsulate this phenomenon and got stuck; that’s when I figured out another way of trying to do the same thing. I decide to write a gag article about The Police to prove my point. I called it “The Sgt Pepper of the 80’s: The Police’s “Synchronicity” revisited” and tried to write it as a straight-faced, Patrick Bateman-esque review of what I always felt was the worst Police album. I recall literally jumping for joy when the article was retweeted by Accidental Partridge (@AccidentalP) – my attempt at intentional Partridge had fooled the experts on such matters.

I give all this over as a longwinded preface to the article you are currently reading about Van Halen and how their catalogue relates to the current pandemic we are all living through. Perhaps what follows is a piss-take in the vein of my Police article. Perhaps I mean every word sincerely. Perhaps lockdown has driven me totally mad. Whichever it is, there is one band that I have been listening to far more than any other since lockdown was instituted and that is Van Halen. Somehow, their rocking party style has been a readymade substitute for a real social life. This would make sense if I had loved Van Halen as a kid, you know, when they were actually famous. The psychoanalysis of the situation would have been that I’m retreating to a safe place in a time of darkness, reconnecting with my teen self as a way of dealing with the terror of the plague. Except, I never liked Van Halen as a kid. At all. And not because I wasn’t into that style of music – I loved hard rock and heavy metal in my early teens almost exclusively. I just didn’t like Van Halen. I’m sort of discovering the band, at least as much as one can do for something that was culturally ubiquitous throughout almost all of my childhood, during the lockdown.

I should do a brief introduction of who Van Halen are for any Zoomers reading this. Van Halen are a band formed in Pasadena, California (a sort of suburb of L.A.) in the mid-1970s by two brothers named Eddie and Alex Van Halen. They joined forces with a wild man named David Lee Roth who became the lead singer, and Micheal Anthony, a dude they met in college. The band’s calling card was the following: Eddie re-invented the guitar, so much so that six-string playing can be split into pre and post Van Halen epochs; David Lee Roth took Robert Plant as a template and turned up the energy, fun and outrageousness to 11; the music was a bombastic reinvention of hard rock that sounded like nothing else at the time but within half a decade of their first album hitting the shelves would be the blueprint for 80% of the bands in America.

By 1982, the band were mega huge; an instantly recognisable pop cultural reference, almost to the point of cliche. There’s a reason the Jeff Spicoli character in Fast Times at Ridgemont High cites Halen as his favourite band. What else would it be at that point in history? But this wasn’t enough for Eddie Van Halen. He wanted the band to have actual pop hits on the radio. Selling millions of records didn’t satisfy him; he wanted to shift ten of millions. He wanted Van Halen to be the biggest band in the world.

As a result of this burning ambition, Halen made a strange journey in the second phase of their career toward an MOR (Middle of the Road, Zoomers) sound, away from their hard rock party sound and image almost completely. Synth heavy ballads became the order of the day. David Lee Roth was not down for this and left the band, to be replaced by Sammy Hagar, a man already known to hard rock fans at the time as the guy who had trouble driving a car below 55 miles per hour and employing lyrics that were notably right-wing even for heavy metal of the period. Amazingly, this shift was incredibly successful and Van Halen became a dad rock staple, selling millions of records to a totally different demographic than had first fell in love with the band. Even grunge, which toppled so many groups of Halen’s ilk in the early 90s, failed to dent Van Hagar (as the second iteration of the band is widely known) and its mega-success.

Eventually, Hagar left and Halen have been in a confused state ever since. They tried it on with David Lee Roth again, but this was unbelievably short-lived, mostly consisting of one appearance together at the MTV Awards during which Roth swore on air. They eventually tried to keep it all going with Gary Cherone, a guy who is like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of Sammy Hagar. The results were widely hated, even amongst fans of latter-day Halen. They have stumbled from nostalgia cash-in attempt to nostalgia cash-in attempt since, sometimes tempting Hagar back, other times Roth.

The way to understand whether you like Van Halen or not is to listen to the first album, which remains their best. The second song on the debut record, “Eruption”, is a two-minute long guitar solo, the impact of which will almost certainly be lost on younger listeners. Eddie Van Halen re-invents guitar playing here completely, ushering in a new style that would dominate the form from then on. Even if you aren’t in favour of this having occurred, you at least have to credit the man with the enormity of such an accomplishment. The appeal of Van Halen is somewhat like that of the Ramones debut – a big part of the fun of it is the gall and youthful energy of a bunch of guys doing something genuinely new in music and seeing how much they can get away with. One of my favourite songs on the album, “I’m the One”, is so wild it barely features any riffs; Eddie mostly just shreds throughout. The whole thing is so unwieldy it feels like it must be about to fall apart at any moment. Then they do a four-part barbershop bit a cappella right in the middle of the tune, after which, the song picks up right where it left off. This is what you will either love or hate about early Van Halen – they do whatever they feel like doing, sod it all.

Van Halen II is almost as good as the first one. It features what I think is their signature song, “D.O.A”, which musically and lyrically not only defines what’s so great about early Halen but also provided the blueprint for hundreds of other successful bands. Motley Crue, for one, basically took “D.O.A.” and made a career out it. Elsewhere, you have “Dance the Night Away” and “Beautiful Girls”, both of which define other aspects of hard rock that would be widely copied throughout the 80s.

I consider the mark of a good Van Halen song is if in the last ten seconds of it you are overcome with the urge to shout at no one in particular, “Van fucking Halen!”. The band Halen most reminds me of is the Beach Boys. The music creates its own world, one of non-stop sunshine, fun and girls. Both bands changed rock completely by their influence; both of them used vocal harmonies to great effect; both started great and went downhill, eventually becoming actually terrible, which we’ll get to shortly in the case of Van Halen.

For the third album, Women and Children First, the plan seemed to be to try and make the band’s sound deeper, both philosophically and sonically. Whereas the first two albums were more or less recorded live and then corrected here and there, WACF sees Van Halen really utilising the studio for the first time. It has some great songs on it – “In A Simple Rhyme” is the most beautiful track they ever recorded – yet the album feels like a let down from the first two, in same way Rocket to Russia isn’t quite as brilliant as the first two Ramones records. When bombast and energy is your thing, you are inevitably going to suffer from the law of diminishing returns.

But Van Halen are not the Ramones for the simple reason that Halen were technically one of the best rock bands ever assembled. They are closer to Led Zeppelin in most respects, a comparison that would surely not have been lost on Eddie Van Halen. He wanted the band to get deeper, more serious. That’s where the fourth album, Fair Warning, comes in. It is the most “metal” of all the Van Halen albums, which is part of the reason why a lot of hardcore fans think it’s the best. My opinion on it is that it’s the least good of the first five Halen albums, partly because it achieves its aims so successfully. A big part of what’s so great about early Van Halen is that feel good party vibe they so successfully put across in their music. This is why Diver Down, the fifth Halen record, is their most underrated album (it has a decent claim to be the most underrated album of all time by anyone). Fair Warning bombed at the box office, causing the label to put pressure on the band to fart out another record in record time. They went into the studio and did a bunch of covers and anything else they had lying around. This caused them to accidentally rediscover what made the first two albums so great. Diver Down is fabulous fun, from the quasi-thrash abandon of “Hang ‘Em High”, to the casually genius “Little Guitars” (one of their best ever songs) to the perfectly done 1920’s pastiche of “Big Bad Bill”, which charmingly features Jan Van Halen, Eddie and Alex’s dad, on clarinet. Diver Down is the final great Van Halen record because it is the last one where they don’t take themselves too seriously.

Now we come to the part where I didn’t like the band as a kid and how I now know why. When I was 11, 1984 was the biggest thing in the world. It was ubiquitous in a way younger people today could never fathom. Even when things are popular these days, everything in pop culture is so Balkanised it would be impossible if you didn’t experience it to imagine something being so universally admired it is inescapable. I thought perhaps it was the experience of the album’s hugeness that had soured me on both it and the band in general; surely having now come to love the first five records I would appreciate the infamous sixth one with the passage of time. But having immersed myself in their back catalogue for several weeks beforehand, I’ve come to the conclusion that 1984 isn’t a patch on their first five records and I can pinpoint why – it reeks of “maturity”. It is the musical equivalent of being told that it’s time to cut your hair, get a suit and a real job. Which might be fine advice for life but not for rock n’ roll, which to me is supposed to be about youthful abandon and escape. If it has to be serious, write lyrics about deep topics and musically go prog or something. Don’t make songs that could double as the soundtrack to a corporate video. Then again, what do I know; I’m clearly in the minority here. Sure, lots of people bought the first five Van Halen records, but way more bought the five that followed. Turns out MOR is timeless as well as big money.

That’s why the commonly held belief that David Lee Roth leaving the band and Hagar joining is what ruined Halen is incorrect. Roth left because of what the band was becoming, which was inevitably going to happen, not the other way round. Eddie had bought a studio, intent on making MOR staples from there on out. Roth didn’t want to go along with the new programme; Hagar as a replacement vocalist makes perfect sense in context. Eddie Van Halen essentially wanted to break up Van Halen and bring most of the same band back together to create a new band which would also be called Van Halen.

After finding 1984 still left me mostly cold, I tried to like Van Hagar during this lockdown discovery of the whole of Halen’s discography, I really did. And while I have to admit there is a song here and there that isn’t bad, I just hate the style to the cockles of my very soul. It’s like Bon Jovi with better chops. No thanks.

Final question: why Van Halen as the soothing choice in the time of CoVid? I think I needed music that was youthful sounding and fun but that was also something I hadn’t previously used up. I needed something new that wasn’t really new at all, in other words, if that makes any sense. I wanted to find a relic from the past that I had misconstrued back in the day and discover its true value in the present. I don’t know what that says about the virus or my reaction to it ruining all of our lives for a few months. But I do know that I now fall into the camp of people that smile when David Lee Roth asks “Have you seen Junior’s grades?” before Eddie shreds his ass off, and that’s good enough for now.

*****************************************************************

I have a new book out now. 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, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s available here:

The post Van Halen and the CoVid crisis appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

My review of the Lib Dems’ “2019 Election Review Report”

We have known for months that the Lib Dems were doing an internal review into what went wrong with the 2019 general election campaign. As someone who has strong views on this subject, I read the report, released yesterday, with anticipation.

I’ll start with this basic, overarching review: it is much, much better than I thought it would be. I should caveat that remark by saying my expectations were pretty low going in. I had cynically thought that the conclusions the report would come to as to what went wrong in December would be some painfully Lib Demy stuff along the lines of “we didn’t deliver enough leaflets” and/or “we should have been more progressive”. Instead the report is relatively bold. It delves into things I never thought it would; for instance, the dysfunctional structure of the party itself. It states that the way the president, CEO and the Federal Board interact doesn’t really work and needs urgent straightening out. It even goes as far as to say the internal bureaucracy of the party is deeply problematic in and of itself; the report might as well have wondered whether First Past the Post isn’t so bad after all, that’s how far off the usual Lib Dem trail it wanders at times. In fact, one of the things it mentions several times is how the the Lib Dems talk to themselves too much and don’t understand how to connect with the wider electorate – or sometimes, to even understand that the Lib Dem membership and the general electorate are two very different things. Another plus is that it avoids Lib Dem-speak most of the time. It is usually written in clear, concise English and is clearly produced for general public consumption. All of this is very good and pleasantly surprising.

The report is harsh on Jo Swinson. I can’t comment on anything I didn’t see, but there is one thing I will disagree with it on. It states that Jo’s team were too insular. Often times, this is actually necessary to a leader’s success; to have a close inner circle around them that is suspicious of anything outside of that ring. What the report should have said is that it wasn’t the fact that there was a close inner circle around Jo that was the problem, but rather that the team in question seemed to make some pretty terrible choices, over and over and over again, probably because (and this is a guess on my part the report reinforces) many of them were over-promoted. This is a distinctly different critique, and given this report is meant to build toward the future, an important one. You can’t want to do away with the nightmarishly labyrinthine Lib Dem inner bureaucracy and expect that the leader’s office won’t have a lot of power once you’ve done that.

The report does address this to some degree, to be fair. It calls for the professionalisation of the party in a manner that is sensible, long overdue and that would do away with a lot of the problems the report describes regarding both HQ and the leader’s office. It even goes as far as to want to, and I quote, “develop policies and practices in line with appropriate modern businesses/other sectors and benchmark ourselves against industry standards where they exist for the relevant departments.” This is ambitious and would represent a huge culture change as compared to the Lib Dems post-2015 to present.

I disagree with some of it. It overstates the effect the revoke policy had on the degree of loss; even then, it’s not nearly as bad as most sources on this topic. But even if there are some explanations presented I take issue with, most of it is relatively trivial and much more importantly, I think the recommendations the report makes are for the most part sensible. The problem comes with trying to implement them for real. Are the Lib Dems actually going to do all the stuff the report says it should? Starting from where the party is at the moment and with what must be very limited resources? I applaud the ambition the report exudes but also worry about how realistic it is to want to change as much as the report feels necessary.

Yet in the end, I’d rather the report was overambitious than a limp swan song in disguise. Congratulations to the review panel on coming up something relatively strong and decisive here instead of the usual whitewash. Whatever its faults, even those Lib Dems who don’t feel as rosy about it as I do should be able to agree on one thing – this report could have been exponentially worse in every imaginable way.

*******************************************************************

I have a new book out now. 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, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s available here:

The post My review of the Lib Dems’ “2019 Election Review Report” appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Nigel Farage is on the rise again – and this is why the Tories should start to be worried

It has been a tough six months for Nigel Farage. Riding high in the early summer of 2019 after winning the EU elections, it looked for a bit like once again Farage could change the political order in a profound way. Yet the ascension of Boris Johnson to the leadership of the Conservative Party was a killer blow from which Farage is still yet to fully recover. Used to being the darling of the British right, something which flourished when Theresa May became so widely loathed, the sudden reuniting of the right under a Conservative Party banner cut his platform out from underneath him. He tried for a bit to argue that Boris Johnson’s “deal” was a bad one; that it retread a lot of May’s deal, only with the added problem of cutting Northern Ireland loose from the rest of the country. It didn’t work, with his own supporters turning on him, telling him to get behind Boris.

Eventually, he did just that, standing down the Brexit Party almost completely and allowing the Tories a clear run at getting a decent majority. But Farage has waited in the shadows since, searching for his moment to strike back, safe in the knowledge that Boris has to run the country as well as actually bring Brexit to a satisfying conclusion. Well, it looks his time might have arrived.

Farage ingeniously figured out the government’s one major weak spot during the crisis, at least as far as right-wing voters are concerned – illegal immigration. Farage going to Dover to do a report on the state of immigrants sailing across the Channel and the government’s way of handling this in the midst of the crisis has gone mega-viral in Brexitland. It is one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of Farage’s genius at understanding what his audience wants; he has managed to cause a large number of natural Boris supporters to question everything about the Tory government without having to get into any critique of their handling of the crisis. Many on the right are now becoming increasingly anti-lockdown, yet Farage has wisely stayed clear of this, at least for the moment. He’s seen a better weak spot and attacked it instead.

When these Brexit supporters watch Farage’s reportage from Dover, they get angry at the government. They question not only their handling of immigration, but everything at that point. The way the crisis has been managed, including lockdown; the economy; the “threat” of an extension to the Brexit transition. Farage is taking his time with the intention of doing this right. Boris and his colleagues would be foolish to think they have banished the threat Farage poses to them forever. He could be back in a big way in British politics sooner than almost anyone would have foreseen even a month ago.

********************************************************************

I have a new book out now. 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, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s available here:

The post Nigel Farage is on the rise again – and this is why the Tories should start to be worried appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Ten years on from the 2010 general election. What were the long term effects of the Lib Dems going into coalition with the Tories?

Yesterday was the ten year anniversary of the 2010 general election. It wasn’t an anniversary widely celebrated. Every corner of British politics had something to feel bitter about on the night. The Tories fell short of what many felt was their destined return to being the natural party of government; the Labour Party were chucked out of government after 13 years, by far the longest they had managed to keep hold of Number 10; the Lib Dems crashed and burned on the night, far short of where they had expected, actually losing five seats over all.

What is the legacy of that election? It still seems to me like a turning point in British politics, the effects of which we are still coping with. An argument that has been made over and over again ever since was that the Lib Dems made a horrible mistake going into coalition government with the Tories. This point can be batted back and forth and I’m not really interested in going over all that here. What I’m more interested in is the legacy of the coalition, as in, the things we’re still dealing with from it politically, and whether those things were worth it.

I would argue the biggest legacy of the coalition is the British left losing their collective marbles, something that ten years later is yet to fully play out. And it happened pretty much literally overnight after the Lib-Con government was formed; Labour went from being a broad church that was still considered a natural party of government, to a weird communist rabble in the space of several days. I don’t mean the PLP and the internal structures of the party disappeared that quickly; they were still keepers of the old flame, at least temporarily. But everything at a grassroots level fell away very, very quickly. I recall the chants of “Tory scum”, a relic from the early 90s, starting up again within days of the government being formed.

Once that happened, things like Corbyn becoming leader take on an air on inevitability. That’s what made Ed Miliband’s leadership such a shitshow, when you strip away all the surface; the left had decided to lose its collective mind and nothing was going to stop that from playing itself out to the painful end. And, you know, what? I think the Lib Dems going into government with the Tories needs to take some of the blame for this happening.

If the Lib Dems hadn’t taken that fork in the road, many things might have happened. The Tories probably would have struggling on as a minority government, contested another election soon after and won handily. Yet when I think about that taking place, I have to concede that the left would probably not have gone full-communist in those circumstances. We’d have a much more functional Labour party now. How much you value such a thing is another matter, but I’m more and more convinced on this point as the years go by.

************************************************************************

I have a new book out now. 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, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s available here:

The post Ten years on from the 2010 general election. What were the long term effects of the Lib Dems going into coalition with the Tories? appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

How the rally round the flag affect is waning – and what that means for Boris and the government

The Tories are still riding high in the polls. The prime minister’s personal ratings remain outrageously positive, as do the numbers reflecting faith in the government. So, it would be highly logical for you to rubbish the idea that the rally round the flag affect is on the wane at all. But I believe at a grassroots level, something is starting to shift. A lot of normally faithful Brexiteers are beginning to not only question some of the current lockdown strategy, a lot of normally faithful Tories are as well.

Sweden is starting to become a problem for Boris. I want to repeat before I go any further that I have no expertise in the science of this and it is very complicated. I am more than willing to believe that what has worked relatively well in Sweden would not have worked in the UK for many reasons. Yet the “Scandinavian model” here is starting to attract the political gravity, while at the same time the exact opposite idea, that the UK waited too long before going into lockdown, exerts the precise opposite pull, threatening to tear the consensus across most of the country around the government’s CoVid strategy to pieces.

Another problem is the combination of lockdown fatigue and the economic impact of the lockdown starting to feel widely felt. Again, this would happen even if the government’s strategy was the exact right one, but that doesn’t matter. Sometimes, even though the experts are right, the public decides a different way – as Boris should know all too well.

What can the government do at this point? Probably not a lot. Their bed has been made. I could talk here about something that is completely in their hands, what to do about the Brexit extension, but even there, every choice is a bad one. I’ve read a lot recently about how the government can choose to extend the transition and the public won’t mind. Yes, most of the public won’t mind, but a crucial slice of the electorate that voted Tory last time in key seats will mind, a lot. Then again, going for no deal at the end of this year, possibly when we’re just starting to really economically recover from the CoVid crisis, is the largest political gamble of all time. Boris would be betting his entire legacy that the WTO Brexit crowd were at least mostly right.

What next? The government is announcing something on next steps this Sunday. I think this needs to be substantive or else these trends could actually begin to become a problem for Boris.

******************************************************************

I have a new book out now. 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, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s available here:

The post How the rally round the flag affect is waning – and what that means for Boris and the government appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Here is the emerging split on the right. Time will tell how deep it goes – and how that affects the Conservative party

One of the things we learned definitely from the December general election was how united the right was compared with how divided the left had become. While the right was able to group around Boris and the Tories, those who wanted the Conservatives out of government were split several ways, most prominently between Lib Dems and Labour.

The right remains mostly united today. The CoVid crisis has thus far strengthened the Tories with a rally round the flag effect kicking in. Yet underneath the surface is an emerging schism that, if it gets worse, will start to cause the Tories problems. I’m not saying it will, incidentally; the problem I am about to describe could all go away on its own, or things could fall nicely for the Tories and solve the issue. I’m only saying it is there.

What the general election victory was about in December was uniting the Brexit vote while allowing the splits in the Remain vote to help the Tories out. This worked beautifully for the Conservatives, resulting in an 80-seat majority. Yet this saved up problems for the future, some of which are starting to show already. On one side, you have what one could be describe as traditional Tory voters. This is less about past voting patterns than currently held political opinions, incidentally. These people are four square behind Boris and the Conservatives and it would take a series of monumental revelations about the Tories mishandling this crisis for them to even begin to question their loyalty. This group is annoyed by the other end of the Brexit equation, which are those who are questioning the lockdown more and more and at least beginning to wonder aloud if the Tories have mishandled this crisis.

What may blow this apart is Brexit, of course. The trad Tories wouldn’t be fazed by a Brexit extension in the least and would excuse it to the hilt, citing the CoVid crisis. However, the other bunch, let’s call them Brexit Party flirters, would cry foul. It would push a lot of them into outright, vocal dislike of the Tories and bring their suspicions about how the crisis and lockdown has unfolded to the surface. While I think there are way fewer people in this latter category than in the trad Tory one, this could still kick off a civil war on the right.

The Conservatives are aware of this – thus why any extension is being ruled out. Yet if they get cold feet when they see the shock a no deal Brexit might introduce and panic, then this scenario comes into play. In the middle of a pandemic crisis, I wouldn’t want to be the prime minister that has to deal with any of the choices involved there.

Even without a Brexit extension being enacted, the schism on the right could still come alive. The divisions on the handling of the crisis could become more enflamed and start to get serious for the Tories – watch Nigel Farage for signs of this happening over the next six months. He will be on any resurgence of anti-Tory feeling within the bosoms of the Brexit faithful like a fly on the proverbial faeces. Again, even if you take Brexit completely out of the equation, on one side you have a group of well-off people whose like of the Conservative party outweighs any short term concern; people who are either part of the establishment or like the fact that we have an establishment in a very old school Tory fashion. On the other side, people who want to tear the establishment down. The Conservatives have juggled this paradox impressively for a bit. Doing so forever, particularly with Corbyn no longer the leader of the opposition, might be impossible.

**************************************************************

I have a new book out now. 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, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s available here:

The post Here is the emerging split on the right. Time will tell how deep it goes – and how that affects the Conservative party appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Don’t Leave, Organise: what a meeting of Labour’s new left rearguard tells us

“The previous comments made by some of the individuals on this call are completely unacceptable. These are not people who support the values of the Labour Party. This is being made clear to the Labour MPs who attended the call in the strongest possible terms and they are being reminded of their responsibilities and obligations.”

This was the statement put out by the leader’s office yesterday when an event took place, via Zoom given the confines of the era, organised by an internal Labour grouping calling itself Don’t Leave, Organise. Its ties to the Socialist Campaign Group are difficult to ascertain, as in, why this new grouping was needed given the SCG already existed is unclear. The name is unbelievably telling, nakedly acknowledging that many on the left of Labour will want to leave the party over Starmer becoming leader and are having to be compelled to stay put and fight.

The event’s panel was deliberately provocative; that’s too polite, actually, it was a downright statement of intent. Tony Greenstein, expelled from the party for alleged anti-Semitism; Jackie Walker, expelled for allegedly having said things even Corbyn’s leadership couldn’t live with; several other Labour figures of the left known for their “anti-Zionist” views. Also there was Diane Abbott, who was shadow Home Secretary only a few weeks ago, alongside Bell Ribeiro Addy, MP for Streatham. The presence of the two PLP members was what prompted the tame, guarded statement from the leader’s office.

I probably don’t need to go into huge detail about what was discussed at the event. It was argued that the EHRC had become “weaponised and politicised”; that Ken Livingstone had been “expelled from the party for saying in truth a historical statement”. You know the drill and can guess the rest.

The event, Abbott’s attendance and the leader’s weak response tell the tale of one of the biggest challenges facing Keir Starmer’s leadership. Many have complained about the statement I led the article off with, saying Starmer should be doing much more. Why isn’t Abbott being suspended for a start? It’s because he doesn’t want to start an all out war with the left just yet, one they are using things like this event to ignite. They want the battle because they think it will lead to them getting the Labour party back again. It is, at the very least, the only way it will happen, they do have that much correct.

It is clear the left of Labour want a war with Starmer, one in which everyone loses but the left can at least pick up the pieces afterward. It seems to me they want to destroy Starmer’s leadership and then claim he was Ed Miliband 2.0. They can then pretend it’s 2015 again in 2024 and get one of their own back into the leader’s chair. They’ll tell themselves at that point that having had a Tory government for 20 years will inevitably mean people will vote for a Labour majority, regardless of how loopy left the leader of the party happens to be. This is the world these people live in.

If I was advising Starmer, I wouldn’t know what to tell him to do. When is a good time to start fighting the loony left full on? I really don’t know. All I would tell him is that while going after them full frontal has huge downsides, so does allowing this stuff to go on.

*******************************************************************

I have a new book out now. 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, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s available here:

The post Don’t Leave, Organise: what a meeting of Labour’s new left rearguard tells us appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Why the #FBPE hashtag failed – and the general lessons from that failure

Some might immediately dispute my headline. “We got six million people to sign a revoke petition! There were several marches through London attended by hundreds of thousands of people!” All right, but Brexit happened. Sort of. It’s hard not to see a pretty hardcore version of a real Brexit taking place at the end of this year. And really, it all ended in December when the Tories were given a very large parliamentary majority by the British electorate. To reverse quote the Corbynistas, FBPE lost the argument. What went wrong?

There are several ways to approach this question. You could say that Brexit was always destined to win given the 2016 referendum result added to the fact that the leaders of both major parties were pro-Brexit during the period in question. But I don’t think so; everyone knows there was a period where Brexit unquestionably felt in peril. You could say it was ultimately going to fail because of Corbyn’s Euroscepticism – this is a more compelling argument, but not quite the whole truth. As a movement, #FBPE has pretty much completely disintegrated since the general election, whereas Brexit as a social bond, despite it technically having happened in January and the government discouraging use of the term, is continuing to grow.

I have had the opportunity to work with/be interviewed by a few PhD students over the past couple of years doing work on social media and its sociological effects. Apologies in advance, but I have to tread a line here in not giving away too much of someone’s original research that will hopefully earn them a PhD in the near future, so I can only talk in generalities. Basically, one student’s research seemed to be telling her that pro-Brexit accounts are “stickier” than #FBPE ones, as in, if you have a pro-Brexit account that displays the appropriate signifiers – Union flag and/or cross of St George, “no Remoaners”, #Britishindependence, “love Europe, hate the EU” – and you follow a fellow pro-Brexit account, you are much more likely to get a follow back than if you are a #FBPE tweeter and you follow a fellow #FBPE account. And by “much more” I mean possibly between two and three times more likely.

I want to reiterate that I am mentioning this anecdotally as opposed to presenting it as a statistical slam dunk – she may have done more research after we spoke that led her to believe this wasn’t as much the case as her initial findings suggested. I mention it because when I saw her data, it rang intuitively correct. And that is important not just for understanding what happened in December 2019 but for what happens in British politics next.

Those who display a #FBPE hashtag on their Twitter profile are likely to be more discerning about where their information comes from than pro-Brexit accounts are. To turn this around into something pejorative, I suppose you could say FBPE types are more likely to be snooty about this sort of thing; skeptical of voices they are unfamiliar with, whereas because pro-Brexiters are much more doubtful about mainstream news outlets already, they are more open to entrants and unknowns. This is obviously going to have an effect on who follows whom; a pro-Brexit account is much more likely to find a new account that at least on the surface seems culturally helpful or at least not unhelpful worthy of a follow, whereas the FBPE person is going to be more selective as to which accounts it is listening to.

If it is the case that FBPE types are two to three times less likely to follow back their political brethren than pro-Brexit accounts, this tells a lot of the story already. As we’ve all become accustomed in the time of CoVid to talking about R rates, the same principle applies here; if pro-Brexit accounts are following each other at double or even treble the rate, the connectivity of that community will quickly be exponentially greater.

There are loads of reasons that contributed to and might have been a result of this relative lack of social media connectivity in FBPE land. One is that there was a definitive schism in the movement, essentially between pro and anti-Corbynites. This came to a head in the general election, with those who were at least tolerant of Corbyn were urging people to “vote tactically”, while it was clear that the anti-Corbynites were not going to vote Labour just to possibly stop Brexit. There was no such split in the pro-Brexit ranks. While there was briefly a threat in the form of the Brexit Party splitting the vote, Farage couldn’t have done other than he ended up doing, which was essentially standing aside. The ascension of Boris Johnson united the tribe. The schism was only ever a false one anyhow – most Tories didn’t like Theresa May either, so there was never anything like the problems the left had over Corbyn.

Perhaps the centre-left can unite around Starmer. The near-death of the Lib Dems as a national force – and I only add “near” here to be kind – along with the fact that Starmer is pro-European, meaning Labour won’t suffer “revenge of the Remainers” at another election, means there is hope for non-Tory politics. But it will need to be more connected and I think that is some ways off.

************************************************************************

I have a new book out now. 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, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s available here:

The post Why the #FBPE hashtag failed – and the general lessons from that failure appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Has the public really lost all faith in the mainstream media? Here’s a theory

Sky News commissioned a YouGov poll late last week around several topics, one of which was trust in the media. It came back with very low figures in favour of the mainstream media: 72% of respondents said they did not trust newspapers, 17% said they do. 64% said they do not trust television news, 24% said they did. Is trust in the media really this low in Britain?

Many in the press have described it as a push poll, which I think is harsh on it. The numbers definitely say something about the public’s trust in mainstream media outlets but also this needs unpacking. What I’m about to say is only my guess, but here goes. The polarisation of politics has got so bad that anyone trying to pursue a non-partisan line will struggle. And what I mean by partisan is not so much Conservative v Labour – although the lines are fitting onto those two main parties whether they like it or not – but what I suppose you might call Leaver v Remain, although Brexit is more an indicator here than the main driver of who fits into which camp.

Mainstream outlets in the UK try and be as “balanced” as possible, although I’ve put that word in quotations as it is hard to know what that means anymore, that’s how rough the seas have become. Every hardcore Remainer thinks the BBC is biased toward Brexit; every diehard Leaver thinks it is a Remoaner propaganda machine. They have tried to please everyone and no one feels satisfied. Yet, I don’t know what else these mainstream outlets could have done over the past five years. As an example, it would probably surprise Remainers how much Leavers attack Laura Kuenssberg, and vice versa. I would suggest that this might be an indication that she’s doing something right, but again, things are so muddled I’m not really sure what that means anymore.

I’ve covered television and radio but what about newspapers where everything is partisan already anyhow? Why is trust even lower in them? I have a theory on this. I think when people are asked this question in a poll, they think of newspapers they don’t read and journalists they don’t like. So, a rabidly right-wing Brexiter when asked about trust in print media will think of Owen Jones, and their political opposite will think of Rod Liddle. The point is, even going partisan doesn’t help because it just creates a more polarised media and in turn, an even more polarised audience. You can’t win, basically. Until further notice, we are divided.

Is there a way to fix this? I don’t know if there is. It’s just one of those things that has to play out. The introduction of social media has played with the dynamics of human interaction to such an extent that we can’t have even have basic truth anymore that people don’t think is unfairly slanted one way or another. If history is anything to go by, these phases of extreme polarisation usually play out and people come closer together again. Eventually, at least. Who knows how long this little era of partisan division might last.

In the meantime, I would suggest the following. Don’t bash the mainstream media. Its lazy, for a start. By all means, complain about individual journalists or programmes or whatever but remember that every news channel or newspaper is just trying to find an audience – and most are trying to stay as balanced and objectively truthful as they can while doing so. Imagine for a moment if the mainstream media really did collapse completely and social media was the only source of information. If you can’t imagine why this would be a disaster, you haven’t thought it through.

Also, take time to question the insanity that goes on within your own side for a change. If you’re a Remainer, think about the conspiracy theories about Boris faking his illness, or even worse, the idea that “herd immunity” was a ploy by Dominic Cummings to test eugenics theories. If you’re a Leaver, reflect on the 5G causes Covid thing awhile. There are loons on both sides and good people on both sides as well. The good people, deep down, have more in common with one another. Instead of thinking of the worst manifestation of the other side when you consider them, try and imagine your political foes as someone very much like yourself who just took a different path.

************************************************************************

I have a new book out now. 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, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s available here:

The post Has the public really lost all faith in the mainstream media? Here’s a theory appeared first on nicktyrone.com.