UK and Europe World • Page 52

Trump UK visit in the diary 13th of July. Don't think the public will be giving the warmest of welcomes.

 

two days of orange bigotry in a row i guess

 

Glad to see Rudd gone at last. Conservatives are so brazen in their determination to maintain untenable positions. I honestly thought she was just going to weather it.

 

Anyone come across any good summaries of the local elections?

From the little I've seen it looks like Labour made gains, Conservatives pretty much maintained, but the media narrative seems to be that the tories had a great day but Labour not so?

 

the result looks the same as 2017, but it’s actually better since the group most likely to vote labour (young people) don’t care about local elections and press neutrality laws don’t apply

 

It's was the most enjoyable local election in Sheffield I've known for a while.

I don't know if you've heard of the Sheffield tree crisis but it's been an awful situation here. The Labour run-council (very Blairite or just obstinate and ignorant for the sake of it it seems) got us into this awful PFI contract five years ago. It was meant to repair the awful pothole roads, instead it's been chopping down healthy trees across the city. Bit by bit people have uncovered controversial decisions and in the end a Freedom of Information request revealed that there is a target in the contract to cut 17,500 trees. It's a disgrace. Even worse is the state of the roads that the PFI was meant to fix. They've used cheap tarmac so the weeks or snow have really screwed them up - they're no better than before! Terrible.

The Council haven't listened. They've lied. They've shifted the blame. It's been terrible. Sadly the council decided to take an injunction out against protestors and then tried to get a Green councillor imprisoned. It's crazy. She was innocent - they had no evidence and the judge ordered them to pay her fees (as far as I know they haven't yet).

Needless to say, there are a lot of disgruntled citizens from all walks of life. A few of the wards most impacted have swung to the Greens and the LibDems. I decided to vote for our local Green candidate and was pleased that she won convincingly. There was no way that the Labour Council would lose their majority but hopefully they start listening and acting as this has become a scandal that is shaming a great city and a usually nice place to live. Heads need to roll to be honest.

It was a local election and it was right in this situation to vote on a local issue.

My politics lecturer wrote a really good and short article about the death of democracy in Sheffield here. Would highly recommend it.

 

Yeah I've heard about that, it sounds crazy. I've got friends in Sheffield, I ought to get in touch and see how their patch fared.

We didn't have an election but my tory MP has been on Twitter all morning talking about how the results have proven that the Momentum Mob is disastrous and Corbyn's Hard Left has been thoroughly undermined. He's shite.

Didn't realise that the neutrality laws didn't apply to local elections. That seems... bad?

 

I think in total Labour lost 4 councillors but they gained one from UKIP. I was pleased to see the Green Councillor who they tried to imprison (Alison Teal) get re-elected - her majority was 8 before so Labour really pushed but she managed to win by nearly 1400 votes.

On your other points, the way politicians/people interpret these elections is sometimes a bit ridiculous.

 

So...I just finished a big long paper on Northern Ireland and Brexit. And wow holy shit is Northern Ireland absolutely fucked. Just, completely fucked. To the extent I genuinely think unification is imminent. I give it 5 years after Brexit goes through, maybe 10 depending on the deal they get for Northern Ireland. Either that or the troubles 2.0

 

I sadly don’t think you’ll get unification without violence and tension first. Another reason Brexit has been so ill considered and poorly thought through. The fact that the government still seem to be burying their head in the sand about this is one of the greatest Brexit tragedies.

 

I don't think you'll see a return to violence on the republican side. There really just isn't the ground support that there was for it in the 60s - 80s. I think the most likely violence would be loyalist terror because, ridiculously, the UVF were never forced to decommission their weapons. But speaking as someone who lives in an area that was very supportive of the IRA, I can't see it happening again from this side without at least a decade of outright tensions, threats and weapons stockpiling.

 

Yes, I was thinking more on the loyalist side (because I think the obvious direction to go if you leave the EU is an open border or leaving the UK).

 

The main crux of why I think that, because I do think the border will most likely end up being a non-issue, it that without CAP money the North's economy is screwed in the most severe terms. Pretty much the only way for them to ever get that money again after Brexit - even if the UK should somehow remain in the Customs Union or Single Market - is to unify

Or they could somehow have NI remain wholly in the EU while the UK leaves, the "reverse Greenland", but no one but nationalists seem to want that

 

I think the republicans and nationalists would go for that if they saw it as a realistic prospect, but for now they're just letting the Tories and DUP bite themselves on the ass over and over again

 

All this royal wedding stuff is truly insufferable

 

I'm seeing rumblings about another snap GE in the autumn. How likely do we think that is? Could it go in Labour's favour this time?

 

That scares me honestly. Another Labour loss seems like it would be crippling, but a win means they have to do Brexit which could be even more crippling long term

 

I feel another election would result in a similar result. Can’t see the Tories winning an overall majority, can’t see Labour doing that either. Surely too much of a risk for May though? Can’t see it happening.