Interesting Links for 09-05-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Labour welcomes Tory MP who attempted to interfere with the judge in her husband's sexual assault case

(tags:Labour OhForFucksSake politics UK )

2. SNP appoint forced-birth anti-LGBT politician funded by the religious-right to deputy first minister

(tags:lgbt abortion snp OhForFucksSake )

3. New Strategy Could Lead to Universal, Long-Lasting Flu Shot

(tags:disease vaccine research )

4. The Problems with the 'Live Action' Disney Remakes

(tags:Disney movies OhForFucksSake )

5. Keir Starmer refuses to comment on Natalie Elphicke's remarks about ex-husband's victims

(tags:Labour women OhForFucksSake )

6. The Billion Dollar War for "Bluey" (the most successful TV show that most people have never seen)

(tags:TV Disney children video viaSwampers )

7. I hadn't realised that the Eurovision backlash over Israel/Palestine was getting pubs to pull their showings

(tags:eurovision Gaza Israel genocide )

8. Major cities and towns in North America replaced by major cities across the Atlantic by latitude.

(tags:maps Europe USA )

9. A desire for a loud car with a modified muffler is predicted by being a man and higher scores on psychopathy and sadism

(tags:psychology cars noise )

10. Biden warns Israel US will halt weapons supplies if it invades Rafah

(tags:USA Israel Palestine )

11. Five babies have died with whooping cough in England this year as cases soar.

(tags:disease children )

Comments

Re: 2

[andrewducker]

This is plausible.

Of course, they'll have to be those things both for ex-Conservative voters in Dover, and for ex-SNP voters in Glasgow. That will be a fun one for them to have a go at.

Re: 2

[danieldwilliam]

There are genuinely many many things the Labour Party can do in office that would keep both sets of voter onside.

Not being Rishi Sunak.

Imprisoning Michelle Mone etc.

Quietly doing something *effective* about irregular and dangerous migration across the Channel

Trying to do something to grow the UK economy.

It'll become harder later on.

But also, the trick to managing broad and heterogenous coalitions of voters is to stick firmly to those issues that they all agree are important and all agree on the solution and on which you can make progress and to avoid talking about anything else.

Re: 2

[andrewducker]

"But also, the trick to managing broad and heterogenous coalitions of voters is to stick firmly to those issues that they all agree are important and all agree on the solution and on which you can make progress and to avoid talking about anything else."

That's great until someone else starts talking about the anything else, and prodding you about it in public. At which point you go ah, um a lot. As happened to Forbes yesterday when interviewed about gay rights. How much support they lose over that kind of thing will be interesting to see. People can always shift over to The Greens, after all.

And yes, I think that Labour can get a lot of traction for the first couple of years just by not being as appallingly incompetent as the Conservatives. And can probably get a bounce at the following election using the method I outlined a few days ago. But, as seen with the Blair administration, once you've got a functional economy people tend to disagree about the rest of things, and the disagreements set in, and you start losing voters to other parties.

Re: 2

[danieldwilliam]

"Look, the voters are not interested in prodding people in public or hearing them say um a lot. Those are not the priorities of the Great British People or this Labour Government. This Labour Government has a laser like focus on the issues that do matter to the Great British People. Issues like Those Things They All or Things We are Good At. That is what matter to the Great British People and that is what matters to this Labour Government."

More seriously, the government have the advantage of setting the agenda, literally, for lots of the debate. If you've brought in legislation for a bunch of issues it's difficult for the opposition to shift focus to other issues. Not impossible but difficult. It's one of the reasons being Opposition sucks. No one cares what you think about opposition issues. They barely care what you think about government issues.

Re: 2

[andrewducker]

This is true up to a point. But I remember the debacle over the repeated questions to Tim Farron over whether gay people were sinners.