Corb Blimey!

[DCI Harry Batt]

I think all the polling data is terrible, as it goes. Also, I thought ComRes was quite recently held to be good polling data.

[johnr]

There's an element of potato/potahto here, of course.

The keenness you mention is a real thing, agreed. I do wish you'd get people out on the street at other times, but that's me wanting something from an electoralist social democratic party which it's never going to do.

Oh, we've been doing that in local Labour too - we won a strike action against Wetherspoons a while back, and have recently been successfully teaming up with Acorn, to fight evictions.

[DCI Harry Batt]

That's good to hear. Getting people involved in local campaigns without trying to take them over and without setting up a special party campaign vehicle is an excellent thing.

[johnr]

Indeed. Reps are invited to meetings to speak, local members are then encouraged to join their protest and support them on social media. No special campaign.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Well that's cheered me up a little bit, anyway.

[E10 Rifle]

Getting people involved in local campaigns without trying to take them over and without setting up a special party campaign vehicle is an excellent thing.

Heh. You speak as if you have past experience of that sort of caper …

Anyway, TT does have a point in that there is complacency among some Labour people about the 2017 result. And some of us are as in danger of adopting a "It is always 2017" position just as Blairites fetishise residence in 1997. Things have got worse for us since 2017, we've not campaigned or performed as well as we should. There's enough people out there doing stuff to change that, and there's reason for hope, but 2017-fetishism should end.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Heh. You speak as if you have past experience of that sort of caper …

How very dare you!

[George C.]

I think all the polling data is terrible, as it goes. Also, I thought ComRes was quite recently held to be good polling data.

Sadly it's not all terrible.

See my posts passim.

[Lucy Waterman]

We’ve had enough of experts, eh?

[E10 Rifle]

Do you really think that's what she's saying?

[Lucy Waterman]

Actually, it reminds me even more of the down-is-up convolutions the Republicans used to justify appointing Harriet Miers.

[E10 Rifle]

No, she's saying that the very narrow and class-based definition of 'intelligence' promotes an awful lot of not actually that intelligent and inexpert "clever men", who aren't as bright as they're painted, while the intelligence and experience (and yes, expertise) acquired from different life situations is undervalued. Unless you actually think Cummins, Rees-Mogg et al really are "experts".

[Lucy Waterman]

My stepfather used to say lots of stuff like that, sometimes using the phrase “book learning”.

[Snake Plissken]

Part of the fun and games around Brexit is down to people like Minford and Hannan who have been afforded intellectual heavyweight status (I know) based on the fact that they read books of free market theory which break down as soon as they are exposed to the big bag of emotional idiocy that is known as a human being.

[E10 Rifle]

Good for him. And it's relevance to the theme of the article is zero.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Who was asking what "bad faith" was all about, recently?

[Nefertiti2]

My stepfather used to say lots of stuff like that, sometimes using the phrase “book learning”.

Did he also say Ulysses was his favourite book?

[delicatemoth]

I think Corbyn's done well here. I actually feel a vague spasm of hope for the first time in a while.

[Flynnie]

We’ve had enough of experts, eh?

Yeah, if your definition of expert is an Oxford PPE graduate versus an autodidact who has read Ulysses because he’s actually interested in the flipping book.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Yeah, if your definition of expert is an Oxford PPE graduate versus an autodidact who has read Ulysses because he’s actually interested in the flipping book.

Dominic Raab won a Cambridge wide prize in International law in the Tripos exam. He doesn't seem to know anything about international law that isn't dangerously wrong, or that islands are reliant on their ports for, well lots of things. (which is what a lot of international law is about)

That article is very odd. I would go a long way with the central thrust that the current british political class have seriously devalued the PPE and Oxbridge brand. I don't understand the class aspect though. Corbyn is from a solid professional upper middle class background. His parents had degrees in the 30's. He lived in a manor house. he went to a preparatory school and a grammar school. He went to university, All pretty standard for someone of his background. Not going through the motions of finishing the degree isn't. That's where it arises. The accusation is that he didn't finish because he wasn't intelligent enough to handle it.

Given that his mam was a maths teacher and his dad was an electrical engineer, by far the most plausible conclusion to draw from his academic record is that he just wasn't all that interested. That's not really that unusual for someone who was growing up in england of the 60's is it? a lot of people left school as quickly as they could and started work. I haven't heard many stories about the Educational system of the time that made it sound particularly appealing. I also don't know if it would help, I mean, His brother has multiple advanced degrees, and he seems to primarily to be a massive gobshite. However ultimately, he's from a similar class to a lot of the Tory parliamentary party, and 'posher' than quite a few. It's not a negative thing, I mean no-one can help who they are born to. But it is a relevant thing in an article like that.

There are a couple of lines that jump out.

That self-belief is key, and it’s fed by a particular sickness of the English psyche: the belief in the strength of certain individuals’ robust intellectualism and the need to be led by one’s academic betters.

Is this true? I must have missed the various cabinets of Dons over the years. I've never necessarily got the impression that this overwhelming deference and respect for intellectual endeavour was a big thing in the UK. It's certainly not a big thing here. Nobody cared that bertie Ahern was an accounts clerk in a hospital, perhaps apart from him. Much in the same way that no-one seemed to mind that Don Corleone arrived in the US as an orphan refugee. Yes most of your leaders went to Oxbridge, but that's a class marker as much as anything. It's very clear that none of the current cabinet learned anything.

Cummings isn’t stupid, but the terms in which he and others are spoken of belies a deeper problem in British politics: our idea of what counts as qualification in politics is purely informal, given that no formal qualifications exist.

Hmm, I've tried to read a couple of those Dominic Cummings posts, and the thing that I would take from them is that there are a lot of different ways to be stupid. Everything in those blogposts is ultimately stupid in its own way, the challenge is to figure out where he's gone so terribly wrong. and they also seem to be one of those sneaky psychological tests, where the thing being measured is how quickly to do you give up. It seems the quickest way to be stupid on a massive scale is to be far too convinced of the brilliance of your intellectual models that are built on foundations of shit, and when you consistently seem to display the level of understanding of other people, of the kid from Room. He's basically just a school shooter in a society where it's practically impossible for a middle class teenage oddball. with no social skills, to lay their hands on an assault rifle.

That sort of intelligence that they seem to be talking about, is only one of many forms of intelligence and Dominic cummings might be very good at solving puzzles, but on its own that sort of intelligence really only dictates how fast you can go on your path to ploughing into the bridge pillar of reality.

To become a member of Parliament, you need to win selection through your chosen party, then convince enough of your constituents to vote for you.

Is this really true in the era of central office candidate lists, and about a third of UK seats haven't changed party in obscene lengths of time.

To be a special adviser, you need to be trusted enough by your employer and share their ideological mindset. So you’re left with a clutch of MPs and their advisers tasked with cobbling together a coherent political roadmap with little but their own loosely defined historic ideology and willful self-belief to go on.

A non trivial number of advisers and assistants are kind of expected to sleep with their MP. Now try and get that picture out of your head. Vivid isn't it?

[Satchmo Distel]

I think polls are somewhat pointless because so many of the respondents are either lying or only pay attention about a day before the election.

[Etienne]

John Major was derided for his mediocre academic background too.

[Snake Plissken]

George Osborne was called an "oik" because his private school wasn't Eton.

[Etienne]

"Remember #Corbyn lost a vote of no confidence from his own MPs in 2016 by 171 to 42. And he wouldn’t go. So how can anyone trust him as a “caretaker” prime minister? #Caretakergovernment".

I've now seen this take more than once. These people have genuinely disappeared up a rabbit hole.

[E10 Rifle]

Yeah just saw that. Also, on social media this morning, the absolutely scalding hot take that expecting Corbyn to take over now would be akin to demanding that he lead a national unity government in 1940 (spot the flaws in that one). All Brexit arguments that reference the second world war are shit. Without exception.