Below this post is a live commentary thread on local and regional elections in the United Kingdom from regular guest contributor Adrian Beaumont; I myself am overdue for new posts on late counting in Tasmania and the looming Upper Hunter by-election on May 22, so stay tuned for those over the next few days. Other than that:
• A report by Max Maddison of The Australian suggests the pendulum may be swinging back to a federal election sooner rather than later, due to “the turmoil of the start of the year dissipating and the rate of vaccinations slowly increasing”. This is said to be reflected in the New South Wales Liberal Party’s commencement of preselection proceedings this week for 13 seats, for which nominations will close on May 21.
• The Age reports that Victoria’s Supreme Court will today consider a last-minute bid by ten unions to prevent the Labor national executive from choosing a candidate for the new federal seat of Hawke on Melbourne’s north-western fringe. The national executive had been expected to vote today to endorse former state secretary Sam Rae as part of a deal between elements of Rae’s Right faction, notably federal front-bencher Richard Marles, and the Socialist Left. This freezes out the rival Right forces associated with Bill Shorten and the Australian Workers Union, who favour the rival claim of state minister Natalie Hutchins, who is also invoking the cause of affirmative action. The legal action seeks to establish that the federal party organisation had acted improperly in taking over the state branch in response to the Adem Somyurek branch-stacking scandal.
• The Australian National University’s Centre for Social Research and Methods has published results from a survey of 3459 respondents on “attitudes towards and experiences of retirement and social security income during the COVID-recession and initial recovery”. Among other things, it finds 55.0% support for an increase in compulsory superannuation from 9.5% to 12% as per current legislation, with 20.8% thinking it should be lifted even higher. Only 20.4% said it should remain at the current level, and only 3.8% believed it should be lowered or eliminated altogether.
Yes, from personal experience testing results come back within 24 hours in NSW.
Spray @ #195 Friday, May 7th, 2021 – 2:40 pm
I aint looking where your hand was.
Blairites have successfully killed the Labour Party. Job very well done.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/07/hartlepool-byelection-result-labour-starmer-conservatives
a r @ #200 Friday, May 7th, 2021 – 2:48 pm
Yeah, I am not solid on it. From experience, there is a two tiered health system and, generally, those with money can get prioritised or get out to somewhere that can prioritise them. So I am assuming that most (certainly not all) Australians in India would have access to money (if desperate) that would be beyond the reach of many Indians.
I thought there is plenty of evidence of Australians able to leave to another country. Sri Lanka, Maldives. Money talks, maybe other countries in the area too.
I said “low?”. How about “lowish?”?
Rex Douglas says:
Friday, May 7, 2021 at 3:24 pm
“Blairites have successfully killed the Labour Party. Job very well done.”
There is another thread but this has nothing to do with the Blairites. It is the Remainer Anti-Semitic Corbynistas who destroyed the UK Labor Party. Blairites know how to win elections.
Bucephalus says:
Friday, May 7, 2021 at 3:16 pm
All major coastal cities in Australia should have terminals for Floating Storage and Regasification Units in order to take advantage of LNG. WA in particular needs it as a backup in case the pipelines from the NW are compromised.
Gas will be largely phased out as an energy source in the domestic economy. The LNP are funding gas coz they can no longer fund coal. The political costs of pouring money into dodo projects is too high, even for the LNP. Even so, the energy system is being transformed. Perhaps the less they do the better. They are utterly incompetent. Better that they make a mess of gas than they make a mess of renewables.
Where is Dandy?
SMRs vs more gas in the electricity grid?
And so I’m unable to see my friends and colleagues in Sydney for another week.
Fuck you Gladys for your don’t give a shits about quarantine.
Simon Katich @ #204 Friday, May 7th, 2021 – 3:26 pm
Perhaps “lowish but increasing as the healthcare system becomes more overwhelmed”? Don’t think I’d want to see the inside of even the priciest private hospital in India right about now. Or over the coming few months, at least.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/07/hartlepool-byelection-result-labour-starmer-conservatives
The political expression of the industrial working class is fading away, in the same way that the class that created the voice has also faded away. The elites that have usually ruled in England are firmly back the saddle now. UK Labour won a majority from Opposition three times in the 20th century. Quite likely, their best days are in the past. They barely exist in Scotland, where Labour first came into existence. They’re now little more than a rump based around London.
The First World War destroyed the Liberal Party. Brexit appears to have destroyed Labour. The Tories, historically the instrument of the English ruling class, are fully in control once more.
” It is the Remainer Anti-Semitic Corbynistas who destroyed the UK Labor Party. Blairites know how to win elections.”
Bucephalus is correct. Alas.
“And so I’m unable to see my friends and colleagues in Sydney for another week.”
When did this happen? I haven’t seen any travel based restrictions.
Dandy’s been busy in a seminar with ESB peeps.
Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Blairite faction of the United Kingdom Labour Party?
N
Better that they make a mess of gas than they make a mess of renewables.?
Just like they did to the NBN!.
Roy
Hope you enjoy your bungee jump.
a r @ #209 Friday, May 7th, 2021 – 3:09 pm
I wouldnt be travelling there atm for some cheap, streetside dentistry.
But I know both Thailand and India are/were the preferred places to travel to for whitie expats in the general SE Asia region for health care.
Dandy
Is that a plea for sympathy? 🙂
Dandy Murray @ #213 Friday, May 7th, 2021 – 3:19 pm
Ah! So thats why you dont send me flowers and love poems anymore.
Don’t read to much into the Hartlepool by-election.
Hartlepool has been the” clown car of British politics” in recent times – according to Andrew Teale of Britain Elects.
http://www.britainelects.com/2021/05/05/the-may-2021-elections-previewed-part-iv-the-parliamentary-special/
Australia seems to be the last bastion of the working class (even that is fading), the rich and powerful stolen UK and America.
N says:
Friday, May 7, 2021 at 3:44 pm
“Brexit appears to have destroyed Labour.”
UK Labour destroyed itself by abandoning its working class base. Hartlepool is a classic example where they selected a Remainer Candidate for this byelection. Why would they do that? Because they have almost no connection with the working class base anymore. They sneer at Brexit, pride in the UK and England and so much more. They openly call them racists for being worried about illegal immigration and loss of jobs to floods of legal immigrants. They say men can have babies, all whites are racists and if you disagree you are a bigot, gamon, etc.
Might work. Might not.
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/david-rowe-cartoons-20210405-p57gpn
“Hope you enjoy your bungee jump.”
What the fuck are you talking about? I asked a simple question. Are there travel restrictions or not? The NSW Covid site says no but obviously you know better.
This concerns me.
She is capable. Presentable. And the authoritarian crowd love her.
This is hysterical. You’ve got to give him points for trying it on. Ohio Senator on a zoom call while he’s driving with a virtual home office screen behind him … except he’s got a seat belt on and spends the whole time looking left and right!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-07/ohio-state-senator-andrew-brenner-zoom-driving-office-background/100124502
Bucephalus
Blairites won elections sixteen years ago and earlier-a Blairite Labour party simply cannot win anything nowadays.
PaulTu says:
Friday, May 7, 2021 at 3:54 pm
“Don’t read to much into the Hartlepool by-election.”
It’s not just that election occurring.
Cud Chewer
Some possible consolation, Gladys has done a bit of dummy spitting over NSW being ‘cancelled’ by Jacinda Ardern and we know how much notice Ardern will be taking of Gladys don’t we 🙂
Jordie and Kevvy in the one room! Together dissing the Sky News special on Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull:
https://youtu.be/Vs1n-pCycA8
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3131906/india-can-learn-chinas-experience-fighting-covid-19-says-top
India could learn from China’s disease control playbook in fighting its Covid-19 surge, according to US presidential medical adviser Anthony Fauci.
Fauci offered advice on how to tackle the “very difficult and desperate situation”, during an interview with The Indian Express published on Saturday.
India has become the pandemic’s epicentre, reaching a record high of 400,000 new daily cases on Saturday,
with health care systems overwhelmed and patients struggling for access to care and supplies.
Fauci said building makeshift hospitals, like those used in Wuhan last year when the central Chinese city became the first epicentre of the pandemic, could be an emergency stopgap measure.
“What the Chinese did when they had a crisis, you might recall, literally, within a few days they built these emergency units that served as hospitals,” he said.
Ryan Spencer says:
Friday, May 7, 2021 at 4:00 pm
“A Blairite Labour party simply cannot win anything nowadays.”
The current one that was overrun by Corbynistas isn’t even close.
I have a couple of suggestions of how to improve their chances but fortunately they would ignore me.
Aqualung
Ta Da !
Thanks poroti
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/may/07/clive-palmer-and-kerry-stokes-paper-rapped-for-spreading-covid-vaccine-misinformation
he mining magnate Clive Palmer has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on newspaper ads attacking his opponents and making false claims about Australia’s Covid-19 vaccination program.
The Australian Press Council, which monitors newspaper standards, has so far been silent about this potentially dangerous spreading of misinformation.
But now the Independent Media Council, a press-council equivalent for Kerry Stokes’ stable of newspapers, has stepped up and criticised the West Australian, upholding a complaint against it for publishing a full-page advertisement by Palmer criticising the safety and legality of the Covid vaccination program, which contained factual inaccuracies it deemed unfair and “serious errors”, because they were “likely to undermine public confidence” in the program.
Oops: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-07/sa-health-unsure-of-patient-impact-of-medication-dosage-bungle/100122958
I’m not sure how a Windows patch can really be to blame, or if the union’s ambit claim for more nurses would have remediated the issue.
Bucephalus says:
Friday, May 7, 2021 at 3:55 pm
N says:
Friday, May 7, 2021 at 3:44 pm
“Brexit appears to have destroyed Labour.”
UK Labour destroyed itself by abandoning its working class base. Hartlepool is a classic example where they selected a Remainer Candidate for this byelection. Why would they do that? Because they have almost no connection with the working class base anymore. They sneer at Brexit, pride in the UK and England and so much more.
Thatcher set out to gut the Victorian/Edwardian industrial economy that provided the ballast for UK Labour. She succeeded. The communities that depended on and constituted that economy barely exist now. The political order has caught up with the Thatcher’s counter-revolution. The counter-revolutionaries are in control again in England and their reach is being extended and consolidated.
England has always been a class-ridden society….a society run for and by the elites in one form or another. For about 35 years in the second half of the 20th century it seemed another way was possible for England. But that phase is over now…well and truly over. The working people of England no longer have a political organ that speaks strongly for them. This has been the usual state of play in England. They have been divided and they have been defeated. The splitters won.
N @ #206 Friday, May 7th, 2021 – 3:32 pm
I hate to be the one to tell you this, but so is Labor.
The Blairites changed Labour from being a party for workers into a party for corporates.
A strategic and well executed political kill.
I see that UK Labour is eating itself, being imprisoned in the “tax to pay for things” trap.
Whilst the Tories are having a good laugh as they throw money around like confetti with out a care about how they pay for it, and they a being awarded for it.
Again the conservative can spend as much as they like, as long as they don’t tax the rich more.
The real problem for the left is its disconnected from the public.
The left is good at seeing a problem but useless at finding solutions because its default position is more welfare and more taxes instead of fixing the problem and the left has a terrible habit of letting people down because it talks the talk but can’t walk the walk.
Player One @ #156 Friday, May 7th, 2021 – 4:17 pm
Bill Shorten’s powerful AWU Labor faction is on a unity ticket with Morrison re gas.
Blairites fully embrace the trickle down theory.
Says it all really.
Player One says:
Friday, May 7, 2021 at 4:17 pm
N @ #206 Friday, May 7th, 2021 – 3:32 pm
Gas will be largely phased out as an energy source in the domestic economy. The LNP are funding gas coz they can no longer fund coal.
I hate to be the one to tell you this, but so is Labor.
It may have escaped your notice, but Labor are not in power federally. They are not funding anything. Unless they achieve office they will not have the luxury of choice. Where they are in power (in the States), they’re funding renewables.
When or if Labor do come to power federally, they will will almost certainly face a hostile Senate. They will likely never get to enact their platform. They will be torn to pieces like nearly every other Federal Labor government.
But feel free. Post more mis-truths.
Kakuru @ #NaN Friday, May 7th, 2021 – 3:47 pm
Yeah. Tony Blair just had to reappear with longish hair and he took the world by storm again. He knows innately what works with the general public.
Rex
When the left attacks corporations it is attacking the people that work in those corporations.
The idea of boss vs worker is outdated.
Nicko @ #NaN Friday, May 7th, 2021 – 4:20 pm
You left out the bit where they intimidate the Central Bank into keeping interest rates low so as to keep the asset price merry-go-round almost spinning off its axis. Not to mention wages so low that inflation is hard-pressed to break out of the stranglehold Tories have placed on it.
Mexicanbeemer @ #164 Friday, May 7th, 2021 – 4:30 pm
Haha …low wages and insecure work isn’t outdated
Tony Blair was a political success story until his career exploded thanks to the weapons of mass destruction nonsense.
I also quite liked Gordon Brown, although he wasn’t exactly charismatic.
I’m not sure that there’s anyone in Labour right now with anything like the electability of either Blair or Brown. Starmer is arguably the best of a bad lot. The Corbyn movement was absurd, and was taking the party into irrelevance.
Labour is lucky that Cameron’s career was finished by Brexit. Otherwise, he might have remained PM for decades. Johnson is a bozo, and could conceivably be beaten.
Distribution of GDP across economic sectors in the United Kingdom 2019. In 2019, agriculture contributed around 0.61 percent to the United Kingdom’s GDP, 17.41 percent came from the manufacturing industry, and 71.26 percent from the services sector.
The organised industrial working class that founded and populated UK Labour is no longer “organised”. No longer as numerous, it’s now also very much more diffuse and disaggregated. The political culture is following the adaptation of the economy and the labour market.
Political affiliations are being subsumed by all kinds of alternative affiliations. This is not the first time such a thing has occurred. The UK, the locus of the original industrial revolution, is rapidly becoming a post-industrial economy and society. Political shifts are inevitable and that is exactly what we’re seeing. There’s not much point in being sentimental about it. It remains to be seen how the political order will evolve.