Chatterbox Friday

Horrowing.

Is that lockdown amipal?

You have been warned. You’ve all been warned.

Morning.

I don't understand why Hartlepool voted Tory.

Also, gaming went OK, two Fortnite trio victories.

With a side portion of Brexit

Morning

It's Friday.

That is all.

Completed it mate.

Because you touch yourself at night.

Measure THIS on my swingometer

Punch the bastud.

I went to a pub yesterday. I had a good night. I felt the alcohol made me strong, in body and mind. I'm not just saying that. It did make me feel alive.

Hartlepool

Because Labour didn't care about them.

Labour foisted a remainer who had campaigned to close the local A&E as the only candidate on the long list.
They didn't even allow Hartlepool Constituency Labour Party to choose.

The MP does two things. He represents Labour to the constituency, but he also represents the constituency to Labour. Since the Blair years this is one area where Labour have absolutely lost it. 
There is a relatively small group of mostly London living people at the top of the Labour Party (and the various unions). They have sought to insert their friends and little helpers as MPs, but without gaining genuine links to the constituency in too many cases.

They have used Scotland and the North East and other areas as if they were permanent Labour resources to be mined for safe seats and otherwise ignored. The resut is that constituency parties over the last 20 years have become hollowed out in a lot of areas. There are fewer activists and they are less enthusiastic. And the union mechanisms won't turn out in the same way either.

You ended up with rotten constituencies, first in Scotland and now elsewhere where there was a big Labour vote - because people had always voted Labour, but little enthusiasm. They were ripe to fall. The people who were in their 30s and 40s in the 1990s mostly didn't pass on tribal adherence to Labour to their university educated children

I don't think Labour has ever recovered from the 2008 Financial crisis and the MPs expenses scandal. These revealed two things. Labour supported big business and banks over people and too many MPs had their snouts in the trough. 

The choice of Corbyn as leader was a reflection of that. He didn't break Labour, it was already broken. That's the only way he could get elected as leader despite all the MPs not liking him. In choosing him twice Labour supporters were sending a massive message to the party to change. Of course no one know what change is actually needed and Corbyn was a terrible leader, completely unsuited to the job, but it was a cry for help.

The trouble is Keir Starmer seems unable to do anything about this. He would, perhaps, have been a good leader after Blair. After Brown Miliband and Corbyn and with Scotland lost he is clueless.  There remains a possibility that he will win, if the Johnson led Tory party falls apart, or if its monstrosity becomes too apparent, but t the moment he appears like the Scottish Labour leaders post Dewar - a series of forgettable names mostly unable to stop Labour sliding in to irrelevance.