Liberal Comfort Blankets

Craig Murray writes:

Carole Cadwalladr posted a nonsensical tweet today showing the swing of opinion from Remain to Leave during the EU referendum campaign and claiming this as evidence that the Leave advertising worked.

This is a ludicrously childish assumption of cause and effect by Cadwalladr. Consider this graph showing the even more spectacular leap of support by Labour during the 2017 general election campaign. Yet the Tories vastly outspent Labour on advertising.

Then look at this graph of the Scottish Independence Referendum, where again No outspent Yes on advertising but opinion swung the other way.

Carole Cadwalladr has done excellent work on the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook data sales scandals, revealing dark doings that needed to be exposed. 

But the claim that advertising spending has a decisive effect on polling intentions is very dodgy indeed. In fact, looking at the examples of the Scottish Referendum and General Election, using the Cadwalladr induction method you would conclude that advertising spending is counter-productive.

But Cadwalladr’s foolish tweet today is more than an attempt to enhance the importance of the research of Carole Cadwalladr. It is part of a continuing effort by the liberal elite to find simplistic reasons why their views were rejected by a major section of the general populace in two seismic political events – Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump. 

The elite are seeking to comfort themselves with the idea that happenings of very marginal significance – Cambridge Analytica’s audience research, or 13 Russians allegedly trying to hack unspecified info – were in fact massive factors that explain the electorate’s “deplorable” behaviour. 

For what it is worth – and perhaps it is not worth much, though it is worth more than Cadwalladr’s logical fallacy – my own view is that hatred of the political class, by a population which has come to realise it is exploited, was a major factor.

In the Brexit referendum, Remain made the fatal mistake of being fronted by detested politicians – Nick Clegg, Will and Jack Straw, George Osborne, Tony Blair. The chance to kick these people proved irresistible. Similarly Hillary was the most detested machine candidate the Democrats had available. 

By contrast, while the “authentic” personas of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage may be fake, they were well placed to tap into the anti-politician mood. 

This also explains why Remain did much better in Scotland, where it was headed by the SNP’s far less detested politicians who are themselves regarded as anti the UK establishment.

Finally, the key factor that unites all the three opinion poll charts above – General Election, Brexit and Scottish Indyref – is that opinion swings very fast indeed inside the period of broadcasting restrictions, when broadcasters have to give at least a semblance of fair time to the view which the Establishment generally derides. 

Unlike the advertising explanation, which works in only one out of three cases, the hypothesis that broadcasting restrictions redressing establishment bias is the most important factor, would appear to work very well in all three cases.

Vauxhall Motors In Which Direction?

Vauxhall is not a Left-dominated Constituency Labour Party, and in fact Kate Hoey was one of the 42 MPs who voted to keep Jeremy Corbyn as Leader.

There is more going on here. Far, far more.

Party Over Here?

After more than 20 years, they can no longer be bothered to pretend that they ever did not belong in the same party. So they are preparing to set it up. So, what would this new "centrist" party look like? Like the Coalition, that's what.

Socially liberal in the "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll" sense, but heavily committed to Tony Blair's assaults on civil liberties, and to his persecution of the poor, the sick and the disabled by such means as the Bedroom Tax. Pro-EU and pro-austerity, which is just the way the EU likes it. And signed up to the bombing into oblivion of wherever came into the heads of the Bush and Clinton courts in exile.

The Conservative activist base is like that, such as there still is. I get in trouble for saying so, but it is obviously true, which is why it annoys people when I point it out. As for its MPs, they are practically all like that, but why leave a party that had, after all, been led by the Prime Minister for the last eight years and counting?

Much of the Labour activist base used to be like that, back when there were only three men and a dog in the post-Iraq, pre-Corbyn Labour Party. But that is no longer the case. And the Lib Dems opposed the Iraq War and Blair's attacks on civil liberties, before being annihilated because they went into government with the Conservatives, so they will be giving both the Blues and the Pale Pinks a very wide berth.

All in all, then, a party of failed Labour MPs in search of Conservative activists who already have a party that can reasonably claim to be doing, if not brilliantly, then at least all right in a weak field, on the programme that this new party has to pretend is not already being offered by anyone else.

I do not think that many of them ever are going to leave the Labour Party. They intend to stay and make Jeremy Corbyn's life miserable. But there is going to be another hung Parliament, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I need £10,000 in order to stand for Parliament with any chance of winning. My crowdfunding page has been taken down without my knowledge or consent. But you can still email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com instead, and that address accepts PayPal.

“There Is Such A Thing As Going Too Far”

And if the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism were in force, then Jonathan Freedland, who certainly used to be a member of the Labour Party and who probably still is, would be expelled for having written this. Not that Jeremy Corbyn​’s internal enemies, Jew or Gentile, really care about anti-Semitism, or even very much about Israel. But the point still stands: under that Definition, Freedland would have to be expelled for this article: 

It’s the season of that most modern Jewish rite of passage: the post-GCSE summer tour to Israel. 

From what I can tell, it hasn’t changed much over the past 35 years: still the hikes through parched deserts and over ancient mountains, the night trek up Masada, moments of adolescent contemplation at the Western Wall, some museums, a kibbutz or two and constant, aching teenage laughter. But this summer there will be two clouds in otherwise blue skies.

The first is the most significant. Last week’s passage by the Knesset of the nation-state bill is a desperate blow for all those who feel bound up with Israel, who feel compelled to defend it and who wish to see it not only survive but to thrive as a just and fair society. 

It says that the right to self-determination in Israel is a right that applies to Jews only and that Hebrew is the state’s only official language, with Arabic now granted merely a “special status”. 

The combined effect of those two moves is to tell the one-fifth of the country that is not Jewish and whose mother tongue is Arabic that they are second-class citizens. 

For all those who’ve long defended Israel against the accusation that the very idea of a national home for the Jews is inherently racist and who have campaigned hard against the claim that Israel is an apartheid state, this is a heavy blow.

Israel has explicitly granted collective rights to one group of citizens and denied them to another. Those used to shouting that “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East” will need to find another slogan — because this is not how democracies behave.

Naturally, Israel’s most committed haters are heartened by this move: this proves, they say, that Israel is and always was a racist project.

That’s not right: on the contrary, this represents an appalling break from Israel’s founding vision, a terrible violation of the promise contained in the Declaration of Independence — that Israel would “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.” 

What’s more, it came in a week when Israel’s prime minister warmly hosted Viktor Orban, who won re-election with a shamelessly antisemitic campaign, and when Israeli police arrested a rabbi in a dawn raid on his home for the “crime” of conducting a non-Orthodox wedding.

Those of us who care about Israel have to face facts.

Netanyahu is not only enshrining discrimination against a minority into Israel’s basic law, he is overseeing both the Orbanisation and Iranification of Israel, twin processes which are equally depressing.

Which brings me to the second of those clouds. Earlier this summer, the RSY-Netzer youth movement told a volunteer, Nina Morris-Evans, who is 20, that she was not, after all, going to be leading an Israel tour. (Full disclosure, perhaps unnecessary in the JC: I’ve known her parents for years.) 

She had attended the now notorious Kaddish for Gaza demonstration and, as the chief executive of the UJIA candidly put it, “There is such a thing as going too far.” 

Now, my own view is that the Kaddish for Gaza event was a terrible idea. It took what is perhaps the most precious, sombre Jewish rite of mourning and used it for what looked like a political stunt. Nor did Nina help herself with a poorly-worded blog written after the event.

But none of that either justifies the extraordinary torrent of murderously violent, misogynistic abuse that rained down on her from hawkish Jews via social media — I’ve seen a sample of it and it would make your jaw drop — or makes the decision to drop her as a madricha on Israel tour a sensible one. 

That’s partly because everyone, especially the young, are allowed to make a mistake, and partly because no one involved in this sorry episode can dispute Nina’s deep, active commitment to the Jewish community and to Israel. (Happily, she is now involved in a tour for the Liberal Jewish youth movement.) 

But chiefly it’s because of the wider conclusion other young people are likely to draw: that they are only welcome in Jewish communal life if they can endorse Israel as it currently stands, the Israel of the nation state bill, the Israel that embraces Orban, the Israel of Bibi Netanyahu. 

And if they do reach that glum conclusion, too many of the next generation will simply walk away — from supporting Israel, most certainly, but also from Jewish life itself.

You can see it in the ongoing US controversy over Birthright tours: young Jews who want to reject occupation and racism, but embrace Israel.

If they are told these things are inseparable parts of a single whole, they will reject it all. That would be a huge mistake. These young people are engaged and committed. They want Israel to be the country its founders believed it could be.

Sure, they’ll make mistakes. But don’t cast them out: they might just be the people who wrench Israel off its current, tragic path.

Don't Hash This Up

I have very bad arthritis, and it is getting worse. If cannabis relieves that or anything else, then it has an active ingredient that does so. That active ingredient needs to be identified and prescribed. When we need aspirin, then we do not simply ingest bark.

Radical change can never come while the workers, the poor and the youth are in a state of stupefaction. That is what the Big Dope lobby wants. Of course it does. Look at who and what it is. We have been here before.

But there is going to be another hung Parliament, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I need £10,000 in order to stand for Parliament with any chance of winning. My crowdfunding page has been taken down without my knowledge or consent. But you can still email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com instead, and that address accepts PayPal.

Keeping The Public Safe

My friend Richard Burgon writes:

This announcement is further evidence that the Conservatives’ decision to outsource whole swathes of probation to the private sector has created an unprecedented crisis in the system.

This ideological experiment has been a costly failure, just as Labour [mostly Richard himself] warned it would be. 

This decision to throw more good money after bad and the government’s re-commitment to a privately-run probation service shows that the Conservatives have run out of all ideas on how to fix their broken system.

Delaying this announcement until Parliament closed for the summer is a tacit admission by the Government that its probation policies can’t withstand the slightest scrutiny.

With a Labour government there will be no more bailouts for failing private probation companies. Labour is fully committed to returning the probation system to the public sector.

The Tories should do likewise and create a probation system that prioritises keeping the public safe rather than boosting the profits of private companies.

Don’t take you eye off that man. Great things, and all that. Great things.

Trial Date Watch: Day 85

More than 15 weeks after I had again been due to stand trial, I now no longer have a trial date, even though it is rightly a criminal offence to fail to attend one's trial.

Had I been tried, as expected, on 6th December, then, even had I been convicted, I would already have been released, since I would by now have served even the whole of a wildly improbable six month sentence.

The legal persecution of me, which has been going on for over a year, was initiated only in order to deter me from seeking public office or to prevent my election to it, and its continuation is only to one or both of those ends. Amnesty International is on the case.

Until there is anything to add to it, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.