Emrys
Emrys's Journal"Why is the DUP so controversial? The party's stances on abortion, gay marriage and climate change"
Meet the UK Tories' new partners in power:
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The Conservatives are preparing to form a government with the Democratic Unionist Party, after shock election losses saw Theresa May’s party fall short of a Commons majority.
Tory officials took part in “extensive talks” with Northern Ireland’s largest unionist political party overnight but the deal could come at a high price.
The DUP has regularly courted controversy in its near 50-year history for its views on issues from same sex marriage to climate change.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dup-hung-parliament-results-policies-manifesto-abortion-gay-marriage-climate-change-who-are-they-a7781656.html
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The man behind the numbers: interview with Professor John Curtice
Psephology – the science of politics – is obscure enough an academic discipline to have most of us reaching for a dictionary, but the political musings, done without fear or favour, of Professor John Curtice have become as much a part of election night as warm beer, curled up sandwiches and the swingometer.
The slightly dishevelled figure of Curtice has become so ubiquitous with television coverage of the country’s political predilections that there is even a parody Twitter account in his honour - @johncurticeontv – which invites readers to spot “the legendary professor on TV”. And while certainly niche, the account already has almost 6000 dedicated followers posting images that capture Curtice mid-analysis, offering political commentary across the airwaves or simply in the background of spin rooms and television studios looking ‘in the know’.
There is also a second account set up by a self-proclaimed fan which appears to exist just to send some love to the man that has become the Sultan of Swing.
Curtice has an enclyopedic knowledge of general elections – he has followed every one of them for the last four decades – and now with trademark indefatigability, he applies his detailed academic analysis, along with an engaging and accessible punditry, to cut through the fog of numbers and paint a picture of how Britain has voted and why.
https://www.holyrood.com/articles/inside-politics/man-behind-numbers-interview-professor-john-curtice
"Church Sign": When I Find Myself in Tweets of Trouble ...
https://twitter.com/LiberalEffects/status/871540014932312064
Revealed: Tory politician links to extreme right
L4PD is linked to the racial nationalist London Forum, which in February held a secret meeting addressed by Holocaust denier David Irving. L4PD founding member Elizabeth Hobson is a vocal supporter of Davies and has shared platforms with some of the most prominent extreme-right figures active in the UK and overseas.
Davies’ 12 years serving as Conservative MP for Shipley, West Yorkshire, have been characterised by a seemingly endless series of controversies.
An outspoken critic of what he calls “feminist zealots”, Davies filibustered for more than an hour in order to prevent the passage of a bill on preventing violence against women, and has called for the word “women” to be removed from the Women and Equalities Committee.
http://hopenothate.org.uk/2017/06/02/tory-politician-links-extreme-far-right/
Davies has been a notorious filibusterer during his time in Parliament:
Here are some of the bills Tory MP Philip Davies has filibustered
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/philip-davies-filibuster-domestic-violence-a7479266.html
7 facepalm moments from Tory MP Philip Davies' 77-minute speech against a domestic violence law
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/7-facepalm-moments-tory-mp-9469223
Tory MP tries and fails to block anti-domestic violence bill with 91-minute speech
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/domestic-violence-istanbul-convention-bill-philip-davies-filibuster-parliament-snp-a7597686.html
Nigel Farage is 'person of interest' in FBI investigation into Trump and Russia
Source: The Guardian
Nigel Farage is a "person of interest" in the US counter-intelligence investigation that is looking into possible collusion between the Kremlin and Donald Trump's presidential campaign, the Guardian has been told.
Sources with knowledge of the investigation said the former Ukip leader had raised the interest of FBI investigators because of his relationships with individuals connected to both the Trump campaign and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder whom Farage visited in March.
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Farage has not been accused of wrongdoing and is not a suspect or a target of the US investigation. But being a person of interest means investigators believe he may have information about the acts that are under investigation and he may therefore be subject to their scrutiny.
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"One of the things the intelligence investigators have been looking at is points of contact and persons involved," one source said. "If you triangulate Russia, WikiLeaks, Assange and Trump associates the person who comes up with the most hits is Nigel Farage."
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/01/nigel-farage-is-person-of-interest-in-fbi-investigation-into-trump-and-russia
Given Farage's chaotic tendency to looseness of the lips, whether in his cups or not, if I was any of the others implicated in the investigations, I'd be a bit nervous about his involvement.
Is the editor of the Daily Mail the most dangerous man in Britain?
Under Paul Dacre’s 25-year reign, the paper has become the UK’s most fanatical anti-liberal voice. We trace its growing political influence through the past year’s headlinesby Tim Adams
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May and June of last year was one of those times when news seemed to take on a narrative life of its own. The only parallel I could think of was in those last febrile weeks of Princess Diana’s life, when the frenzy of the tabloid press seemed to make a shocking ending inevitable and necessary. My colleague Carole Cadwalladr has indefatigably unearthed the ways that social media became a toxic tool of the Leave campaign. That effort only reinforced what was happening in plain sight, however. Rarely has there been a moment in British political life when newspapers – and, in particular, a single powerful newspaper – focused the thinking of its readers so effectively on one question. As Mark Twain observed, “There are laws to protect the freedom of the press’s speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.”
As we face another weird polling day that hardens surreality into fact, I’ve been reading through the front pages and editorials of the Daily Mail over the course of the last year, in sequence, as if they were a novel, or a blueprint for the nation we have become. It has not been a joyful experience. I began with the starting pistol to the referendum, and ended with “Crush the saboteurs” and wondered exactly how we had got here, and where we are heading next.
Chapter one of that story takes us back to last February and the critical moment when David Cameron returned from his negotiation with the EU ministers to present his gamble to the public. He came back from Brussels with predictably few new concessions but with a sense, reinforced by his gilded passage through political life, that he could charm both his cabinet and the Tory press on to his side.
...
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/14/is-paul-dacre-most-dangerous-man-in-britain-daily-mail
One of the successes in this field in Scotland
has been the website/blog Wings Over Scotland: https://wingsoverscotland.com/about/
Set up in 2011 by occasionally abrasive ex-video games designer and journalist Stuart Campbell (his Twitter feed can be controversial at times), its main focus is Scottish independence, but its methodology is forensically (and often colourfully) picking apart media misreporting and myths from a leftist viewpoint.
The very well-visited blog (250,000 readers a month is not unusual) is crowdfunded, and its annual appeals regularly raise prodigious amounts of money from individual donations very quickly (Wikipedia estimates it's raised over £540,000 since 2013).
Vuelio rated it second only to Order, Order in its annual blog rankings.
In the run-up to the Scottish referendum, Campbell published "The Wee Blue Book", a compendium of myths and their debunking that was widely distributed online and in hard copy and is credited by many with changing minds on the subject of independence. Its approach has been copied by a number of other campaigns, from the group Scotland In Europe to the more controversial Yes California. WOS also funds independent opinion polling from time to time.
WOS's success depends very largely on the skills and personality of Campbell (who does occasionally host paid contributions from other writers), so its use as a model for other groups may be limited, but it's an under-covered success story among the "alt-left" media.
Don't be fooled by election results - Tories still face uphill battle in their bid to crush Labour
True, at 38 per cent the BBC’s projection of the English county council results into a national share of the vote was the best tally for the Conservatives since Gordon Brown occupied 10 Downing St. It was enough to put the party as much as 11 points ahead of Labour, whose performance was worse than anything recorded during Ed Miliband’s tenure as leader.
However, this 11-point lead was rather less than the 17-point lead currently to be found on average in the opinion polls. More importantly it is only four points above the lead that David Cameron secured in the 2015 general election.
That performance gave the Tories a majority of just 12, a majority that is now deemed by the Prime Minister to be inadequate. Theresa May wants a landslide, and while an 11-point lead would probably give her a comfortable victory, such an outcome on 8 June might now be deemed something of a disappointment.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/local-election-2017-latest-analysis-john-curtice-tory-landslide-general-election-a7720801.html
I'd call this a contrarian view, but it's by John Curtice, so I tend to listen.
I would quibble with his claim that the Tories' "strong advance in the local elections in Scotland gives the party good reason to anticipate making some gains north of the border next month", though.
Just as the Holyrood elections last year, run on the D'Hondt PR voting system, flattered the Tories in terms of seats (by far the majority were regional list seats rather than directly elected), the single transferable vote system Scotland used for the council elections will also have had its own more unpredictable effects in terms of down-ticket transfer votes (not least because an embarrassing number of the electorate don't seem to have grasped what was expected of them).
They could make some minor inroads beyond the sole Scottish Westminster seat they currently hold (they can barely do worse), but they've quite a hill to climb under the first past the post system, it will be a very different election despite their efforts to turn the local council campaign into an anti-indyref/SNP referendum, and a lot of their enthusiasm at the prospect of taking seats from the likes of the SNP's leader at Westminster Angus Robertson stems from wishful reading of small (hence statistically unreliable) Scottish subsamples of UK national polls.
German paper's damning account of Prime Minister's talks with European boss
This account is from Twitter Moments, which gathers together tweets on a certain theme to make them easier to follow.
One suspects the government spokesman wouldn't recognize his arse without satnav.
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/brexit/eu-kommission-skeptisch-vor-brexit-verhandlungen-14993673.html
https://twitter.com/JeremyCliffe/status/858811071347511296
Today's FAZ report on May's disastrous dinner with Juncker - briefed by senior Commission sources - is absolutely damning.
Jeremy Cliffe ✔ @JeremyCliffe
1) May had said she wanted to talk not just Brexit but also world problems; but in practice it fell to Juncker to propose one to discuss.
https://twitter.com/JeremyCliffe/status/858811271575195649
2) May has made clear to the Commission that she fully expects to be reelected as PM.
https://twitter.com/JeremyCliffe/status/858811555063967746
3) It is thought {in the Commission} that May wants to frustrate the daily business of the EU27, to improve her own negotiating position.
https://twitter.com/JeremyCliffe/status/858811847176278016
4) May seemed pissed off at {David} Davis for regaling her dinner guests of his ECJ case against her data retention measures - three times.
Cliffe's full - and predictably disturbing - tweeted summary of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung article is here: https://twitter.com/i/moments/858943560594235393
Much derision after May's whirlwind tour of the Scottish Highlands.
Buoyed by concerted MSM misreading and misrepresentation of recent polls to try to bolster the myth of the Great Tory Revival in Scotland (to the extent that they're only marginally more unpopular than they were during the Thatcher years), her campaign chose to fly her up to Banchory in Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, a ward which for a variety of demographic reasons is rather favourable to Brexit, Unionism and the Tories. It ... didn't go well.
Theresa May has fuelled accusations from Labour she has been “hiding from the public” during the general election campaign after she held her latest rally in a tiny community hall in Aberdeenshire with such poor phone reception that live coverage of the event was impossible.
About 200 Conservative campaigners crammed into Crathes hall, Banchory, a tin-roofed single-storey building at the heart of a swath of woodland in rural north-east Scotland, from where journalists were unable to tweet or broadcast.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/29/theresa-may-campaign-event-in-scottish-forest-prompts-new-claims-she-is-hiding?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
https://twitter.com/rjcurran2/status/858311383728967681
PM Theresa May arrives in north east, expected to ask Scots to vote for her to "strengthen the Union", economy & her hand in Brexit talks.
Or, as Labour activist Eoin Clarke more succinctly put it:
https://twitter.com/LabourEoin/status/858371524847337473
Theresa May sneaking in the emergency exit of a village hall in a forest 17 miles from Aberdeen. Doesn't look very strong to me.
And about those "200 Conservative campaigners" the Guardian article mentioned:
The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed that many of those forming the “audience” for Theresa May’s speech in Crathes looked even less enthusiastic than usual.
The real Tories are very obvious to spot. But when you look at the BBC video from which this picture is taken, you can see that the others not only do not look enthusiastic, they do not join in the clapping. Do not take my word for it, watch the video – the body language, apart from the obvious Tories, is more of hostages than supporters.
My contacts in Banchory tell me that this is because, in a weird Tory return to the 19th century, it was made clear to tenants of the Crathes estate that they were expected to turn out to support strong and stable leadership. The heir to the estate, in whose name the hall was booked, is Alexander Burnett, old Etonian and Tory MSP. Which century are we in?
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/04/theresa-mays-fake-meetings/
And then ...
https://twitter.com/WingsScotland/status/858576577763958785
Wings Over Scotland @WingsScotland
This is some properly audacious bullshit from Tim Shipman in the Sunday Times 😂😂😂
And so it was that later in her flying visit, Mrs. May went to the nearby village and knocked on some doors ... and knocked ... and knocked:
https://twitter.com/Trickyjabs/status/858400163278225408
For the cameras, Theresa May attempted to deliver 4 (FOUR) leaflets today...no one answered the door.#VoteLabour #GE2017
https://twitter.com/imajsaclaimant/status/858774003091222528
That awkward moment a Tory leader goes knocking on doors in front of the cameras... but nobody answers #GE2017
https://twitter.com/ScotRef101/status/858774404502827008
.@theresa_may's campaign trip to Scotland summed up in four seconds. #GE2017 #ToriesOut
How long can she (and our media) keep this up?
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Member since: Mon Sep 7, 2009, 12:57 AM
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