Guido’s commenters are becoming like a collective character in their own right – scurrilous, sweary, obscene, libelous, sexist, gay-innuendonic, very eighteenth century. I particularly like comment 14 on this, a classic in the modified cliché genre:
Something in the air?…yes, and it stinks: there was shit hitting the fan last week but we could soon see a pile of shit with a fan beneath struggling to cope.
I have been making a bit of a prat of myself here lately, predicting that Brown will go any day now, any week now, within a month, etc. The trouble with predicting a Tipping Point is that you never know exactly when it will happen. You only know that it will. It’s like knowing that there will be a stock market crash, but not knowing exactly when to switch all your bets. Yes, indeed, there will be a crash, but when? Only if you know that do you make your killing.
I think this story, about an old-school Labour ex-MP from T’North saying I quit is rather significant. There is no talk from this woman of the scurrilous Tory media or of what a tragedy Brown is enduring – this is as close to F*** Off You Mad Bastard as it gets. This is important because it goes to the matter of Labour’s core vote. Things for Labour could just go on getting worse and worse. There is no price, to put it in stock market terms, beneath which Labour now cannot fall.
I am now waiting for the next clutch of opinion polls. They could be the Tipping Point, because these may include evidence that even hitherto incorrigibly Labour voters, utterly devoted to the nincompoop idea of the government controlling everything and subsidising everything and hence ruining everything, are now going to sit on their hands for as long as Brown continues. There is a feedback loop at work here. Some core Labour voters are already disgusted about the smearing, and more will be as they learn more. But others will be (are?) disgusted that the smearing may be causing the core Labour vote to collapse, and will decide that they also need to join the chorus to get rid of Brown, even though they personally do not dislike him that much and quite like it now that it is Tories who are being smeared. This is the essence of these landslide things. At a certain point they feed on themselves. But … when???
I quite take the point made by Thaddeus yesterday, that a government falling for merely being horrid to other politicians is not nearly as good as a government falling for being an insanely bad government, of us. I would not be making half so much fuss about this Smeargate thing here if the charge against the Brown regime was not being lead by a hardcore libertarian. I’m now digging out my small collection of Guido photos, to exhibit here.
Guido even linked today to that wonderful Libertarian Alliance piece he did in 1991 about acid house parties. (See also this piece about The Benefits of Speculation, which now makes very interesting reading.) The LA is getting richer now, what with all us Gold Subscribers stumping up a hundred quid a year, year after year, but it will be many decades before it will be able to buy publicity like that.
The Daily Telegraph has not exactly covered itself in glory. All those barbs about how it lifted Guido’s story without attributing the source must have hurt. I have just read Guidos’ rebuttal, and it is very good.
That is why a lot of the MSM are scared of the man otherwise known as Paul Staines. I have known Paul as a casual acquaintance in the libertarian scene since the 1990s and he has always struck me as very upfront about his activities. So he used to organise young raves? Excellent.
We are asked to believe that all these NuLab characters were joyless swots in their yoof, touching nothing more powerful than a pint of piss-lager and reading Viz comics for the odd cheap thrill. What a pathetic bunch of bastards they are.
And now we have the tampered with ballet box and Georgia Gould… Just saw it on the telly whilst reading Brian’s piece.
I just can’t wait to be shot of this bunch of Broons, Hoons and Loons.
JP
My reaction when reading that (actually not too bad and quite informative) Telegraph piece about Guido was that I can remember when there used to be backbench MPs like this. And the HofC was a far better place for it.
If they were trying to make Guido look bad, they failed miserably.
I value our democracy, such as it is, very highly and so regard ballott rigging to be the worst of crimes. What is the penalty in law for vote fixing can anyone here tell me? How likely, if proof emerges that vote rigging has taken place, is it that anyone will be prosecuted for it?
I remember being pretty appalled when the original selection process for a candidate for London Mayor was fixed by pretending that Frank Dobson had won instead of Ken Livingstone. It appears I was not alone in my disapproval as Ken won the post by standing as an independant and was kicked out of the Labour party for his trouble. Surely it is a cornerstone of democracy that you are not always going to get the result that you would like, but you make a commitment to abide by the result nevertheless.
The prediction business is tricky, but like a cult leader each time you are proved wrong, you get more certain.
I think we must be getting close though, but i think the economy tanking completely will cause the downfall of Brown.
We should have a clearer idea after the budget. If the markets don’t believe it, that could be the long awaited trigger.
Roll on the public lynching, Brown, quangocrats, senior policeman, data gatherers, council chiefs, hospital managers……Of all the countries that have risen up and overthrown their corrupt elite, has any had a longer list than us?
Brian, good analogy with predicting moves in the stock market. Some economists had predicted the recent credit crunch, looking at all the data on monetary growth, debt, etc, but the trick is the inflection point. Come to that, a debate is now raging in the economics profession as to when the stock market starts a sustained rally, or when inflation begins to take off. Hold onto your hats.
Now a lot of core labour voters will wonder why they should vote for a party which has attack dogs who savage Labour MPs and other Labour ministers. my dear mamma was a socialist and always voted Labour. She became quite disgusted by their antics and last time she voted when she lived oop T’North, she voted BNP!!!
50 year labour veteran and former MP Alice Mahon has quit ZANULabour in digust.
Be careful what you wish for Brian.
To use you analogy; markets usually recover fairly quickly from sharp and sudden collapse e.g. 1987, dot com etc. It takes a long bear market punctuated by futile rallies to totally destroy confidence.
So it might be worth hoping that new lab recovers a bit from this – only – to get dammed by another revalation again and again.
Just remember it takes more than one nail to seal a coffin.
Being on the other side of the Atlantic, I think I missed something that happened over there. Can someone explain or post a link explaining this “ballot box tampering”? Mind you, I’m not shocked by such. After all, as an American I know that our electoral system cannot be trusted to deliver a result reflecting actual votes cast; what with huge numbers of bogus registrations used by the Democrats to vote unchecked absentee ballots, no proof that the person voting is the person registered or if the registration reflects a real person, voting by illegal aliens, and vote counting procedures that are run by the Democrats [who seem to regularly “find” pre-stuffed ballot boxes in their cars and homes during recounts]. I did find it interesting that Detroit now has more registered voters than it has men, women, children, and household pets.
In any case, what happened along this line in Britain; and is there any sort of outrage outside the Brit blogosphere?
Subotai Bahadur
I just don’t see Gordon going at this point in time. The tipping point resides with the Cabinet, and their collective loyalty to the Prime Minister.
Given Gordon’s staying power, and bloody hell, he is glued to power, it will require direct evidence and a party that is willing to take on the fight to unseat him.
My concern: Brown is an unstable character who refuses to be prised from No. 10 even by his bitten nails. If he is backed far enough into a corner, and if it is clear that the political process offers him no options to maintain power, will he take action to change the game in his favour?
Phillip Chaston.
Like Hitler Did?
Interestingly under Blairs reign, he tried to sneak through a bill to allow him to bypass parliment if circumstances required (basically, if he felt like it). I only heard about it because I belong to the National Secular Society and the Motorcycle Action Group and they both saw fit to mention it in their newsletters. The mainstream media, as far as I am aware, completely ignored it. I believe that backbench MPs not wanting to be relieved of what little power they have left, stopped it in its tracks.
Statutory Instruments are bad enough as it is. Power enough if you ask me.