{"id":6215,"date":"2019-12-28T13:46:39","date_gmt":"2019-12-28T13:46:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=6215"},"modified":"2019-12-28T13:46:39","modified_gmt":"2019-12-28T13:46:39","slug":"u-k-election-2019-optimism-despair-and-the-fingerprints-of-steve-bannon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2019\/12\/28\/u-k-election-2019-optimism-despair-and-the-fingerprints-of-steve-bannon\/","title":{"rendered":"U.K. Election 2019 \u2013 Optimism, Despair and the Fingerprints of Steve Bannon"},"content":{"rendered":"
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  1. Long Term Patterns: the U.K. Prefers Oxford University-Educated Conservative Prime Ministers.<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Only Winston Churchill, and John Major among election-winning Prime Ministers since World War II did not pass through \u2018the city of the dreaming spires\u2019 during their formative educational years (neither University of Edinburgh-educated Gordon Brown nor Jim Callaghan, who could not afford a university education, won an election to become Prime Minister).<\/p>\n

    A former President of the Oxford Union, Boris Johnson (Baliol College, 1987), joins a list that includes Theresa May (St Hugh\u2019s, 1974), David Cameron (Brasenose College, 1988) Anthony Eden (Christchurch College, 1922), Harold MacMillan (Balliol College, 1914) Edward Heath (Balliol College, 1939), and Margaret Thatcher (Somerville College, 1947), as well as Labour PMs Tony Blair (St John\u2019s, 1974), Harold Wilson (Jesus College, 1937) and Clement Atlee (University College, 1904).<\/p>\n

    Apart from political points of difference, the well documented hostility exhibited towards Jeremy Corbyn, across the media spectrum, since he was first elected party leader<\/a><\/span>[i]<\/a> may be attributed to bias (unconscious or otherwise) against an individual perhaps deemed to lack the necessary polish \u2013 or debating skills \u2013 conferred by the elite institution.<\/p>\n

    Moreover, it is clear that Conservatism, an admittedly amorphous and pragmatic body of ideas, fluctuating historically between pro- and anti-European Community positions, represents the mainstream of British politics, with the Party holding power for forty-four of the seventy-four years since the end World War II (or 60% of that time); rising to twenty-seven out of the last forty years (or 68% of the time since 1979).<\/p>\n

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    Shares of the vote in general elections since 1832 received by Conservatives (blue), Liberals\/Liberal Democrats (orange) and others (grey).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    The Conservative formula has been based inter alia<\/em> on a partisan press, Atlanticist foreign policy involving periodic military commitment, increasing Euroscepticism since Margaret Thatcher, free trade, low taxation, privatisation of government services, and emphasis on financial services in the south-east of the country as opposed to manufacturing industry in the north and west (apart from an arms industry that earned \u00a314 billion in export revenues in 2018<\/a><\/span>[ii]<\/a>). Moreover, particularly under Tony Blair, New Labour (1997-2010) broadly embraced Conservative policies.<\/p>\n

    Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s socialist politics thus represented an usual anomaly in U.K. politics \u2013 a genuine threat to the Conservative consensus on how to govern Britain, through a grassroots movement, albeit focused in the south of the country. The scale of the threat is demonstrated by Corbyn\u2019s ability to attract almost as many votes to the Labour Party in the General Election of 2017 (c. 12.9 million) as Tony Blair did in his 1997 landslide victory (c. 13.5m).<\/p>\n

    The disturbing character of the campaign to defeat the Labour Party under Corbyn in 2019 has exposed the limits of democracy in the United Kingdom, and bears the fingerprints of Steve Bannon\u2019s tactic of unsettling opponents by \u2018deliberately crossing the line, defying normal courtesies, disrupting debate by scorning its conventions.\u2019<\/p>\n

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    The \u2018Bannonisation\u2019 of the Conservative Party: my @tortoise<\/a> piece on the profound change triggered by Boris Johnson\u2019s leadership – and the battle ahead for the party\u2019s soul #CPC19<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/VhIiRtTAvl<\/a><\/p>\n

    — Matthew d'Ancona (@MatthewdAncona) September 28, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n