William, It Was Really Nothing

First point of interest: I saw the unthinkable mentioned yesterday.

The potential for a Conservative-Labour coalition of some description.

Now a largish account has mentioned this it means it's fully discharged into the aether. It moves from unthinkable to thinkable - as a lot of people will now have thought about it having seen this tweet. It's no longer a liminal thought, thought rarely enough to be extinguished, or left to simply skit around some lonely corner of the ocean (i.e. rarely visited places like this blog).

Manchesterism

The big thing to mention is Andy Burnham's Manchesterism. A political philosophy. (That's kind of funny isn't it, when you say it out loud. He has his own political philosophy. Like Chairman Mao, or Plato.)

Clearly this laughter is a form of snobbery on my part - that they've dared to put themselves in such a lofty bracket. However, when I get beyond that reaction, my real view is that all these philosophies are a joke. All brought into the world by people who are too big for their boots. All essentially intellectual window-dressing for, "Here's how I would manage the human football team."

So what is Manchesterism? On first appearance it just looks like globalism in a Reni hat. I should try not to be so cynical though. I always think it's good to try to look on the bright side when things don't go your own way. Nevertheless, it's hard not to see this as Labour spinning a narrative to check yet more things off their wish list. The devolution in particular is predictable. It's literally the last thing on the list I quickly knocked up before the general election. (If we exclude the added proportional representation - though I guess that's more plausible now too.)

People could look at this list and nitpick. Technically we're not back in the EU, but we've had countless efforts to 'realign', so the direction of travel on all these issues has been clear. Likewise, 'illegal to homeschool' might sound a bit hyperbolic, but they've introduced legislation that's brought in a mandatory register for children that are home-schooled (or out of school in general) - that gives local authorities the right to demand attendance of children deemed "at risk." Whatever that means - which ultimately will be whatever they want it to mean.

Refugees As Economic Units Confirmed

This last story is another amusing one. That refugees will have to pay back £10,000 of their accommodation costs once they start earning.

Firstly, it's just funny that they've made it like student loans. Like becoming a refugee in the UK is no different to going to university.

Then also it's funny because it shows that the word refugee has become utterly meaningless. A refugee is supposed to be a desperate victim fleeing certain danger. It's not very nice to put a £10,000 debt burden on such a poor soul, is it?

(I don't think they're actually putting interest on the amount owed, lol. Though that would be even funnier.)

If a party on the right did this there'd be people chaining themselves to railings over it, and they'd be using the word refugee very much in its original meaning.

Perhaps it'll act as a deterrent to some degree, I don't know. It's just crazy how the narrative makes zero sense at all. Even Labour just use the term refugee to mean migrant. Or rather, to be more accurate, it kind of means, 'illegal migrant that we're making legal.'

Oh, Manchester..

And one final little note.

With Burnham on the scene we keep getting these references to Manchester bands. In a recent video Burnham himself made a lyrical reference to the Smiths song Is It Really So Strange?

Of course, the natural riposte is, "Oh Manchester, so much to answer for.."

However, journalists and pundits will have to resist the temptation to use that one, as the song's about the Moors Murders. So potentially the response will come, "How can you use the murder of children to make a cheap political joke?!!"

Cancellation incoming.

So it'll be interesting to see if anyone is brave enough to reach for that one.

[As anyone online knows, the correct response in such a situation is to double down, refuse to apologise, and say Manchesterism is worse than the Moors Murders. That would be incredibly brave and reckless though. Maybe one for a Restore candidate.]