Theresa May’s Fake “Meetings” 285


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?

The area, “Royal” Deeside, is a magnet for rich retirees from Surrey and had the highest UKIP vote in the Scottish EU elections. It is perhaps the only part of Scotland in which May could truly feel at home.

The popular theory among election advisers is that the electorate are stupid and do not pay attention to elections. There is therefore no point in trying to discuss detail or make any intellectual explanation of policy dilemmas. All the electorate will notice are simple slogans, which can be repeated infinitely because most voters don’t pay attention and will only hear them two or three times.

The Tories are testing this theory to destruction in this election. Shielding May from any “real” encounters, from any debate with opponents, and from any questions except a very few from picked right wing media, they intend to coast to victory. In Scotland this approach is so at odds with the active citizenship that was inculcated by the referendum campaign, I believe it will fail badly. We will see.

So what did May say in Crathes? Well, according to the Guardian

“she had told her supporters that she was the only leader capable of providing “strong and stable leadership” for Britain as the country headed towards Brexit.
“At this election, people will have a clear choice between five years of strong and stable leadership with me and my team or a coalition of chaos led by Jeremy Corbyn,” she said.”

Which funnily enough is exactly what she told her supporters in Leeds at her last “meeting”. That was remarkable because, in one of the most ethnically diverse districts in the UK, she spoke to what looked exactly like a Broederbond gathering.

I was delighted that the Metro newspaper conducted a sober appraisal of my statement that Tory policies are identical in most important respects to the BNP manifesto of 2005, and found I was right. You might imagine that might cause May’s advisers at least to try to make her meetings not look like BNP gatherings. But evidently they have decided it is more important to continue to prioritise the racist vote. They are banking on it being all white on election night.

May meets nobody except ardent Tories or those in no position to argue – employees of companies in their workplace or tenants. It is appalling abuse of power.

May is simply refusing to participate in democracy – which involves candidates being open to question and debate. There is really little point in having an election of this kind. Which presumably explains this question being asked in YouGove’s current political poll.

It is all extraordinarily sad, and I suppose the saddest thing of all is media complicity in this non-election – of which the latest and dreadful example is STV’s decision to exclude the Green Party from the Scottish leadership debate.

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285 thoughts on “Theresa May’s Fake “Meetings”

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  • Ron Glaiser

    Look at the pics above. The banners all proclaim Theresa May as the choice, NOT the Conservative party. And she keeps talking about a vote ‘for me’, not the party or a local candidate. Does that mean the costs of this venture are ALSO directly attributable to Theresa May insofar as election spending regulations are concerned?

    • Muscleguy

      It’s the same here in Scotland for both the Local and General election. Scottish Tory election leaflets are blue with no mention of the Conservative and Unionist party, it is apparently from the Ruth Davidson party. They’ve been using that tactic for a while now since they think Davidson is more popular than her party. Vote for us but we won’t tell you who ‘us’ is.

      The only policy Tory Local leaflets push is NO REFERENDUM as though local councillors have any say whatsoever on that issue. What the Scottish Tory local election issues might be, nobody knows. But your local representative will represent NO REFERENDUM in the council chamber, on the refuse and recycling committee and while debating dog fouling.

      • reel guid

        I got a large Tory flyer – whether it was meant to be for the council vote or the GE I’ve no idea – and it mentioned the indy referendum 17 times.

      • J Moir

        The Aberdeenshire meeting is actually approx 20 miles from the city centre. It includes a long commuter strip (Cults, Bieldside, Peterculter & Banchory) of old established private properties that house, probably, most of the senior oil and gas industry chiefs of the area.

  • Ann McClintock n

    You could take make it up. But in a eal democracy you would neither want nor feel the frustration engendered by unsubtle and patronising “leadership”.

  • Dave

    Kim Jong May will not take questions, will not tell what her policies are and does not meet the people but only sees specially selected tory members. She now even sneeks into the venues through narrow wooded bridleways in her obsession not to meet anyone who could ask her anything at all. I am expecting all her team will be turning up with the same ridiculous hairstyle she as supreme stable leader is modeling and should the Labour party let off a manifesto commitment again she will set off a 100 missiles in response following it up with threats to The EU and Japan and Mrs Smith from Dagenham for good measure.

  • William

    During the early Franco Fascist Years my Mother in Law was threatened with the sack if she didn’t take a day off and go flag waving as Franco was driven through the streets in Barcelona,as a Republican she hated doing this but needed her job.
    Thought those days were over.

    • Habbabkuk

      What you write is historically attested, William. But let us not forget that in the same period the Caudillo was also finishing off, in one way or another, thousand of his political opponents (tens if not hundreds of thousands in the period 1939 – 1950), Hence drawing comparisons between Mrs May and the Caudillo are perhaps ever so slightly exaggerated….and, as far as many are concerned, counter-productive?

      • kailyard rules

        She (the Conservative “they”) are only beginning. Let’s wait until 2027 to tally the dead from “cuts” and further societal mayhem. Is there not a grisly start already from suicides etc.? Or have they been exagerated?

        • Habbabkuk

          Yes, but isn’t that what people were saying during the Thatcher governments?

          This massacre of the innocents has the habit of vanishing, like the Cheshire cat’s smile.

      • Anon1

        Don’t forget that Mrs May is also Kim Jong Un, Hitler and Mussolini depending on which crackpot you’re reading. All because she’s called an election and won’t appear on a TV debate.

        • Bayard

          “All because she’s called an election and won’t appear on a TV debate.”

          You go on believing that, if it comforts you, but forgive the rest of us if we treat it with the scorn it deserves.

  • Alwyn Davies

    I have feared for some time that we are moving towards a dictatorship and it would seem my fear is fully justified. No mention of Conservative Party on placards just May and the strong and stable leadership rubbish.
    No addressing the public and no debate allowed.
    Unfortunately the media have such a stranglehold on public opinion that this won’t be reported widely.

    • adams

      These comment boards are full of people like you commenting on the situation and bemoaning it . Mostly correct , but we know that . However you offer no solution as to where we can improve things for us the powerless ones .
      I suggest we get rid of the FPTP voting system which shackles us to the Lab/Tory seesaw . A Proportional voting system would neuter the right to rule Parties in just one election . Coalitions yes, but that is better than the elective dictatorship we have imposed on us by FPTP . Think about it . Just bemoaning our fate is NOT enough .

  • Sally hoy

    Looking at the photos of May I can’t believe that’s Harehills! So many suited white people. You can bet your bottom dollar they don’t live there.

    • Rebecca

      No they don’t. As a student I lived just down the road from there. If you walked about locally as a white person you were in the minority.

  • Steven Devlin

    Watch out for abnormally large turnouts,especially regarding postal votes. The myth of the silent majority strikes again

  • Sharp Ears

    Perhaps she’s been helicoptered off to stay with the Dacres in Ullapool, in one of their three homes.

    The Langwell Estate, a 20,000-acre estate near Ullapool in the Scottish Highlands, was bought by Dacre and his wife, Kathleen, for £2.45 million in 2009, according to Scottish Land Registry documents.
    https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/paul-dacre-langwell-estate?

    Dacre has given this cruel and extremely unpleasant woman a lot of space in today’s MoS to stick the knife (or stiletto as they call it) into Jeremy and then twist it.

    Weak, unstable, nonsensical
    Theresa May twists the stiletto on Corbyn as she pledges to CRUSH the Labour leader in the Election,
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4459122/Theresa-twists-stiletto-Corbyn.html

    I have not opened the link nor read the muck but the more of this there is in the tabloids, people will react against it. Her so called Christianity is a myth if she can put her name to it.

    Has megalomania set in? She is not even allowing ministers a final say on the manifesto.

    • Loony

      What is Fascism?

      Well Mussolini (and he knew of what which he spoke) defined it as a merger of state and corporate power. Today you have a globalized criminal banking cartel that commits crime after crime with all punishments specifically designed to foster ongoing criminality. Check out the rap sheet against industrial behemoths such as Siemens, VW, Tesco, BAE etc. Check out the use of unconstrained and unauthorized state power in killing the foreign man.

      All of this is done for your benefit. It is done to protect the value of your house prices and it is done to allow you to go shopping at will, Remember you have an absolute right to all of the crap that you pay such a high price for and almost immediately send to landfill.

      What political party is proposing to end this orgy of killing and consumption? Answer none. Why is this? It is because the political class is responding to the demands of the people – and you demand moar, moar, moar. So you will get moar, moar, moar.

      Railing about the immorality of others is a mere diversion that allows people to avoid confronting their own culpability as we all march blindly and unknowingly into the latest chapter of the end game.

      • fwl

        What is fascism?

        Media would have us narrow it to WW2 enemies and no others.

        But, in light of Trump it is perhaps an appropriate time for a reconsideration of the Frankfurt School.

    • adams

      These comment boards are full of people like you commenting on the situation and bemoaning it . Mostly correct , but we know that . However you offer no solution as to where we can improve things for us the powerless ones .
      I suggest we get rid of the FPTP voting system which shackles us to the Lab/Tory seesaw . A Proportional voting system would neuter the right to rule Parties in just one election . Coalitions yes, but that is better than the elective dictatorship we have imposed on us by FPTP . Think about it . Just bemoaning our fate is NOT enough

      • Chris Rogers

        adams,

        Perhaps if you did some homework, you’d notice that within the new rank and file of the Labour Party, that is those that joined after June 2015, a majority favour PR, if not a grand anti-Tory coalition – obviously, the rank and file are to the Left of the present Bitterite majority PLP and Party structures, but to say persons are not advocating both Constitutional change and PR is an understatement. Whilst the Old guard Labour Left may still dream of absolute majorities, most of us just want a Labour led coalition government, one that will implement PR within in a five year Parliamentary cycle – if May is elected PM on only 37-39% of the vote, I think enough people will say ‘enough is enough’ and start demanding PR, and if that means violent protest like our peers on mainland Europe, then so be it.

  • Chris Rogers

    With all the howls and Librul indignation against supposed fascists in the USA, Holland and presently France, it strikes me as odd that a woman who’s record on opposing immigration in government is real, who’s instigated ‘wagons of hate’ campaigns on London roads and who surrounds herself continually with white anglo-saxon types, should see herself as the saviour of the UK, and promote herself as such. Whilst I’m loath to accuse Ms May of being a fascist, the fact remains she’s ultra Right and attracts support from Racist outfits, be they UKIP, EDL or other neo-fascist groups operating within the UK. Had she perhaps offered an alternative to the austerity riddled neoliberal economic proscriptions her Party has offered the UK for these past seven years, I may have some sympathy. However, the fact remains Ms. May is probably the most Rightwing, nationalistic candidate for PM this nation has seen in more than a century. That she now believes she’s actually conducting a Presidential campaign, and is sold as much by her spiv-PR advisers cause this observer great alarm, particularly given all the venom vented at Trump and Le Pen, which seems absent in media coverage of this god awful woman and her deplorable Party of the rich and tax-avoiding elite.

    • Anon1

      If it is a party of the rich, then why is it about to win a landslide election with a predicted 45-50% of the electorate voting for it, against a socialist candidate? I can only conclude that you believe that “the rich” is anyone who isn’t on benefits.

      • Marcus

        The Tory philosophy is at its heart dishonest. They sell to the electorate that there is opportunity for all, while enacting policies that make it harder for those less well off to rise up, and easier for those already privileged to keep that privilege. They sell themselves as the party for those of us who work, while simultaneously removing our employment rights and putting barriers up to allow us to access those that are left.

        Of course if you are protecting the privileged then you get the benefit of support from that small but influential group, who control many things including the media. To put it simply, if you are not one of those already very well off, and think a conservative government is going to help you, then you have been deceived.

  • reel guid

    Channel 4 ITN news last night had a clip of May speaking at Crathes showing plenty of people around her and normal sound. They then showed a clip of Sturgeon speaking at Glasgow. They showed her in close up so you couldn’t see the people and the sound was really bad and tinny and made her voice sound harsh.

  • Sue Lovell

    The YouGov question “The best way to run the country would be to have a strong leader who does not need to bother with Parliament and elections” is the most disturbing question I’ve ever seen. It implies that “someone” is looking for the public’s backing for a dictatorship. And YouGov is owned by a Tory., So I’m guessing it won’t be a benevolent dictatorship.

    • Anon1

      Nobody “owns” YouGov. Peter Kellner (husband of the EU’s Baroness Ashton if you want to play that game), whom I assume you are referring to, had a 6% share in the company before its flotation and has since stood down.

      • Bayard

        Do you actually read your comments before posting them? If YouGov has been floated, then lots of people, or perhaps only a few, own it. That’s not “nobody”. Do you happen to know that a majority of shares is not held by someone who is a Tory as opposed to knowing that someone who is a Tory doesn’t own any shares?

        • Anon1

          “If YouGov has been floated, then lots of people, or perhaps only a few, own it.”

          Exactly. No one person owns it, ie nobody owns it. Not Peter Kellner, not Stephan Shakespeare.

          Therefore YouGov is not “owned by a Tory”, as Sue wrote above.

          Clear now?

          • Bayard

            Nobody owns it outright, yes, but that’s not what you said. Anyway no-one needs to own it outright, they just need to control more than 50% of the shares. Have you bothered to check how many shares Stephan Shakespeare owns?
            In any case, ownership is largely irrelevant. Maybe Sue was wrong to say that it is owned by a Tory. However the result on the bias of its output would be the same if it was started and is still run by a Tory, wouldn’t it?

          • Bayard

            “Have you bothered to check how many shares Stephan Shakespeare owns?”
            I see you have, now.
            “Thanks for your agreement”
            Pity you didn’t bother to read the rest of my comment.

          • Herbie

            Doesn’t matter who owns the shares.

            The management run it.

            Institutional shareholders very very rarely intervene.

            Individual shareholders even less.

            Unless it’s a major shareholder with direct interest.

            The management set the policy.

  • Postal Voter

    We need an app that shows past postal voting in all marginal constituencies, apart from advising on tactical voting. And somebody needs to make sure the upcoming postal votes are clearly delineated from the rest, this time its going to be an even smoother operation, no crashed vans on the motorway with 90k ballots. A correlation between inordinately high turnouts and postal voting in the marginal constituencies will show up like a sore thumb. Unless the postal votes are “mistakenly” mixed with polling day ballots, in which case Labour needs to be ready to raise hell. The BBC may be expected to doctor the exit poll, a whistle-blower with a concealed 4k smartfone would be very nice.

    • Anon1

      “Labour needs to be ready to raise hell”

      Erm, it’s the Labour Party that would have the most to lose from a clampdown on postal ballot fraud.

      • Chris Rogers

        Anon1,

        I’ve not used a Postal Vote in years, but given I’m not around for 8th June I thought it expedient to arrange a Postal Vote rather than get my elderly mother to vote for me in my absence. Do I now take it that I’m breaking some kind of law, or involved in voting irregularities, particularly given I’m not a resident of Jack Straws old constituency. Oh, and I’m voting Labour, but that’s democracy for you.

      • Postal Voter

        Was it Labour that won all the marginal constituencies in the last election? That crashed van with 90,000 ballots was definitely not on its way to Scotland !

  • Kay Bee

    If anyone thinks that we live in a democracy they need to understand what the word means. When they do that they will see that political parties exercising power over their members both elective and supportive is not a democracy. If our elected representatives were free to vote according to the wishes of a majority their electorate duly canvassed we might be getting close to it. Alternatively we have to have in the UK a proportional election system where those forming a government represent more that 50% of the voters and voting should be compulsory with postal votes only issued to those at each election who have a valid reason for being unable to attend the polling station.

  • CapnAndy.

    Looking at the top photo I have to confess I find the people with mad staring eyes rather worrying.

  • Anon1

    Craig Murray, who is completely in favour of the unaccountable and anti-democratic EU, believes the EU referendum should not have taken place and that the result should have been ignored.

    He believes that the result of the Scottish referendum should have been ignored. He believes that independence should be declared withlut a democratic mandate. He believes those who voted against Scots independence are either evil or thick.

    He believes that to have even the slightest concern about mass-immigration is racist. He believes that the 17 million people of this country who voted to leave the EU are racist.

    He now, apparently, believes that the Prine Minister is a fascist for calling an election and refusing to do a TV debate.

  • Sal Clynder

    It is a major scandal that this story is not even mentioned on established news media sites. Any pretence we are living in an open democracy within the UK should be challenged as widely as possible.

    • Anon1

      “Any pretence we are living in an open democracy within the UK should be challenged as widely as possible.”

      …by using your democratic right to do so in an open democracy as you have just done. Doh!

  • Anon1

    The only examples of “fascism” (in the modern sense of the word) I can think of in Britain today come from the left. “In the future the fascists will call themselves anti-fascists”, as someone once said. Look at the state of our university campuses, for example.

    • Chris Rogers

      Which Left are you talking about, as far as I’m aware its the Social Justice Warrior types who have turned our Universities into Thought Free Zones – indeed, CM was moaning about this last month I believe, only to impose his own ‘no thought zone’ here in the week. Now, if you are discussing Progressives, I’ll happily concur with you, but if you are talking the real Left, well afraid to tell you PC was never big in South Wales, or the North East or the North West & certainly in my own University between 89-96 we had absolute freedom of thought and freedom of speech – we’d all be accused of being anti-semites now for our continual support for Palestein and denunciations of Israeli actions in Lebanon.

      • Anon1

        I think the reason for the ban is that Craig doesn’t want the embarrassment of his “friends” in the blogosphere and on Twitter sniggering that most of his readers are Le Pen supporters.

        • Chris Rogers

          Anon1,

          What you fail to recognise with Mme Le Penn, is that her economic policies are exactly those that France, together with most of the EU member states actually require. Of course, you, like CM, seem to wish to conflate the economic message with the messenger. Which is actually quite sad given that Melenchon in France pushed similar economic policies to Le Pen, as does our own Corbyn – so, the message is clear, oppose neoliberal economic proscriptions, namely privatisation and austerity, unless of course you want to end up like Greece or the Baltic Nations.

        • Chris Rogers

          Does Mme Le Pen hate Israel, or is it she’s just opposed to neoliberalism and austerity, in a similar way that Corbyn and McDonnell oppose them – oh, and they are critical of Israel too, that lovely Apartheid State denounced by Mandela. Gotta love the arch Israeli apologist Habbabkuk, the person who denies the Nakba was ethnic cleansing, despite numerous Israeli scholars now stating correctly that it was, and these interpretations based on historical records in the Israeli National Archive.

        • Habbabkuk

          I have exactly the same impression, Anon!. What has happened, I think (unless various leopards have changed their spots, which I very much doubt) is that one specific commenter is still allowed free reign with “comments” about Israel,the FoI and so on -probably as an act of kindness – while rest of the obsessives have had their wings clipped. If this is so, all true friends of this blog can only approve.

        • Chris Rogers

          Habbabkuk,

          As ever your true colours are out on display. Prey tell who has had wings clipped, or is it just your imagination as ever, given any slight critique of Israel is deemed anti-Semitic by you and your brigade of Apartheid apologists.

        • michael norton

          The death rate in Greece is going up.
          The birth rate in Greece is going down.
          This is the result of EXTREME EU imposed AUSTERITY WROTE LARGE.

        • Herbie

          So, yes, everyone knows that Macron is backed by the Rothschilds.

          But, who is backing Le Pen.

          Step forward, George “Guido” Lombardi, no less:

          https://euobserver.com/elections/137613

          Yes folks.

          It’s the Lombards and the Rothschilds, all over again.

          Who’da thunk it.

          And in a Republic.

          Nothing’s changed since the 1700s.

  • Tom Douglas

    We don’t have an NHS problem:
    We don’t have an education problem:
    We don’t have an employment problem, nor a housing problem:
    “WE HAVE A TORY GOVERNMENT PROBLEM”, get rid of that and all problems are solved:

    • Bayard

      “We don’t have an NHS problem:
      We don’t have an education problem:
      We don’t have an employment problem, nor a housing problem:”
      None of those would be a problem if it wasn’t for the politicians meddling all the time. I doesn’t make any difference what colour their rosettes are, they are all meddlers or would-be meddlers. There are good reasons for getting rid of the Tories, but this is not one of them.

      • Bayard

        Spending more money on the NHS doesn’t necessarily improve it. In fact, it can have the opposite effect.

  • Anon1

    Don’t forget everyone, Craig is going to crawl to Holyrood on his knees if the Tories hit 29% in Scotland. They are currently polling 28%. Squeaky bum time for Craig.

    • Bayard

      Nice for the pollsters to see that someone still believes the tosh they churn out.

  • reel guid

    Panelbase have released more details of their Sunday Times Scotland poll.

    It shows 52% in Scotland think there should be a second indyref if the SNP win a majority of the Scottish seats in the GE.

    • michael norton

      I think it would be better for the whole of
      The United Kingdom

      if Indyref2 is called as soon as possible.
      Then we can all get on with our lives and that horrible Sturgeon woman can go and boil her head.

      • Bayard

        I hate to say it, but I have to agree. If, as many on this blog have been saying, Scotland is a net recipient of funds from the rest of the UK, then the sooner the rUK is shot of them, the better. Plus, you’d never have to listen to Nicola Sturgeon again. If the Scots want to go to hell in a handcart, why are we not giving them the handcart and wishing them good luck with that?

  • Gareth Evans

    Mind you out in the boondocks like here in cornwall the opposition are talking about Missing May not the huge deficit in social funding coming when we crash out of the EU anyone heard anything about the Tories replacing EU funding? Anything at all other than a vague promise for landowners and farmers ? What about the ferries?and the old folks homes ,who get funding via an indirect route( before the outrage from profiteers)
    Anyone at all talking about specifics rather than just vague bollocks like “global Britain” or “trading with the commonwealth”

    As someone who has worked for British countries in Places that vote leave told us “we dont trade because the EU wont let us” (sic) this lack of specifics and a manifesto of platitudes is the most frightening thing about this election I can take arms against a dictator how the hell do you do so against a platitude ?

    • Bayard

      The argument that we need to stay in the EU because our own government, that we elected ourselves, is so crap that we need another tier of government above it to keep it in order, is not a very convincing one.

  • Iain More

    I know people who were threatened with eviction by Lairds if the SNP should win the election. That was back in 1974. It is an old tried and tested Tory tactic. There were no journos there when those threats were issued not that it would matter to our obsequious Brit Nat Press and Media. How many journos were in that crowd yesterday?

    • Anon1

      How do we know that what Craig writes is true when his only source is “my contacts tell me”?

    • Bayard

      Why did you do it then? Could you not tell the direction it was heading from the headline?

  • reel guid

    When is the Prime Sinister coming to her precious precious Scotland for the next instalment of Fake The High Road?

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