"n'er cast a clout til May be out aka NO BREXIT: hell is other voters -- UK election 2017

no you're a mugwump

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tnA4hVf2WA

Blair sez Labour should take defeat as a certainty + concentrate on retaining enough seats to "hold them to account". Hmm .. remind me of how many of the PLP abstained against The Welfare Act etc etc..

Jesus stfu Blair.

there's enough on him now to throw him out of the party after the election, I think they should do it whatever happens

Maybe better on that Corbyn thread but Search seems broked again so

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/04/jeremy-corbyn-theresa-may-media-general-election-labour/

When we held events, rather than just covering the event and scrutinizing the policy, as they would with others, the press would seek out a trivial issue in an attempt to mock the whole thing. It felt like this was constant, desperate even. It was a campaign to undermine Jeremy. Sometimes I thought people did it because they were lazy and couldn’t be bothered to read up on the policy. A lot of them really couldn’t be bothered to engage with what we were trying to put forward.

Runciman article good enough to put in this thread too, esp the Benn prophecy

The turmoil inside the Conservative Party brought about by Maastricht – culminating in Major’s futile attempt to see off the ‘bastards’ in his cabinet – helped confirm the view that the issue of Europe was potentially fatal for the Tories. Benn’s diaries suggest a different story. The party most at risk of being destroyed by Europe was Labour. The Tories could always refract their differences through the cut and thrust of high politics, whereas for Labour there was the real risk that any divisions would prove insurmountable. Benn was never reconciled to the idea that social democracy in Britain could be achieved if decision-making power was franchised out to the bureaucrats in Brussels. Yet from the late 1980s on almost the entire parliamentary party took the opposite view, coming to believe that the EU represented the best bet for enshrining workers’ rights. In Benn’s eyes, this amounted to giving up before you’d even started. He also thought it risked stoking nationalism around Europe when the workers came to realise how they’d been betrayed.

Suspect that the next (and far bigger) battle within the Labour Party won't be between pro- and anti-Corbynite factions at all, it'll be between the pro- and anti-immigration wings of the Labour Party. Cameron's biggest 'achievement' as Tory leader may turn out to have been transferring the Conservatives' toxic divisions over Europe onto Labour.

However I feel about the various wings of the Labour Party I trust the Blue Labour faction less than any of them.

"The Tories could always refract their differences through the cut and thrust of high politics" -- what does this actually mean?

(Have to say I'm not yet ready to cede the counterfactual that all would have been well on the left, if only Benn had beaten Healey and etc -- I remember the 70s and where fall-of-empire emotions were threatening to take us, partly because i've been writing about them over the last few days. Europe allowed us a space -- 40 odd years in fact -- to, er , refract that change though other routes, mostly cultural, mostly benificial, while protecting us from the collapse in presence in the world that actually confronted us. Of course those 40 years, like the largesse from north sea oil, were almost entirely wasted…)

another looming battle within labour -- and within wider politics at large -- may well be between the old and the young, the sense of so many long-standing institutions (not just media but parliament) being not remotely fit for purpose; the sense that the old are getting their demands met at the expense of all manner of things for the young, from freedom of movement to actual jobs, housing, further, education, an accessible health system, a survivable climate…

(writing this as a tail-end boomer acutely aware that as a generation we never -- to coin a phrase -- had it so good)

"The Tories could always refract their differences through the cut and thrust of high politics" -- what does this actually mean?

I don't actually know but it's exactly what's happened post-Brexit to the Tories - a party you'd think would be even more split than Labour but none of the divisions ever became as toxic

I think he broadly means that the Tories, when push comes to shove, have always managed to rally behind their own best interests

and their best interests are far more coherent and homogenous than the ideological and cultural divides within Labour

]This is why democratizing the Labour Party is so important, because it is the first step to democratizing the British state and the economy. You have to provide a conduit through which people’s opinions and concerns can be relayed directly into the day-to-day running of government; a really dynamic government that has its ear to the ground, not one that is beholden to what lobby journalists or commentators are saying.

To achieve that, the Labour Party has to become much more than an electoral outfit. It has to have a purpose beyond electing a parliamentary elite to run the country while leaving the people on the outside. Constituency Labour Parties must become the centers of community life, running social programs, building the public’s capacity to understand the world around them. If we are to have a government of the people, for the people, and by the people then we must first raise people’s abilities to govern themselves.

999 times Yes btw as long as he remembers most people are not really interested in the mechanics of politics and that's a v healthy thing

that would make sense in terms of what's happened, except your way of saying it is clear and factual and runciman's is weird and jargony and i don't get the jargon -- why describe any of what you just said as "the cut and thrust of high politics"

(sorry, i'm being sub editor-y)

("you" there being an amalgam of lex and NV now i read more carefully)

Head v heart seems important. A lot of Tories (including most MPs) were intellectually convinced that Europe was good for Britain without being very happy about it. All the passion was on the Eurosceptic side (apart from Clarke and Heseltine). The remainers have been on the whole happy to accommodate to a changed reality. If the referendum had gone the other way I think the Tories would have been much more deeply split.

I don't think the turmoil in the Labour party is much about Europe. The referendum was a bolt of lightning revealing to two sides in a coalition how starkly different their values and priorities were. But it's been coming a long time - ever since Blair concluded the old working class had nowhere else to go and economically secure metropolitan liberals were the constituency that needed to be won over to win elections. There's only so long you can take people for granted before they say fuck you.

I read "the cut and thrust of high politics" as a nod to the idea of politics as just a game, an extension of Oxford Union debates, where insults to political opponents are basically for the bantz, which is precisely what enables Tories to inexplicably set aside what look like deep ideological divisions. Centrist Labour aspires to this I think but never transcends Sensible Middle Management territory.

What's interesting about May is that by all accounts she purports to loathe the idea of politics as just a game, but it seems like this is only the case when other people are playing it given the arc of her career.

ie it's not possible to really have deep ideological divisions if ultimately your only ideology is yourself - a political philosophy you might gravitate towards is only ever clothes you think look nice

Can't accuse Theresa May of gravitating towards nice clothes

ah yes, that makes better sense, thank you -- tho "high politics" seems a funny term for this (what's "high" about it, except it's mostly posh people doing it, and isn't it actually a kind of evasion of politics?)

also unclear if it's runciman's own analysis there, or he's channelling benn: either way i actually think it's a pretty bad description of *how* the tories have managed these divisions except for quite a brief etonian interlude (there was real venom during the major era and after, and it's really not what may is about either) (basically remainer tories are largely shutting up and falling in line, i suspect, bcz business and the city are simply switching to the assumption that brexit is on, and they must retool and adapt to the new situation)

(i was going to say, same as capitalism did under hitler, then thought better of it, then unthought unbetter of it) (angry dubdobdee now, as my twitter voters demand)

A new YouGov poll conducted for The Times has shaved 7 pts off the Con lead.

Labour increased its support by four points to 29 per cent, while the Liberal Democrats were down two points to 10 per cent and Ukip rose two points to seven per cent.

fuck polls but at this point i'd probably take a 10% gap the day before the GE

WHY DO UKIP STILL EXIST FFS

(although i guess they're still useful from soaking up votes from the foamier-mouthed end of previous conservative voters)

I'd be surprised if the UKIP vote wasn't at least halved with at least a third going Tory. A lower turnout overall might at least prevent the Tories getting more votes than two years ago and keep the UKIP vote under 1.5M. The bulk of the remaining UKIP vote will be just another direct fuck you to Labour.

to non-white people via Labour I think you mean

Sure. I mean I hope the UKIP vote shatters by that much or more but it really depends on how many of them go blue and where.

In the meantime UGH LOL Esther McVey still being a thing.

I bet the good Tory voters of Tatton are thrilled to have the scouse gobshite!

Headline figures are one thing, but this is a scary snippet on (lack of) class effect on voting in Times/YouGov poll

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-bEzZIWAAIamr9.jpg

now do the same for age alba -- that's where the divide is

I know. Let's let down the tyres on the minibuses.

Logan's Run the MFers tbh

what's the cutoff age

the point where you think voting Tory is socially acceptable

i seriously think if a momentum party does split off -- or less plausibly forces o/g labour to split off -- then it's likely to coalesce round rhetoric with an age-based resent-the-boomers it's-our-world now component

i was just watching an argument unspool on twitter abt pensions, which was beginning to touch on this -- it began with the triple-lock (linking pensions to inflation etc, which the tories are apparently considering tinkering with?), and someone joking that one thing tories and labour share is hatred of young people… bcz angela rayner is committed to keeping the triple-lock in place

anyway the meat of the quarrel was that (for the young) the double-whammy of "our taxes pay your pensions" (which is of course built into the concept of pensions) and "pensions in the future may be very different, to our disadvantage" is likely to generate quite a lot of friction if weaponised politically

Throw in 'pensioners keeping the other-demonising newspapers alive' perhaps.

the sooner ver kids are out setting things alight in the streets the better tbh

what's keeping the other-demonising newspapers alive is (i) print advertising of a particular kind and (ii) the continued (elsewhere exploded) belief that print advertising works anything like as well as it's thought to

Some top notch posts in the old brexit thread this morning. Matt DC and noodle vague blazing a trail.

Rachel Johnson, sister of Boris, has defected to the LibDems.

How could someone who is pals with the likes of Littlejohn and Hopkins (and Boris!) possibly vote for the cuddly and compassionate LibDems?

Oh, she is hinting at standing as a candidate as well.

I bet that shambling BJ performance on Today was the last straw.

some of her best friends are mugwumps

maybe she likes the smell of spaniels

Maybot stuck again https://twitter.com/rosschawkins/status/857633537671008256

Radio Derby to PM: Do you know what a mugwump is?
PM: ...what I recognise is that what we need in this country is strong and stable leadership

see she's too statesmanlike and leaderly to listen to questions or respond to them appropriately. conversation is for weaks

she is in full "that would be an ecumenical matter" autopilot for the next 6 weeks!

hope there's scope to turn S&S into a joke against them

Search reveals a surprisingly rich history of mugwump usage on ILE.

actually "strong and stable" and "smell my spaniel" are totally interchangeable: maybe this is the joke comes from

holy shit! search is back.

When we held events, rather than just covering the event and scrutinizing the policy, as they would with others, the press would seek out a trivial issue in an attempt to mock the whole thing...

the lead story on today this morning was literally "boris johnson called JC a funny name"

she is in full "that would be an ecumenical matter" autopilot for the next 6 weeks!

― calzino, Thursday, April 27, 2017 4:50 PM (fifty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ah so she did learn something at the vicarage after all

https://twitter.com/LabourEoin/status/857358855013052416

She's a straight up sociopath.

Sociopaths are popular this year.

From the Jacobin article linked upthread by Corbyn's former press officer:

"Theresa May is not a people-person, she interacts very badly with the public and tends to detach herself from them as soon as the cameras are turned off."

This, I think, is something that Labour should have greater scope to play to than they seem to be managing. It's deeply unfortunate that Corbyn has this image in the press as a grumpy uncle or pedantic fusspot schoolteacher. I remember seeing a video some time ago, probably during one of the leadership elections, and it showed Corbyn interacting with some "normal hardworking people." It seemed like he was attending some event where there happened to be a little workplace birthday party, a woman was being given a cake and sung to by colleagues and Corbyn had joined in. There was a very quotidian warmth and he put his arm around the woman whose birthday it was while singing along. It seemed completely natural. You could never imagine May or most MPs being that comfortable with ordinary people. At the time it was still Cameron leading the Tories and I remember thinking how different it would be had he tried to join in, dressed as a city banker wherever this was, maybe a school or a library or something. The unease and pungent whiff of distaste that I'm pretty sure would be palpable. I think people know in this country do know that many of those that rule have no idea what people's lives are like really, and in all likelihood think of the great unwashed as being different to them. I think that clip of May shows someone who ultimately doesn't see human beings down the end of her policies for the most part. She understands a certain technocratic notion of "fairness" only. Like I said, I think people know this and it is part of what underwrites a more general "populist" turn.

What I mean is that May herself said it best when she talked about the "nasty party," Labour need to stop talking about fairness because fairness has completely contradictory meanings made by neoliberal rationality and the legacies of class. Labour need to make people realise that in fact the Tory party and Theresa May, well sort of hate most of the people in this country. And I think the recognition of this contempt is just barely beneath the surface, held in place by a mix of "aspiration" and masochism.

http://i3.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article10269552.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/General-Election-2017.jpg

http://i3.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article10269552.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/General-Election-2017.jpg

omg plaxico

remember during the last general election when there was this strange attempt to convince people that teen girls thought ed milliband was dreamy?

gr8 post but isn't there perhaps an element that what the masochistic inferiority-complex-ridden genuflecting gbp want IS someone who's aloof, unapproachable, removed from everyday graces? someone who looks like they could just execute a thousand insurgents with a single gesture and no batted eyelid?

I think that is a very real possibility, yes.

remember during the last general election when there was this strange attempt to convince people that teen girls thought ed milliband was dreamy?

I will not stand for this calumny that Milifandom was anything less than a genuine grassroots phenomenon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milifandom

#Cameronettes, a Conservative response to the Milifandom, was suggested by 21-year-old Twitter user and University of Exeter student, Charlie Evans.[11] A Cameronettes Twitter account was created, that claims to be run by a 13-year-old girl. The hashtag has been reported by the BBC to be "less successful" than the Milifandom.[4]

someone who can command, destroy, do what they cannot

Love that Corbyn pic precisely because of how hard it is to imagine any PM of the last few decades or other Labour leader doing it. Plays well alongside the pic of May squirming between two schoolkids also.

one of the differences between corbs and may is that she was in the shadow cabinet (1999) after just two years in parliament (first elected an mp 1997), whereas corbyn -- rather famously -- was a backbencher from 1983 to 2015 w/o break. He worked on anti-war committee and justice for palestine committees and such, but will have had a LOT more time interracting with constituents than she has had, so yes, i think it's very likely he's pretty good at this. Two years* vs 32 years.

*she was a local councillor prior to this i think, but it wasn't full-time: she was already working at the bank of england at the time -- also councillors do a lot less constituency work, unless they're super-diligent and like doing it

(re that photo: michael rosen, author of "it's a bear hunt" and someone who spends his professional life reading to and working with schoolchildren, reported that JC was in fact excellent with them, as the photo tends tot suggest -- he's unselfconsciously prepared to dramatise the story as he reads… obviously it's a hostage to tabloid fortune, as is every unguarded expression while doing your real job and not working the media the way yr handlers say you must)

jezza won't help yer old fella from maidstone live out his arab-slaying fantasies. probably hug 'em. feckless

Blair sez Labour should take defeat as a certainty + concentrate on retaining enough seats to "hold them to account".

Could Blair be any more of a putz? No, don't answer that. It's rhetorical.

as is every unguarded expression while doing your real job and not working the media the way yr handlers say you must

At least Corbyn will never be papped while struggling through a bacon sarnie.

silly and strange as it was, milifandom was very much a counterspell to the sarnie episode -- the fact that a character-quality as interpreted in one platform will generate a totally different response on another (viz that awkward nerds are loveable and this quality could just as easily work for EM)

of course the scales of play were very different, and the different platforms didn't balance each other out at all -- or even, given bubble effects, interract much (they interract more now, two years later)

the victorious war on tabloid affect -- bearing in mind that print readerships are collapsing -- will be enacted in social media, with its weapons and all its irritating absurdities (is already doing so: cf kelvin mackenzie's suspension)…

(not to say that the right can't also use the internet as a weapon, obviously)

McKenzie was out and about today doubling down on the same old criticism re Liverpudlians persecution complex and blaming them instead of his own employers who definitely did not operate any sort of process where a barely-coded racist insult of a footballer in an opinion column couldn't have been deleted before printing.

yes trevor fkn phillips has been giving him cover re persecution complex

Nuttall quoted Phillips about six times in the last interview I saw with him.

the thing about milifandom is that there are teenage girls who think dzhokhar tsarnaev and james holmes the aurora shooter are dreamy so liking a centrist labour politician who may about to become pm is quite a bit more understandable

i can see why nuttall and mackenzie -- both racists after all -- assume that support from this quater does actually somehow absolve them, and that this issue will fade away… but i really don't think it will (and it won't do phillips much good either)

"Theresa May is not a people-person, she interacts very badly with the public and tends to detach herself from them as soon as the cameras are turned off."

Imagine the Conservative Party electing as leader someone like that, a woman too, and expecting them to win an election... oh hold on...

just read an otm comment earlier about how amusing the disparity is between the reality of TM's content-free listless poise + very Kim Jong Un style forays into empty looking warehouses with some happy/bored greetees in Derbyshire and the the fawning AUDACIOUS MAY PARKS TANK IN LABOUR HEARTLANDS type headlines that followed. Another 6 weeks of this and even the BBC might start turning on her.

They didn't even have to elect her this time xp

do you think she's much like thatcher though, tom, except quite superficially? i'm not sure i do

She's a space alien, so in that sense she's like Thatcher.

Actually, that is unfair on her, she's nowhere near as weird as Thatcher.

The major difference I can see between Thatcher and the post-2010 brigade, is that they have not even attempted to buy off any part of the electorate. Thatcher laced her economic terrorism with right-to-buy bonanzas, but austerity hasn't come with any bribes. I guess the royal mail selloff was an attempt to rerun this, but it didn't really pan out.

"but austerity hasn't come with any bribes"

that is what I don't get - she has made so many working people noticeably poorer, and then has the audacity to feign being on their side. But according to the latest YouGov poll lots of the people she has fucked over actually like her.

Old Spitting Image clip doing a bit of a round the other day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1l1XGiXgo0

I was thinking earlier that May would be a gift to Spitting Image.

ugh i hate spitting image worse than the tories and hignfy combined tbh

I thought it was ace at the time, never re-watched it since like.

Apparently that clip is from 91 but I didn't think they made Major entirely grey until a bit later. It's pretty weak as a sketch though was just surprised at the audacity of the writers risking the perception of calling the viewers stupid (as opposed to the politicians) in the process.

Not a great a sketch, because it can't decide whether it is taking the piss out of Tory voting Pimlico Plumbing type wealth creators or the working class Tory voters.

it was always totally tin-eared about class (and women)

(in brackets bcz not strictly relevant to this skit -- but actually the aspect that enraged me most)

Meanwhile, his sister Rachel has announced she has defected to the Liberal Democrats to stop a hard Brexit, telling a "moving" tale of how her 19 year old son Oliver cried on the morning after the referendum and said, “Boris has stolen our futures.”

I'm sure the thou doth protest too much BJ nephew will get this detail deleted from the internet at some later point, but can imagine him played by the young Charlie Boorman in Excalibur for a dramatised version of this moment.

Nuttall now standing in Boston & Skegness (CON HOLD) after failing to identify a winnable Labour seat.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-aR-7DWAAEPLm8.jpg:large

JC's excellent first week continues

praise from cesare borgia

Barwell was just sounding weak as piss on the housing crisis and trying to argue that the building of 500000 new council houses would somehow exacerbate the problem. It takes some fucked up Tory rong-thought to come up with that conclusion, but most of the PLP wouldn't probably argue with more "affordable housing" being the answer.

the LibDems are campaigning on building more social housing as well, the uncompromising stance the Tories are taking on this would be hard to defend in a debate.

debates are for the feeble

I'm gonna end up saying this every week until it happens but Blair expelled from the party has to happen

Labour need to make people realise that in fact the Tory party and Theresa May, well sort of hate most of the people in this country.

the problem is that most of the voters in this country seem to hate most of the people in this country. eg that sociopathic "poor people shouldn't have children" tweet Matt posted - sadly I just don't think that would be even close to a dealbreaker for the electorate. most of them probably agree.

I'm wondering if this is a specifically English/British trait because you're very right lex, the little lord of the manor "my family and bollocks to everybody else" mentality feels like it runs thru the history of Englishness, you could write a great book about it, but am I just sulking about a world-view that's more or less universal?

TM seems quite confident that she can actually make the working poor poorer and deflect all their anger onto "benefits scum" rather than Tory tax credit cuts they ought to be pissed off about. But of course some working people don't like to admit their shit wages were ever being propped by benefits. I think the basic need to feel superior about others and complete indifference to others problems is a probably a universal thing, history is littered with evidence to support this imo

am I just sulking about a world-view that's more or less universal?

why be cynical about your fellow countryfolk when you can be cynical about the whole hunan race?

there's a reason I'm Alright Jack was given that title and it nails a similar vibe in 1959

I have the feeling that this is the sort of stuff that works and works and works with the electorate until suddenly it doesn't and then yr authority pretty much evaporates overnight.

Re: Blair, it's very noticeable that Gordon Brown, who wasn't a good PM at all, has had the good sense to keep his mouth shut for the time being.

there's fascinating stuff about the suppressed history of the Blitz and the amount of opportunist burgling that went on while people were hiding in the air raid shelters. Dickens and Fielding full of scumbags, Pecksniff or Blifil feel like great universal Brits and I hate the idea of universals, fucking Polonius man, the archetypal stolid business Brit

IT TAKES A NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS TO HOLD US BACK

I dont think its specifically English and I think its more than fuck everyone else, its cathartic nihilsm. Cut your own head off to spite the rest of your body who cares. Anger as addiction

I have the feeling that this is the sort of stuff that works and works and works with the electorate until suddenly it doesn't and then yr authority pretty much evaporates overnight.

see 79-97 tory government. They certainly weren't worse in the last five years than previously, but all of a sudden they can't buy a vote. Perhaps the 'not being worse' was a factor in them losing the uncritical support of fascist newspaper barons, idk

last five years, ie lingering death of Major government

xxxp Polonius Danish tho

lol

I like the idea of an amoral, feckless spiv, lothario type who is profiteering from the blitz and the wartime black market as a fictional theme because it is an antidote to the overrated Band of Brothers type shite (see Nolan's next bullshit movie). But don't want the British electorate to vote with that mentality.

according to my dad during WWII my granddad was working a reserved occupation - skilled engineer and all that, tho I'm not sure how old he would have been anyway - and as conscription kicked in the factory took on a bunch of spivs who'd evaded the draft, proper Private Walker types. one day my granddad mentioned to one of these guys that the thing he missed most under rationing was a bit of cheese. so he comes in on Monday morning and opens his locker and there's the biggest wheel of cheddar he's ever seen in his life, and this lad giving him a wink and a tap on the side of his nose. my granddad told him in v Anglo-Saxon terms to get rid of it quick cos he thought he'd end up in jail.

Recommend "Caught" by Henry Green, written at the time of the Blitz, which offhandedly crams the bravery and heroism stuff into the last three pages, the rest of the book taken up with desultory shagging, bitching and arsing about.

desultory shagging, bitching and arsing about

new board title

Yeah I was thinking about Caught as well, although that was written during the war so before the whole commonly-accepted WWII narrative had even been written. General impression you get is that everyone thinks it's a pain in the arse.

Margaret Thatcher's dad was one such spiv!

My best friend's dad, who was a medic in three different hospitals during WWll, was always very quick to point out false spin from the war - his most memorable story was that the Royal Family were NOT cheered in the streets of the East End. They were booed with force.

brown will intervene in scotland. he can't help himself

though maybe not this time because the situation is so dire for slab

Brown Labour would be les mots justes

I like the idea of an amoral, feckless spiv, lothario type who is profiteering from the blitz and the wartime black market as a fictional theme because it is an antidote to the overrated Band of Brothers type shite (see Nolan's next bullshit movie). But don't want the British electorate to vote with that mentality.

― calzino, Friday, April 28, 2017 10:00 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hang about, isn't part of the problem British people having a dewey-eyed sentimental view of and obsession with the world wars?

I'm wondering if this is a specifically English/British trait because you're very right lex, the little lord of the manor "my family and bollocks to everybody else" mentality feels like it runs thru the history of Englishness, you could write a great book about it, but am I just sulking about a world-view that's more or less universal?

As a relative outsider I'd say in my experience this is a common impulse across Europe at least, even in countries where the welfare state is working very well. Part of it is that anecdotally everyone knows someone who's on benefits and in their view taking advantage of it - and people aren't easily convinced that having a few ppl abuse the system is infinitley preferable to establishing guidelines that makes it so people in need don't get them, or have to humiliate themselves to get them. A bit like how the death penalty always ends up super-popular in opinion polls.

Then of course there's the US rage at "welfare queens" despite the lolsome excuse for a social safety net they have.

What I would say is perhaps more of a typically British thing is how nasty people are about it, how gleeful in their hatred. This may just be because the tabloids push for it more here, but it also feels like kind of a national characteristic? Hope that's not an offensive way of putting it - fwiw I think the same characteristic is also at the root of a lot of great British cinema, comedy, literature.

we do love a pillory, it's true. I wonder how common that form of punishment was elsewhere.

Comedy, absolutely. Punching down is absolutely the way to get ahead these days, cf those Little Britain cunts

As for literature, I can't be the only person whose thoughts raced to friend of ilx and novelist engagé, dear old Parting Anus.

another looming battle within labour -- and within wider politics at large -- may well be between the old and the young

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/27/labour-ahead-polls-among-voters-40/

Among 18-24 year-olds Labour is 19 points ahead, according to figures from YouGov. In contrast, among the over-65s the Conservatives are ahead by a huge 49 points.

FORTY NINE POINTS.

More of a census than and election really

an

Good to see labour leading by a smaller margin among an age cohort that is a) smaller b) much less likely to vote than the age cohort the tories dominate :-(

look, i'll throw meself on the pyre as long as all these other old tossers join in

Comedy, absolutely. Punching down is absolutely the way to get ahead these days, cf those Little Britain cunts

As for literature, I can't be the only person whose thoughts raced to friend of ilx and novelist engagé, dear old Parting Anus.

To clarify: what I was trying to identify as British is not specifically punching down, but rather having this gleeful attitude towards the targets of one's hatred, whatever they may be. So the comments sections of tabloids laughing at dead refugees or having these fantasies about executing benefit scroungers are part of this, but so are Stewart Lee, Charlie Brooker, the whole Angry Young Man stuff in literature and cinema, maybe even punk rock circa '77.

Obviously I'm not equating these on a moral level but I think they come from the same kind of energy, which can be used for good and ill I guess, and which I don't think is as present anywhere else that I can think of.

Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh
Stop, traveller, and piss
— Byron on a recently suicided PM

Question i have is why seasoned cynic NV thinks ppl might be better anywhere else

that reminds me, still haven't tap-danced on Thatcher's grave

I don't think I do darragh, I'm wondering out loud if there are peculiarly English character traits. you could argue that different countries tend to end up with different kinds of polity/politician, and wonder whether this is an indicator of anything. it interests me if nothing else, cos god knows I hate what most people are talking about when they talk about Englishness.

Theresa May with approval ratings above 50 percent, that's shudderingly Real England and what can we do about it and how quickly can we take off and nuke the island from orbit?

They're doing well in Wales and Scotland too, lest we forget.

Begging people itt to NOT link to polls as reported by the Trollegraph of all things.

The Telegraph is the only website I can see at work, CNN too, so that's my excuse.

It is quite an education tbh.

only having access to the telegraph at work would vastly improve my productivity tbh, maybe i should have a chat with the it folks here about our settings

The Election in pictures: Tracey + T Watson in a real England style photo op outside Fultons Foods in Batley!
http://news.images.itv.com/image/file/1126159/img.jpg

The Telegraph is the only website I can see at work, CNN too, so that's my excuse.

I had no idea workplaces had political firewalls.

I'm wondering if this is a specifically English/British trait because you're very right lex, the little lord of the manor "my family and bollocks to everybody else" mentality feels like it runs thru the history of Englishness, you could write a great book about it, but am I just sulking about a world-view that's more or less universal?

― Brexectile dysfunction (Noodle Vague), Friday, April 28, 2017 4:09 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the trait that is unique to england for me (not all english) is defining a good day as one on which you've made someone else's day worse, and a really good day on on which you made your own day worse too.

Meanwhile Liam Gallagher continues to have an excellent week with straight-talking Beatles and curry obsessive Michael Dugher now chief exec of UK Music.

I had no idea workplaces had political firewalls.

Used to be the BBC but came in to work one day to find the BBC blocked and somebody discovered we could get the Telegraph.

someone in yr it department clearly has a sick sense of humour

check how old they are

that information technology department in full:

http://c0.thejournal.ie/media/2014/05/the-fast-show-special-752x501.jpg

bbc is basically the telegraph now amirite

the bbc isn't routinely troubled by intense pressure to provide positive coverage to advertisers tbf

The columnists on the Telegraph are really something else. Thank God they're Premium rate so you only ever get to read the opening paragraph.

yes telegraph is just a garbage fanzine these days

weird that the barclay brothers once owned the european (not that i ever read it, maybe it just aggregated horror stories abt life on the continental bit of the continent)

a garbage fanzine

shirley manson was a great frontwoman tbf

expert political science sonned by brit-pop joek

i'm only happy when it reigns

Theresa May's latest gaffe - she doesn't know where she is, but is "erm...pleased to come to ..erm.. this particular town".

we've all been there tbf

wherever there is

anyway, maybe cut back on her benzos

http://i4.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article10312756.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/Britains-Prime-Minister-Theresa-May-C.jpg

PEAKIIIIIIIIIIIING

she's been getting into gideon's stash

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2015-03/18/9/enhanced/webdr09/anigif_original-grid-image-25709-1426684476-28.gif

Theresa May's latest gaffe - she doesn't know where she is, but is "erm...pleased to come to ..erm.. this particular town"

Feel like I'm going to have posted a Blobby Themepark comment on every thread by the end of the day…

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/7b/7a/54/7b7a549f94a878b27bb2a2cc7b4dfb28.jpg

that's the kind of luxury accommodation the workers in the vast soylent green factories of post-brexit britain will aspire to

worth half a mill if it was in London, easy

This the first stream of the affordable house building scheme that Barwell was talking about earlier!

ahhh, we laugh because we live in hell

Dante's peak

'bijou maisonette with easy access to spacious garden, offers from £750k'

http://i.imgur.com/Hh2KYUc.jpg

Neat summary: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-british-press-and-europe/

[quote] I'm wondering if this is a specifically English/British trait because you're very right lex, the little lord of the manor "my family and bollocks to everybody else" mentality feels like it runs thru the history of Englishness, you could write a great book about it, but am I just sulking about a world-view that's more or less universal?

― Brexectile dysfunction (Noodle Vague), Friday, 28 April 2017 08:09 (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink [/quote]

I can totally relate to lex's point and this reply. It probably has something to do with the fact that england has never had a revolution, except for an industrial revolution. There was a massive renewed interest in 1649 during the '70s for exactly this reason.

didn't it used to be [quote]?

"england has never had a revolution"

King Charles I's severed head might beg to differ!

ok but you had new labour longer than you had a republic

The United Kingdom, as opposed to England, also managed to lose (most of) Ireland along the way, so it's not exactly been plain sailing.

Play, It's [q]

Plax, rather.

PLAX

Ah-Arrrrrrrrgh

I liked SNP's Jeane Freeman on any questions tonight.

Surprising, SNP MPs are mostly terrible.

She had Lord Falconer as a palate cleanser but was actually quite passionate and right-on. But I suppose it is easy to sound good when you are opposing a late 19th century style bill to further victimise rape victims and put masses of children below the poverty line.

Actually, this was Gideon's work - but as seen in the last parliament session when the mask slipped. TM fucking loves it!

When I say the mask slipped, it slipped right back onto TM's face.

freeman was previously a labour party member and before that a communist. she also has been involved with politics and political campaigning for decades. so she has the competency and right-on political views that make her good value for money in the media

they are all shit really, in such esteemed company tonight - she was the only one not totally hurting my ears.

UK has had three revolutions tho but, plus a significant and inspirational earlyish secession from the empire

1649: parliament (acting for the business classes) topped the king in a national pursestrings beef, lasted till they hit the first crisis of leader succession (not unusual in revolutions)
1688 aka the GLORIOUS revolution, smartly relegislating some of the above, they kicked out a second king, brought in a monarch-for-hire mainly allowed to rubberstamp what they said, importantly no kingly control over the money
1776: the far western britons revolted over "no tax w/o representation", formed some kind of king-free federation? how they fared no one now knows
(1921: not-so-far western britons revolt in turn, some still bitterly bearing in mind the behaviour of ppl involved in 1649 *and* 1699)

this^^^ somewhat from (e)reading b.anderson's "imagined communities" considered as a nuanced slapdown of the nairn-anderson(p) thesis re british political backwardness and the absence of a completed revolution -- uk had the FIRST revolution (came in three somewhat tangled parts over 127 years), the revolutions that followed (starting w.france and then haiti) took tips from what went before and did it differently, plus the middle classes had changed somewhat in the intervening time, as had the role of colonialism*

*there was a footnote here that i deleted on reflection: it would have mentioned that, a little before the civil war began, cromwell had had a plan to emigrate to the caribbean and set up a plantation

Farage is no doubt planning something similar.

also in the 1920's Stalin was sending donations to our striking miners and Lloyd George had the choice of conceding to some of the strikers demands or sending the army against them (again I think). Could have been another revolution, but perhaps prole conditions just weren't quite bad enough as they were in Germany and Russia for it to happen.

if "bad conditions" includes the social structure in chaos then yes: the governing infrastructure of UK&empire held up fairly well immediately after the war (except in ireland), but failed in germany and was obviously shattered in russia

Tooze is really good on this period, The Deluge is a fantastic read.

I'd still describe what's gone on in britain as civil wars and coups rather than revolutions, which suggests to me more of a shake up to the class system & structures of power. parliament's still creaking into the 21st century, we are still ruled by barons, the country is the preeminent example of political decay

we aren't ruled by barons tho

Many of the French revolutionaries admired what they saw as the superior instinct for freedom and democracy of the English - Anglophobia took over once Britain started interfering in the Revolution. They were very conscious of avoiding the mistakes of the English revolution, for instance, Robespierre cautioned against trying to spread the revolution beyond France's borders militarily because that could lead to the emergence of military hardman like Cromwell - no-one listened to him and look what happened.

not to side-eye robespierre obviously but the emergence of cromwell surely predated the english revolution spreading beyond england's borders?

but yes, the general point is important, even if robespierre's analysis is odd

Yes, Maxie's point was that a Cromwell figure was more likely to arise if the revolutionary state got itself involved in offensive wars with attendant militarism and jingoistic tubthumping.

Coming at this from another angle: plenty of other countries haven't had revolutions either (at least not as unified states) and haven't exhibited the kind of behaviour we're discussing to the same degree.

I think that if there's a preponderance of "fuck you, I got mine" in UK society as opposed to the continent it really can be put down to a stronger (and earlier?) embrace of capitalism.

we aren't ruled by barons tho

i don't think the house of lords is much more of a joke than the rest of the constitution

the constitution is indeed a joke, that's because we still live trapped in the lee of the revolution that took place in the 17-18th century, when it took shape

a modern baron -- all life peers so far have been barons -- has nothing like the power that some dukes or earls had in the 15th or the 16th century

(barons weren't actually of much consequence then either)

was just looking up when "an englishman's house is his castle" was first said, to look for early emergence of the "i got mine" attitude

apparently it was codifed into english law by edward coke in 1620, tho already a well known saying (meaning that even the king could surround my house, no matter how mean a house it was, with soldiers, but he couldn't legally enter without being invited)

^^^this was also the kind of stuff the french admired, as "the english attitude to freedom"

put a bit better:
meaning that no one, even the king -- tho he could surround my house, no matter how mean a house it was, with soldiers -- could legally enter without being invited

Meanwhile, the UKIP campaign is up and running, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/29/ukip-leader-forced-cancel-rally-fight-brexiteer-remain-voter/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2017/04/29/TELEMMGLPICT000127219800-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq4GoSUj5tx--cOXjJHDSbw8HVFIRe1LfTRcFJro6tXCE.jpeg

guy in the middle on the first telegraph pic all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And yet that's his arse crack you're looking at in the photo above.

important sociological work being done in the piece by the mentions of the "red drink" and the "heart-shaped glasses"

you know what it's like when you have one too many red drinks

Take the red drink, the tories end. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. Take the blue drink, we leave Europe, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Guys shoes look freakishly huge in that first pic

ay, the red drink will do that to your feet

Bets on which was which

yeah i don't think there's much value in that

Oh i don't mind lumping on

no biggie, they are just getting into the fight-night spirit a bit too early!

The guy looks very like Advert Man

http://www.iwcp.co.uk/files/images/m33_newsimg_a30ba016-2947-43e9-bde0-d07f09345e0f.jpg

Bets on which was which

One aged 62 and the other aged 28, not exactly a toss-up

The article needs the Ned Raggett spoken word treatment imo

barons were doing well, exerting their influence and shaping the constitution through the anarchy and then w/ the magna carta. these fights between the top layers of the establishment seem like precursors to the civil war to me, which, even if we say involved mobilising the whole country on class lines to some extent (obv contested), did not involve the generation of a new system so much as further rebalancing and reform of the existing one. & idk that the 17th&18th centuries are unique, there's been plenty of hugely significant reform since, in terms of suffrage, for the house of lords and the increasingly marginal barons & at the international level. the decision not to reform is also of course v political and you could argue the tory party's greatest achievement long term has been reducing the role and power of parliament/govt/politics in general; the british empire never ended, it just got privatised etc.

It'd be fun to be corrected here but it seems to me there has been a real lack of political imagination in british politics, certainly at key times but more generally too, that has led to this incrementalist, piecemeal, reformist approach to change. anyone in a position to change the system is an insider invested in keeping elements of it in tact. and this protecting of interests mirrors the self-interest we're talking about. I'd struggle to call the british idealistic with a straight face. everyone is always ready to stop fighting and be bought off before things get too wild. idk how else to explain the presence of barons on the political scene in 2017, is there anything comparable in other countries?

xp

"One aged 62 and the other aged 28, not exactly a toss-up"

Who supported which could still quite believably reverse either way, but this is Hartlepool - they once executed a monkey on espionage charges and have a high percentage of bigots Brexiters!

A French monkey, of course.

look, he was eating cheese, he had his hands up, what were they supposed to do?

that has led to this incrementalist, piecemeal, reformist approach to change. anyone in a position to change the system is an insider invested in keeping elements of it in tact. and this protecting of interests mirrors the self-interest we're talking about.

I am thinking The Leopard (a work I've read a long time ago now) to be a novel about just this kind of thing (set in the dawn of the formation of Italy as a state...)

Truly turning the clock back here people!

Maybe I shouldn't do this but I've been just looking at the last few posts in the old thread:

Rolling Brexit Links/UK politics in the neo-Weimar era

Just some general things. I think the work has to be at either substantially altering the compositon of the PLP -- yes Tom Gann didn't get anywhere because he is so vocally against much of what the PLP is up to but the criticisms are mostly respectful in tone, and frankly part of saving this country from utter ruin will be people like that having a run at things. To me its all about 'how we can get to that place?'.

In that sense I can't say I'm that arsed with June 8th. I'd hope of course that the gap isn't as wide as the polls show but if its saving an awful Labour MP who won't help in anyway then they are of no use. I know its a different situation but I look at Melenchon not backing Macron and that's a good example to me rn.

TBH I would be perfectly happy to see every Saving Labour type flushed out but only if that's counterbalanced by some better, new-intake Labour MPs appearing elsewhere. I don't really see local constituency parties nominating many Momentum types but that doesn't mean that what we end up with won't be considerably better than Michael Dugher or whoever. If they all just go Tory it will make things worse and there's a kind of privilege inherent in pretending it won't.

https://twitter.com/aylott/status/858295343632576512

This is good IMO, exactly the kind of tone he should be striking, particularly in disgruntled Middle England. Of course there's also the danger that parts of the country aren't disgruntled (or not in that way), they're actually euphoric about Brexit, because they've chosen their path out of this mess and they aren't going to change course yet. Obviously everywhere is quite divided, some blue seats will go yellow etc.

Contrast with May on Marr this morning, an excellent illustration of the complacency that seeps in when you think you're basically guaranteed victory. It isn't going especially well, her poll lead is down 10pts in a week because she's actually quite a terrible campaigner. The charge of hiding from the public is beginning to stick and she's very bad at controlling her body language when interacting with people. She's still going to win comfortably but I'm not sure that this sort of 'do the bare minimum' campaigning is the way to deliver a landslide.

She was abysmal on Marr, her answers on foodbanks was as unskillfully evasive as usual and veered towards "strong and stable" waffle again. Her own election team might not have ruled out hiding her for 6 weeks at this point.

It's a lose-lose for her. If she starts being more visible in uncontrolled meetings with the public it becomes clear just how flaky she is. If she decides that it's safer to repeat her 'strong and stable' mantra to a coterie of bussed in supporters then the charge of being evasive and hiding from the public sticks. Labour should really call her out on this as how can she be a tough negotiator with a united EU when she doesn't have the courage to debate with members of the public nevermind other party leaders. I fear this personalisation of the election won't sit well with Corbyn or if they have the discipline to do so.

Marr tried to do an impression of asking some questions of substance, but kept backing off when she was struggling. You could see there was a pre-show agreement not to grill her on policies too hard because she is incapable of defending them without recourse to "strong and stable".

My bitch is strong and stable
Cookin' up dope on the table

alternatively "Hiding indoors when she's able"

Does she actually have any policies? Aside from grammar schools, removing the triple lock on pensions and possibly a few tax rises and the latter two don't really strike me as vote winners.

The pensions thing is the sort of thing the press will go ham on after the election and will force a u-turn in case it sinks her government.

I think it actually looks worse to be visibly struggling under a very gentle grilling than it would under a savaging, because you can always blame the interviewer in the latter case.

"Does she actually have any policies?"

She doesn't really have any, but seeing as she is running as a continuity candidate she should at least be held to account for the damage wrought to the country by current policies. I'm sure Brian Walden would have savaged her, but no point expecting a job to be done properly on the Marr show.

Marr helpfully got her to confirm that gay sexual intercourse is not a sin, but you could really feel that conviction in her flat No! with no further comment.

harrowell as brusquely useful as ever on a variety of things:
http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2017/04/30/some-links-on-my-current-preoccupations/

this is a good thread on a particular (non-negligeable) group of ppl who are drawn to may and the idea of "strong and stable"
https://twitter.com/hoodedman1187/status/858422995689275392

one of the problems with major's notion of "wealth cascading down the generations" is that
(a) the cascade might dwindle for reasons not entirely in most people's control
(b) any given generation basically might decide to turn off the cascading tap

a&b are both currently in effect IMO

so much of my dad in that, tho he was a little lower down the class spectrum probably and his innate class consciousness would never let him go full Tory, so in him it mainly channelled its way into fervent Brexitism. so these same impulses in that generation can cut across party and class lines to channel a collective mindset in the same general horrible direction

Reading that does help to illustrate why it doesn't really matter that TM is a poor communicator and doesn't give a shit if the perception of her is she is totally cold about the spike in childhood poverty and nurses joining the working poor in foodbank queues etc. If anything it adds to her aura of S+S competence with a massive section of the electorate "who had it so good". It is quite dispiriting when you start thinking about it, but never mind!

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/apr/30/bank-holidays-misery-no-more-seasides-nausea-family-eva-wiseman?CMP=share_btn_tw

'holidays are bad, actually' among the hottest of contrarian anti-corbyn hot takes

i can see why you mightn't think much of them if your actual job is one long fucking holiday

"you do yearn now for the spa-like calm of work"

http://www.lovehemsby.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Spar-Supermarket-Hemsby.png

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/30/british-people-vote-brexit-deal-leave-eu

I don't get how you can think that "more referendums" is the solution to the awful situation we're currently in. do Lewis and Maskell actually think that this is a viable strategy to prevent/ameliorate brext, or is it just about getting re-elected in there respective remain-supporting constituencies/positioning for potential leadership bid?

That's an excellent (if unsurprising) thread.

> I don't get how you can think that "more referendums" is the solution to the awful situation we're currently in.

switzerland has about one a month...

https://inews.co.uk/explainers/iq/switzerland-held-9-referendums-already-2016/

this is a good thread on a particular (non-negligeable) group of ppl who are drawn to may and the idea of "strong and stable"

You mean Tories?

https://twitter.com/JeremyCliffe/status/858810953353367552

"4) May seemed pissed off at Davis for regaling her dinner guests of his ECJ case against her data retention measures - three times."

This guy is terrible, but you can't argue that he isn't principled and consistent!

He's a strong and stable negotiator.

this is a good thread on a particular (non-negligeable) group of ppl who are drawn to may and the idea of "strong and stable"
https://twitter.com/hoodedman1187/status/858422995689275392

Class mobility huh? JK Rowling and a lot of Labour voting columnists and celebs are a good example of that. They've had the stability to write/do whatever it was that made them well-off, but its Corbyn's Labour that is the problem. To them its a game, they won't be materially affected by this.

The conclusion from this is they'll still vote Tory and somehow believe that strong and stable May will resuce it. Laughable if even 30% of that report of the dinner with Juncker is accurate - its just frightening in all sorts of ways, paints as an almost Trump-like illiterate who believes in her press from the Daily Mail (akin to Trump making decisions based on what he watches on TV). And why wouldn't she? It seems we are seeing the effects of what happens when you get rid of any advisors that raised concerns and would've briefed her.

The negotiations for this deal could go on a lot longer than five years. She will be elected but she may not survive it.

i found that thread hard to get through due to the underlying narrative of someone hating their parents. not that i have a problem with that as a concept, it just diluted my trust.

came here to post the link caek posted.

EU side felt May was seeing whole thing through rose-tinted-glasses. "Let us make Brexit a success" she told them.

may is such a lightweight :/

interesting that sky seem to be running with the "may is a weirdo" angle: https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/858969746623967232

Just noticed Blair was referring to May as "solid + sensible" back in November's NS.

"It’s 20 years to the day that Tony Blair became Labour prime minister on a wave of optimism, and to mark the occasion - and try and rebuild the decimated Labour vote in Scotland - former Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling is in Edinburgh today."

Lol!

maybe he's gonna set himself on fire Thích Quảng Đức in the high street

Thích Quảng Đức-style

i found that thread hard to get through due to the underlying narrative of someone hating their parents. not that i have a problem with that as a concept, it just diluted my trust.

it's strange, there were a bunch of ppl on twitter rolling their eyes at that thread for being an example of "guilty white liberal tries to explain away/excuse their relatives reactionary beliefs", which didn't seem to be where it was coming from at all? also lots of defensive boomers complaining that it was an example of sneering, patronising young ppl unfairly blaming their parents for everything that's wrong in the world, so I guess you can't win.

think it was the repeated use of "step fascist" which i assume is part of her ongoing narrative if you follow her. as i said upthread, i think her material analysis is fair and illuminating.

it seems so perfect as to almost feel unreal. like a user persona created by a pollster.

xpost

i guess i liked that thread bcz it was clearheaded abt something that's important in politics and history: evident policy success often carries the seeds of catastrophe for the next generation, and sustainablity across generations is all but impossible either to plan for or even to pitch for

ps one of th things i've been acutely aware of writing the introduction to my rockwrite book is that the notorious countercultural break in the 70s known as punk was an early harbinger of this issue -- less bcz tony parsons and johnny rotten are now brexit, more that the huge (and heartening) expansion of FE was causing a significant gulf of comprehension re sense of aspiration between generations, esp at the working class end -- where young people for the first time on a large scale had a glimpse of the opportunity to engage culturally and creatively with the world in a way that had only happened to ppl from their class very occasionally at any time before

one of many things not really fully confronted (actually toby young's dad's book "meritocracy" does -- perhaps bcz it's partially written as an SF prophecy, it has a real cassandra-dimension to it, pointing out a thing literally no one seemed to be able to hear: that the left behind are a damage, and not one we will be able to ignore for ever)

plus empire stuff and the vast humiliating wound of losing it (but i need to organise my thoughts better on this)

Is the implication of that thread that May is being systematically deceived by her own Brexit ministers?

do you mean the jeremy cliffe thread?

just posted this on the baldrick thread, which is a partial answer to that i think:

good point from alex harrowell on his twitter: that parking boris at FO has shut him up -- in part by smothering him in layers and layers of supersmart diplomatic highflyers who are adept at cutting off at least some of his stupidity, in part by just giving him important work to do that takes place elsewhere -- but it has also, for this same reason, basically cut the PM off from use of the same supersmart diplomatic highflyers (bcz they are fully occupied)

so that the quality of her briefings (re EU and Dinner with Junkers etc) has collapsed less bcz she has organised, trump-style, that no one breach her blissful ignorance, more bcz she has organised that the routine interrupters are more urgently needed elsewhere (shutting boris down)

^^^none of this is good obviously

aiui, the Brexit dept is largely staffed by kids who had no choice in their placement or old duffers who aren't wanted elsewhere. Most capable civil service personnel don't want anything to do with it.

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/02/dads-army.jpg

where is it even based?

xpost

the Cayman Islands

Same place as the Cabinet Office iirc.

department for exiting the EU (davis) is at 9 downing street currently
department for international trade (fox) is at 1 victoria street
FO (johnson) is where it always was

while looking this up i found a mail report that all three (johnson, davis, fox) share a grace-and-favour house in kent -- but surely this is way too apprentice-house-sitcom to be true (also: mail)

ah right - they cram a lot of shit into the cabinet office!

it's the "miscellaneous" gov meta department

while looking this up i found a mail report that all three (johnson, davis, fox) share a grace-and-favour house in kent

Fox, Davis, May, Johnson

http://www.thebritishblacklist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/rising_damp_screen_Shot.jpg

aiui, the Brexit dept is largely staffed by kids who had no choice in their placement or old duffers who aren't wanted elsewhere

This is basically the start of the Wire.

“I have the impression sometimes that our British friends, not all of them, do underestimate the technical difficulties we have to face,” he said, adding that May had told him in response to each of his questions about the future: “Be patient and ambitious.”

i can picture this. gormless.

Might as well just be saying "You've got to WANT it Claude."

I'm not saying she's not gormless, but you could translate anything into German and back again and end up with the likes of "let us make brexit a success".

Good news, Labour has deselected Danczuk.

Not so good news, Labour appears to have selected and then suspended a racist cabbie as candidate for Sidcup. The racist cabbie will now be standing as an independent.

He has a very odd defender on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/Bryn__Phillips/status/859370453403672577

https://twitter.com/Bryn__Phillips/status/859364291832672256

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-trevor-merralls-eradicate-islam-tweets-parliamentary-candidate-investigation-racist-muslims-a7713111.html

Apparently a "smear campaign" jointly executed by Novara and Uber.

/while looking this up i found a mail report that all three (johnson, davis, fox) share a grace-and-favour house in kent /

Fox, Davis, May, Johnson

🗻

lol. this is aiui true, but it's more a timeshare than la regle du jeu.

https://twitter.com/George_Osborne/status/859362035859062784

^^^not the friendliest opening shot from the osborne standard?

sorry:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-0RNGoXgAIRqQ9.jpg:large

T.May's face on big ben tho, that's my shit right there

acerbic views Я us

God, I wouldn't like to be Theresa May- or any politician!- now that Adams is on the case

Please Adams Don't Hurt 'Em

Yep, thought so: Everyone seemed to be "whoa, GOsb newspaper editor while serving TMay?" but yeah he hates her and he hates Brexit, so hmmm hows this going to play? I wonder..."

Basically, his ideal scenario is that the Conservatives win the election, but with a slightly increased majority which means T.May's 'hand' by her definition isn't strengthened enough, and she has to quit and all that.

Which is quite possible. I wonder what odds you'd get right now on May's resignation?

will her hand be forced, I think she's too fired up with the lady's not for turning delusions to go quietly. I think she'll let the brexit negotiations combust spectacularly before she's shoved out of power.

Any sort of No Deal would surely also mean her resignation, I think? Immediate and very tangible economic and social effect. One reading of the FAZ leak I read suggested it was the EU's way of assuring that if there is No Deal that it is seen to be TM's fault rather than a failing of the negotiations on both sides. This suggests that the EU feel there's an increased probability that No Deal will happen.

xpost and also not.

She will probably win comfortably but will come under a lot of pressure pretty quickly from the Hard Brexit cru when she starts having to compromise / negotiate. I think a rebellion is far more likely from the right than the centre, even if they are outnumbered.

I can't see her being forced out by anything short of a full scale press rebellion. A 'no deal' situation will be painted as the EU's fault.

lol yeah, there'll be no rebellions from 'pro europe' tories. May seems more accepting than any previous PM that she's basically a subordinate of Murdoch-Dacre-Barclaybros.

i'm sure, that's how it would be spun, but im working on the (v possibly misguided assumption) that a serious hike to WTO tariffs have a significant effect on the economy of that sort that is unspinnable.

xpost

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/02/theresa-may-awkwardly-eating-chips-could-be-2017s-bacon-sandwich

we've reached a turning point

Yeah, If we have WTO tariffs the economy will tank very rapidly. Although I'm sure it will tank either way.

lol ok her eating chips is just sortof what i would have imagined it would look like?

murdoch-dacre-barcLOLbros don't have the heft they did tho -- even the sun's circulation has halved since 2000, to c.2 mill (and murdoch is 86 and won't live for forever) [citation needed]

especially they don't have the heft to paint a situation with 30% tariff hikes as actually good, to ppl whose businesses are going under -- obviously it will be painted as "europe's fault" (saw a bit of that re #brexitdindins) but above a certain level of catastrophe i'm sure how well that will continue to work

Yeah, If we have WTO tariffs the economy will tank very rapidly. Although I'm sure it will tank either way.

― Heavy Doors (jed_), Tuesday, 2 May 2017 16:04 (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think this would necessarily cause a popular backlash, my sense is that people are oddly accepting of the reality they are in and refuse to see that it is the consequence of a set of political decisions and calculations.

I can't see her being forced out by anything short of a full scale press rebellion. A 'no deal' situation will be painted as the EU's fault.

The Tories will look for any excuse to ditch her asap, landslide or not.

If she loses the 'economic confidence' of the country like Major did and there is a Labour party benign enough for some of the tabs to get behind then she is unlikely to win another election. I can't see the Tories pushing her out before it is too late to change course though. There is no Plan B.

Xps

Readership is barely even relevant - they're more powerful than they have been for years precisely because the government is cleaving almost exactly to their agenda, and the BBC follows it more closely than it used to. I think it's very likely that May will end up being taken down by her own MPs when Brexit talks go off the rails, probably from the anti- rather than pro-European side. It's almost inconceivable that she would survive a Yes vote in Scotland.

They may say nay way May but they'll need to bear in mind how she got the gig in the first place ie total lack of contenders who weren't even more deluded about their suitability to lead.

I think there will be at least two contenders I can think of, come the evil day.

oh who???

The only one I can think of is Jeremy Hunt

or a "Nicky Morgan-type"

Zac Goldsmith and Michael Fabricant?

Lemon lemon bloody difficult

surely David Davis has the necessary zeal for the cause plus whatever passes as credibility amongst those bawbags

Heidi Allen is totally going to run next time there is a leadership election

boris?

xpost

Theresa May sounds like an England football pundit bigging up their chances of winning a World Cup

i think boris has to flounce pre-election to even think about pulling that off

(also no: boris is over)

"really the European style of political negotiation is very overrated, there's no substitute for passion and commitment and our lads will give it a hundred and ten percent and we fear nobody"

I don't think Boris is over.

is goldsmith even still in the conservative party?

Isn't he standing as a candidate for them?

no surely not over. he'll just pirouette on a sixpence to whatever new stance is expedient. will be seen as opposite to staid May. he'd at least stand. he can't bloody help it.

xpost

xpost omg i can't keep track

yes they took zac back, he's standing for richmond

May interview on her negotiating approach

"Never seen a more Yer Da child." - is the same as the Scottish/Irish meaning?

it's all well and good these Brussels Eurocrats swanning around over there with their briefings and their research but could any of them negotiate a Brexit deal on a cold February night in Stoke?

they'll be undone by a rory delap style throw-in from liam fox in the 90th minute.

Keep an eye on Jo Johnson, Boris' younger brother.

oh god. that's a really good call. hadn't thought of that. the johnson it will be ok to vote for.

lol, is leaving the tory party the key to being its next leader?

The racist cabbie thing is so depressing, he shouldn't have been anywhere near the selection process given his identity and views were apparently reasonably well known some time ago.

don't think this would necessarily cause a popular backlash, my sense is that people are oddly accepting of the reality they are in and refuse to see that it is the consequence of a set of political decisions and calculations.

Actively welcoming it in some places I think. Pull those bankers and London types down a peg or two; make the workshy millennials get their fingers out; everybody dig in like what we had to in the 70s; build moral fibre what what

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/02/may-juncker-will-find-me-bloody-difficult-woman-in-brexit-talks

i mean come on

tough. damn tough.

Jo Johnson has a ministerial portfolio (universities?) and remains a Tory (he is married to Amelia Gentleman, the Guardian journalist). It's Rachel who plans to join and vote for Lib Dems.

lol, yes I got confused. Business Innovation and Skills. Jo just seems like the feminine spelling and I was watching her haircut on the andrew marr show on saturday which put her fresh in my memory.

Diane Abbott doing a fine job of monopolizing the headlines.

fake news. sad!

I keep trying not to confuse him with Huggy Bear guitarist Jo Johnson....

just checked and he's a Joseph, presumably the lack of an e is to indicate that blue blood courses thru his veins and he will not abbreviate his name in the same manner as the common rabble

I bet if Corbyn was snapped looking at a cone of chips with a quivering curled lip like an alien insectoid in human disguise, the BBC would lead with it. But as most non-beautiful people probably struggle to look photogenically dignified in the act of eating, I think snapping people eating is bullshit and should be banned.

http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.142503.1313990764!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_750/alg-trump-palin-la-famiglia-jpg.jpg

?

Here's a full translation of the Frankfurter Zeitung article, rather than the bullet point translation:

https://medium.com/@20sthredhead/i-translated-that-infamous-german-article-concerning-the-may-juncker-dinner-that-everyones-been-ac5f952b92e

It makes her sound even more "gormless" and the amount of detail in it leads one to trust its veracity.

For the most part, anyway

Remixing the classics

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/dfe7a4e9277480af9cdccbe4e6a5bd3175a83cce/0_0_3500_1751/master/3500.jpg?w=465&q=20&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&dpr=2&s=f8fa6335e19902baf4c158df10304000

Oh God what will the army do with no bombs? I must vote Conservative.

Aren't bombs a bit antiquated now? I am sure when the Saudis come to the UK to buy weapons to commit genocide in Yemen with, they get something a bit more high tech than a bomb for their money.

"We have all the bargaining chips, they have all to lose... absolutely we should be asking for money back" says Conservative Peter Bone pic.twitter.com/Dd4Qaur8R0

— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) May 3, 2017

@faisalislam

"We have all the bargaining chips, they have all to lose... absolutely we should be asking for money back" says Conservative Peter Bone

Huh, tweets embed now.

how could you actually think that? you'd think the idea of a tiny economic body being crushed by a much more powerful one would be easy for tories to understand.

those bargaining chips in full:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KN2lfo34agE/T-we4OdqzZI/AAAAAAAAF3o/gsRr-Ov0GnQ/s640/bucket2.jpeg

http://c8.alamy.com/comp/CN67ER/woolen-hats-and-i-love-london-t-shirt-market-stall-shop-in-camden-CN67ER.jpg

i'll guarantee you that none of that shit is manufactured within the borders of the united kingdom either

I have no doubt it's a sincere belief, though completely bonkers.

The theory underpinning a lot of this seems to be that if the EU doesn't cave in to the demands of mighty Britain we'll set ourselves up as a tax haven to lure all their companies over but, leaving aside the passporting issue - which is critical, we'd have to cut corporation tax by 7% just to match Ireland. It would be good for someone to be pressing these mugs on how they'd expect to pay for that in the short to medium term.

aye, chances are it's a sincere belief but the idea that the uk is choosing to negotiate on beliefs rather than, y'know, empirical evidence and rational thought is fucking terrifying

how can a debt-ridden nation of 60m people be a tax haven?

these fuckers all need to hang

Beliefs rather than empirical evidence and rational thought has proved pretty successful at the ballot box lately.

oh aye, for sure - applying the same sledgehammer approach to the delicate business of negotiations with the eu seems like it might be um problematic tho

Britain is already a tax (and money-laundering) haven iirc.

bone isn't a negotiator, and barnier -- who is the EU's negotiator -- will be well aware that a degree of unhelpful background noise will be a constant, from ill-informed or partisan onlookers, and something that can should just be screened out (he will also be screening out the responses to this nonsense from member states)

the main damage of #brexitdinner is probably the strong suggestion that may (if not davies) really do cleave pretty closely to the shouty stuff, which prior to that could be assumed to be for home public consumption only -- and it's a damage bcz the UK seems to have done so little by way of maintaining good reliable back channels, where they can actually say (quietly) "ignore what i'm just about to tell the UK voters"

by "(if not davies)" i'm not implying that he's actually a ways away from may, or known to be less deluded, just that the leak didn't especially compromise him afaics

He may be getting invited to less dinner parties if he just tells that story over and over again.

"we'd have to cut corporation tax by 7% just to match Ireland"

yed have to do a lot more than that to match us buck

I have any number of responses to that but none that wouldn't get me in trouble with Herself.

Anyway, May has given a speech suggesting that the EU is trying to interfere in the election outcome with "deliberately timed leaks".

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2017/may/03/general-election-2017-official-campaign-begins-politics-live

Whoever wins on 8 June will face one overriding task: to get the best possible deal for this United Kingdom from Brexit.

And in the last few days, we have seen just how tough these talks are likely to be.

Britain’s negotiating position in Europe has been misrepresented in the continental press.

The European commission’s negotiating stance has hardened.

Threats against Britain have been issued by European politicians and officials.

All of these acts have been deliberately timed to affect the result of the general election that will take place on 8 June.

By contrast, I made clear in my letter to the president of the European council invoking Article 50 last month that, in leaving the European Union, Britain means no harm to our friends and allies on the continent.

We continue to believe that no deal is better for Britain than a bad deal.

But we want a deal. We want a deep and special partnership with the European Union.

And we want the EU to succeed.

But the events of the last few days have shown that - whatever our wishes, and however reasonable the positions of Europe’s other leaders - there are some in Brussels who do not want these talks to succeed.

Who do not want Britain to prosper.

So now more than ever we need to be led by a prime minister and a government that is strong and stable.

really glad i decided against playing a 'strong and stable' drinking game between now and the election

t/s: 'Threats against Britain have been issued by European politicians and officials' vs 'We have all the bargaining chips, they have all to lose... absolutely we should be asking for money back'

We continue to believe that no deal is better for Britain than a bad deal.

this could have been worded better

Britain’s negotiating position in Europe has been misrepresented in the continental press.

c'mon just say 'fake news' we know you want to

genuine q: why should the eu want the talks to succeed and britain to prosper?

punishment is actually a good tactic pour encourager les autres, I would think

exactly! what have the eu got to gain by providing yet more special favours to a country which has told them to fuck off?

why should the eu want the talks to succeed and britain to prosper?

bcz they want the best conditions for continued trade with the UK for the EU: what is defaulted to if the UK walks and no deal is established will not not deliver those conditions and both sides will lose out (the UK almost certainly losing out a lot worse)

a prosperous britain will buy more goods from the EU than one that is not prosperous

not

it's the relative utility for each side that's the thing, though; a bad deal or no deal will be much worse for Britain (60m people) than for the EU (450m people), and the European Commission knows this, the mystery is why the hard-headed political realists of the Conservative Party are choosing to ignore this

But we want a deal. We want a deep and special partnership with the European Union.

the rhetorical gymnastics required here are absurd.

At their most cynical some EU leaders might want to see Britain 'succeed' in maintaining its net migration figures in case of any unwanted knock-on effect on their own states quantities.

May saying 'WE want you to succeed but clearly not all of YOU want us to' is diplomatic idiocy vmic but might be funny to see far right press splurt "wait who's WE?" I guess.

like "we want a deep and special partnership with the european union" but not enough to actually be part of it, or agree to its fundamental rules, just literally some cash in a sack while you tell it to fuck off out of the other side of your mouth.

'i want a divorce, but we should still fuck regularly and i'll help myself to stuff from your fridge whenever i fancy it, cheers'

Frauds with benefits.

the hard-headed political realists of the Conservative Party

think these fella got kicked in the nuts and whacked dizzyingly hard over the head last june tbr

it is completely ridiculous. britain is the only one with any obligation here and yet may seems to think the "we're all in this together" shite that they've used to fuck over a country might wash europe-wide. britain chose to leave, the eu can then do what it likes. isn't that the entire point of leaving? it's amazing how recently the hard brexit talk was - and probably how soon we'll hear it again when it suits the undulations of whatever's happening in the talks/election. a ridiculous balancing act.

This speech is proper OMG stuff. The only, only way they can get away with this "a deal will be easy they need us more they're going to punish us hard and some don't even want stable and strong government led by me" bollocks is with a press that's 80% Leave.

I don't even know what it takes to stop all this. A massive unforeseen LD vote? A clear majority of the country know this is bad for us, at least a good chunk think it is madness. Why can't we stop it?

I think the Tories and SIR Lynton Crosby have paid a lot of attention to how Trump won the US election.

is there any hope putin wants corbs to win?

is there anything to be said for another russian meddle?

I don't even know what it takes to stop all this. A massive unforeseen LD vote? A clear majority of the country know this is bad for us, at least a good chunk think it is madness. Why can't we stop it?

tbh an antigovernment bombing campaign seems like perhaps the only option left

i've heard others say, m'lud

is there any hope putin wants corbs to win?

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Wednesday, 3 May 2017 15:54 (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is there anything to be said for another russian meddle?

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Wednesday, 3 May 2017 15:54 (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well its been shown that putin is in favour of whomever can dick the country up the most. so i think may is safe.

In terms of bargaining chips, really only Ireland has the potential to be massively dicked over by this, so I'm sure they're making all kinds of arrangements with brussels to soften the blow.

meanwhile in the mother of parliaments:

It is my pleasure - no, my privilege - to announce that the passive aggressive kitchen notes war has started again in Parliament. pic.twitter.com/2Ln2qZ5ryY

— Marie Le Conte (@youngvulgarian) May 3, 2017

whenever I watch May at that lecturn I feel ill about the idea of downing street, this street that looks like a public space, a relatively normal street albeit in a wealthy chelsea neighbourhood. It looks like she's come out of the house to speak to the cameras, but in fact she hasn't. There is no possibility that anybody from the public could speak up, be heard, and puncture this nonsense she's spewing. Strong and stable. I just find it really annoying I suppose, this stupid fake street.

lol at those fucking notes. i work in moj and the kitchen is full of them. there are at least four at any given time. the childishness of civil servants is beyond the level of anywhere i've ever worked. i moved from an untypical gov department back out to the wild west in the last few months and it was strange but not surprising to be reminded of the basic dysfunctional behaviours. the first thing i notice, and something that happens nearly every day, is how often people try to walk onto an opening lift before those on it have disembarked. like the minute the doors open there's some automaton trying to storm on. used to happen last time i was in a dept as well.

Civil Service staff doing their own washing up with their own washing up liquid feels just as weird as the washing up liquid then being stolen. But that's austerity for you.

well there is that side too. people have to buy their own tea etc.

we had to buy our own tea in the civil service in glasgow 8 years ago #freedom

theres plenty of opportunity for ireland out of this but maybe thats just dub privilege talking plax?

the insidiousness of "strong and stable" is that even when it's mocked or turned into a comedy meme we're just amplifying the signal

not that i'm saying let's not mock it, mind

so you're saying we're keeping the signal strong and stable

smell my spaniel!

Who was the last PM that was actually any good at international diplomacy? Cameron was obviously awful, don't remember much of what Brown did outside Davos etc... say what you like about Blair or Major they at least understood how to deal with other European leaders.

say what you like about churchill he at least understood how to deal with other european leaders

brown had a gift in negotiation for useful obfuscation of financial complexities that he'd mastered as well as anyone in the room

Was Cameron so bad? He did get Xi Jinping a selfie with Aguero you know.

Isn't the problem with this question that you have to go back to the neo-colonialism era to find a credible candidate? I can't remember where I heard someone saying Wilson finessed LBJ pretty goodstyle over Vietnam commitments.

Got played for a good 'un by Ian Smith over Rhodesia though.

I don't think any of their reps would stand up to scrutiny, but when you start thinking "at least he wasn't Blair" - maybe you are setting your standards too low!

Wilson keeping us out of Vietnam was a considerable achievement I think - not that he got any credit for it, especially from the Left.

whenever I watch May at that lecturn I feel ill about the idea of downing street, this street that looks like a public space, a relatively normal street albeit in a wealthy chelsea neighbourhood. It looks like she's come out of the house to speak to the cameras, but in fact she hasn't. There is no possibility that anybody from the public could speak up, be heard, and puncture this nonsense she's spewing. Strong and stable. I just find it really annoying I suppose, this stupid fake street.

otm

Tories up 4 points!

Looked at London Evening Standard on the tube - it's impressive how transparently it has been rebranded into Osbourne's Blog About Why May Is Shite within a matter of days. It was already so terrible that it's difficult to see this takeover as ethically worse than before, and I did get some chuckles out of it, but a) London hardly the demographic that needs to hear this right now and b) kinda sad that labour is seen as such of a non-threat that tories are reduced to waging internal war.

What kind of numpties deliver an election flyer to a Diplomatic Mission? You'd think the massive flags would be a clue. pic.twitter.com/7pumxVnoih

— karaspita (@karaspita) May 3, 2017

The options here as I understand it are a) eh, turn up the fascism, people love that these days b) Theresa May as an increasingly out-of-the-closet English Fascist (maybe backed with "It is scientifically impossible for the English to be Fascist") c) talk up this line because this government has no other policies d) talk up this line because this government has no other popular policies.

I don't like these options.

The EVENING STANDARD also featured a leader column praising BJ and attacking Khan, over the Garden Bridge.

i see brenda's called an emergency meeting at buckingham palace this morning - abdication? illness? dismantling the whole antiquated notion of monarchy?

cancelling brexit

we can but hope

what a way to go out. firing from the turrets as tye tories close in

honestly wouldn't be surprised if it was a meeting to tell royal staff not to tweet about theresa may, or politics, or brexit, etc.

"i'm deleting twitter"

apparently phil is standing down from royal duties

bad news for the strength and stability of the monarchy

women and people of colour across the commonwealth breathe a sigh of relief as the grim reaper sharpens his scythe

The country must pull together at a time like this.

Prince Phil is retiring from official duties, that's what it is.

Too Greek, Too Strong

the political correctness police finally got to him i guess

good night, sweet prince

bah i was hoping for "masks off and lizard up," orders queen

Philip being sent to an internment camp along with other potentially subversive Europeans who seek to sabotage our Brexit

with brexitmania in full swing, now seems like it'd be a good time to campaign to repatriate the greek and german dolebludgers in buck palace back to their countries of origin

nv and i are on the same page, i think it's safe to call this a groundswell of popular support for royal repatriation

brb gonna write a press release

our unelected monarchy

comin' over 'ere, livin' in our listed buildings, cuttin' our ribbons

can't help but feel that this act has been deliberately timed to affect the result of the general election which will take place on 8 June. there are some in Buckingham Palace who do not want these talks to succeed, who do not want Britain to prosper

Yesterday it was the ES, now we have ER in league the EU

what next - ET?

hopefully the electorate will see through these sinister alien saboteurs so that under a strong and stable leader we can swiftly get the Beatles catalogue remastered

Let's give our lads the bombs they need to finish the job.

The more I think about it the more bizarre that whole standing outside No. 10 to denounce sinister EU forces stunt was. Slightly unhinged.

frit

and no GE "coverage" today til after polls close this evening

(xp) I don't know what's going on, it's not like they actually needed to do it, they're light years ahead in the polls.

Prince Phil is retiring from official duties
That's what it is
Liz is the hottest bitch
That's what it is
But she gon stay ladylike
That's what it is
But Imma act crazy like
That's what it is

They see me pollin'
They hatin'
Remoanin'
Try'na make me strong and stable

thread delivers

The more I think about it the more bizarre that whole standing outside No. 10 to denounce sinister EU forces stunt was. Slightly unhinged.

I don't know what's going on, it's not like they actually needed to do it, they're light years ahead in the polls.

genuinely i think it was an attempt to cover their arses a bit because brexit is gonna be a bumpier ride than they expected, and the opportunity to get a slice of that zeitgeisty 'sinister furriners meddling in our election' stuff was too good to pass up

Saw a couple of twitter threads exploring the idea that May as form (as Home Secretary) for "creating an enemy" so that she looks tough when she's actually planning (after a lengthy bout of fireworks) to fold, most notably in the Abu Qatada case.

1. Here is the tale of Theresa and Abu.

— David Allen Green (@davidallengreen) May 4, 2017

^^^s usual v wary of DAG's implied political extrapolation from this, but he's generally good on legal procedure

I can't bring myself to read it, but apparently Toynbee wants election-polizei to round up young people and march them into the polling stations for their own good. Presumably in time for when Labour breaks up and SDP 2 are up and running.

maybe round up some olds and march them off a cliff while they're on

would really love a Blair-Jack Straw-Frank Field reunion tour tho, I think it would add some much-needed merriment to the bleak 5 years ahead

just five bleak years seems optimistic

oh I assume the world will end at some point during

five years, that's all we've got

thx for the clarification nv, i am in full agreement (hope?)

we've got bbc news on the office here and the endless parade of talking heads lining up to respectfully gnaw on phil's meat oreo is making me dread even more the national groundswell of rah-rah patriotism we're in for when he and/or brenda shuffle off this mortal coil

the tories must be quietly crossing their fingers that a royal will croak before june 8th

otoh, charles not that auspicious a name for a royal, from their perspective

he's gonna be a George or something tho isn't it?

Canute out of the question I suppose.

The New Georgian Age

:(

Saw a couple of twitter threads exploring the idea that May as form (as Home Secretary) for "creating an enemy" so that she looks tough when she's actually planning (after a lengthy bout of fireworks) to fold

Hmm, that is a more comforting take on the rush to declare enemies than I'd found so far. I read this otherwise not very illuminating blurb last week, as the repetition of "strong and stable" first became nauseatingly frequent and on the day that May gave her Leeds talk describing our 27 currently-fellow members of the EU as "opponents", and thought, hmm, who does this paragraph remind me of?

But is it going too far to compare Trump to charismatic 20th century tyrants like Hitler or Mussolini? In some ways it is, MacMillan says. ‘He’s not a Hitler — he doesn’t head a fascist party — and the Republican Party is more and more divided by the day. But I think he’s like Mussolini in wanting public attention and portraying himself as the great strong man, making grand gestures and searching for enemies. He’s a lot like some of the Latin American dictators like Chavez or Castro or Perón — claiming to speak for the people; loving the crowds… Making promises — “I will give you money and jobs” — then blaming “our enemies” when they aren’t delivered.’

(OK, no loving the crowds for Theresa May, but)

What's depressing for sad sore-losing remoaner me is that even the ES's anti-May stuff doesn't challenge the EU=enemies line, just goes for "hapless May is not cunning enough to foil devious European plots" instead

yes, i don't buy into DAG's optimistic spin on this phenomenon, he's generally extremely naive about politics

Dunno if building an enemy is going to work here but the simplest (and probably most accurate) suggestion is that any time she blows up an extra bit of anti-EU feeling she gets a bump in the polls.

meanwhile in notes on parliament no longer fit for purpose:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-5pQcWXUAE6miZ.jpg

xp

I've no doubt that's the case but I don't really get why, surely hardcore Brexistas are leaning May anyway and anybody normal ought to be repulsed when she breaks out the jingo juice

Ups her telly coverage, gets her on the covers of all the papers. It's a small bump not a huge one, and it's transitory (but there's only five weeks to go).

Longer term, the bubble will be maintained until it suddenly bursts, and it won't be burst from within. I find it hard to imagine that either the dunkirk stuff or the royalist stuff are swaying the younger end of the voter spectrum significantly (or newspapers or TV, come to that). Outbreak of intergenerational political hostility -- not really in evidence since the 60s -- is going to be a thing, in the next couple of years (as we move further out of the lee of the 60s, but moving out of the lee isn't the only reason).

My constituency has a new (not New) Labour candidate, who is a left winger/Corbyn supporter. Not sure what if anything this will mean for his electability, Amber Rudd has a 5000 majority which isn't unassailable I suppose. I did vote in the local election today, for an Owen Smith fan apparently but fuck it I'm going Labour on everything everywhere, no Green protest votes this year.

Where I live is clearly a Labour area, there are Labour posters in loads of windows, smattering of Lib Dem and zero Tory/UKIP, but it's the bastards who live in the surrounding countryside that vote Conservative, as per usual. Was pleased to see my OAP next-door neighbours put up a Labour poster in their window #NotAllOldies

I only saw one poster in hastings (old town) last weekend - green

actually maybe it was only up because of jack in the green?

this is a better, more detailed thread than the DAG one i linked above (it includes some of the same material):

May's #1 is "look like a fighter".
So winning is a problem - bc it ends the fight. We know this from her Home Office days. Thread. 1/n https://t.co/15M4YsAEHm

— Simon Cox (@SimonFRCox) May 3, 2017

I presume Philip has had a debilitating episode, like a massive stroke, which would explain their recall of staff (they weren't sure if he would live) as well as the announcement that he wouldn't do...whatever it is he does.

Outbreak of intergenerational political hostility -- not really in evidence since the 60s -- is going to be a thing, in the next couple of years (as we move further out of the lee of the 60s, but moving out of the lee isn't the only reason).

this can't come soon enough tbh, the baby boomers have merrily sailed planet earth well past the point of no return and if there's not heads on sticks outside centres of governmental power in the next decade or two i'll be pretty disappointed

phil's still doing his ribbon-cutting rounds until autumn so i don't think he's knocking at death's door just yet, sadly xp

he is attending an event in a couple of days so should know for sure then, but the palace insist it isn't health

this can't come soon enough tbh, the baby boomers have merrily sailed planet earth well past the point of no return

May/Trump et al do feel like the dying lashings out of the boomers, for sure. It's how long they'll keep lashing that scares me

the sooner we adopt the logan's run model of society the better

if we'd done it already, i'd have been dead for just over seven years

an unexpectedly attractive thought

The men all look like Michael York and the women all look like Jenny Agutter. Sounds fine.

As a tail-end boomer I want to say it's more complicated than that -- but, as I work on a project that looks at elements of 60s/70s/early 80s pop and semi-pop culture that I still very much value, I have to say some days I think I'm really really REALLY cherrypicking to get the results I want.

TParsons -- whose youthful emergence I was writing about just two days ago -- is not helping with this feeling (to be fair to me, I was not particularly friendly to the work of his salad days).

#angrydubdobdee translates^^^: parsons was always a cock

One day he will pull off his mask, and it will be revealed he was a Gary Bushell sock from the start.

please don't make me think about garry bushell inside tony parsons

i'm (literally) old enough to remember when GB was still in the SWP, and denouncing Churchill as "bloated Tory twat" (in a Sounds features on The Members, I think).

but even then didn't he have a very firm belief in the virtues of good ol' fashioned uber-machismo?

REAL ENGLAND

http://www.litopia.com/wp-content/uploads/DSC_0003-1.jpg

lolwtf that's Steve Ignorant from Crass (of whom GB was not a fan)

Garry’s live guest this evening is the co-founder of the seminal anarchist punk band Crass, Steve Ignorant. Loud, uncompromising, highly strung, often copied, loved, hated but but never forgotten. …Crass were simply one of the most subversive and influential bands to emerge from Thatcher’s Britain. Are their ideas more relevant now than then? Join us for tales of resistance, rebellion, direct action and Thatchergate. Doesn’t get better than that, does it?

(Of course it's fucking health, when you're 96 everything's health)

maybe if you're human

^ gets it

WAKE UP SHEEPLE

didnt think bushell could be any worse then you find out cunt was a music writer an all

He wasn't just famous for Oi! compilations with Nazi puns/denouncing homosexuality in The Sun at the height of the AIDS crisis/his good looks.

(xp) He only wrote about shit music, fwiw.

they look like they're drinking rum and cokes to me, that's not very Oi

or halves, which is even less so

you don't get a head like that on a glass of rum and coke, shirley?

and those glasses haven't been washed in forever, is this how Bushell lives?

Haven't been washed since the Old Queen Mum dies, gawdblesser.

i was going to say i quite liked the members, but i just revisited them on spotify and they are in fact not very good

dark rum and coke often forms a wee frothy head, more so than any other spirit I know, hence my guess

who wants to volunteer to listen to the steve ignorant episode of GBH: THE GARRY BUSHELL HOUR in the hope that we can put this brown-beverage controversy to bed

So not gonna happen, despite the "rum and coke".

nah I assume it's some inferior canned bitter in grubby glasses

i can't quite believe i'm devoting mental energy to garry bushell in 2017 but here we are

Son of a fireman, Garry trained under the legendary Paul Foot on the Socialist Worker – and was promptly placed under surveillance by the British security services.

They’re probably still listening.

As show business editor of The Sun, he became in Ross Kemp’s words, “the most feared critic in the business”. He’s written best-selling biographies and two gripping crime novels, and he is deeply associated with British youth cults, rock, punk and Ska bands.

Garry has discovered new talent by the bucket-load, managed bands, championed working class comics and notched up a Number One hit. His #1 rated ITV series Bushell On The Box trounced Coronation Street for audience share.

wtf at that last line - if ever a citation was needed...

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMzg3MjI5NzE1MV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMjgzMDYzMQ@@._V1_.jpg

presumably audience share at 3 o'clock in the morning when the other channels were shut down was pretty easy to dominate

Garry Bushell has been called many things `The Godfather of Oi` - `The Punk Poet` - `The Gangster Of Slang` - ME - well I just call him the funniest TV writer of all-time.
His autobiogrphy `Bushell Off The Box` by Garry Johnson is probably the best biog I have ever read.
I dont think any other book contains such a varied `guest list` - everyone from The Kray Twins to Dale Winton.
Not a lot of people know this - I didnt before I read Bushell Off The Box - but Gal is mates with celeb gangster Dave Courtney, Ozzy Osbourne, Boris Johnson, Babs Windsor and David Beckham.
Before becoming a TV pundit - Bushell was an apprentice footballer with Charlton Athletic. manager of The Cockney Rejects and a gag writer for both Ben Elton and Benny Hill.
A versatile chap or what? The book contains many exclusives - my favourite being that former Labour leader Neil Kinnock offered him a seat in the House Of Lords and that Simon Cowell offered him the part of a judge on Britain Has Got Talent.
Bushell saying "no" has turned out to be a massive mistake - but has also made a star of his old Sun boss Piers Morgan.
To sum up Bushell Off The Box is a great book and I look forward to the movie version with Danny Dyer as the fast-talking TV pundit.

'His autobiogrphy `Bushell Off The Box` by Garry Johnson is probably the best biog I have ever read' is cracking me up

I've drank out of some similarly dirty receptacles at home before from drinking wine + lager out of same cup type savagery, but would seriously take issue with those clammy pisspots in a pub!

Britain Has Got Talent, the grammar nazis' own talent show

the staining round the top of Steve Ignorant's glass is particularly disturbing

baron kinnock coming out that as well as you'd expect

coming out OF that

should i buy a copy of the best of bushell on the box on dvd from amazon for £2.17 and liveblog my way through it in a very special thread here on ilx y/n

i'll say yes but tbh I wouldn't do it

also the possibility of getting slipped a copy of The Best of the James Whale Show is worrying

more than anything i'm kinda curious to see what it does to my amazon recommendations

DVD Release Date: 14 Nov. 2005
Run Time: 1089 minutes

jesus god that can't be right surely

that's how long it feels

If it's that long, I'm coming around to the idea of you liveblogging it.

In one go.

james whale and garry bushell bear porn

About 127,000 results (0.86 seconds)

Son of a fireman, Garry

Hmm so I have something else in commmon with Garry apart from liking the Cockney Rejects.

fuck, who directed that gary bushell dvd - bela tarr?

in a yoke, strapped to their shoulders, along the Fosse Way xxp

welp

http://i1247.photobucket.com/albums/gg622/bizarrogazzara/BoB_zps2xwrsa85.jpg

Buy it again

further to that species-status issue:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-_rReIXsAAKYmI.jpg

(more grand work from the osbo-standard)

fucking hell david icke really is otm after all isn't he

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/labour-frontbencher-slammed-for-shameful-tweet-about-prince-philips-retirement-a3530726.html

Have I mentioned fuck this country.

The Sun in full "FIRST!" mode published online that he'd died. Not sure if that lasted seconds or minutes but was screengrabbed.

mock outrage that non-whites are not particularly fond of this old racist tosser with a face like google maps (satellite) is completely dud.

This is an excellent insight into how fucking unbearable the Standard is going to be until such time as May is gone and an elderly backbencher in a safe Tory seat dies.

so like, i never ever watch tv news or listen to news on the radio - everything i consume is online. came in tonight and watched maybe 10/15 mins of newsnight, as flatmate was watching it. i got so animated he said "try this", and put on question time. even when i was in bbc before all of this i had a sense of how dire and centrist it was, centrist about to veer right i guess, but watching it tonight even briefly gave me this huge sense of why left leaning people are so angry at bbc. question time, the entire thing is fucking disgusting. dimbleby never interrupts anyone making a right wing point, and actually cuts off left leaning questions or skips them before the person they're directed at has to answer them. tonight they had paul nuttall, david davies, a welsh cymru politician, a labour politician, and a ceo of siemens who was a massive pro-brexit tory, gurning along. surely they had to fight hard to find a business leader who is pro-brexit. not only does dimbleby cut off left-leaning questions, when a right-leaning audience member asks something and he decides it hasn't been answered, he'll follow up with a few "but surely" add-ons.

genuinely i'll never watch this fucking shit again.

said it already but i was.... idk scandalised...?... about the bbc radio coverage of the day or two after the GE announcement, genuinely shocked by the lack of rigour, balance, quality

(xp) Two left wing panellists on QT? That has to be some kind of record.

so like, i never ever watch tv news or listen to news on the radio - everything i consume is online. came in tonight and watched maybe 10/15 mins of newsnight, as flatmate was watching it. i got so animated he said "try this", and put on question time. even when i was in bbc before all of this i had a sense of how dire and centrist it was, centrist about to veer right i guess, but watching it tonight even briefly gave me this huge sense of why left leaning people are so angry at bbc. question time, the entire thing is fucking disgusting. dimbleby never interrupts anyone making a right wing point, and actually cuts off left leaning questions or skips them before the person they're directed at has to answer them. tonight they had paul nuttall, david davies, a welsh cymru politician, a labour politician, and a ceo of siemens who was a massive pro-brexit tory, gurning along. surely they had to fight hard to find a business leader who is pro-brexit. not only does dimbleby cut off left-leaning questions, when a right-leaning audience member asks something and he decides it hasn't been answered, he'll follow up with a few "but surely" add-ons.

genuinely i'll never watch this fucking shit again.

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Thursday, May 4, 2017 3:40 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/10001/bbc-reprimands-question-time-producer-over-far-right-social-media-posts

Oddly on R4, Dimbleby was the only one criticising the Erdogan-like tone of TM's speak when the election was first called. But he doesn't seem to have maintained that level of alertness since!

That's Jonathan Dimbleby, not David.

said it already but i was.... idk scandalised...?... about the bbc radio coverage of the day or two after the GE announcement, genuinely shocked by the lack of rigour, balance, quality

same. and i realised what a bubble i'm in by dint of only ever reading my news. tv is fucked as a medium for this.

(xp) Two left wing panellists on QT? That has to be some kind of record.

and both extremely inexperienced. the entire thing is sick.

xpost i remember reading that story. i've never doubted it when i read on twitter that bbc is right-wing - it was full of latent right-wingers, or people who believed that they had to destroy their own liberal biases and reach true neutrality by drifting right - but again having deliberately avoided bbc news and current affairs, for many years, because those voices annoyed me even when speaking about something trivial, it is amazing how toxic it feels today.

newsnight had two people talking about the resigning royal, both of whom supported him, and then the host said "well compared to how we treat, for example, footballers, his 70 years of service is rather impressive". and it's like... footballers work, for a living, and train, and fight hard to emerge from an incredibly tough system.

anyway - as much as someone needs to be watchdog for all this i'm mainly really glad i never ever consume my news this way.

xp
But.. they both sound the same!

All I can say is thank fuck for your blood pressure you turned off before This Week came on.

The PC and Lab guests were Leanne Wood and Rebecca Bailey-Long. I think they had three women on it once.

my flatmate is still watching it. i mean even when angry i've often kinda wondered at some of the more furious almost futile rage i see about the media in the uk - but question time kinda shows me the source.

Currently we have Lisa Nandy vs. Neil, Portillo & Lionel Barber all backing up Theresa May's The EU Is Out to Get Us narrative.

And I mean, like 30 seconds of Lisa Nandy, and 10 minutes of right wing EU paranoia.

QT audience seemed to have a fair bit of love for Corbyn or maybe I just follow too many Corbsheviks.

BBC probably look at figures for their news/politics output and resign to it being two-thirds or more wrinkly Brexidiots. Unsurprising with numerous old white men hogging these presenter gigs for years (Dimbles, Humphrys, Neil, Marr...possibly the BBC does not survive for there ever to be anyone other than that doing those jobs while they exist). Still curious as to why other channels haven't tried to compete with it on QT though.

it's not even the brazen bias, the whole format is terrible, the flagship of the BBC's "have your say" agenda, idiots invited to stumble thru the banalest of questions and applaud whichever spew of soundbites their preferred rosette coughs up, and this is presented as the soul of what politics did. it's an internet comment section played by the worst amateur theatre company you've ever seen.

"what politics is"

too tired to formulate my contempt thoroughly, the perfect critique was knocked out in 20 seconds by The Day Today tbh

britain reminds american airports, in the sense that fascistic tv news is unavoidable. i don't know if that's just because when i'm home i'm visiting the kind of aged relatives who have the tv on all the time, but POLITICS does seem to be more endemic.

Stephen Bush has gone all #teamTerrified 1931 IS HAPPENING!! on twitter re: council results - and they are bad so far. People have tried to calm him down on making any correlation on a low turnout. Its clear UKIP can join Prince Philip on a "job done" retirement trip though.

In the meantime rumours etc. but May is to do a swift walk-out of EU talks post-election in UK, then France and Germany. Its clear she is imcomptent though, all sorts of random fuckery to come, and pretty soon too.

Some of the results I've seen seem to go like Lab are +1 to +3 but Tories are +10 because UKIP have been wiped. Lib Dems are nowhere either.

One thing might be low turnout and also the demographic that is voting could be overwhelmingly not very young.

This is all hilarious after five years of cuts in council budgets but there are also subtle local issues, such as corruption in certain Lab councils.

These results suggest that making Brexit the only issue is not going to work at all for the Lib Dems at the GE. I think they also confirm my suspicion that a lot of the country is proudly and euphorically walking off the cliff.

Lincolnshire, vote share: Con: 53.4% (+17.4) Lab: 19.3% (+0.7) UKIP: 7.5% (-16.8) LDem: 4.6% (+0.1) Grn: 1.5% (+1.4) Oth: 13.7% (-2.7)

Can't wait for some Labour centre shithead to say we are not doing enough to appeal to racists.

I think it's true that QUESTION TIME is now very bad.

It was once a somewhat different entity - Robin Day, then Sissons, earlier Dimbleby. Even until c. the last 5 years, it was different - basically less 'populist' and less right-wing. It could be very irritating but it did offer some genuine space for different ideas. I saw Tony Benn on it many times in the 1990s.

That's changed - moving towards the 'Daily Mail comment thread' mood it is closer to now, with maybe some 'left populism' in there as a slight counterweight. I am unsure how far the supposed far-right programme controller is responsible for this; maybe she is.

Emblematic here is the well-known sense that UKIP are on it every week, despite having zero or one MP -- Farage, now Nuttall, and sometimes others. Whereas Greens (who now have infinitely more MPs than UKIP) are probably on it once per 10 episodes or so.

I suppose it has been moved with, but also contributed to, the Overton Window.

I used to watch, now think I would mostly find it too painful.

The UKIP wipeout suggests that 'be more racist' would be disastrous for Labour - especially seeing as those votes are swinging behind the Tories and won't survive a bungled Brexit negotiation process. But supporting Brexit on some spurious "will of the people" bullshit that no faction of Labour really believes hasn't worked either.

Scotland will be starting to count now.

i'm assuming the tories will have made gains in scotland too (a sentence i can barely believe i'm typing)

making Brexit the only issue is not going to work at all for the Lib Dems at the GE

can't be bothered to dig up my own quote but I said as much about Labour's manifesto on the day she called the election

re my somewhat non-based sunniness abt the decline of old-form media in presence and effect, the reliably excellent tweeter FLYING RODENT note sourly that the rise in toxix reactionary nonsense in the world coincides with a gradual rise in uptake of social media (facebook in particular) by older people

this very much underlines matt dc's point that the declining readership of the sun and (even more) the mail isn't terribly relevant (and undermines my glass-half-full kneejerk re inevitable changes i think)

[observation: i realise he almost certainly has a more rewarding and less stressful actual job, but i genuinely wish matt dc was a paid commentator in a grownup paper somewhere; even when i disagree -- bcz i am a hopeless 70s relic of a countercultural leftie -- he is IMO way better at comment journalism that most of those resignedly indicated here: in the thread: british political journalists who are worth reading )

(my atrial fib procedure is in two weeks so i am probably likely to be going on a bit of a tell-ilx-b4-it's-too-late spree: it is a supersafe procedure! so don't worry! but it does involve full anaesthetic and i am 56 so er yes anyway)

Would heartily cosign that observation.

Whoa!

Best of all possible luck with that one!

xpost

Would Matt DC's mainstream media column be allowed to contain as much swearing as his ilx posts, whether on the Labour Party or on Premier League relegation battles, are contractually obliged to do?

Actually the one above about "making Brexit the only issue" contains no swear words at all -- following Mark's post, I now see it as a sign that DC is preparing for his new mainstream career.

were i his editor it would have MORE swearing (i will not be allowed to be his editor) (me = not an editor = everything wrong with the world in a nutshell obv)

it is time to turn uk ilx into a newspaper

@janemerrick23 Isn’t that the slogan of Vichy France “Travail, famille, patrie”, work, family, country…

— Rob Redmond (@robby_red) May 5, 2017

oh it embedded, ^ a response to:
Jane Merrick‏Verified account @janemerrick23 2h2 hours ago
More
Embryonic leadership pitch by Stephen Kinnock: "The British people care about 4 things. They care about work, family, community and country.

yes, those are certainly concerns unique to the people of the british isles and not, say, the majority of the population of the planet earth, good work stephen

Its a relief that they dont have to care about health anymore!

That's correct (one of the oddest things about patriotic lists is how they pretend other people don't like similar things) -

also it's not a particularly convincing list.

I could as well say: 'The British people care about sex, alcohol, money and sport'.

the british people care about knotted hankies on heads, swizzle sticks, breeding dangerous dogs, and being racist

the british people care about this:

http://i1247.photobucket.com/albums/gg622/bizarrogazzara/wtfhaveidone_zpsodf3j7ys.jpg

"Life, a job, a career, a family, a fucking big television, washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin can openers - I could go on"

the declining readership of the sun and (even more) the mail isn't terribly relevant

Yes although social media is where their frontpages continue to be paraded relentlessly every day and it can have the effect of e.g. Twitter and FB being 24 hour 'round-up of tomorrow/today's headlines' sections on 24 hour news channels...if you follow a lot of journalists at least...and at this point the frontpages seem entirely engineered for this purpose (and particularly in the Mail's case the COMMENT pretty much moving from page 2 to page 1).

Once their print sales drop below a million (which should happen before a 2022 election) it'll be interesting to see if there's any kind of eye of the storm period where things like Hammond's U-turn on tax don't happen so predictably because less frontpage outrage is cutting through in the traditional way. Being unbearable is the only way the Standard can get any attention in the same way but if Obsorne's plan is really to shank May in the capital I don't know how effective that will be given the apparent adoration of her in much of England rn.

the rise in toxic reactionary nonsense in the world coincides with a gradual rise in uptake of social media (facebook in particular) by older people

Comment sections of news sites too - more people of retirement age than the internet has hitherto had to deal with, homeowners, time on their hands...and a strange insistence on watching BBC News, QT etc. (if only so they can complain about their LEFTY bias) because they have for as long as they care to remember.

psyched for bushellthread

cosine matt dc but hes too restrained on sports imo maybe limit him to the rest of it

the idea was always for local garda to be the daily ukilx's sports editor

I don't know what Matt does but he's so adept at this sort of thing I assumed he was working in the media - I know, the two don't follow.

ukandeireilx even #eire

britishislex

omg

there he is

the idea was always for local garda to be the daily ukilx's sports editor

nobody needs me writing like nult as martin allen

Labour has lost control of Glasgow city council for the first time in nearly 40 years. The Tories have taken a place in Ferguslie Park, the most deprived bit of Scotland.

Tories take seats in Ferguslie Park and Shettleston

Can't even begin to explain how sickening this is, but here's some background reading on Ferguslie Park.

(xp) Basically fuck Scotland an' aw.

On average the Conservative vote was up by 12 points, much as one would anticipate from recent polls in Scotland. ... Labour's vote meanwhile is down between 6 and 8 points in the wards that it also fought in 2012.

fucking hell, shettleston

i wonder what the turnout was like there

Rubbish candidate selected in East Ayrshire

Make up your own jokes.

douglas carswell is jawing away on the beeb news channel right now

has any man with a full complement of teeth looked more like a toothless gurner than douglas carswell?

looking forward to seeing what troopz has to say on labour fan tv

So if this was to be repeated at a national level it would be a complete disaster for Labour (assuming of course, it isn't already). Had we not been staring down the barrel of a GE it might have been very difficult for Corbyn to survive - we can debate whether it's his fault until we're blue in the face but if you're the leader then you kinda agree to carry the can for this sort of performance regardless.

Also assuming that this is a big reason behind the decision to call an election in the first place, b/c it may have been her last change to guarantee she'd be facing Corbyn and not someone else. Got to say I'm gleefully anticipating Steven Kinnock's almost certain failure though. Meanwhile (outside of London at least) the Lib Dem 'brand' remains comprehensively trashed and I'm not sure how they come back that.

(Also thank you Mark that is a very kind thing to say)

Never mind guys – Dave out of Blur has been elected in Norwich

I'm delighted and humbled to have been elected County Councillor for University Ward, Norwich. pic.twitter.com/xVrnjzwBCB

— David Rowntree (@DaveRowntree) May 5, 2017

insert post ending "'im not a cunt LG X" here

alex james will be raging

xpost

surprised alex james isn't a tory councillor already

hope he's better at fixing potholes than he is at making music

Sorry Matt you prob don't mean it that way but Corbyn isn't a football manager.

I don't see the point of someone like Kinnock or Cooper taking over if they are to be a failure.

Kinnock's failure to ... be elected Labour leader?

I'm not sure I can even see him going for it. I mean there would be an absurdity to taking the Return of the Kinnocks that far?

David Rowntree stood against Clive Lewis to be Norwich South Labour MP, and was, of course, beaten!

"I don't see the point of someone like Kinnock or Cooper taking over if they are to be a failure."

True - that's part of why JC won in the first place - but presumably they believe they might not be failures?

Meanwhile (outside of London at least) the Lib Dem 'brand' remains comprehensively trashed and I'm not sure how they come back that.

Yes, so much for hoping the Lib Dems can pick up Remain Tory votes. Useless cunts. Their voters have gone back to where they always belonged in the first place.

Kinnock and Cooper are failures whether or not they achieve anything

Kinnock is a nonentity too.

The book I'm reading about the Official IRA has them trying to forge links with the Labour Left in the 70s: Benn isn't really interested (at first), Dennis Skinner they consider a sincere and principled man, Neil Kinnock is dismissed as 'an opportunist'.

Tory elected mayor in Tees Valley. That is Tees Valley.

state of this lot:

https://preview.ibb.co/jgcMQk/fsdghsfdg.jpg

timhenmanfistpump.gif

It's not like being a football manager but if you are leading any organisation you implicitly agree that you're ultimately responsible for its performance, even if it's in a mess for pre-existing reasons that are nothing to do with you. It's possible that Corbyn's own measures of success (and yours too) don't match up to the commonly accepted version, of course, but if you can't persuade enough other people of that then it's going to be a struggle to stay on.

My guess is that Kinnock will try and fail to win the requisite number of parliamentary nominations, I just don't think there are that many people who take him seriously. There will almost certainly be a challenger from the left next time as well, whether that's Clive Lewis or someone else.

20 years old btw

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/live-experience/cps/624/cpsprodpb/vivo/live/images/2017/5/5/97705ba5-8ca4-42e4-a9b9-c9248273a814.jpg

conservatism is a helluva drug

this seems pretty remarkable/ominous. like all of those 'Lab could lose its northern heartlands to UKIP' predictions kind of coming true, but with Labour losing to the UKIP-fied Conservative party rather than UKIP itself?

Indeed.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/05/lib-dems-failure-surge-voting-labour-stop-tories

http://www.conservativehome.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Screen-shot-2015-06-01-at-05.38.15.png
We have Gaz Coombes' younger sister running in our town and she is 1/6 to win the seat. She is completely politically vacuous and hasn't much to say other than the Cons are better than Labour. Despite not being posh - I don't think she is quite as working class as she claims to be. If she truly was, she would have witnessed some of the damage by now.

obv didn't take his death well

[disclaimer]
She might not actually be Gaz Coombes younger sister.

FAKE NEWS

YouGov here stating UKIP a gateway drug for Lab to Tor vote-switch
but scale of gateway: 0.5%
conclusion: UKIP weren't a gateway drug etc

UKIP has been a gateway drug for Labour voters to go to the Tories... but more just went straight for the hard stuff https://t.co/PlGeoNWdCS pic.twitter.com/GQmRsBGBpN

— YouGov (@YouGov) May 5, 2017

the byes from the hardstuff

a contemplative nigel farage contemplates his pinched and straining gateway

http://g8fip1kplyr33r3krz5b97d1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/GettyImages-543428034-1-714x475.jpg

Seeing UKIP wiped out and the LibDems edging closer to oblivion would be so much fun if it was for the crushing downer that most of these bastards are now Tory voters:(