theresa may: is her project subtly machiavellian or merely cunning, baldrick-style?

PRO: pseudo-big beasts toppled in the great cull, now political toast: cameron, johnson, gove
also toppled: ids, fox, crabb, ledsom lol
shelved: osborne (perversely perhaps I don’t think he has been as damaged as the above)
top of the heap hence not to be sniffed at: may
CON: good god what a rubbish heap of rubbish she has “bested” (largely by keeping her mouth shut, something you can’t do forever s a PM)

PRO: longest-serving home secretary since james chuter ede
CON: last home secretary to become PM was james callaghan

PRO: she has had an easy summer ftb internal labour squabbles, corbyn distracted etc
CON: it is the summer, when nothing much happens politically anyway (“silly season” etc)

PRO: she has cleverly hamstrung possible “biggish”-beast rivals/goads/gadflies (BJ, Fox, David Davies) by putting them in “charge” of fashioning brexit and designing the structure so that they are knocking heads with one another — plan, to reveal them gradually as idiots and dispense w/their services while directing matters herself by other means (besides it is the summer, when nothing much happens)
CON: three months later they are idiots with literally no grasp what brexit entails, the tories have actually wasted the summer headstart almost as comprehensively as labour) (arguably more: I think their currently lead is a deceptive consequence of the blank page offered and will change sharply as matters clarify, as the negotiation gets under way, as the mocking laughter rolls over us from europe)

PRO: she has played a clever game not tipping her hand; tory numbers have stayed up
CON: this same game is what shafted labour and there is literally a time table counting down — three months wasted is an eighth of it — there is no evidence that the army of well-informed and high-powered lawyers, civil servants, diplomats and negotiators is being gathered… the tories most of all are now prey to their militant anti-sir-humphrey rhetoric of 50 odd years (hinckley point debacle a good example)

PRO: labour has failed to unite into a pro-brexit camp to capture the regrexit mood
CON: tories will also lose voters to regrexit

PRO: labour as a long-term historical coalition is clearly in turmoil
CON: it’s not as obvious — because brexit and the leadership campaign masked it, and may is still very much in honeymoon period — but tory divisions are very much not healed, nor will they be, and the classic tory numbers-pumping weapons are mostly at the point where they will impact on potential tory voters now (viz pensioners…)

PRO: a big shake-up of the scene could work in her favour…
CON: … but what if it's a sea-change?

In summary: you can’t exactly fault her for achieving victory and hobbling internal opponents, but she has inherited a multi-layered onion of poisoned chalices (globally, nationally, party-wise) and merely seen off the cluster of clowns till recently clogging up right politics (which voters I think have tended to admire; but the resultant change of mood will benefit the politics of change in rival parties more than the politics of status quo); plus I have yet to see anything except negative capability. I can't yet get a read on her. HOW ABOUT YOU?

(^^^this is a bit chaotic btw, apologies for that)

political animal cunning placed her in the right spot at the right time for the leadership win but i wouldn't tag her as a theorist or deep thinker, she feels more like an avatar of the volkisch soul of the party with all the limitations that entails

A couple of "readings" of her (though from over 10 years ago):

I wouldn't mind Theresa May crushing me with her Russell & Bromley stilettos.
― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, November 6, 2003 2:59 PM

The latter, I guess. I fancy Teresa May.
― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, September 15, 2004 3:09 PM

lol

ps alba is now a professional sub editor

May has a clear grasp of Napoleon's "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" and has applied this idea both inside her own party and with Labour. Not sure if there's any more political mous than that.

nous, I mean.

Her image of providing stability is so important to her that she seems to be wary of actually doing or deciding anything. I wonder if No. 10 is in a state of paralysis - unable to get anything decided or approved.

Her government still has the feel of continuing on from a very quiet summer. And yet one of the next big set pieces, the Autumn Statement where Philip Hmamond is expected to "reset" fiscal policy, is only weeks away now.

These are all good analyses.

She's looked a bit rattled when I've seen her on TV lately. So yeah, a strong departmental/territorial politician who's been making moves that are sound in theory (eg the Brexit appointments), but which aren't adequate to the reality of a shit-mad era.

People in my industry tend to cross themselves, as though warding off a vampire, when her name is mentioned. She's far more ideological and less pragmatic than Cameron / Osborne - or rather less concerned with money and more with 'Conservative principles'. I may be biased by her position on student migration but it doesn't bode well for someone now responsible for looking at trading off economic success and tabloid right-wing sentiment in the Brexit context.

This is paywalled but has some background on City fears of a "hard Brexit":

https://www.ft.com/content/dd666fb8-833c-11e6-a29c-6e7d9515ad15

Almost three quarters of UK chief executives polled by KPMG said they were considering moving operations or headquarters overseas following the Brexit vote, according to a survey released on Monday.

One Wall Street boss expressed concern that Mrs May did not fully grasp the consequences for the City of a “hard Brexit”, while other financiers claim civil servants are afraid to speak up to explain the broad risks of leaving the EU’s economic core.

One banker said that pro-Brexit ministers like Mr Fox and Mr Davis had yet to engage with the City. “If you try to discuss detail with them, you are dismissed as questioning the merits of Brexit,” said one.

Putting Fox / Davies / Johnson in charge and letting them fail, to swoop in and fix everything later, on might be Machiavellian but there seems to be a sense that things are moving a little faster now, as positions on both sides solidify, and idk how long she has before the course is irrevocably set.

ps alba is now a professional sub editor

I was talking about the porn star, obv.

"British diplomats are quietly urging European business leaders to ignore the statements of senior UK government ministers over Brexit"

Reckon Fox/Davies/Johnson may wreck things to such an extent it will too late to undo the damage.

Basically she is a Baldrick who thinks of herself as Machiavellian - which is fkn dangerous. One positive is that she is so Thatcher-like in mannerisms or 'look' that a catastrophic failure might wreck the image of the former in terms of perception of competence/'saving out country'

The negative side is that this might meaning wrecking a lot of the country...hopefully something better can be built. er, lol at that.

The ideological thing is v visible, like it seems weird to kick up a grammar schools noise right now - no pledge, no election nearby, & ahem quite a lot of other stuff going. Yes, signal to the base & maybe a distraction from Brexit, but it does seem like she had no idea that actual people would be furious and argue it. Maybe evidence for more Baldrick than Machiavel.

Can see her crashing and burning before the next election and Johnson and Osborne going toe-to-toe thereafter.

Am I really the only person who read the first line of this thread as PRO: pseudo-big breasts?

johnson is peak yesterday's man, it won't be him

xp: yes, yes you are

Sadly, no xp

away with you both

pro: she is caught on an unusually ferocious fork at every level and taking the boldest possible gamble in all directions to power through
con: she literally hasn't a clue what she's doing and is ignoring everyone who's telling her otherwise

haha "otherwise" s/b "so" in that second sentence i think

http://uk.businessinsider.com/conservative-conference-brexit-article-50-birmingham-2016-9

^^^

The "bold gamble" is "HARD BREXIT CAN BE DONE. NOTHING CAN GO WRONG, CRISITUNITY BECKONS, BRITONS UNITED CAN CONFOUND THEIR POLITICS/FRUSTRATE THEIR KNAVISH TRICKS" (where "they" is everyone else apparently including the irish and the scots)

the actual future is comedy marmalade, bottled air and the UK military freed to commit battlefield atrocities w/o threat of legal comeback (in mercenary terms there might well be a market for the last, if we hire ourselves out to the sauds or some of blair's other chums, like that guy who boiled political opponents alive) (i mean, he's dead, but another will be along in a moment)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CmAMy0HWkAIOPuu.jpg

she's forgetting that "winging it" only stands a chance of working if you're a virtuoso at the height of your powers, which, let's be real here

by the way, amazing image choice Business Insider picture editor, well done

I read pseudo-big breasts.

I thought this from Yvette Cooper was interesting (yes, I know, but this was a good piece):

I respect her style – it is steady and serious. She is authoritative in parliament – superficial attacks on her bounce off. When the Tory establishment call her “a bloody difficult woman” she rightly wears it as a badge of pride. But the flip side is that she is not fleet of foot when crises build, she digs in her heels (remember the Passport Agency crisis in 2014 when the backlog caused hundreds to miss their holidays, and the Border Force crisis in 2011 when border checks were axed).

And she hides when things go wrong. No interviews, no quotes, nothing to reassure people or to remind people she even exists. It’s helped her survive as home secretary – but if you are prime minister, eventually the buck has to stop.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/07/theresa-may-britain-tory-candidate

It's that latter part that was apparent over the last few weeks, and that latter part which can be interpreted as laying-in-the-cut, give-em-enough rope cunning, but isn't really anything when, likely the silence over Hinkley Point, or the 'charge!' strategy over triggering Article 50, you end up in the same place you were going to with a generally weaker look and position.

The exception I'd make is appointing three brexit ministers - it seems clear that Fox and Johnson are not competent or capable of delivering anything (and FO is basically sales these days, right?). David Davies is an unknown quantity to me, but some accounts suggest he's probably the smartest and the most likely to deliver cogent policy. She can afford to let two people play in their sandpits to appease that section of her party.

The grammar school's thing is weird. There's no need to chuck anything to the Tory loon section just yet, so it looks like ideology. It's terrible politics though - excluded children = excluded voters across the political spectrum. I wonder whether her policy Spad Nick Timothy is influencing things here:

According to Timothy’s writings and occasional interviews, he decided to become a Conservative partly because of the party’s position on academic selection. Timothy’s exclusive state school, King Edward VI Aston School for Boys in Birmingham, had a “transformational” effect on his life. But he worried that if Labour got into power it would close such schools, cutting off opportunities for kids like him to get ahead, he has said.

http://www.politico.eu/article/nick-timothy-theresa-may-uk-conservative-conference/

Tony Parsons also took this line: it's an outrage that bright kids like him should not be allowed to escape their background and kick the ladder down behind them as they count their dirty cash

It had great force in the 80s, and naturally appeals to people who benefited from it personally (Gove is possibly another).

But a lot of the underlying dynamic resentment currently stems from communities that feel they've been left behind (and are ignored and despised): the bright kids went off to college and to that London and now sneer at those they were once at school with, well fuck them, let's vote to troll them. I've seen a handful of people tackle the darkside of "aspiration", the bad energies and community-corrosive issues of internal migration -- Alex Harrowell on his blog, Dan Davies on twitter -- and I think it's one of the things that the left is going to have to wake up to, that the interests of various regions have been allowed to getwildly out of kilter (it's one of the things that the term "heartland" obscures: labour now has several "heartlands" whose natural interests clearly clash…)

A lot of working class grammar school boys are tremendously fond of their alma maters which I read as half Stockholm Syndrome, half Judasism and half willful, privileged blindness to social reality.

Step forward, Old Grammarian Andrew Neil.

to add a fourth (slightly more sympathetic) half to NV's stated three (all of which often also apply): artistic or bookish ppl escaping from homes or neighborhoods destructive or dismissive of the possibility of same may well have v complex/conflicted feelings abt both (and a degree of not-unjustified gratitude to the means of their escape)

i sometimes wonder what my debt to the county of my birth wd be in a just economic/political settlement :|

depends which county

https://britishcountyflags.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/insert-image-1-salop-flag1.jpg

you probably owe very little

Step forward, Old Grammarian Andrew Neil.

Though the Scottish Tories do not support the reintroduction of Grammar schools. Funny old world, innit?

cos anyone who experienced that particular type of grammar school “transformational” effect in scotland then left?

No demand for them, I assume.

yeah mark I am more mindful of the benefits that grammar schools conferred on otherwise isolated w.c. kids than my unnecessarily grumpy post let on

cos anyone who experienced that particular type of grammar school “transformational” effect in scotland then left?

― conrad, Tuesday, October 4, 2016 6:41 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think the thing is that time for most scottish people - well certainly in glasgow and the west - even if you went to grammar school and it ended up benefiting you and you did well in life you, generally, continue to believe that you are the salt of the earth/are a bit ambivalent about it all

not sure what you mean but surely you don't think e.g. an andrew neil or a michael gove might consider themselves virtuous in any way rather than revelling as they surely must in their own cynicism and poisonousness

andrew neil is definitely a counter example to my thesis

I'm sure andrew neil thinks that he deservedly ascended from his humble origins due to meritocracy

when paul foot described him as a member of the establishment, andrew neil angrily threatened to cancel his subscription to the LRB

(it was pointed out with some glee that he actually received a free issue)

have decided that theresa may is machiavelli only in the sense of standing in the head of a giant government baldrick operating the levers.

also

this is good on the nature of the HO and why Theresa May felt at home there, what this implies for her government and the "protective state".

A powerful image emerged of a department that had become embattled over a long period of time. In a ‘neoliberal era’, in which national borders were viewed as an unwelcome check on the freedoms of capital
..
However Theresa May’s long tenure (6 years) and apparent comfort at the Home Office (often a political graveyard) suggests that these symptoms may have become more pronounced in her case or meshed better with her pre-existing worldview.

to add a fourth (slightly more sympathetic) half to NV's stated three (all of which often also apply): artistic or bookish ppl escaping from homes or neighborhoods destructive or dismissive of the possibility of same may well have v complex/conflicted feelings abt both (and a degree of not-unjustified gratitude to the means of their escape)

Can highly recommend 'Respectable' by Lyndsey Hanley on precisely this subject - and why the destructive/dismissive reaction of those trapped within the system is perfectly understandable.

(and the title is a nod to Mel and Kim, if that helps tip your hand)

(it was pointed out with some glee that he actually received a free issue)

... you can take the boy out of Paisley.

... but only via the mechanism of selective education iirc.

^very good

if only there were no possibility of an andrew neil once removed having any subsequent effect upon a paisley

xps
that's an interesting article - it tallies with what I've seen of HO. From the off I've wondered what years as Home Secretary has made of May - I mean on day one I assume the permanent types sit you down and say 'Britain is under threat all the time' and show you folder after folder of terrifying stuff that's going on. Six years of that must really skew your vision of the world. (And then the protect/paranoid vibe that's inherent in HO's role then gets amplified by being in the gunsights of the Daily Mail all the time). But I hadn't thought how it might fit with her personal predispositions or wider politics - class issues, other policies, departmental fights.

yes interesting

"Is the fact that liberals haven’t experienced being the victim of regular petty crime or a failing school now going to be the main basis for ignoring them?"

what do liberals' experience of crime have to do with it? (it being foreign workers, 'citizens of nowhere', Brexit, etc)

Lots of liberals have experienced lots of crime, of various kinds

I'm left-wing and I have been burgled - despite CCTV footage of my burglar selling a box of my records in MVE and providing his driving license to the staff, Kentish Town police somehow failed to follow it up and I got a shrugging letter a few weeks later. Useless fucking idiots!

Yes.

We are breaking the mould.

yeah that liberals/crime thing was a bit weird. i once got accidentally mugged in oxford while pathetically unresistingly stoned and wearing flipflops #liberalelite

the institutionalisation of pastoral paranoia and protectionismfeels very '70s creepy vibe tv, with PKD's The Penultimate Truth its logical end point.

http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/the-protective-state/

More on what Theresa May might be up to..

Think May isn't up to anything as calculated but the picture of her arriving to this from her time as Home Secretary is p/gd.

Former Polish minister of finance Jacek Rostowski: "With a hard Brexit, the Leave camp can avoid being seen by voters as the supplicant in negotiations with the EU – which it inevitably would be, no matter how often May denies it"

In other words, skip past all possible humiliating negotiations to a very bad endgame that doesn't require euro-permission (which is an upside if yr a brexiteer trying to save face at home)

(btw re yesterday's storyt in the times of the very bad figures shown the cabinet re the uk's economy post-brexit: the figures are the treasury figures from before brexit -- in other words the primary shock reveal is that the cabinet are learning that remain expertise was otm and that these are the facts they are going to have to work with)

also: http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/james-obrien/which-eu-law-are-you-looking-forward-to-losing/

Imo the folly is less that people vote illogically than to be surprised that this is often the case

Sorry I won't stand for facts and figures and logic or lack of. I have my views and that's enough thanks.

What do you think? Call the BBC now and treat us to your ill-informed opinion

Sir Gerald Howarth ‏@geraldhowarth: Frau Merkel, the UK rejected free movement. It's free trade or a trade war. German business won't be clapping if we stop buying BMWs #brexit

^^^"they want to sell us caaaaars" is a much-laboured refrain (and this is nutpicking a little, don't think howarth is currently in the cabinet)

https://twitter.com/geraldhowarth/status/784427139550613510 <-- first few responses are good

Someone on the Torygraph quoted Howarth as saying the decomissioning of The Britannia (or some ship) was the worst day of his life. Tweet has gone now.

I don't think Germany will mind that much if Frankfurt picks up financial business lost by London post-passporting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37523553

Paris is way ahead of Frankfurt rn

i've read ppl talkin abt vienna and dublin also (not right now but only a few relatively easy tweaks away)

Not sure that's a reasonable conclusion from that article, but there's a lot to go around.

Oh that wasn't my conclusion as such.

I've only seen articles relating to Paris but I'm sure there is plenty of others if I cared to look yeah

Musha and welcome to be sure to be sure

She's far more ideological and less pragmatic than Cameron / Osborne - or rather less concerned with money and more with 'Conservative principles'.

In the short term, this will work just fine - she'll give the Mail/Sun/Express exactly what they want for long enough that they'll keep cheering despite the shaking heads from the City and the Economist/FT.

In the longer term I think this is potentially disastrous for the Conservative brand. When they are doing well, their number one electoral asset is their ability to convince enough voters that they are Just Doing What Works. A bungled Brexit and a tanked economy will make it much, much harder to maintain the fiction that they are pragmatists rather than ideologues.

Her biggest tactical error so far is failing to call an election, she'd win by a comfortable margin if not a landslide, and that current slender majority leaves her very open to rebellion. This faultine within the Conservative Party has tended to run along European lines but it's really a free-market vs RW-authoritarian divide and there are enough disgruntled Tory MPs in the former camp to make life very difficult for her.

Like so much talk of early elections, that ignores that it isn't her choice anyway. To call an election, she'd need to got throught the process of repealing the fixed term parliaments act, or she'd need 2/3 of MPs to vote for it (Labour has over 1/3 of seats), or got through the clusterfuck of engineering the loss of two votes of confidence.

She could introduce a bill for an early election and challenge other parties (labour) to vote it down (lets leave aside whether enough labour mps would go for an early election to fuck up corbyn), taunting them with being afraid of democracy and all that- but labour are so obviously cratered at the moment that they might be prepared to suck that up.

Sorry I won't stand for facts and figures and logic or lack of. I have my views and that's enough thanks.

Definitely. They're my two fingers and I'll do what I like with them.

I took Matt to mean calling it right at the point of accession to PM -- which I think might* have got the 2/3s it needed (from all sides of the house) in regard of the constitutional nicety of actually having an election to change PMs. That's the chance she missed. Later than that as you say is just "early election chatter"

*who can say, it was a weird two weeks…

day after Brexit: colossal gift handed to labour by tories, labour (beset by internal squabbles) squanders this gift
three months after Brexit: colossal gift (ie labour's further internal squabbles, allowing tories to get out ahead) handed to tories by labour, tories -- for reasons that range from hubris to simple out-of-depth incompetence, squanders this gift

In the history of "events, dear boy, events", it would be a rich (and darkly hilarious) irony if the labour leadership battle turns out to have a valuable pause for and spur towards reconfiguration rather than a catastrophically wasted season (ok, i'm not holding my breath about this -- but literally nothing may's front benchers say abt brexit suggest any of them have grasped the amount of chewing they face, given what they've bitten off)

Otm

accidentally mugged

i would like you to elaborate on this term, fizzles

leavers (increasingly belligerently): "brexit is brexit!"
eu paladins: "lol, brexit is what the eu decides it is"

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-brexit-latest-nationals-uk-stay-immigration-a7351446.html

re: non-early election. This summarises it: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/12/no-early-general-election-theresa-may

So this article p/much falls on the majority of 17 and defining crisis because the crisis is what Brexit comes to mean and why this u-turn was called in. The majority may not be enough. Labour (from the grammar school to today's session) seem to be gathering some unity (Corbyn has basically told the PLP to fuck off w/shadow cab elections I'm the leader -- and the PLP seem to have accepted they can do little in the short-term -- and Keir Starmer is looking like a solid appointment, with the diff on immigration being buried down for the moment).

However yes the 2011 Parliament Act (the hurdles described above) and also I think everyone was pretty much drained from the long referendum debate, as was the electorate. That's my take on "public dislike early elections". Also the election would've turned into the "what Brexit means", with almost no coherence.

_accidentally mugged_

i would like you to elaborate on this term, fizzles

ah yes. (i'd forgotten what that referred to, and thought it somehow referred to lab and cons botching of strategic advantages via sporting analogy of "mugging" - as in last minute undeserved goal etc - and spent some time trying to "see" it - then i remembered my post...)

so i was v stoned in my room on a sunday evening and remembered i needed to get some cash out to have money for the following day, as rent was coming out, and if i let it i wdnt be able to withdraw cash i needed to eat or drink probably more importantly.

so i went out in flip flops etc to a local cashpoint which was round an unlit corner. then two men approached me from different sides, one of them grabbed me and pushed me up against the wall and said "where the fuck is it" and i said what i probably wdve said regardless of the question "what". he then said "where's the money, you're going to get us out £x" i can't remember the amount. then his friend said "it's not im, mate, it's not im" "yeah it is where's our f'ing money you c" etc. there was a bit of to and fro'ing that i can't remember now but i seem to recall i ended up getting out the very small amount of money i had available and giving it to them tho by that stage they had become more uncertain but decided i shd give them some money anyway.

in fact as i write that i realise the only other time i was mugged was also "accidental" or inadvertent. i was in poland and had been getting drunk with some young polish blokes who, when i left about two am to trudge across the snowy urban scrub came after me, having put bandanas on. i said "i've just been drinking with you i know what you look like" (more in drunken outrage at the stupidity rather than through any bravado). to which they responded that i shd give them my wallet which i did. they then rifles through taking out the money - złoti and then largely worthless in terms of £££ - and other things like bus tickets. then they came across my university library card and on examining it said "oh you are english we thought you were russian or german" and gave me everything back including bus/tram tickets and gave me a cigarette by way of apologies. that cigarette being polish probably had some GBH element to it but i smoked it with relief accompanied by some rather shaky laughter.

the point being in the first one, if it wasn't clear from my phone typing, that they had mistaken me for someone who owed them money.

the downside of being fizzles, the man of many faces

Fizzles lives an exciting and sometimes dangerous life !

"oh you are english we thought you were russian or german"

Or as a Polish woman I used to work with once put it, "We're so unlucky to be stuck between the two worst countries in Europe".

Fizzles lives an exciting and sometimes dangerous life !

it's like one long sax rohmer novel.

by that stage they had become more uncertain but decided i shd give them some money anyway

an admirable pragmatism today's politicians could learn from

The NHS to the Brexit committee: "Where's our f'in money you c?"

Surprisingly critical piece on the BBC news website by Mark Mardell:

Behind Mrs May's brisk self-confidence there must be an awareness that she is not there because of a vote by MPs or a general election. She came to power, almost by accident, because of the referendum. So she has taken it (Brexit) as her mandate, the source of her authority.

The prime minister has moved from her enigmatic, almost mystical, "Brexit means Brexit" phase to a more doctrinal interpretation of the vote of 23 June.
She has said the British people voted against unrestricted immigration, an unresponsive democracy, elites, inequality, the banks, unfairness and liberal views on crime - and for job security, patriotism and government intervention in the economy.
She hasn't quite told us that the British people were voting on how to pronounce "scones" and the best way to get to Woking, but it may not be long....she has placed herself in the role of High Priestess of Brexit, alone able to divine its deep meaning, jealously protecting the holy aura of the oracle.

lots of brexibabble today about "not revealing our hand"

maybe they're thinking of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treacle_mining

cabinet hopelessly split, brexiteers anonymously briefing against the chancellor: https://www.ft.com/content/2633a1dc-9465-11e6-a80e-bcd69f323a8b

david davis's pps (one stewart jackson mp) has been calling for a boycott of the economist; unconvinced this tactic will brings good results

I think Philip Hammond is the more interesting figure right now. We're used to Chancellors cutting an all powerful figure of late but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Tbh I'm having trouble working up the requisite level of hatred for him so far - everyone knew exactly what Osborne was from day one but this guy's so grey, so obviously at odds with half of his Cabinet, and yet he's the guy carrying the can for their fuckups.

I doubt this state will last long past his first Autumn Statement fwiw.

what is the cartoon bird that philip hammond looks like

thought it might be a disney vulture but now I think not

Crazylegs Crane?

don't think that's the bloke I was thinking of but not a bad shout mate

Beaky Buzzard or Sam the Eagle.

Crazylegs OTM

alas http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/14618772.Philip_Hammond_denies_he_was_a__left_wing__leather_trench_coat_wearing__Goth/

Oh no! the crow jpeg has disappeared from please help me identify this crow!

oh, it's still there further down: http://i.imgur.com/7gI1dwk.jpg

Secret lovechild of Mystery ILX Thread Garga-Crow and Sam the Eagle.

Was it a cereal mascot. I think there was a toy with a similar image on it around when i was a kid and we would have picked it up in Kenya in the late 60s.

Though possibly in Canada or America a couple of years earlier, before i was born.

There were no Goths when Philip Hammond was at school, unless he invented them.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Invasions_of_the_Roman_Empire_1.png

You see, nowhere near Brentwood.

did the Ostrogoths and Visigoths throw insults at each other like "Your'e a shit excuse for a goth, I saw you going to an acid house party dressed like a casual" ?

If I may forward my candidate in the lookalike contest:

http://wondersofdisney.disneyfansites.com/clipart/miscmovies/lambert/littlelambert.png

thought I was imagining a grey bird but CC fits the bill - it's not just the big beak but the wonky gob wonky eyes wonky everything

http://www.cartoonscrapbook.com/01pics-L/crazylegscrane-L07.jpg https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/10/03/12/philiphammond031016.jpg

Looks like the image i was remembering earlier was actually a version of this character who was cuckoo for Cocoa puffs
http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Cocoa-Puffs.jpg

I would embed a youtube of Crazylegs Crane in Nest Quest, where the hapless crane tries to measure planks for his new house while the dragonfly tells extended numerical anecdotes and throws all the measurements out, with some hilarious remark about LOL Brexit Economics!!1

but there is no such youtube so you have all been spared

(treasured half-remembered childhood television moments)

that article __xyzzzz and i posted separately suggests that the treasury will be isolated in a May government. Hammond maybe to occupy position as a sort of suffering accountant patsy.

Hammond maybe to occupy position as a sort of suffering accountant patsy.

Excellent casting by Central Office.

Corbyn: NHS so underfunded it's often left to police to deal with mental health issues. Why are mental health trusts facing economic crises?
PM: As home secretary, I changed the way police work with mental health. Number of people using police cells as a safe space is down by half

WTF re safe space

we've changed it so that no-one is looking after those people

Is it possible she's just really, really stupid

"baldrick-style" is in the thread title for a reason

it's starting to look that way. sturgeon and jones were withering after their "summit" w her

"You don't know what you're doing.... You don't know what you're doing..."

Harry Smith

‏@stvharry
#PMQs Corbyn quotes Baldrick's "cunning plan" in attack over " shambolic" Brexit plan. PM point out that Baldrick is a Lab Party member

^^^guess who reads ilx :)

Lock thread!

:D

Hi Seamus!

poor old seumas

PM point out that Baldrick is a Lab Party member

um, does she realise baldrick is a fictional character?

haha. that's hilarious.

https://twitter.com/Tony_Robinson/status/791239017245380608

Tony Robinson Verified account
‏@Tony_Robinson

Baldrick means Baldrick #pmqs

http://shop.radiotimes.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/460x/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/4/1/41s0u6vwnnl.jpg

ok i'm reading that jacob rees mogg is being mooted as replacement for mark carney

(tho possibly not by theresa may)

dude

ha, this seems to come from a Bloomberg article that states "Serious political magazines are even speculating that Treasury Select Committee member Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of his most outspoken critics, might be his replacement", with the word "speculating" hyperlinking to this Spectator thing: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/10/jacob-rees-mogg-replace-mark-carney-bank-england/

(Mogg seems terrifyingly popular with btl Spectator commentators)

I suspect even Theresa May might think twice before handing control over the Bank of England to a guy in his late 40s who is possibly still breastfeeding.

Also he managed the impressive feat of backing every other Tory leadership candidate except her.

love this picture of Mogg and a spindly table:

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2015-03/19/11/enhanced/webdr12/enhanced-29020-1426777638-10.jpg

yes the counter-storyplacing has begun:

Mark Carney stands ready to serve 8-year term at Bank of England: https://www.ft.com/content/5107a124-9eb5-11e6-891e-abe238dee8e2

seen in the wild: the argument that TMay's plan included this court judgment all along, it allows her to do what she REALLY wanted to do (but till now felt constrained not to)

She's just not that good.

but what does she really really want to do?

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n21/william-davies/home-office-rules

This was very good on May, and what her project might be, although it has been somewhat overtaken by events.

Feeds into my point that the left has for many years naively assumed that the end of neoliberalism would be brought about from the left. The idea that it might eventually be dismantled from the right, and that what follows might be worse, has never really occurred.

I think many on the left (eg Paul Mason) urged a postneolib strategy precisely because of the very real risk of fascism, it was just that they presumed it was going to happen in Austria or Croatia first :( :(

Yeah, me and my friends has said neoliberalism was just fascism in disguise, and that bankers were literally Hitler, since we were fifteen years old.

and now you're the rock band Muse

Haha

literally the rock band Muse

tbf it would explain why the guy in my local branch wanted to see my cock before I could have an overdraft

and the hold music for my online bank is "the Horst Wessel song"

and now you're the rock band Muse

lolz

quite literally giving customers a raised arm salute when they pay in a cheque

come to think of it, quite clearly a dessicated 70 year-old corpse behind the counter

if a bank manager yells aufstehen! at you in the Reichsbank, that is known as a standing order. apologies, my best material etc.

Yeah Mason has been good on this - but it feels like these cautionary voices are a relatively recent (ie post-financial crisis) thing.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/news/kate-bush-theresa-may-wonderful-best-thing-happened-us-long/

um... would like to read what she said and not just the bits the telegraph chose to quote.

Q: A track called “Waking the Witch”—which was released in 1985—was performed for Before The Dawn. You once said that the song was about “the fear of women’s power.” With regards to Hillary Clinton’s recent defeat, do you think that this fear is stronger than ever?

A: We have a female prime minister here in the UK. I actually really like her and think she’s wonderful. I think it’s the best thing that’s happened to us in a long time. She’s a very intelligent woman but I don’t see much to fear. I will say it is great to have a woman in charge of the country. She’s very sensible and I think that’s a good thing at this point in time.

http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/in-conversation-with-kate-bush/

I hope someone tells her about the home office Go Home vans.

too busy writing her next album, the leopard print shoes

Pull Out The Pym on The Dreaming had an effect on Thatcher's post-election cabinet reshuffle the following year.

you've some way to go to beat your old "Salami Dreamers" pun, mike.

"I don’t see much to fear."...

Do we like that chain necklace though?

The problems with the plan to let the Brexiteers embarrass themselves on this issue is that a) they don't embarrass and b) they are more than capable of acts that would embarrass May (E.G. Boris doing a book signing of his Churchill book while on a diplomatic trip, on Armistice Day).

nothing says "take back control" like tory mps and beloved uk sports stars being banned from travelling to the us

lol special relationship

May leaving the US after publishing Brexit bill and leaving Labour to deal with the fallout seemed a competent manoeuvre unless Trump was seen to bully her.

And then the airport ban and protests happened.

I mean who could possibly have foreseen something like this????

tbf who knew there are good muslims?

As hashtags go the #theresatheappeaser is a pretty fucking brutal one.

Obviously this shows the sheer weakness and friendlessness of the UK's position right now but anyone with even the tiniest bit of foresight could have seen themselves caught up in this.

should really be #teresateappeaser

is she really bothered at the moment tho? can't see her core supporters or the average foaming Brexiteer getting worked up about the human rights of a few islams

I doubt it. If people were really that bothered they would have made more of a fuss when Yemeni grandmothers visiting their children, Iranian filmmakers or all but a handful of Syrian refugees were either denied visas to come to the UK or refused access at port of entry. Our policy isn't as nakedly crass but May has been making it as difficult, expensive and humiliating to visit the UK as possible - cheered on by a press saying it didn't go far enough. Holding hands with Trump might look infra dig (the current petition to stop him coming argues he should be denied a visit because it might embarrass the Queen to have to meet him) but I don't think it will be damaging.

Incidentally:

Sophy Ridge‏ @SophyRidgeSky

Dan Jarvis on immigration: for too long we have run the risk of demonstrating that we don't understand the concerns people have #ridge
10:19 am · 29 Jan 2017

He couldn't even take one morning off!

This story has quite a way to go - and this is just week 1, the ongoing association might be under pressure.

keep being tempted to engage Jarvis on Twitter but my depression hasn't bottomed out yet so

She's unlikely to be too bothered at the moment but it's the sort of thing that becomes embarrassing when British citizens are caught up with it and damaging if and when she basically lets them swing. The political wind can seem to be behind you until suddenly it isn't and there's going to be a huge and ferocious backlash. The question is how far away that actually is and how much damage will be done in the meantime.

May is less stupid than Trump and has introduced her policies in a much quieter way and on the occasions where she has been tone-deaf (eg the Go Van) she's backtracked reasonably quickly. She is acutely conscious of her public perception and I think will get rattled once she loses control of that, even if the entire discourse and direction of travel is basically in her favour right now.

If we weren't at a particularly febrile point in the Brexit process there'd be a few Tory MPs sensing blood, but I doubt many of them would voluntarily step out of line at this stage.

*all* the uk rightwing papers have gleefully gone with "may held tiny hand bcz trump afraid of stairs" btw

the WH never really warmed to greece-to-their-rome as a trope, but this is next-level material

I agreed w/Matt but this is getting bigger than I thought. Labour and LDs both flatly calling for no state visit for Trump while the ban is on; laying it on thick against May. She'll hate this.

May is less stupid than Trump

A proud boast.

it's kinda soothing to watch this petition to the uk government to deny trump a state visit rack up hundreds of signatures a minute: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/171928

i was gonna join that but then realized its premise required some concern for the royal family

yeah, that stuck in my craw a bit too tbh

still signed it using the loophole that brenda will probably be dead by the time of the state visit

I did sign cause why not but yeah funny wording, wgaf if hrh nazisalute is embarrassed

signed it anyway, gotta love a pile-on

https://www.dougsguides.com/sites/default/files/High%20Five.jpg

Think living with Prince Philip for several decades might have inured her to embarrassment tbh.

petition closing on 200,000 signatures, no sign of slowing

May isn't being boxed into appeasing Trump, her entire career to date indicates that her guiding principles are similarly nativist and anti-immigrant. But this is probably the most damaging look for her yet - for all the waffle about the special relationship and Thatcher/Reagan nostalgia there's kneejerk anti-Americanism on the British right as well as left (GWB was never seen as an ally by the Tories iirc?), which might come from a place of anti-vulgarity rather than actual morality but the point is that even jingoistic empire-obsessed Brexiteer racists mostly hate Trump too.

(Maybe they don't like to think about America because even more than the EU it's a reminder of how small and un-great Britain is now.)

GWB was never seen as an ally by the Tories iirc?

No need, New Labour got in there first.

360,000 signatures and counting.

half a mil, not bad

Wonder if it can break a million.

The last petition on Trump, to prevent him from entering the country, reached 550,000 and managed to crash the website - so far so good with this one.

the uk's failing petition site's cyber is weak, can't handle more than a few visitors at a time. sad!

nice

I remember when Bush visited London and the protests and security were off the chart and that's going to be tiny compared to when Trump turns up. I wouldn't be surprised if the government concluded they just couldn't be fucked. But then you remember we've alienated every other country so all bets are off.

There's always Erdogan.

https://twitter.com/wheatles/status/825657230565445632

Approaching three quarters of a million.

britons' fears of dangerous foreigners reaching these shores can v occasionally be justified i guess

the concerns are legitimate

unlike his presidency amirite

Within about about 10 minutes, it'll be the second-most popular petition on there, beating "Give the Meningitis B vaccine to ALL children, not just newborn babies" (823,348). It'll have a while to go to beat "EU Referendum Rules triggering a 2nd EU Referendum", which asked for a recount if there was less than 60% or a turnout less than 75% (4,150,260). That got a debate last September.

i hope this petition can repeat the barmstorming success of those ones

One million.

https://cauldronsandcupcakes.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/1000000_one_million_views_fireworks_turquoise.jpg

will be interesting to see if this is debated, to compare the debate (if so) to the one from last year which was just wall-to-wall zings even from those who thought banning him a silly idea

surely they have to debate it to at least give the appearance that they're paying attention to what people want o god i can't even tell if i'm being sarcastic or not anymore

Looks like the petition is getting 100,000 signatures PER HOUR!

"Theresa The Appeaser" could stick, especially after Bercow rules it's not out of order.

appeasing "a bully" is pretty weak sauce tho, classic 2017 politics

Just got back from a protest in Brighton, way bigger turnout than expected considering it was organised in ~24 hours. Think it's probably still going but I got kettling flashbacks and had to abscond before I turned into a quivering mess of anxiety.

https://twitter.com/trillingual/status/826187205051682818

https://mobile.twitter.com/telescoper/status/826191503399776258

lol

"down with that sort of thing"

monday's hansard is v readable

So is there any point to calling local representatives about this, like what the yanks are doing?

So did the budget mention brexit even once?

Apparently not.

Today, this thread seems appropriate..

Pretty impressive how easily the press can get them to cave even with no realistic prospect of them backing a different party.

And of all the items in the budget to cause contention?? A rise of a percentage point on self-employed taxation seems pretty innocuous compared to the evisceration elsewhere

well, a lot of people who are today counted as "self-employed" are basically unemployed (= zero hour contracts and not getting work): it's a regressive tax affecting a considerable number at the base of the scale (though the noise is coming from people much further up: most journalists are self-employed)

i suspect this was conceived as another osbournian elephant trap for labour, incidentally (as in trapping them into opposing the govt and limiting their own later room for manouevre re raising taxes): but increasingly these traps are actually making the ground unsafe for everyone, and narrowing if not entirely blocking any workable future for the govt also (cf brexit itself, dark lol)

Osborne's devious Machiavellian plan to get himself fired and be able to command fat wages from sinecures at foreign banks

cf line 3 in the OP: "osborne (perversely perhaps I don’t think he has been as damaged as the above)"

the brexalump trap brought down the govt (as well as labour)
other tory traps for labour are currently snapping round hammond's feet

(one* problem for the opposition right now: they are precisely designed for labour to find them hard to use)

*yes there are others

https://twitter.com/chrisshipitv/status/839962030618660864

Regardless of what he said, Cameron's been doing A LOT of comfort eating since June.

xxp tfw you get fucked up by unnecessary traps you laid for a labour party determined to destroy itself without any outside assistance

fat dave is my favourite dave

yeah kinda feel for him under the jackboot of spin doctors forcing him to keep his weight down like Ricky Hatton in the run up to another beating

he's gonna be cyril smith-sized within five years

"The word “Brexit” was not used once — apparently out of fashion among ministers who have been told that it now polls badly. “A new partnership with Europe” is the new preferred phrase, according to a senior government official who has seen the “Brexit Narrative” handbook which instructs staff on how to speak about Britain’s exit from the bloc."

http://www.politico.eu/article/brexit-hole-at-the-heart-of-british-budget-philip-hammond/

A new partnership with Europe means a new partnership with Europe.

Not quite as snappy.

world-historical blunder means world-historical blunder

not that it *is* world-historical, britain hasn't for some time been and will never again be that important

Talking of polls, post-Budget polls in the Telegraph today are brutal for the Tories. Though we'll see how long the disillusionment lasts.

i think my basic intuition -- since roughly the time i began this thread -- is that, smart or dumb, the tories have zugwanged themselves, that their high poll points are almost entirely the ppl of the uk thinking "ok we're fucked, but at least SOMEONE seems to have a plan, whatever it might be" i.e. really as brittle as this (tho not harmed by the sense that there are no rival plans on offer) (ie the centre has no plan and the corbyn front, if it has a plan, has not communicated it to, well, certainly not to the ppl of the uk as a whole) (shall we just say)

but in fact the moment the plan arrives it falls apart -- and i suspect the disillusionment is kind of already deeply there, lurking unexpressed, which is why its manifested so intensely on such a shallow-seeming pretext

That seems otm.

The vote doesn't have many places to go right now though, does it?

yeah, that's a strength till it's not any more -- it's the thinking that shafted nu-labour

This is pretty illuminating
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n06/david-runciman/do-your-homework

Her time in the coalition was remarkable for the number of bitter personal disputes she had with fellow ministers. Many of these were over the issue of immigration. She came into a department that was pre-committed by the Conservative manifesto to bringing annual immigration down to ‘the tens of thousands’ from the hundreds of thousands it had been under Labour. Her colleagues, including Cameron, didn’t seem to have thought about whether this was a realistic target and assumed that if it wasn’t it would have to be fudged. May had no intention of fudging it, to the increasing consternation of the people who had landed her with the task. It is far from clear she believed it was good policy. That wasn’t the issue. It was now her policy and she would see it through.

whole essay is really interesting -- runciman at ruminative length is generally v good value, certainly for an "insider"

i've never seen even the beginnings of a political point made of the fact that a political leader's forebears were in service (inc.a great-grandfather who was a butler): possibly bcz for some decades the idea had just become a dismissive joke abt the long-lost past (even tho it must be true of many ppl)

so just as brexit is the UK finally ruinously forced to reckon with empire and the delusions we've fostered to look well in its aftermath, may as pm is the UK reckoning with the hidden aftermath of the empire class structure at home? (not that runciman openly goes there, it's a point he makes in glancing w/o even quite noticing where it could lead, i think)

(what i'm getting at is the secret history of a class subculture entirely fashioned round getting essential things done effectively and INVISIBLY, by a sector within the amorphous idea of the lower middle classes as a whole, which is actually -- almost by definition -- culturally and affectively cut off from the rest of the lower middle classes, let alone the other classes) (i think you'd have to turn to fiction to really dig into it: remains of the day, dorothy sayers, lol wodehouse even: the revenant politics of JEEVESIAN RESSENTIMENT…)

This piece is terrific, just got to this part:

Within twenty minutes of her arrival in Number Ten, May had summoned Osborne to sack him. Accounts of this meeting differ. Osborne’s people say it was cordial. But May’s people, who include Fiona Hill, now safely back in the fold, let it be known that the new prime minister gave him a severe dressing-down, telling him he had overpromised and underdelivered on the economy. What is clear is that Osborne had little idea how much she loathed him. He had thought that their previous disputes were just part of the cut and thrust of high politics and easily put behind them. That’s precisely what she loathed about him. She hates the idea that politics is just a game, which is what she suspects the Cameroons have always believed. She dispatched Gove with equal relish, telling him she couldn’t stomach his betrayal of Boris Johnson in the leadership contest. In truth, this was the least of it: what she really despised was Gove’s long-standing habit of making it up as he went along. Many observers were surprised when she brought Johnson back as foreign secretary, given that they too had previous from his time as mayor of London, when they had fallen out over his attempt to usurp her authority by purchasing three water cannon from Germany to help keep public order in the capital. The difference is that Johnson never tried to put her in her place; if anything, it was the other way round, after she blocked the use of the water cannon and then told him off about it in the Commons, where he couldn’t answer back. The public tends to see Johnson as the ultimate clown politician, all stunts and no substance. That’s not the way May sees it. For her it was Cameron, Osborne and Gove who were fundamentally unserious, because they were the ones who made promises they couldn’t keep. Johnson had the advantage of never having his promises believed in the first place.

Good piece ty

Deciding that something is your policy and you are going to stick to it no matter what, regardless of whether or not you even agree with it, strikes me as a gigantic psychological flaw in a politician. Let alone one who is charged with leading the single most challenging diplomatic task the UK has made in half a century.

heath, thatcher, major and now may all leaders from a lower middle-class* background arriving with a degree of embedded contempt for those who would thoughtlessly and blithely consider themselves their "betters" (though all of them i think negotiated this complicated fact in different ways)

cameron was an outlier in modern terms, last toff tory leader was alec douglas hume, whose place in history is somewhere between footnote and joke (and cam may well join him here)

*i once heard a tory grandee on the telly describing heath's accent as "working class" which spun my head round a bit, but maps something out abt relations in the party -- and major's class background is famously hard to get a clear sociological read on

Interesting article - but it goes way off-track when it talks about her advantages and compares her to Trump:

...the question voters ask of any leader is: ‘Do I like this person?’ But it seems more likely that the question at the back of their minds is: ‘Would this person like me?’ Cameron did OK on that score – better than Ed Miliband – because many voters suspected he would at least be polite and try to conceal any awkwardness he felt. But May is a natural. Weirdly, she has this in common with Trump, with whom she perhaps shares more than meets the eye. Trump too, for all his manifold unpleasantness, does a good job of seeming to be non-judgmental when it comes to his voting public. He is unspeakable to his fellow politicians, to the press, to his employees, to immigrants and to the women who are unfortunate enough to appear to him worth coveting. But to anyone who doesn’t fall into those categories, he might seem like a good person to hang out with.

I don't think anyone would think she's "a natural" . Her basic appeal for those who like her seems to be, as Mark S flagged, is that she has the image of having a 'plan' (whatever that might be) and an aura of hard-work and 'getting on the the job'.

yes i was going to say, the trump comparison seems weirdly strained -- he's looking to explain TM's sky-high polling obviously, but of course trump's polling ISN'T sky-high (especially in the UK, tho that's not really relevant to his point)

there's an element of the usual self-loathing westminster-bubble overcompensation here (runciman IS an insider after all): can't we pointy-headed elitists grasp that here is a pol that connects with [whatever the current buzzword for "real people out there who never munch" is]?

She has a lot in common with Major, not least that they made PM without having to face the electorate, but that in many ways they are the platonic ideal of a certain class of Tory. Workmanlike, unpretentious, small pleasures (Major's cricket/May's gardening) rather than flashy Blair/Cameron cosying up to cool Britannia, Tracey Emin et al.

*i once heard a tory grandee on the telly describing heath's accent as "working class" which spun my head round a bit, but maps something out abt relations in the party -- and major's class background is famously hard to get a clear sociological read on

assume this is from the Michael Cockerell documentary, iirc the grandee is an Oxford contemporary who, when asked about Heath being an atypical Oxford undergrad due to his class background, says something about him having "a pronounced cockney accent, which of course he retains to this day". I think this is followed by Cockerell relating this to observation to Heath and asking for his opinion, Heath seems visibly amused but doesn't go further than diplomatically/gently saying that he would not describe his accent as such.

I also remember reading a quote by someone to the effect that non-posh ppl of Heath's generation who made it to Oxford quickly tended to either attempt to assimilate and adopt the accent, mannerisms, dress sense etc of their upper-class collegues, or do the opposite and defiantly assert and empahsise their background, whereas Heath was unusual in that he did neither, didn't try to cling to his lower middle-class origins but also never seemed ashamed of or tried to disguise them. idk if being congenitally disconnected from humanity in general made it easier for him to adjust to being disconnected from his class via upward mobilty?

yes, you're quite right, it was was the documentary and it was "cockney accent" -- which is equally head-spinning of course

"was was the" s/b "was that"

heath, thatcher, major and now may all leaders from a lower middle-class* background arriving with a degree of embedded contempt for those who would thoughtlessly and blithely consider themselves their "betters" (though all of them i think negotiated this complicated fact in different ways)

Is being a vicar's daughter lower middle class?

According to Wikipedia, lower middle class = Hyacinth Bucket. That's useful.

I had a month of doing a liftshare with a middle-aged lower-middle-class conservative lady, it was quite a good experience in terms of hearing her explain her viewpoint and the reasoning behind it - not because this viewpoint is unrepresented (it most certainly isn't) but because it's so ubiquitous in the countryside in the south east that nobody ever feels they need to explain it from inside rather than outside.

Her assessment of Theresa May was that she seemed like a decent, professional person who was taking her job very seriously, working hard and standing up for the majority of people in the country. She had not heard anyone say that she was much worse at policy detail and negotiation than at internal party maneuvering. For my part all I could do was tell her my personal experiences of dealing with TM's immigration policies, how they had wrecked a year of my family's life for no conceivable reason, but not sure I made much headway - there are deeper prejudices underlying everything in this country, and I suspect that having a foreign wife and children makes me to some extent an outsider and an intruder, my experience less important than the majority who just want to get on with their lives and not worry about things changing.

I didn't tell her that I hate TM more than anyone in the world right now, though I do. Aside from everything she has done to me, she reminds me of a manager I had who steamrollered through "projects" with no regard to either peoples lives or measurable success. I find these sort of people the most insufferable on the planet, and would genuinely prefer a manager who was incompetent, didn't turn up or even was nakedly money-grasping.

xp
"economically secure, without being well-off" could probably describe some C of E vicars - I notice TM's old man had a side-gig as a chaplain. Probably a decent little 2nd income when you are already living rent free.

Vicars earn like £17k which is below a lot of entry-level office jobs but yeah it's hardly a precarious existence nonetheless.

low pay, free house, help with bills etc., flipside is that if you have to leave your job (or are squeezed out) you lose your house. it's a bit of an anomaly

i had may's grandparents in mind when i said that tbh: vicar is quite hard to place class-wise (as ppl note they're not paid much)

same as music hall performer/garden gnome purveyor maybe

could it be.. hear me out, now... that there was a time when social status was not entirely tied to income and/or wealth

i had may's grandparents in mind when i said that tbh

I did think that. Was it at an ILB FAP I was talking about my great-grandfather's strange double life as water board inspector/theatrical entrepreneur?

you did tom :)

true tracer, but May is only four years older than me -- the social status of vicars has inevitably drifted down with the cultural status of the church

i'm jumping in here cause my grandfather was a methodist minister, with many of the same parameters - house paid for, low salary. in his case he had to move every three or four years. when he arrived in one town, the story goes that the lay leaders in the congregation there told him part of the package was hay for his horses, should he want it. he said no, but he'd appreciate some gas for his chevrolet! BA DOOM. but anyway what i'm getting at is that he enjoyed quite a bit of prestige in each of these small towns. i imagine rural texas has a few differences with the cotswolds, mind you...

my memory of a small shropshire village is that there was quite a shift even between the early 70s and the late -- the elderly incumbent when we first moved there (who had been in role for years) had a heft, despite fraility, that younger successors never achieved

there's a line in kipling's stalky where one of the boys -- heir to thousands of irish acres -- responds to a teacher chastising him, in a tone that says [from memory] "you are but an usher hired to interpret the classics to me" -- this jumped into my head as i was trying to capture the attitude the more landed locals had to the younger successors, it overstates it but it was there (it doesn't help that the one i particularly have in mind was a fluting idiot)

wouldn't say the prestige/weird respect/fear afforded to clergy in the UK has many if any tangible benefits for their families

Wasn't the villager C of E tradition to hand a vicarage to the effete third or fourth son of some local lord or baronet, kind of a loads of class but no money scenario?

... and no brains either.

The Very Rev. Tim Nice-but-Dim

not exactly: back in the first half of the 19th century, a third son of the aristocracy would probably be steered towards the church (second went into the military) -- but this meant bishops not vicars on the whole, and didn't survive into the 20th century (also you p much had to pass exams to go into the church from the 18th century onwards, not all effect sons of baronets could manage this)

the early part of james woodforde's diary of a country parsonage is about securing the money to live as he wanted -- it's basically family money and he was very uncertain that any of it would come his way (in the end i think some did)… it mainly went on staff and upkeep of the parsonage ands its lands AND of the church (these were often in terrible condition)

(lol i read this bcz it was an xmas present to me from the father of my first gf: it is interesting though on daily life -- woodforde ate a COLOSSAL amount of meat and his daily regime included five regular meals a day)

effect = effete

My knowledge of C of E vicars is largely based on Kind Hearts and Coronets tbf.

Anglicanism is a mystery to me, frankly.

if Fielding's to be believed then the majority of country parishes where low-paid and low-prestige in the 18th century, I suspect that's generally been true of the church's foot soldiers throughout its existence

My cousin is married to the dean of the next parish over. Seems about the most middle-class existence imaginable, albeit without any money, though i don't know if Eastbourne is notably different from slightly further inland.

That LRB article is really great. Lots to digest and actually the curious class/wealth position of the English clergy seems to explain a lot about how May's been received even though she hasn't had to explicitly define herself in those terms.

(As the son of a rural CoE vicar it is surprisingly difficult to actually explain those terms: yes, social status with no actual money is completely true, but there's this incredibly weird way in which clergy families are both integral to and separated from rural communities - ie regardless of actual church attendance or belief the idea that the vicar is some sort of figurehead is crucial, but due to the nature of clergy work and the tortuous politics of rural parishes I think most clergy families deliberately (possibly are told??) don't socialise with their parishioners or educate their kids at the village school etc - and doubtless there's an element of snobbery here too. But maybe more to the point w/r/t the acceptance of May by the rural Tory grassroots is that the "clergy family" as an institution might float slightly above the rest of the community, might invite a weird kind of deference (or outright hatred if village politics end up that way) but it's such a known, familiar factor compared to eg Cameron's PR career. This is kind of garbled, it's weirdly hard to explain when you've lived through it.)

my experience again -- so very much not trying to trump lex's -- but "deference" isn't quite the word: more like an unquestioned pre-set recognition that this was a person who was going to be included in all kinds of events and discussions (social and occasionally local-political), and was often practically speaking going to given the final say as of right (even if the decision wasn't one which this or that senior villager at all liked)

Don't some vicars get assistance with private school places, to avoid kids at local schools?

yeah that's right, deference isn't quite the word but I couldn't think of any other

xp and yes, though I don't think that was the stated reason

lots of private schools -- many of which are religious foundations historically -- have long-standing little scholarships available for the children of parents of various backgrounds, via old-pupil bequests and such

the money involved is mostly pretty limited though, in relation to modern-day fees for such schools (and the child in question will also have to pass the entrance exams same as everyone else, so it's not a stress-free shoo-in necessarily)

https://mobile.twitter.com/1030/status/848953002706829314

^ Hysterical.

further subterranean evidence the snap election was more about panic than planning as two of the top figures in may's communications team (katie perrior and lizzie loudon) quit within three days of one another

She has been so smug and triumphalist in the past week, it is good to see some trouble at t'mill.

They're likely to run a shambolic campaign- May herself is a very awkward performer in the spotlight and won't enjoy the next few weeks at all. But it probly won't make much difference :-(

http://cdn2.theweek.co.uk/sites/theweek/files/2017/02/170216-may_0.jpg

what a natural, Obama crossed with Princess Di right there

She just repeatedly kept using the words leadership + stability mixed with platitude heavy waffle without explicit references to any policies - then that old chestnut "the coalition of chaos". Not very good at this game at all, even a Beeb correspondent admitted earlier that Corbyn has been "energetic" and had another good day.

coalition of chaos coalition of chaos coalition of chaos coalition of chaos coalition of chaos coalition of chaos

Didn't they use that last time as well?

yep.

theres a lovely photo going around of corbyn today reading to kids
he looks very comfy in it

They're likely to run a shambolic campaign- May herself is a very awkward performer in the spotlight and won't enjoy the next few weeks at all. But it probly won't make much difference :-(

Yeah, I don't want to get my hopes up but she's a car crash campigning-wise, this is obviously why they're trying to get this over as quickly as they can, before anyone realizes.

She is dreadful as a public performer.

It's like when Farage tries to 'smile charmingly and optimistically'.

I guess in fairness I would argue the same for May as I do for Corbyn: it's supposed to be about the policies, not congeniality.

of course I know which policies are still far ahead in the polls, or rather the nebulous belief in policies

it seems important to remember that the obvious awfulness we're laughing at is invisible to the Britain's Got Austerity massif

this is the thread for noting instances of that obvious awfulness and incompetence, if only for our own mental health

brexit/weimar -- WHICH NEEDS A NEW THREAD BTW -- is where we note how awful and incompetent everything else is, inc.seamus milne if/wjhen applicable

nah that's fair but it's the hope that kills

we need a Brelection thread but not starting one on this stupid phone

It's like when Farage tries to 'smile charmingly and optimistically'.

Whenever he does this he looks like he's leering at your wife's cleavage.

he is

Provided your wife isn't British.

Theresa May's charmless incompetence makes me despair even more tbh, just knowing how little the electorate holds it against her (compared to what they've held against Miliband, Corbyn, ABBOTT etc etc)

I mean, with Cameron at least there was that hammy Blairy PR sheen. May is delivering economic disaster with fascist overtones without even any charisma or whatever "likeability" is! The entire appeal of her persona is that headmistressy sternness - the "safe pair of hands" - but everything she actually does, whether pursuing hard Brexit or doing so with pig-headed, religious fervour - completely undermines that. And yet it doesn't!

:(

Compare and contrast May with Corbyn at Brentry children's centre, easy to see who's the more relatable. https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ec2c46fd80364299bcf321ccab244d5536219fdf/0_136_3500_2100/master/3500.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=9c0cea3907162de5c8e0e24a1780a734

Headmistressy severity has an unfortunate history of popularity in this godless country

up until not that long ago, the GBP was largely willing -- sometimes thru gritted teeth -- to outsource their judgment of competence to the "establishment"*

i: mood of GBP is as angrily suspicious of the "establishment" as it's been in my lifetime and probably ever (original peasants' revolt notwithstanding)
ii: the "establishment" as a institutional generator of (and therefore judge of) competence is in fact now very highly corroded
iii: the best real-talk guide to competence is always going to come after the fact (hence is not really particualrly helpful)
iv: we are all -- inc everyone in this thread -- somewhat reduced either to kremlinological inspection of entrails (omigod s/he is bad at picking/running his/her staff) and/or big-brother-style snapshot shortcuts (omigod bacon sandwich, can't engage w/schoolchildren w/o lookin like an alien etc)

*i know this is a woolly stand-in for something more concrete but harder to pin down**: but change -- for example -- in nature of the times over the last two decades, the BBC in the last decade, the telegraph in the last two or three years, plus corrosion of civil service as an institution dense w/expertise all agreed more or less to respect despite grumbling, plus (less immediately but still relevantly i suspect) the mounting disenchantment with e.g. cap-S Science as a space in which politics held only minimal sway, plus the general neoliberal rot with higher ed, plus BANKERS… anyway you see where i'm going maybe, that a largeish if often semi-invisble bunch of ppl you might think are crusty old squares who nevertheless knew something abt how things best got done, are now simply not much acquiesced to, in re what should happen and what alarmingly may happen
**probably another name for it is the TECHNOCRACY -- anyway its day is largely done, its empire toppled, and we all scrabble in the horrible ruins (empires are a bad thing; largely bcz when they fall is often worse)

it's arse-backwards - and the consequences are more dire than good right now but my inner child can't bring itself to regret the passing of that establishment

This is occurring everywhere, so perhaps a Longstanding Global Technocratic Hegemon into the shitbin thread is due

There is the 'is the west experiencing a rightward drift one' but I am not sure that really captures it

feel the title s/b more like "desperately we looked to the grown-ups to step back in and take charge, but the grown-ups was just us, so that was no good"

i don't regret its passing either, but i do think things are going to bumpy before they settle (and i'm well aware they'll be a LOT more bumpy for others than me personally)

"we paged arnold toynbee, we got polly"

Ironically enough I think people having some idea of what "semi-invisible" looks like isn't helping things.

Yes as I approach the age of my management I am sickeningly familiar with that feeling - these people have little applicable experience, no vision or thoughtfulness, just ambition and the sense of entitlement engendered by "putting the time in" and it basically seems to be everywhere and everyone is gradually realizing it

Institutional failures without real consequences for the institutions themselves can only go on so long

actually another route into the wider idea -- put back into my head* by scanning the chapo trap vs west wing thread -- is that a lot of polities have passed from being high-trust to semi-low-trust societies within as little as a generation, and nearly nothing institutional is at work to reverse this

*i had a plan to start a thread about this a few months back, but then had actual stupid work to do and never got round to it

The narrative of 'the grown-ups taking charge' is central to May's message. It feels more like the birth of a different authoritarian technocracy than the death of technocracy itself - still tied to an underlying faith that the market will provide. The same is true of Trump to some extent - the solution to problems is to get 'the best people' to fix them, steamrollering dissent and legal niceties. The civil service (or what is left of it) will still negotiate Brexit, Goldman Sachs heads will still be deferred to on the US economic agenda.

There was a good point made recently that the vision of the UK as a lean, market-oriented Singapore without the humidity always overlooks how interventionist the model of Singaporean authoritarian capitalism (also adopted in part by Russia) actually is. You can have a low tax economy with limited worker's rights, etc, but you probably can't sustain it without the provision of high quality social housing, massive investment in education and public works, etc.

The narrative of 'the grown-ups taking charge' is central to May's message.

@MrHarryCole 6h6 hours ago
Had second old school Tory MP - in all seriousness - refer to the Prime Minister as "mummy" on the phone today. That's twice in a week.

well that's ruined my weekend

"we paged arnold toynbee, we got polly"

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN YEAR 2019
RESURRECT EUROPEAN UNION
ON PLANET JUPITER

Polly/Arnold was beautiful btw and I salute whoever posted that

It does sum up quite succinctly how shite experts are these days!

This thread has been a+ today, but it is also upping my anxiety levels, so I'm going get moderately inebriated and watch Get Out.

surely nothing could soothe jangled nerves more than a screening get out

I'm expecting nothing more than some US fluff pos type horror movie, with ...gasp!.. the revelation that deep within lay secret enclaves of racist white people.

tbh being in the pub reveals the not-very-well-hidden layer of white supremacy pretty well

it can be difficult to get a decent glass of red sometimes, true

if we don't trust "the establishment" anymore then how come theresa may is 20 points clear of everybody else?

Still too much trust in the establishment's press.

Former Sun hypeclown Dylan Sharpe just joined the DWP on 'maternity cover' (as in covering for Mummy May?).

I noticed earlier in the supermarket that the Murdoch tabloid had a Dis-May cover, bemoaning the squeezed white-van man facing tax hikes and no plans to cut overseas aid budget etc. But it seems to have been toned down on the digital edition [the dirty digger snapping his fingers at his minions?].

Mail on Sunday poll has them dropping 10 points after all three recent stories landed. Not sure if that's because the MoS is still sore about Brexit or if they're part of the new "Corbyn could really really win make sure you vote!!!" Lyndon strategy.

LDs have ruled out coalition with both May and Corbyn now

I usually only check this thread on Zing, but does this happen to anybody else

PRO: pseudo-big breasts toppled in the great cull

Other posters said the same up-thread. But this was the quoted old-ilx post which still haunts my thoughts:

I wouldn't mind Theresa May crushing me with her Russell & Bromley stilettos.
― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, November 6, 2003 2:59 PM

The latter, I guess. I fancy Teresa May.
― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, September 15, 2004 3:09 PM

:-(

Marcello isn't around anymore to explain himself but Alba is.

If I was his lawyer though I'd be advising him to point out that he was talking about Teresa May not Theresa May.

Yes.

learn something new every day.

If a jellyfish could be a human for a day it would look and talk like theresa may.

i like jellyfish :(

reading about the FAZ report on the released May/Juncker dinner details is

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

you expect this balls when addressing the media and public but the idea of her saying this to the people she'll be negotiating with is hilarious.

also this

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

What to make of it all? Obviously this leak is a highly tactical move by Commission. But contents deeply worrying for UK nonetheless. The report points to major communications/briefing problems. Important messages from Berlin & Brussels seem not to be getting through. Presumably as a result, May seems to be labouring under some really rather fundamental misconceptions about Brexit & the EU27.

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

the picture of TM as controlling and detail-focused, but only from the centre of her own web of government and the information it passes back to her, without ever allowing in messages from outside or contemplating alternative views, is both entirely plausible and almost unbelievable.

to have that bunker mentality to such an extent that you try and convince the very people who will set the terms of the exit in negotiation with you is comical. it's a case study in delusion and power.

A random reads our thread:

Martin O'Neill‏ @martin_oneill 59m59 minutes ago

Martin O'Neill Retweeted Tom Newton Dunn

Hilarious that the bloke from The Sun thinks that Theresa May's incompetence is all part of a Baldrick-style cunning plan #clutchingatstraws

Martin O'Neill added,
Tom Newton DunnVerified account @tnewtondunn
A fascinating feed. But looked at another way; what if May presumed Juncker would leak the lot so threw out handy election lines for effect? https://twitter.com/jeremycliffe/status/858810953353367552 …
2 replies . 4 retweets 7 likes

Republic Of Ireland manager outed as Ilx lurker!

just the phrase "let us make brexit a success" is the most gormless moronic shit.

whichever way i imagine it said it's dense.

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

oh sod, i am catched on my own petard that belongs on the other thread

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

just the phrase "let us make brexit a success" is the most gormless moronic shit.

whichever way i imagine it said it's dense.

i want to imagine juncker's eyes when she said this. it reminds me of when someone says something to you at work which indicates that someone you believed grasped the situation has clearly and perhaps quite pugnaciously shown that they haven't even got the first principles down.

or just "are you fucking serious?"

i can't tell if it was said as an imperative, which isn't quite as funny as it would be if it was said in the "let us pray" or "let us go to the seaside" sense.

Thing is, not only is May a hopeless campaigner, but with Cameron, Osborne and Gove gone and Johnson under wraps the Tories don't really have any good media performers.

or just "are you fucking serious?"

Or as Boaby Gillespie would say, "Ye whit?!??!"

yeah, this really is the b-team in every sense

xpost

How long before they send for Ruth 'Wonder Woman' Davidson MSP to bail them out?

"Seeing what Dr Chilton had done for showmanship frightened Senator Martin as much as anything that had happened since her daughter disappeared. Any confidence she might have had in Chilton's judgement was replaced with the cold fear that he was a fool."

^^^Everything I undersdtand abt anything I learned in this book

Caveat: I do think there's a risk here in overstating the EU side's utter ruthless cunning and competence (Varoufakis was doing this a couple of days ago). They may also misstep: neverless negotiations between two sides with extremely distant objectives from one another, are easier -- even if tougher -- when both sides are more a less on a level in terms of tactical ablity, than negotiations where some key objectives are similar (UK and EU will still be trading at the close of this, whatever the route taken) but tactical ablity is not on a level.

The Tories do have media performers - they just work for the media.

@TonyParsonsUK 52m52 minutes ago
If not for the blood sacrifice of the British, Juncker would be speaking German today. Show some respect, you puffed-up political pygmy.

@MiguelDelaney
Replying to @TonyParsonsUK
Juncker does speak German.

LOL. Clowns are performers, true.

omg

loooool Parshole

Caveat: I do think there's a risk here in overstating the EU side's utter ruthless cunning and competence (Varoufakis was doing this a couple of days ago).

Agree with this, but the thing that allows them so much leeway that it can make any aspect of what they do look sure-footed and politically astute is the possibility of No Deal. I'm now not sure of anything, but let's assume for the moment that even May, even Davis ('we haven't costed it), recognise that No Deal would be immediately and tangibly bad for the UK (and their immediate political prospects) - 30% tariffs, flight disruption, queues at borders, the whole kit and caboodle. Actually, make that two factors because time isn't on our side either. Ludicrously optimistic timelines (something I associate in the workplace with lack of competence and detailed thinking about the project ahead) suggest that there's a wall of reality to hit there as well.

Also, the fact that the EU seems to have done some documentation, and thinking about how to engage in the negotiating process and we appear to have done very little.

I mean the EU is messy, admin heavy/slow (tho this is prob a benefit in this situation), and has multiple members who can fracture in different ways, but we're in such a pathetically tight corner.

The conclusion to the first bit was 'let's assume all that' they must realise that they're going to have come round sooner or later to the EU's demands, which means that no matter what pratfalls or errors of judgement EU players make, it's not really going to make too much difference that I can see.

it reminds me of when someone says something to you at work which indicates that someone you believed grasped the situation has clearly and perhaps quite pugnaciously shown that they haven't even got the first principles down.

I think it's more than half-way to the (hopefully not universal) experience of when someone says something in work and you realise they're drunk.

i actually quite like the idea of May getting drunk and leaning over and slurring 'let's make Brexit a success' at Juncker. Maybe she was going hard at the booze during the three times Davis was going on about the ECJ judgment (what the hell was all that about? what point was he making?)

i'm half wondering whether she feels slightly frozen in some social situations like that - a feeling business dinners aren't really her scene, eating/drinking being quite a private thing and existing in a different sphere to the desk bound detail grinding.

for: she's not part of what i've seen described as the 'dinner party elite' (i.e. london social set).
against: she's wined and dined dacre (and another newspaper editor?).

There's no way that May drinks, let alone gets drunk. I think she was actually asked how much she drank a few years ago and she was weirdly evasive about it, probably because she was told that being teetotal makes you look even more distant in the eyes of a lot of the electorate.

yes, makes sense sadly (not that i have anything against teetotalism as such, but unfortunately it limits the possibility that she got stinking drunk and decided to troll juncker).

She is type 1 diabetic, which must play a part in determining her alcohol intake.

type 1 diabetics do not have to be teetotalers.

is this level of... control i guess you'd call it, something new? it's becoming really odd, is well past that in fact. is it May or is it her handlers? if May, why? surely she can't feel *that* ill at ease with humans the public? word in that lrb article was that she *liked* doing door-to-door arrests canvassing and campaigning.

Reporters hit out at Theresa May during her visit to Cornwall today after local journalists were reportedly “shut in a room” and banned from filming her.

The Prime Minister is touring the South West but local media was stopped from recording her while she visited an industrial estate.

http://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/reporters-shut-room-banned-filming-theresa-may-cornwall-visit/02/05/

yeah I was about to say maybe it's less the canvassing and more the camera crews following her around

right, yes. it's a media than generally portrays her in a v flattering light tho. i wonder if it's the numerous quite well known photos where she's looking a bit weird. most recently eating some chips this morning. i wonder if that's somehow *got* to her.

or maybe she feels in some way that media isn't a 'real' part of being on the stump.

still odd.

Note: The media has a very thin skin for this sort of thing...

me upthread:

i think my basic intuition -- since roughly the time i began this thread -- is that, smart or dumb, the tories have zugwanged themselves

i still think this, except i now think they are many months more aware of the problem: that they are totally hemmed in by bad options -- whether or not may enjoys being on the stump, she is not a natural easy-cheesy charmer-improvisor and well knows she cannot afford to go off-message, except the message at any length beyond "strong and stable: brexit is brexit" isn't there, bcz the moment they try and fill it in, the cracks will show

hence basically trusting to their opponents' continued hapless ineptitude and the full-backing-in-a-pinch of the usual newspaper-owner suspects (which support is currently not looking as fulsome as they must want)

the measured tone of the press response is surely a fake objectivity intended to make the final week blitzkrieg look more impressive

god bless neutral Kirsty Wark, taking a stand to protect middle class families on a mere 200K per year

wrong thread, we do have an "execute every last one of the motherfuckers" thread surely?

"politics of envy" seems to be becoming more ubiquitous than "strong and stable" a lately. Not that it makes any fucking difference.

will still be voting for "eelootm" tbh

I think she, or her team, have mb correctly judged that ppl hate politics, democracy & debate even more than usual atm & won't judge her for not bothering

https://theswamp.media/theresa-may-s-father

yikes

I worked on the re-wire of the Church of The Resurrection in Mirfield while at a company that would go bust before the job was finished. I don't feel so bad about what a fucked mess we made of that job now!

"Yet just after Theresa May took over at No.10 her campaign team started to request the deletion of web addresses linked to Hubert Brasier." - Fucking shady as fuck, man.

to be fair this seems a little bit flimsy

v much so

some interesting kernels in there tho

well maybe, but I don't have much trouble believing her dad's proximity to much pederasty!

The stuff about the hospital serial killer is good though.

I found the historical Mirfield stuff interesting - obv The Black Bull is a Tesco Metro these days and about 80% of Mirfield are Tory/UKIP voting scum, but I lived there for a couple of years, so..

I remember finding a very well preserved 30's/40's Woodbine cigarette pack hidden under a floorboard under the mains board in that church. I was thinking *I wonder who left that there*

no human thumb among the woodbines no crediblity

lol!

wait i started this thread, it has taken a turn i did not anticipate

also why did i say "human" thumb?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2016/10/02/110192479-theresa-may-news-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqnxsVzbFt55yT5iapkHrLYW3_2sgz594JaNJ0SIIOdcE.jpg

she looks like them thumbs are severed trophies she is holding aloft!

say what you like about theresa may, at least she has regularly-proportioned fingers and thumbs

(in a jar under her bed)

if we can't get the "may's jars of human thumbs" story trending by tomorrow then we have failed as, well, twats and losers, i suppose

(again i felt the need to write "human" thumbs, i think it's the rhythm tbh)

Hmm.

Just feel like this thread needs to be back in the New Answers list.

Did we get this one sorted?

turns out her project was dumb as fuck iirc

Did we get this one sorted?

not sure. if only there was some empirical way of knowing.

am i allowed to feel i kinda called this re may?

and also re the loosening hold of the mail and the sun?

I think we're all allowed to feel as good as we want to for the next 24 hours at least

totally allowed! ended up being the perfect opposition - media class were all "she's a mastermind superbrain" and then she landed spectacularly on her arse because of her "cunning".

also called it re turning in early and having a good night's sleep, you hilarious nerds

we kept you sleeping while remaining vigilant to ensure your dream had time to hypostasise.

it's a very looking-glass morning

This is exactly the reaction she wanted u guys smdh

am i allowed to feel i kinda called this re may?

and also re the loosening hold of the mail and the sun?

You are, mark.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1785282/the-labour-partys-finished-thanks-to-corbyn-so-its-time-for-me-to-leave/

this isn't the lab ceiling, i don't think:

Labour under Corbyn:

1) Biggest European centre-left party by membership

2) Most money

3) Highest polling

4) Highest election vote share

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) June 9, 2017

caveat forever: "events dear boy events yada yada" but having a large and enthusiastic and energetic and comfortably funded party is a BIG HELP (pity abt all the unenthusiastic middle layers gumming stuff up -- tho some of those were hurrying to kiss the ring last night, tom watson we see you)

Not sure how I missed this at the time:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/prime-minister-theresa-may-replace-downing-street-artwork-with-framed-quotations-of-her-own-speech-a7152106.html

Printed out maps to show how much blue there still is.

The change is intended to remind staff of the need to deliver results in tackling inequality and improving the lives of the worst-off

um

Wonder how far she got?

Wrt the art, not tackling inequality, obv. OBV!

prime-minister-theresa-may-replace-downing-street-artwork-with-framed-quotations-of-her-own-speech

"just about managing"?

"I got us into this mess. I'll get us out of it."

Watched the Maitlis interview - same 3/4 lines delivered ad nauseum.

The question as asked gets more ridiculous by the day. Amazing she ever made it out of the house, never mind PM.

Everything was predicted in mark s's parenthetical comment in the opening post

(largely by keeping her mouth shut, which you can't do forever as PM)

this thread of tim shipman's responses to OJ is interesting

Why is Theresa May giving more insulting robotic interviews rather than announcing her immediate resignation?

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) June 16, 2017

(shipman = political editor of the sunday times) (i don't have a high opinion of him as a commentator but i think it's likely his contacts at the upper level of the tory party are good)

Also seems to be a suggestion that Johnson would probably win any leadership challenge held now and there are enough senior Tories who want to avoid that to defer any decision until there are other viable options.

Excellent, they're shitin' it.

You've got to laugh when the best solution Portillo can come up with is.. Ruth Davidson!

... not even best solution, only solution.

another thing that i don't understand - beyond and coterminous with TM's previously outlying popularity - is how she managed to do well at PM's questions every week? she was more or less always proclaimed "THE WINNAR" and the bits that i saw never did too much to dispel that judgment. she never seemed that thrown. is this itself a judgment on PM's questions as a format? isn't it supposed to reveal this sort of fatal inability to handle difficult questions?

i: boris will always bottle it
ii: anyway murdoch wants gove

i fkn hate the phrase "stalking horse" but that is what we looking it rn, sadly sir anthony meyer died in 2004

It helped that 80% of the PLP were often effectively on TM's side at PMQ's and "difficult" questions are easy to wave away in parliament, not so easy in an election campaign.

it's summer 2017, and govemania is sweeping the nation

i don't think that's true anyway, eli -- she was routinely caught badly on the hop at question time, any time it was a topic she hadn't prepared really

PMQT is a ritual for the appreciation of the cognoscenti anyway -- sane voting punters really don't watch it in any great numbers -- and the cognoscenti were found very badly wanting in their grasp of the shape of the world just a week ago: "she did well" is dust along with all the other nostra

when's the next one? this coming wednesday? many more lab voices, tories on the ropes (with all kinds of optics beartraps lurrking), young lab intake entirely heartened and eager and angry, maybe i will for once become an insane voting punter and turn on the TV

I'd be tempted to put a bet on may skipping pmqs this week tbh

She was always a wooden performer, but it was often reported in a manner that Corbyn was often getting slayed by her silver-tongued wit. No-one is buying that story again.

that has the ring of truth to it mark. and i guess i must count myself as a sane voting punter because i'll admit i barely watched them. conventional wisdom's a powerful drug eh? i am too lazy to look them up but you made at least three posts here, and on twitter, over the past few months, where you said the confidence in may would last - in spades - right up until it didn't any more and that's exactly what's happened. the scenery all turned out to be cardboard.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCXWKLRXcAA0_Eu.jpg

worst ever attempt to look pensive and concerned for the cameras!

i'd even be enjoying "told you so" a little if the event that triggered the change weren't so beyond fucking awful

i still can't get over the fact that the only images we have of may's visit to grenfell look like fucking paparazzi shots

the change was on election day mark! this is just the i's being dotted and the t's being crossed as far as TM's public perception is concerned

I'd disagree with both of you - it tumbled and fell over the month before the election.

yes i remembered this as soon as i posted* but couldn't think of a way to describe what grenfell has done, bcz it's so much more than that: it's torn back the veil from a far deeper and more ghastly thing than t.may's social awkwardness (and m.gove's silly face and, well, there's never been anything good abt boris pissbottle but everything bad about him is still entirely small potatoes)

*"a week is a long time in ---" shut up harold

A lot of her authority did seem to drain away in that month - embarrassing no-shows - becoming the Maybot clown - manifesto of doom. I think both her and the right wing press were in a state of denial about this, but she probably had already lost her majority at that point imo.

Other thing about PMQs is that she always had a handful of scripted responses which didn't deal with the matter at hand but instead just laid into Corbyn personally (inability to lead party, mostly), which would be met with massive cheers and then there'd be no way to press the PM on the answer to the actual question, and then the soundbite is over. She can't do that to a member of the public or an interviewer, obviously, so she gives a rehearsed non-answer and looks terrible.

I'm with Andrew. The fact that she called snap elections, leaving left to right baffled really, was one thing. But she didn't own up to it; even worse, she started behaving very 'weak and unstable' (soz), dodging debates, voters, anyone really. If 'brexit is brexit' and 'no deal is better than a bad deal' are your prime slogans to win an election, you're in for it. Manifesto telling the elderly to eat their houses didn't help. And she still never really explained why this whole election was necessary iirc. She never explains anything tbh.

xxp what Calzino said basically.

What's the betting the queens spech will get voted down? Will the DUP hop on an obviously sinking ship? Are there eneough tories who would sink her?

Would expect the DUP to get some big concessions to stay on side. No way will any Tories vote against it, other than Ken Clarke perhaps, turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

ok i don't really buy this revisionist line: unless the june 8 exit poll was no shock to you, her "authority" had *not* yet drained away, she still had the commentariat (including most importantly us) under her spell (lol except maybe julio)

what 10 pm jun 8 revealed was that the polls had been failing to measure something -- and once you project this fact back, we literally don't know what actual authority or popularity she ever had

in conclusion: the event triggering the change was me devising and posting this thread, i thank you

xp
Ken Clarke sounded like he would be voting for it on Any Questions last night and was talking (and sounding quite delusional in this case) about how in Europe coalition govs can take 18 months to form - so be patient ppl!

Thankig u

xp

maybe May would've been more empathic if she'd had children...

hah! My mum said that, only in much harsher and not very politically correct wording.

xxp

Missed that. In 18 months time we could easily have had half a dozen by elections and not even the DUP could save them.

i wouldn't better against the DUP withdrawing its support right at the last moment to be honest

i think the tories will hold out as a bloc for weeks rather than days, precisely because they know they face the abyss -- but they are punchdrunk and stripped of options, and TM's government is way beyond exhausted now, and yes, bye elections

(remember the labour mps taking the option of retirement bcz they wanted to get out before the landslide: think of all those tory mps committing themselves to a full five years of grinding corrosive fake loyalty in the face of what ppl are now saying abt them -- not everyone can front up being repeatedly called murderers)

ken clarke: art50 clock started ticking 10 weeks ago i believe, 2 yrs less 18 months less 10 weeks is not a lot of time to get the negs hammered out dude

"i wouldn't better" s/b "i wouldn't bet" obv

remember the labour mps taking the option of retirement bcz they wanted to get out before the landslide

yes, yes i do

adding (as if there weren't enough pressures to hand): food prices are continuing to rise

LOL this thread is wot dun it!

Everything was predicted in mark s's parenthetical comment in the opening post

(largely by keeping her mouth shut, which you can't do forever as PM)

― The Adventures Of Whiteman (Bananaman Begins), Saturday, 17 June 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No of course - this was called, and terrible that it has come to pass for all to see in the most tragic way - and with timing too.

She was actively bad at PMQs for most of the last year. Corbyn struggled when he was facing Cameron, mostly because he would ask overlong questions with too many sub-clauses, which allowed Cameron to pick one tiny bit he wanted to respond to and grandstand on that. May didn't do that, she was very wooden and yes did tend to resort to pre-prepared lines and cringeworthy attempts at humour. And yes that "inability to lead" line is never going to work for her again because she is obviously also unable to lead.

PMQs matters in normal times, not because it REALLY matters but because enough political journalists THINK it matters and it sets the tone for news coverage even for nominally impartial broadcasters. But we aren't in normal times and I would hope that enough journalists have learned the lesson of mistaking Westminster theatre for real politics. (Actually what am I talking about of course they haven't learned that lesson).

Looking back, Mark's first post pretty much nails everything to an almost prophetic degree. "Largely by keeping her mouth shut, something you can’t do forever as PM" is especially OTM because she is *still* trying to make that approach work even as it becomes one of the defining features of her political caricature. She also over-relied on the right-wing press to write her premiership for her and there is evidence that its influence is in decline.*

* For day-to-day politics at least, its influence in determining wider societal attitudes over the long term is still huge, if only because most of the work was done 20 years ago.

This is quite striking and supports Matt's final point.

We've matched @YouGov data on #GE2017 vote by age & @risj_oxford on main source of news-Labour won young online, Tories older people offline pic.twitter.com/2pAGyRUap7

— Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (@rasmus_kleis) June 16, 2017

In spite of everything in this thread, she still got 42% of the popular vote, lest we forget.

All praise to Mark, but I think the question in the title had been answered by the election - my tears when I heard the exit poll had nothing to do with her and more to do with the judgement on Corbyn. I think even if she'd won, she would have been weak - but again who else would want the job?

After a tough couple of weeks for the British PM - what’s next? Here’s @rabbitandcoffee with ‘Theresa May and the Holy Grail’. #auspol pic.twitter.com/P7Pnb0vwMo

— Insiders ABC (@InsidersABC) June 25, 2017

Ni! Ni! Ni!

(That's excellent)

Great work. Good cameo by Buckethead as well.

Well that far exceeded expectations

spreadin the luv

:0

And this is how it ends.

Or playing the reaaaly long game.

Gamely, valiantly, she battled on. The hall sensed her intent and started to get behind her. An activist near me with tattoos and purple hair clenched her fists in and out. People were sitting forward in tension.

Could the old girl make it? Could she complete the last few laps of this 18-page address and, albeit on half an engine, breast the tape? Two pages to go. One page to go. We were in the peroration. Yes! She’d done it!

"clenched her fists in and out"

?

the emerging tory narrative around may seems to have come from the ashes of "bloody difficult woman" and now it's as if she's a very old car which you have affection for, even though it takes a long time to start in the morning and you know you're going to get it scrapped soon, perhaps because we don't make the car in britain anymore. either that or like the queen mother, someone who you gamely respect for their role and their civic duty even as you speculate constantly about their health and their impending demise.

cruelly OTM

In a way the coughing is a probably a handy distraction from the weak concessions to Corbyn on social housing and tuition fees. I mean the party has always been ideologically opposed to social housing ("petri-dish for Labour voters") and everyone knows it. And she had already dropped the energy bills cap once, such a weak leader making weak pledges is beyond lame!

"I was just about to mention someone who I'd like to cough all over, and that's Jeremy Corbyn"

hard working Brits love a charity drive, this could be a dangerous new tactic: please help Theresa and people like her

In a way the coughing is a probably a handy distraction from the weak concessions to Corbyn on social housing and tuition fees

also otm. the content of the speech was fucking dismal. weak sauce, or very thin gruel, if you're looking for some reparation of the massive public and social erosions of the last seven years. if you're a tory, you're sitting there gritting your teeth at the feeble concessions to the agenda Corbyn and the parlous state of the country generally have pushed to the forefront of policy. The speech didn't seem to be going noticeably well even before any of the incidents, in fact they seemed to elicit more support from the hall than the content, apart from that content-free guff about the free market being the greatest mechanism for innovation in history or whatever it was.

I was wondering how come the housing market has got broken under the efficient, watchful gaze of the Free Market

but then a nice man from the Association of House Builders or something told me on the radio it's because of planning regulation, so it turns out the Free Market definitely still works

It's just not Free enough.

never enough freedom, if only governments would stop interfering we'd have fully-automated luxury gay space capitalism by now

Didn't see too much of this Tory conference but enough to confirm that Tories are revolting regardless of age, sex, ethnicity etc.

never enough freedom, if only governments would stop interfering we'd have fully-automated luxury gay space capitalism by now

obligatory mention that humanity's greatest achievement, NASA's space programme, was taxpayer-funded and the failure of the free market to properly build on its promise is part of the reason we're not currently enjoying fully-automated luxury gay space capitalism now

a breathless endless fountain of innovative commodities showering down on hard working people who consume as relentlessly as they work, self-sustaining and fulfilling everybody, ouroborosian jouissance eternally and infinitely acting from the same necessity from which it exists

ELON MUSK WILL SUCCEED WHERE STOLEN TAXPAYER ROCKET MONEY FAILED

PER USURA AD ASTRA

luv2imagine earth's first space colony being a libertarian paradise

I believe Ridley Scott has given us a glimpse of this

extraplanetary gulags if I've got anything to do with it!

partially-automated subsistence-level heterosexual martian libertarianism

the new frontier, wagon load after wagon load of bright-eyed idealists shooting space injuns and panning for unobtainium

believe there's a popular shooting game called Manifest Destiny about this

I believe Ridley Scott has given us a glimpse of this

http://www.gstatic.com/tv/thumb/movieposters/14302/p14302_p_v8_ag.jpg

tory cabinet as crew of the nostromo, corbyn as the alien stalking them from the shadows. theresa begins coughing at the cabinet table as hideous socialism gestates inside her

theresa and amber rudd as thelma and louise, corbyn is the car driving them off a cliff

lol i have started hearing "PENNYCORBS!" to the rhythm of "PICKLE RICK!"

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare Brodkin?

jesus thank god he wasn't bare tho

xp
My partner has been reading that one with the kid. She refers to it as time for some "Dead Dad's Ghost"!

Small, er, mercies. (xp)

a naked Jeremy Corbyn lurching towards you is probably not what a lot of people think about, right across the spectrum!

I have been replaying the coughing bits - can report it is soothing

Everything Corbyn was accused of last year (incompetence, clumsiness, distinct vulnerability to these kinds of mishaps) has happened to May this year turned up to 11. If only it mattered...

fun that both Calvin Harris and Florence have already come out on twitter to say they didn't authorize use of their music

i'd assumed they were both closet tories tbf

should've gone with a kate bush medley

Might or mightn't, but I think that the reaction is less about their personal politics and more about the realisation that the tory brand is super toxic right now; could imagine them playing some equivalent young people music in the Cameron days and no one commenting.

primal scream complained about cameron using 'rocks', so did keane about one of their songs iirc