Psychoactive Substances: Rolling UK Politics in The Neo-Con Era

The Tories have taken so many leaves out of Communism's book - denouncing intellectuals, work groups, five-year plans, you get the idea - not to mention a very unpopular decision to sell infrastructure to China, McDonnell missed about 342424 effective book-throwing punch-lines including the phrase 'five-year plan' (the one fact low-attention voters know about Communist governments). Then John McDonnell wouldn't have spent half of yesterday having to explain that he was joking.

including the phrase 'five-year plan' (the one fact low-attention voters know about Communist governments).

Really?

Well, if not the one thing, certainly a widely-known concept that would be a better basis for LRB-throwing japes in Parliament.

After watching the footage I'd rather McDonnell hadn't done it but I really loved Tom Watson's face the most. Then the commentariat come in with a 'he has to look credible' and you are more than glad he's done it and you wouldn't change a thing about it.

It is probably the only thing people will remember, especially if all of Gideon's plans tank.

In terms of the actual substantive issue, it might prove to have been useful to have put down a memorable marker on labour's attitude to the flogging off of infrastructure to the PRC.

Altho lol substantive issues, obviously

The Shadow Cabinet met straight after the Statement finished.

Jeremy Corbyn was late in and said the meeting would have to last no more than 45 minutes. Shadow Education Secretary Lucy Powell said that it should be as long as it needed to be.

Amongst those who spoke in favour of military action were Vernon Coaker, Tom Watson (who emphasised his vote against Libyan military action), Hilary Benn, Michael Dugher, Angela Eagle and Lucy Powell.

Lucy Powell was also briefly involved in a rebuke to Diane Abbott who she told off for being offensive.

Diane Abbott was one of the small number of Shadow ministers who spoke in agreement with Jeremy Corbyn (the others were Jon Trickett and the Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party John Cryer). John McDonnell didn’t speak.

http://blogs.channel4.com/gary-gibbon-on-politics/syria-70000-45-minutes/31952

LOL'd at Jer's "45 minutes" hopefully intentional zinga

uok Lucy Powell?

Is it too cynical to think that, for the Parliamentary Labour Party, this isn't about bombing Syria but removing Corbyn?

If PLP oust Corbyn over a war none of the membership wants, then Labour will *definitely* be unelectable for the foreseeable. And nobody will be allowed to blame it on poor old JC.

He might resign.

Is it too cynical to think that, for the Parliamentary Labour Party, this isn't about bombing Syria but removing Corbyn?

― Caput Johannis in Disco (Tom D.), Thursday, 26 November 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not at all cynical. That at least a few from the PLP are voting with the Tories to nail Corbyn is a real, real low.

That letter he issued after the meeting is great - not 'tactically' but its all v Brian Clough @ Leeds Utd right now I think. Unlike Clough I would like to think Corbyn will stick it out. The members - as the poll published earlier this week showed - are v happy with him.

Don't resign Jez, time for a purge.

'37 style please.

Just been reading this ok-ish book about team-Stalin. He had an enviable team of acolytes assisting him to total power, but only one stone arse.

Yeah I saw your post about it on ILB.

I doubt the Labour rebellion will be big enough to be material. There are better hills to die on than a clusterfuck war where half your allies hate each other, and with a psychopathic dictator, no clear plan for what to do when you've finished bombing, and the near certainty of violent retaliation.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3336942/Chairman-Corbyn-s-Maoist-Britain-Clarkson-education-camp-giant-posters-people-s-hero-Diane-Abbott-compulsory-ping-pong-historian-s-brilliantly-witty-chilling-vision-future.html

So began the first of the purges. Live on national television, well-known writers and thinkers — Melvyn Bragg, Germaine Greer, Mary Beard, David Starkey — were rounded up by Red Guards and driven deep into the countryside, where they were presented with hoes and brusquely instructed to begin tilling the land.

Isn't this a good thing?

"Brilliantly witty".

chilling vision of the future where people have to do hard manual labour to earn a living

The long Guardian piece on the build up to the Tory youth suicide was astonishing. Like, I read it with a mix of prurience and horror but you got this overwhelming sense of all these terrible human beings fancying themselves as characters from House of Cards.

No one seemed to have noticed how deeply fucked up the kid himself was, the piece seemed to suggest he thought he could bring about a scandal that would destroy the Tory Party by lying in front of a train.

student/youth pols are the worst idiots, asocial weirdos entirely reminiscent of infants playing mums and dads in the home corner until suddenly wow they are on the fringes of government with no discernible change in intelligence or ability, in a way this shit is worse than when the entire House of Commons was anonymous former bank managers and younger sons of the nobility at least they had a quiet gravitas

I crossed paths with that Mark Clarke bloke about five years ago in a Tooting pub where my brother's band were playing. He was slaughtered, started hassling some girls in our rabble and just generally being a boorish twat, and goading my large-ish mate who you should not fuck with. My memories of the evening are quite vague, but he was bleating on about how he was a Tory councillor/candidate, as if to justify his dickish, arrogant behaviour, then someone in our group told him I was a Guardian journalist (not mentioning I was a music freelancer, not a politics writer), and he started getting really agitated and in my face. He seemed proper coked up, if you ask me, and the evening ended with my large-ish mate socking him in the mouth after continually harassing a couple of our female friends, and his mate dragging him away saying "it's not worth it, Mark, it's not worth it." They were both dressed in nasty suits on a saturday night in a pub putting on a gig. Did not put one and one together and realise it was the same bloke until reading that Simon Hattenstone piece last night. A right nasty piece of work.

Genuinely felt for the parents as well, like the father was in the steel industry and you could tell he didn't agree with a thing his son believed, he did a pretty good job of not displaying the unbelievable anger he must be feeling.

I had incredible admiration for his parents. I can't imagine what they're going through.

Looks like Shapps is a goner over this. One of those ministers whose continued career has been bewildering for so long.

Fingers crossed.

... he's just resigned!

That was a hell of an article

His seat, or his cabinet position? I WANT THE FULL SCALP. xp

Stevie, find a friendly newspaper and sell that story.

Sort of more proof that people join the Tories because they're horrible people and the Tories fight the corner of horrible people

^^Clarke did in fact oppose Sadiq Khan in Tooting, so if this is how he was behaving under those circs....

Suzy, I remember it too vaguely and worry too much that my mate might get in trouble! I seem to remember Clarke saying some racist shit about Khan that night too though.

Fuckin' Tories in Tooting... the 21st Century is a weird weird place...

Shapps hasn't quite resigned yet, it seems.

never forget "Michael Green" http://www.theguardian.com/politics/shortcuts/2015/mar/16/grant-shapps-business-mp-conservative-chairman-michael-green

not sorry to see Shapps go but the angle that this letter from Lady Warsi contradicts his claim that he had not received any complaints about Clarke's alleged bullying and abuse seems sort of odd to me, what Warsi is complaining about in the letter seems pretty significantly different than the other shit Clarke was apparently getting up to?

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/27/lady-warsi-letter-warning-tory-party-chair-grant-shapps-of-bullying-by-aide

A thought occurred to me, a week or so too late. Which of these men is Grant Shapps, and which is Robert Webb?

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02319/sch_2319637b.jpg https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/7/8/1278599731310/robert-webb-006.jpg?w=620&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=e28f0acae34e7f70f3c3b5389daec359

trick question!

It must have been a very strange experience to be part of that young conservative campaign group. My little meltdown upthread about how one could imagine people being bigoted against benefits claimants was ... one thing, l'm only mentioning it again by contrast to how difficult it is to imagine being a late teen/early 20s person and being fully if naively invested in the Conservative Party (as opposed to conservative ideas) in 2015.

Reading this story now and this detail on YBF is just:

In 2003 Blaney founded the Young Britons’ Foundation, a conservative training, education and research thinktank established to “help train tomorrow centre-right leaders and activists today”. YBF is proudly cross-party. Its executive director, Matthew Richardson, is also the party secretary of Ukip. Blaney has called YBF “a madrasa” that radicalises rightwing conservatives and embraces American-style “attack-dog” politics. YBF claims to have trained thousands of activists, taking them on trips to America where they met neo-conservative groups and visited a shooting range in Virginia to fire submachine guns and assault rifles.

Found the references to the "right wing movement" fairly chilling tbh.

yeah I was wondering "what kind of people would want to be a Young Tory?" but after that bit it struck me "aha that kind of people"

Logically, national security agencies like the MI5 should be monitoring extremists like this.

The pedantic apostrophe in Britons' is the scariest bit. These people will kill

wut

Imago is a writer - every comma matters.

List of murders committed by the Writers' Guild

It must have been a very strange experience to be part of that young conservative campaign group. My little meltdown upthread about how one could imagine people being bigoted against benefits claimants was ... one thing, l'm only mentioning it again by contrast to how difficult it is to imagine being a late teen/early 20s person and being fully if naively invested in the Conservative Party (as opposed to conservative ideas) in 2015.

― cardamon, Sunday, November 29, 2015 12:09 AM (16 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is it, though

They all seem like awful, awful people, but there are a lot of awful people about, and maybe who am I to judge?

(xp) Indeed.