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

I think backing strikes will entrench a set of attitudes in the rest of the party - its one of a many number of things they have to do, but it counts.

In fact I think this might be the first strike that Labour has explicitly endorsed?

article on that subject here: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/02/ns-podcast-135-trident-tories-and-tough-love

(I don't know why the url says that, but it is the right link)

wait, no it isn't, aargh http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/01/junior-doctors-strike-first-strike-ever-be-supported-labour-party

this cunt http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/12/jeremy-corbyn-no-senator-bernie-sanders-democrats

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/israel-boycott-local-councils-public-bodies-and-student-unions-to-be-banned-from-shunning-israeli-a6874006.html

Story as per URL basically - hard to imagine that these days this won't blow up in their faces, google searches for 'Isreali boycotts' surely about to start rising sharply.

... which Google will helpfully response to with 'do you mean "Israeli boycott"?'

I'd be surprised by the govt's audacity with this and the lobbying/gagging bill if there wasn't such a feeble media/sense of public opposition

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/israel-boycott-local-councils-public-bodies-and-student-unions-to-be-banned-from-shunning-israeli-a6874006.html

oh xp

Interesting that the Israeli angle is being made so much of in coverage of the proposed legislation - it would also cover refusal to work with an arms company, refusal to let G4S handle community service, etc

I thought these fuckers were all about consumer choice?

That there is an interesting one - there's so many contradictions between what they say and what they do - likewise 'small government' but you know let's go hardcore on policing, 'cut taxes' haha unless you're poor and you've got a spare bedroom - 'for hardworkingpeople/rewarding merit' but let's allow private schools and oldboy networks to wallow around doing what they want

But I'm always surprised, always - perhaps 'we' get too absorbed in arguing with what they say they believe in, perhaps that's just as planned. People calling themselves 'hard working' has already lost any substance and become just an obvious ideological mantra (or seems so to me?), perhaps all the rest of it will shake loose in the next few months/years

Donkeys are hard working, fuck that. You talk as if you're surprised to discover Tories have no scruples. Fuck it, I'm too old for this.

OMG @ whoever decided to put George Galloway in front of the Grassroots Out campaign, 90% (at least) full of Tories and UKIP members. Reportedly they had to close the doors to stop people leaving.

How many hours did it take for EU leaders to cobble together this deal to keep David Cameron in office? What a farce.

Goldsmith is unsurprisingly in favour of leaving the EU which should probably tank his chances of being mayor.

https://www.politicshome.com/party-politics/articles/story/zac-goldsmith-back-leaving-eu

The news coverage is going to be increasingly unbearable between now and the referendum. More and more shrill and borderline (and not so borderline) psychotic conservative politicians on tv and social media.

I have a feeling this could end up being so divisive and bitter for the Conservative Party that there'll be a clusterfuck of a leadership election that'll end with someone like Michael Gove winning, Major-style, because no one can be bothered to build a coalition against him.

Increasingly convinced that anyone vocally on the In side doesn't stand a chance of being the next Tory leader.

If that is true (not sure it is) then that would definitely make Boris' mind up for him.

The massive intellect that is IDS weighs in.

Boris is maybe the exception, he can do what he wants and get away with it with the public at least.

OTOH campaigning on the opposite side to Cameron might be seen as a brazenly disloyal leadership play by Tory MPs, and that has the potential to be more damaging. Obviously Tories are fine with disloyalty when it suits them but most of them just don't seem to like Boris that much.

Cameron clearly fears the idea of Boris campaigning on the Out side in way he doesn't with, say, Gove. Wonder if Boris would be prepared to trade his loyalty for, say, a Cabinet job.

Maybe there are corners of blue England where Gove is a towering political figure and I just don't know about it, but if he remain the representative of the Out campaign that's on all the front pages between now and June then surely they are doomed?

Boris is out (according to the BBC)

I'm guessing the answer is 'no', but are there any ilxors who intend to vote leave? I wonder if Corbyn would be campaigning for brexit alongside Dennis Skinner and Kelvin Hopkins if he hadn't been elected leader.

i'm minded to vote leave at the moment

Will either not vote or vote leave. To be honest the only thing preventing a leave vote is my distaste for some of the people I'd be voting alongside (NV excepted of course)

yeah it will involve some very unpleasant bedfellows but i feel like the leftist argument to leave is pretty strong

Owen Hatherley otm that whatever qualms people have about the EU as a project, the concrete repercussions of leaving will be deportations, worse employment laws, the restriction of human rights, etc, etc.

the EU isn't the ECHR and the referendum won't involve leaving the latter

and seeing either as a check on the worst excesses of a Tory government feels unlikely to me

The only reason the Tories haven't pressed for leaving the ECHR is that membership of the EU effectively requires it, even if they are distinct institutions. They have mooted it enough times to view it as entirely plausible if not inevitable. The UK is also currently bound by separate EU human rights legislation.

The EU is only ever going to be as good as its constituent governments and the current lot are pretty reprehensible and the institution is a very long way from perfect. However disgusting the treatment of Greece was last summer, it's hard to see how Britain leaving would make any difference to that, and I can't think of any major reasons why the country would be improved by leaving.

I suppose it would theoretically make a more left wing form of UK government a possibility, but a considerably more right wing Britain is by far the bigger likelihood and the bigger risk. The short and medium term economic fallout could be really quite bad as well.

The Tories are constantly stymied by the EU on worker rights and directly or indirectly on human rights. The argument that both could also stymie a democratic leftist movement is correct, the idea that it doesn't inhibit the current government is not. Xp

wouldn't leaving the ECHR mean leaving the Council of Europe and does that seem plausible? i'm not questioning that there will be negative impacts of leaving the EU, i'm saying that it has ceased to be a net benefit to those of us who want genuine economic change in the world

ShariVari very much otm.

it's nice to see people articulating some sort of positive case for continuing with the EU, but the case at the moment looks too reformist/Fabian for my taste. i may not want to side with Gove or UKIP but i've got no desire to be on the side of Blairites and the Lib Dems either

Yes, it would mean leaving the Council of Europe but that doesn't look like much of a stretch if already cut loose from the EU. The negative impacts would be huge and immediate. All the ridiculous, regressive laws the Tories float would become viable. I appreciate that the long term goal of genuine economic change is unlikely to be accomplished under the EU but trading maternity rights, statutory holiday rights, redundancy rights, anti-discrimination rights, the rights and security of hundreds of thousands of European citizens who have settled and built a life in the UK, etc, for something that remains abstract and can still be worked towards doesn't seem a positive course of action.

Any appetite for a Third Way?

:) don't suppose that will be on offer

the other advantage of joining the leave campaign is that you might get invited out to mcdonald's with David Davis, Kate Hoey and Peter Bone

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

feel sorry for those two guys in the top right hand corner, just trying to have a quiet meal

since when is mcdonalds a byob establishment

The EU is only ever going to be as good as its constituent governments

I wouldn't entirely agree with this in so far as the nature of the EU means that any government has to keep in mind that in any directive produced by the EU, their citizens are as likely to be the 'them' as the 'us'.

since when is mcdonalds a byob establishment

yeah, this is... weird? taking a bottle of wine in to have with your big mac?

Seems pretty European imo.

That expression on David Davis's face. What can you say, the man's a pro.

This is good from Alex Andreou on Twitter: "The EU has been corrupted into an instrument of austerity. To empower those blackmailing it further in that direction is not a rebellion."

well, you could read that either way.