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

Reading the various thinkpieces on Johnson and Gove screwing themselves over and wondering, how is it that they didn't see that a Brexit vote was, if not 'likely', entirely possible? From the press conference faces I'm convinced they didn't actually want out, but they're not stupid. Can they really have not had a 'plan' for the first few weeks after this outcome, if not beyond that? Can they have really not foreseen the possibility that Cameron would leave it all up to them from here on in? I'm missing something huge here.

Your analysis is correct. You aren't missing anything. They don't have a plan, it's that simple.

from the TPM piece:

If anything, we'll probably be more concerned about where to locate the UK's nukes that are currently located in Scotland.

Time to rewrite one of the Mouse That Roared movies for Billy Connolly!

xps yeah, at the very least not coherent or matching plans - I sort of imagine each of them had a rough fiction in their head about how this might work, but from the level of 'How will Calais work?', to 'Who will actually negotiate?' through 'Will there be violence in Northern Ireland?' to 'What shall we do about immigration?', nothing… nothing that could be called a plan. Like HQ must be a room with populist opportunists, weird sovereignty nerds,sentimental Powellite Imperialists and flat-out racists arguing about what's next.

If you're right, and I guess you must be, it's staggering that the way the media treats politicians - and its entire job - means that it was possible for the extent of this non-plan to come as a surprise.

Or my naivety is staggering. Or both.

fucking hell at the wales article

consent of Scotland's Parliament, governments of Nothern Ireland and Wales required by European Communities Act??
https://twitter.com/PeteWishart/status/746741523522400256 big excerpt pasted in as quote so goes way past old character limit

Not that it will affect anything right now, but if we're shaping up for a general election, the Green Party also need to elect a new leader.

Glad Benn has been sacked. The party members and unions won't vote for Jarvis, Any left wing leader (Nandy or Lewis are viable if Corbyn steps aside) is going to get similar treatment from the Blairites wanting a dramatic shift to the right and the press. Sympathetic journalists love to imagine that if only he was more organised and slicker things would be different but the press would kill any genuinely left wing movement even if you had Vegas-era Elvis fronting it.

Corbyn is probably right that the only way for Labour to win is to build a grass roots movement like Podemos and economic disaffection post-EU is more likely to make that happen over the next few years than in a generation but Podemos didn't have 200-odd MPs with the knives out. There is a risk that Corbyn won't find enough people willing to work with him to fill a shadow cabinet.

Ebbw Vale has been fucked for decades. EU investment has been positive but it came alongside years of the Tories under Major ploughing money into it to attract inward investment as well and they were not much more popular. When the mining industry collapsed a huge effort was made to bring in low-to-medium-skilled manufacturing and assembly. Almost all the new jobs went to women, bringing new people into the workforce but doing nothing directly for the people who had been made redundant. That probably increased resentment. The EU funding has been great but, again, aimed at young people and not the long-term unemployed. You had lots of older people moved on to sickness benefits to mask the fact that they were actually unemployed and have recently gone through the humiliation of health assessments and cuts to benefits, etc. It may be a case of a town voting against its best interests but there is a huge disparity in who economic regeneration has helped.

the press would kill any genuinely left wing movement even if you had Vegas-era Elvis fronting it.

irl smile

Corbyn is probably right that the only way for Labour to win is to build a grass roots movement like Podemos

yeah i thought he was the party's last chance but i'm much closer to exterminate the brutes at this point

ty ShariVari, NV, nakhchivan, & many others for quality posts on this topic

xxp to NickB - Green Party leader in the US just came out in favor of the vote:

http://www.jill2016.com/stein_calls_britain_vote_a_wake_up_call

(really she hedges her bets, using both "victory" and "defeat" selectively within two paragraphs)

crossposted from US primary thread

went about 3 paragraphs in, bet-hedging is right

Looks like a mass resignation to try to force Corbyn out. Guess I'll be sending back my membership card then. After the Iraq war began I turned my back on politics for a decade, and I think Brexit will have a similar effect on me.

now more than ever the country needs a racist Lib Dem Lite party

Shadow Health Secretary Heidi Alexander has resigned. Labour going into fucking freefall.

how does labour always manage to do this? manage to look even worse and mire flailing than the tories at their absolute nadir?

also, poss stupid qn, but is there a reason angela eagle's name is never in the potential-leader conversation as much as it should be?

xp

because it was taken over by right-wing wankers c. 1995 and they locked themselves in

To me it's Corbyn labour in free fall more than the party. Corbyn was never going to be elected PM therefore was on a temporary contract till such time as the PLP could find the opportunity to move him on. His position post result hasn't been poor but maybe a bit more is needed than an air of indifference. (Someone upthread brilliantly described him as looking like a bored supply teacher.) Particularly when the tories are infighting. Agree with the point about farron although in his position he has nothing to lose and he probably calculates this is the best opportunity to regalvanise lapsed lib dem support.

because the Labour party definitely needs to offer the same economic policies as Euro-positive Tories if it wants to win an election for no obvious reason

So who blinks first, do they boot Corbyn out and he goes off to form PodemusUK with Momentum or do we get SDP 2.0? I can't really see the labour party surviving in its current form.

sturgeon on marr as classy as ever. clear she's going to try pitch a yes vote in indyref2 as much as possible as as vote for the status quo

If Farron plays his cards right he could double the number of MPs the Lib Dems have at the next election .

Best case scenario for Labour is that Nandy or Lewis take over and the PLP grudgingly works with them but I don't think that is what they have in mind. The anti-Corbyn line is that he doesn't have the "experience" to take Labour's seat at the EU negotiating table. Nandy is 36 and Lewis was elected as an MP thirteen months ago. Rifkind was on the news earlier saying 'lol, what seat? You aren't going to be involved in the negotiations'.

I am pretty sure they have eyed a space in the centre right vacated by Cameron and will tack right of Blair, leading to open warfare with the members.

It looks like they are going to coalesce around Tom Watson on the basis that if you aren't going to try to win over the British working classes on jobs and education you might have a chance campaigning on a shared hatred of paedophiles .

shd just elect st1nson hunt3r and be done w/it

As funny as I find the idea of all this actually happening, it seems immensely shortsighted on the part of Corbyn.

http://www.politico.eu/article/how-david-cameron-lost-brexit-eu-referendum-prime-minister-campaign-remain-boris-craig-oliver-jim-messina-obama/

Less than a month before the historic EU referendum, the team assembled by Cameron to keep Britain in the European Union was worried about wavering Labour voters and frustrated by the opposition leader’s lukewarm support. Remain campaign operatives floated a plan to convince Corbyn to make a public gesture of cross-party unity by appearing in public with the prime minister. Polling showed this would be the “number one” play to reach Labour voters.

Senior staff from the campaign “begged” Corbyn to do a rally with the prime minister, according to a senior source who was close to the Remain campaign. Corbyn wanted nothing to do with the Tory leader, no matter what was at stake. Gordon Brown, the Labour prime minister whom Cameron vanquished in 2010, was sent to plead with Corbyn to change his mind. Corbyn wouldn’t. Senior figures in the Remain camp, who included Cameron’s trusted communications chief Craig Oliver and Jim Messina, President Obama’s campaign guru, were furious.

Even at more basic levels of campaigning, Labour were refusing to cooperate. The party would not share its voter registration lists with Stronger In, fearing the Tories would steal the information for the next general election. “Our data is our data,” one senior Labour source said when asked about the allegation.

In desperation, the Remain strategists discussed reaching out to the White House to intervene directly. Obama had met Corbyn during a trip to London in April, when the American president argued forcefully for Remain. They wondered: Maybe Obama could call the Labour leader and convince him to campaign with Cameron?

Don’t bother, Labour aides told them. Nobody was going to coax their boss into sharing a public platform with Cameron. The idea was dropped before it reached the White House.

“We can’t stand there every week and wail away at you for prime minister’s questions and then get on stage with you,” a senior Corbyn aide said at one tense meeting three weeks before the vote, according to a Remain source.

Cross-party campaigning in Scotland didn't really work out particularly well for them at the election that followed.

Labour pretty much got the proportion of the remain vote they were aiming for.

More Labour voters went with remain than Londoners, the same proportion as British Asians and 1% fewer than the SNP if Ashcroft is correct.

The bigger problem in winning over the other 37% is the twenty years of failing to talk about the positives of the EU that preceded it.

I don't necessarily think it would have made a difference in terms of the referendum but his half-hearted approach here has weakened his mandate from labour supporters and invited the fury of his cabinet.

Not that they liked him much to begin with, but a general election is more likely in the near future than not and he doesn't appear to see building a platform as a priority.

His cabinet hated him anyway and has been looking for an excuse to throw him overboard since the day he was elected. The local elections were supposed to be the breaking point but Labour performed better than expected. I'm pretty sure he'd still walk a leadership election if one was held tomorrow.

I think his position is probably untenable but I wouldn't really place the blame for his current situation on the EU referendum.

he couldn't even look at Cameron while he was talking during the Jo Cox tribute on that Friday afternoon. something about that struck me as deeply 'off' especially given what had just happened.

I am also sceptical about another GE being held any time soon. Eurosceptic Tory MPs are already talking about blocking any leadership hopeful suggesting it, xp

I would also struggle to look at the dude whose pandering to the far right contributed to my colleague getting assassinated.

Even if the local elections had gone awry I still think he would've held on but Relative to this, their importance seems miniscule and a lot of labour supporters were deeply disappointed by his lack of enthusiasm.

Appearing on a platform with Cameron would have strengthened his profile with Tory remain voters more than it would've weakened it with labour leavers and would've allowed him to symbolically occupy the vacuum left by Cameron while the tories faff about without having to cede anything in terms of ideology (well except of course the fact that he doesn't like the EU)

Best case scenario but at the very least half his cabinet wouldn't have resigned.

Don't see how Corbyn sharing a platform with Cameron would've made a difference - Ed + Dave and so on you can see because they all look they come from a similar kind of place. Corbyn is as outside parliament as can be. It wouldn't work at all.

Has to hang on until the bitter end. The general election calculation may depend on the how far Labour is shot.

Tory voters are not going to go for the most left-wing party leader since Michael Foot irrespective of what happens. I think he probably calculated that he needs to win the leave vote / non-voters more desperately and standing shoulder to shoulder with Cameron would feed into the widespread perception that 'they're all the same'. That has killed them in Scotland. Idk whether it was the right thing to do but on the basis that it probably didn't change anything, it's an understandable risk to want to avoid.

I think they would have found an excuse - now, three weeks or three months down the line.

Best case scenario but at the very least half his cabinet wouldn't have resigned.

― tsrobodo, Sunday, June 26, 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It wouldn't take a lot to have an agitation of this sort regardless. Some of the commentators that support Corbyn were taken aback by the Vice doc and called it 'over' then. Corbyn is not going to do a lot to win friends, but the people who might be persuaded sound awful as well. xp

So who blinks first, do they boot Corbyn out and he goes off to form PodemusUK with Momentum or do we get SDP 2.0? I can't really see the labour party surviving in its current form.

― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Sunday, June 26, 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Labour is purely a brand - it does look like that who gets to keep it is what the fight is over now.

Tory voters are not going to go for the most left-wing party leader since Michael Foot irrespective of what happens. I think he probably calculated that he needs to win the leave vote / non-voters more desperately and standing shoulder to shoulder with Cameron would feed into the widespread perception that 'they're all the same'. That has killed them in Scotland. Idk whether it was the right thing to do but on the basis that it probably didn't change anything, it's an understandable risk to want to avoid.

I think they would have found an excuse - now, three weeks or three months down the line.

― On a Raqqa tip (ShariVari), Sunday, June 26, 2016 9:50 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Probably true but still hard at this point to gauge the mood of disillusioned remainers. If in the midst of all the uncertainty things get drastically worse and the clamour for remain increases he'll be in no position to benefit from it.

Leave voters are useless to any politician that's prepared to say out loud that they're pro-immigration and non-voters are useless to politicians by default. Besides, you could cut off Corbyn's head and sew it to Cameron's shoulder, still don't think people would be able to see him that way.

Scotland is quite decidedly pro-EU. For the purposes of the referendum I don't see how appearing with Cameron would hurt him there more than demonstrating to them that the Labour leader wouldn't fight to keep them in.

Hah yeah they would have at some point but why does he have to make it so easy for them?

Asking the stupid question: Does Corbyn need much of a Shadow Cabinet. Say about 7-10 people agree to be in it?

Really don't need this shit.

It wouldn't take a lot to have an agitation of this sort regardless. Some of the commentators that support Corbyn were taken aback by the Vice doc and called it 'over' then. Corbyn is not going to do a lot to win friends, but the people who might be persuaded sound awful as well. xp

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, June 26, 2016 9:56 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean I wouldn't let vice interview my cat and he seems to just walk into shit like that. As awful as those people are they're not worse than what we had and they're certainly better than what we might end up with.

I dunno at this point it's hard not to feel like stomaching a Blairite wouldn't have been better than having every conservative fuck up superseded by labour drama.

Gloria Di Pietro has resigned.

Of course politics is around building alliances with people you don't agree with but Corbyn wasn't elected doing that. Corbyn also was never going to acquiesce (and rightly so) to the immigration line that the wide PLP accept and its incredible that in this time where some actual fascism about on the ground (racist attacks, remarks (see LG) and language freely broadcast) that Hilary Benn is having a go now - so much for his righteous morality on the Syria debate.

he couldn't even look at Cameron while he was talking during the Jo Cox tribute on that Friday afternoon. something about that struck me as deeply 'off' especially given what had just happened.

― piscesx, Sunday, 26 June 2016 09:41 (59 minutes ago) Permalink

http://cdn.thejournal.ie/embeds/twitter/fda19b9a29256a54ba932ff290a40100.png

PLP seems to be split between those who want a leader who can win a snap election and those who think he has to lose one to lose credibility with the membership before he can be unseated.

Few seem to think he could win an election, and his relationship with the media does seem to be a massive handicap to that.

Of course politics is around building alliances with people you don't agree with but Corbyn wasn't elected doing that. Corbyn also was never going to acquiesce (and rightly so) to the immigration line that the wide PLP accept and its incredible that in this time where some actual fascism about on the ground (racist attacks, remarks (see LG) and language freely broadcast) that Hilary Benn is having a go now - so much for his righteous morality on the Syria debate.

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, June 26, 2016 10:21 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Don't see how he stays elected if he can't find it in himself to do it. The forthright Corbyn we see with immigration and Syria is someone I can root for, it's the dithering and non-committal stances that leave him exposed and sometimes have me wishing he was someone else.

I hear and experience enough racist shit working in pro-brexit east london to know where this is heading. Don't think I've ever felt more uncomfortable in this country and frankly if the opportunity arises and I can get a passport for the dog I'm out.