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

No that's Camus

well the Labour party does know a fair bit about absurdity

https://medium.com/@Orwell_Fan/fear-and-voting-in-leechwood-south-23e26e4d43a0

This is more like it.

in other 'FFS Labour' news: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/25/suspended-mp-simon-danczuk-likely-to-stand-for-labour-in-election?CMP=share_btn_tw

That's a seat wide open for a plucky independent if ever I saw one.

Karen has applied to stand in Bury!

What a shitshow today was, and Ronnie O'Sullivan about to be knocked out from the World Championship too!

Really nice person I follow has applied to be Lab MP in Lewisham West and Penge: https://medium.com/@Tom_Gann/the-new-type-of-mp-labour-needs-d6e0498f0d07

That Hedges article is a minor masterpiece

julio i thought you despised really nice people

LOL come on Jeremy Corbyn is really nice and I think he is great!

nah, the corb-machine needs more dick moves, i hear all politics is mostly dick moves

thats what the likes of Starmer is for, seemingly. He has credibility.

good dick moves >> stupid dick moves imo

It would be good to be MP for Penge.

Roy Hattersley yesterday seemed to say that Labour should revolt vs JC, before the election.

In any case he said Labour would one day return from JC to its true Labour values.

RH fought one election as part of the leadership. Labour won 229 seats, to the Cons' 376.

Aw, Tom Gann hasn't been selected for interview by Penge. I think he has stood as a candidate before, and would have been good, but is vocally critical of the PLP.

Yeah I like Tom Gann and a lot of what he says is OTM but he's been very heavily critical in a very combative way which strikes me as naive behaviour for someone planning to run again. Maybe he felt like he had nothing to lose, I dunno.

Lewisham West used to be my constituency and the runners appear to be exactly the collection of former NEC-members, barristers and charity workers you'd expect, but then you get this guy:

Ibrahim Dogus

The entrepreneur and co-chair of SME4Labour is perhaps best-known for his role in the popular British Kebab Awards, which is attended by activists from across the party. He is also the founder director of the Centre for Turkey Studies.

one of those turkey studies in full:

https://render.fineartamerica.com/images/rendered/default/print/6.375/8.000/break/images/artworkimages/medium/1/portrait-of-a-turkey-johann-wenceslaus-peter-wenzal.jpg

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/article_small/public/thumbnails/image/2016/10/09/10/keir.png

amirite

*gives up comedy, goes on panel show*

"Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow" was Noel Coward's famously cutting remark about one of the hottest young actors of the 1960s.

never realised the whole snivelling toad queue of 'questions' that happens on the last day of pmqs before an election. is it always like this?

Sir Gerald Howarth, a Conservative who is standing down, says he came into the Commons in 1983, when the country had a strong woman leader, and he leaves as another one is restoring British sovereignty. He appeals to Howarth to protect the armed forces guarding “this sceptred isle”.

Sir Eric Pickles, the Conservative, asks May about anti-semitism, and if she shares his disgust at the selection of David Ward, a former MP accuses of anti-semitism, as a Lib Dem candidate. (See 10.35am.)

May pays tribute to the work Pickles had done tackling anti-semitism. She says people will be disappointed to see the Lib Dems adopt a candidate with a questionable record on anti-semitism.

Ben Howlett, a Conservative, asks if May agrees that his voters should give him a renewed mandate to improve traffic around Bath.

May agrees. A vote for any other party is a vote for wrecking the economy.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/757584238472466433/fHIxAL8T.jpg

Ed Laslett‏ @EdLaslett 33m33 minutes ago
More
Great question from @ben4bath, it's him or the coalition of chaos. There really is only one choice for Bath. #PMQs

The depressing thing is that this shit is definitely going to work.

yeah the guardian min-by-min person said something about there being proof that repeating the same message over and over can be ineffective - i thought this was a p core part of the SIR lynton crosby approach. may is deadeningly good at it too. with cameron or whatever there was always the chance he might try to change the message or come up with his own soundbyte - the idea of bludgeoning the public to death and killing discourse via a few dull soundbytes is prob a dream come true for may.

Sir Eric Pickles, the Conservative, asks May about anti-semitism, and if she shares his disgust at the selection of David Ward, a former MP accuses of anti-semitism, as a Lib Dem candidate. (See 10.35am.)

May pays tribute to the work Pickles had done tackling anti-semitism. She says people will be disappointed to see the Lib Dems adopt a candidate with a questionable record on anti-semitism.

Ex-MP David Ward has been sacked as a Lib Dem general election candidate, party leader Tim Farron says.

Mr Ward, who planned to stand in Bradford East - the seat he lost in the last election - caused controversy in 2013 when he accused "the Jews" of atrocities against Palestinians.

His party membership is suspended and an independent panel will investigate him fully after the election.

Mr Farron said he believes in "open, tolerant and united" politics.

Shudder to think of the state of Bath's bins.

https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/857216148689096704

Howlett has one of the most punchable Tory Boy faces in the Commons. But he's not quite at the level of Corby MP Tom Pursglove.

http://www.toshlist.org/img/photos/mp/mp-pursglovet.jpg

Corbyn should clarify if his position is based on broadcasters refusing to empty chair May (essential spectacle).

The UK should just blow itself up.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/26/theresa-may-popular-voters-leader-since-late-1970s/

... and there's more...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/26/working-class-voters-flock-tories-labour-struggles-hold-onto/

i don't understand why anybody wouldn't want to be part of the United Kingdom, it's full of wonderful people

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/june2017/2017/04/jeremy-corbyn-has-attracted-socialism-fans-not-labour-voters

Where to even start with this condescending shit?

- Impossible contemptuous and condescending in the way that virtually every New Statesman article seems to be these days.
- I totally accept that delusional Corbynite cultists exist and they're among the most annoying people on the internet but for every one there are two who desperately want to preserve the welfare state and saw Corbyn as the only available option given the rhetoric coming from his rivals. A lot of the latter group would have voted LibDem before 2010, so bleating about them not being Labour enough is missing the point.
- This is the part where I caveat this by saying that Corbyn has been a disaster who has bungled/squandered the opportunity of a generation and the likely election result will only confirm this.
- So what happens then, assuming he resigns. Do the Allisons of this world think that all these people can be shamed into electing a nice, "sensible" "moderate" who will do what the focus groups tell them, even if that includes dismantling Labour's legacy, and ensure they lose by a smaller margin next time?
- These people need to be won over, not sneered at! The only way this is going to happen is by putting forward candidates who people trust NOT to proceed with welfare cuts if they get elected. Otherwise they're going to cling to Corbyn like a life-raft, or go for whoever is most like Corbyn next time round, even if they're useless.
- The alternative is that Labour gerrymander the process to keep them off the ballot, and they don't seem alert to the dangers that might be inherent in a Momentum Party or similar siphoning off votes from the other side.
- It's amazing how he can bang on for maybe 10,000 words without mentioning the elephant in the room - the financial crisis and the complete collapse of all the apparent certainties that sustained New Labour, and the failure of subsequent leaderships to really get to grips with that.
- Stop pretending that *any* Labour victory is going to be good for the poor, when it's obvious that there are several prominent figures within the Labour Party who continue supporting austerity.
- Brexit would have fucked them anyway.

when I started reading that (which, why) I was like, oh, another lazy tossed-off blog based on a quick 20-minute scroll through social media and my horror as it dawned on me that it was meant to be a Serious Long Read

Seriously! The entire attitude is precisely why you end up with unelectable lefties running your precious party in the first place.

why do we think corbyn will resign?

I don't. He will hang on until he can guarantee the threshold for nominations is lower. Party conference?

if he doesn't have enough MPs who will accept places in his shadow cabinet after the election he may resign

Didn't he already double up on some of those jobs?

that NS piece barely contains a sentence that isn't stupid, untrue or meaningless. takes some doing, that.

i think at this stage the greater likelihood is splitting the party than seizing it -- with the election lost and the next one five years off, the rationale for not splitting is certainly less than it was

re ns: stephen bush is still worth reading, nearly no one else

If Corbyn doesn't resign after a massive defeat them fuck him. But he's very likely to be challenged by another left-winger in that scenario.

he will force the challenge i suspect, and force the split

otherwise the momentum wing of the party basically loses all purchase

I also wouldn't bet against the unions abandoning him either. Even the most loyal ones know that their interests are better served by virtually any version of Labour in power than under the Tories. And they're unlikely to accept a situation from which there's no apparent way back.

O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast!

if the election is lost, a momentum party is a plausible consequence, but it emerges at its strongest out of a situation where the PLP is gerrymandering or generally manoeuvring against the membership's (and the jilted would-be membership's) wishes

older labour voters are deserting to the tories -- they'll never come back-- but corbyn is currently winning the election vote with under 40s (this alone won't save him in the election but it makes a new party considerably more doable, especially one formed under the kinds of in-party stupidity and unfairness we've seen corbyn first stood… )

corbyn staying on brings that situation about -- him stepping down much less so

on the other hand, i do keep saying he has little strategic nous