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

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