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

Compare and contrast May with Corbyn at Brentry children's centre, easy to see who's the more relatable. https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ec2c46fd80364299bcf321ccab244d5536219fdf/0_136_3500_2100/master/3500.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=9c0cea3907162de5c8e0e24a1780a734

Headmistressy severity has an unfortunate history of popularity in this godless country

up until not that long ago, the GBP was largely willing -- sometimes thru gritted teeth -- to outsource their judgment of competence to the "establishment"*

i: mood of GBP is as angrily suspicious of the "establishment" as it's been in my lifetime and probably ever (original peasants' revolt notwithstanding)
ii: the "establishment" as a institutional generator of (and therefore judge of) competence is in fact now very highly corroded
iii: the best real-talk guide to competence is always going to come after the fact (hence is not really particualrly helpful)
iv: we are all -- inc everyone in this thread -- somewhat reduced either to kremlinological inspection of entrails (omigod s/he is bad at picking/running his/her staff) and/or big-brother-style snapshot shortcuts (omigod bacon sandwich, can't engage w/schoolchildren w/o lookin like an alien etc)

*i know this is a woolly stand-in for something more concrete but harder to pin down**: but change -- for example -- in nature of the times over the last two decades, the BBC in the last decade, the telegraph in the last two or three years, plus corrosion of civil service as an institution dense w/expertise all agreed more or less to respect despite grumbling, plus (less immediately but still relevantly i suspect) the mounting disenchantment with e.g. cap-S Science as a space in which politics held only minimal sway, plus the general neoliberal rot with higher ed, plus BANKERS… anyway you see where i'm going maybe, that a largeish if often semi-invisble bunch of ppl you might think are crusty old squares who nevertheless knew something abt how things best got done, are now simply not much acquiesced to, in re what should happen and what alarmingly may happen
**probably another name for it is the TECHNOCRACY -- anyway its day is largely done, its empire toppled, and we all scrabble in the horrible ruins (empires are a bad thing; largely bcz when they fall is often worse)

it's arse-backwards - and the consequences are more dire than good right now but my inner child can't bring itself to regret the passing of that establishment

This is occurring everywhere, so perhaps a Longstanding Global Technocratic Hegemon into the shitbin thread is due

There is the 'is the west experiencing a rightward drift one' but I am not sure that really captures it

feel the title s/b more like "desperately we looked to the grown-ups to step back in and take charge, but the grown-ups was just us, so that was no good"

i don't regret its passing either, but i do think things are going to bumpy before they settle (and i'm well aware they'll be a LOT more bumpy for others than me personally)

"we paged arnold toynbee, we got polly"

Ironically enough I think people having some idea of what "semi-invisible" looks like isn't helping things.

Yes as I approach the age of my management I am sickeningly familiar with that feeling - these people have little applicable experience, no vision or thoughtfulness, just ambition and the sense of entitlement engendered by "putting the time in" and it basically seems to be everywhere and everyone is gradually realizing it

Institutional failures without real consequences for the institutions themselves can only go on so long

actually another route into the wider idea -- put back into my head* by scanning the chapo trap vs west wing thread -- is that a lot of polities have passed from being high-trust to semi-low-trust societies within as little as a generation, and nearly nothing institutional is at work to reverse this

*i had a plan to start a thread about this a few months back, but then had actual stupid work to do and never got round to it

The narrative of 'the grown-ups taking charge' is central to May's message. It feels more like the birth of a different authoritarian technocracy than the death of technocracy itself - still tied to an underlying faith that the market will provide. The same is true of Trump to some extent - the solution to problems is to get 'the best people' to fix them, steamrollering dissent and legal niceties. The civil service (or what is left of it) will still negotiate Brexit, Goldman Sachs heads will still be deferred to on the US economic agenda.

There was a good point made recently that the vision of the UK as a lean, market-oriented Singapore without the humidity always overlooks how interventionist the model of Singaporean authoritarian capitalism (also adopted in part by Russia) actually is. You can have a low tax economy with limited worker's rights, etc, but you probably can't sustain it without the provision of high quality social housing, massive investment in education and public works, etc.

The narrative of 'the grown-ups taking charge' is central to May's message.

@MrHarryCole 6h6 hours ago
Had second old school Tory MP - in all seriousness - refer to the Prime Minister as "mummy" on the phone today. That's twice in a week.

well that's ruined my weekend

"we paged arnold toynbee, we got polly"

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN YEAR 2019
RESURRECT EUROPEAN UNION
ON PLANET JUPITER

Polly/Arnold was beautiful btw and I salute whoever posted that

It does sum up quite succinctly how shite experts are these days!

This thread has been a+ today, but it is also upping my anxiety levels, so I'm going get moderately inebriated and watch Get Out.

surely nothing could soothe jangled nerves more than a screening get out

I'm expecting nothing more than some US fluff pos type horror movie, with ...gasp!.. the revelation that deep within lay secret enclaves of racist white people.

tbh being in the pub reveals the not-very-well-hidden layer of white supremacy pretty well

it can be difficult to get a decent glass of red sometimes, true

if we don't trust "the establishment" anymore then how come theresa may is 20 points clear of everybody else?

Still too much trust in the establishment's press.

Former Sun hypeclown Dylan Sharpe just joined the DWP on 'maternity cover' (as in covering for Mummy May?).

I noticed earlier in the supermarket that the Murdoch tabloid had a Dis-May cover, bemoaning the squeezed white-van man facing tax hikes and no plans to cut overseas aid budget etc. But it seems to have been toned down on the digital edition [the dirty digger snapping his fingers at his minions?].

Mail on Sunday poll has them dropping 10 points after all three recent stories landed. Not sure if that's because the MoS is still sore about Brexit or if they're part of the new "Corbyn could really really win make sure you vote!!!" Lyndon strategy.

LDs have ruled out coalition with both May and Corbyn now

I usually only check this thread on Zing, but does this happen to anybody else

PRO: pseudo-big breasts toppled in the great cull

Other posters said the same up-thread. But this was the quoted old-ilx post which still haunts my thoughts:

I wouldn't mind Theresa May crushing me with her Russell & Bromley stilettos.
― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, November 6, 2003 2:59 PM

The latter, I guess. I fancy Teresa May.
― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, September 15, 2004 3:09 PM

:-(

Marcello isn't around anymore to explain himself but Alba is.

If I was his lawyer though I'd be advising him to point out that he was talking about Teresa May not Theresa May.

Yes.

learn something new every day.

If a jellyfish could be a human for a day it would look and talk like theresa may.

i like jellyfish :(

reading about the FAZ report on the released May/Juncker dinner details is

EU side felt May was seeing whole thing through rose-tinted-glasses. "Let us make Brexit a success" she told them.

you expect this balls when addressing the media and public but the idea of her saying this to the people she'll be negotiating with is hilarious.

also this

May seemed pissed off at Davis for regaling her dinner guests of his ECJ case against her data retention measures-three times.

What to make of it all? Obviously this leak is a highly tactical move by Commission. But contents deeply worrying for UK nonetheless. The report points to major communications/briefing problems. Important messages from Berlin & Brussels seem not to be getting through. Presumably as a result, May seems to be labouring under some really rather fundamental misconceptions about Brexit & the EU27.

https://twitter.com/JeremyCliffe/status/858810953353367552

the picture of TM as controlling and detail-focused, but only from the centre of her own web of government and the information it passes back to her, without ever allowing in messages from outside or contemplating alternative views, is both entirely plausible and almost unbelievable.

to have that bunker mentality to such an extent that you try and convince the very people who will set the terms of the exit in negotiation with you is comical. it's a case study in delusion and power.

A random reads our thread:

Martin O'Neill‏ @martin_oneill 59m59 minutes ago

Martin O'Neill Retweeted Tom Newton Dunn

Hilarious that the bloke from The Sun thinks that Theresa May's incompetence is all part of a Baldrick-style cunning plan #clutchingatstraws

Martin O'Neill added,
Tom Newton DunnVerified account @tnewtondunn
A fascinating feed. But looked at another way; what if May presumed Juncker would leak the lot so threw out handy election lines for effect? https://twitter.com/jeremycliffe/status/858810953353367552 …
2 replies . 4 retweets 7 likes

Republic Of Ireland manager outed as Ilx lurker!

just the phrase "let us make brexit a success" is the most gormless moronic shit.

whichever way i imagine it said it's dense.

i guess i liked that thread bcz it was clearheaded abt something that's important in politics and history: evident policy success often carries the seeds of catastrophe for the next generation, and sustainablity across generations is all but impossible either to plan for or even to pitch for

oh sod, i am catched on my own petard that belongs on the other thread

good point from alex harrowell on his twitter: that parking boris at FO has shut him up -- in part by smothering him in layers and layers of supersmart diplomatic highflyers who are adept at cutting off at least some of his stupidity, in part by just giving him important work to do that takes place elsewhere -- but it has also, for this same reason, basically cut the PM off from use of the same supersmart diplomatic highflyers (bcz they are fully occupied)

so that the quality of her briefings (re EU and Dinner with Junkers etc) has collapsed less bcz she has organised, trump-style, that no one breach her blissful ignorance, more bcz she has organised that the routine interrupters are more urgently needed elsewhere (shutting boris down)

^^^none of this is good obviously

just the phrase "let us make brexit a success" is the most gormless moronic shit.

whichever way i imagine it said it's dense.

i want to imagine juncker's eyes when she said this. it reminds me of when someone says something to you at work which indicates that someone you believed grasped the situation has clearly and perhaps quite pugnaciously shown that they haven't even got the first principles down.

or just "are you fucking serious?"

i can't tell if it was said as an imperative, which isn't quite as funny as it would be if it was said in the "let us pray" or "let us go to the seaside" sense.

Thing is, not only is May a hopeless campaigner, but with Cameron, Osborne and Gove gone and Johnson under wraps the Tories don't really have any good media performers.

or just "are you fucking serious?"

Or as Boaby Gillespie would say, "Ye whit?!??!"

yeah, this really is the b-team in every sense

xpost

How long before they send for Ruth 'Wonder Woman' Davidson MSP to bail them out?