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

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?

"Seeing what Dr Chilton had done for showmanship frightened Senator Martin as much as anything that had happened since her daughter disappeared. Any confidence she might have had in Chilton's judgement was replaced with the cold fear that he was a fool."

^^^Everything I undersdtand abt anything I learned in this book

Caveat: I do think there's a risk here in overstating the EU side's utter ruthless cunning and competence (Varoufakis was doing this a couple of days ago). They may also misstep: neverless negotiations between two sides with extremely distant objectives from one another, are easier -- even if tougher -- when both sides are more a less on a level in terms of tactical ablity, than negotiations where some key objectives are similar (UK and EU will still be trading at the close of this, whatever the route taken) but tactical ablity is not on a level.

The Tories do have media performers - they just work for the media.

@TonyParsonsUK 52m52 minutes ago
If not for the blood sacrifice of the British, Juncker would be speaking German today. Show some respect, you puffed-up political pygmy.

@MiguelDelaney
Replying to @TonyParsonsUK
Juncker does speak German.

LOL. Clowns are performers, true.

omg

loooool Parshole

Caveat: I do think there's a risk here in overstating the EU side's utter ruthless cunning and competence (Varoufakis was doing this a couple of days ago).

Agree with this, but the thing that allows them so much leeway that it can make any aspect of what they do look sure-footed and politically astute is the possibility of No Deal. I'm now not sure of anything, but let's assume for the moment that even May, even Davis ('we haven't costed it), recognise that No Deal would be immediately and tangibly bad for the UK (and their immediate political prospects) - 30% tariffs, flight disruption, queues at borders, the whole kit and caboodle. Actually, make that two factors because time isn't on our side either. Ludicrously optimistic timelines (something I associate in the workplace with lack of competence and detailed thinking about the project ahead) suggest that there's a wall of reality to hit there as well.

Also, the fact that the EU seems to have done some documentation, and thinking about how to engage in the negotiating process and we appear to have done very little.

I mean the EU is messy, admin heavy/slow (tho this is prob a benefit in this situation), and has multiple members who can fracture in different ways, but we're in such a pathetically tight corner.

The conclusion to the first bit was 'let's assume all that' they must realise that they're going to have come round sooner or later to the EU's demands, which means that no matter what pratfalls or errors of judgement EU players make, it's not really going to make too much difference that I can see.

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.

I think it's more than half-way to the (hopefully not universal) experience of when someone says something in work and you realise they're drunk.

i actually quite like the idea of May getting drunk and leaning over and slurring 'let's make Brexit a success' at Juncker. Maybe she was going hard at the booze during the three times Davis was going on about the ECJ judgment (what the hell was all that about? what point was he making?)

i'm half wondering whether she feels slightly frozen in some social situations like that - a feeling business dinners aren't really her scene, eating/drinking being quite a private thing and existing in a different sphere to the desk bound detail grinding.

for: she's not part of what i've seen described as the 'dinner party elite' (i.e. london social set).
against: she's wined and dined dacre (and another newspaper editor?).

There's no way that May drinks, let alone gets drunk. I think she was actually asked how much she drank a few years ago and she was weirdly evasive about it, probably because she was told that being teetotal makes you look even more distant in the eyes of a lot of the electorate.

yes, makes sense sadly (not that i have anything against teetotalism as such, but unfortunately it limits the possibility that she got stinking drunk and decided to troll juncker).

She is type 1 diabetic, which must play a part in determining her alcohol intake.

type 1 diabetics do not have to be teetotalers.

is this level of... control i guess you'd call it, something new? it's becoming really odd, is well past that in fact. is it May or is it her handlers? if May, why? surely she can't feel *that* ill at ease with humans the public? word in that lrb article was that she *liked* doing door-to-door arrests canvassing and campaigning.

Reporters hit out at Theresa May during her visit to Cornwall today after local journalists were reportedly “shut in a room” and banned from filming her.

The Prime Minister is touring the South West but local media was stopped from recording her while she visited an industrial estate.

http://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/reporters-shut-room-banned-filming-theresa-may-cornwall-visit/02/05/

yeah I was about to say maybe it's less the canvassing and more the camera crews following her around

right, yes. it's a media than generally portrays her in a v flattering light tho. i wonder if it's the numerous quite well known photos where she's looking a bit weird. most recently eating some chips this morning. i wonder if that's somehow *got* to her.

or maybe she feels in some way that media isn't a 'real' part of being on the stump.

still odd.

Note: The media has a very thin skin for this sort of thing...

me upthread:

i think my basic intuition -- since roughly the time i began this thread -- is that, smart or dumb, the tories have zugwanged themselves

i still think this, except i now think they are many months more aware of the problem: that they are totally hemmed in by bad options -- whether or not may enjoys being on the stump, she is not a natural easy-cheesy charmer-improvisor and well knows she cannot afford to go off-message, except the message at any length beyond "strong and stable: brexit is brexit" isn't there, bcz the moment they try and fill it in, the cracks will show

hence basically trusting to their opponents' continued hapless ineptitude and the full-backing-in-a-pinch of the usual newspaper-owner suspects (which support is currently not looking as fulsome as they must want)