"n'er cast a clout til May be out aka NO BREXIT: hell is other voters -- UK election 2017

now do the same for age alba -- that's where the divide is

I know. Let's let down the tyres on the minibuses.

Logan's Run the MFers tbh

what's the cutoff age

the point where you think voting Tory is socially acceptable

i seriously think if a momentum party does split off -- or less plausibly forces o/g labour to split off -- then it's likely to coalesce round rhetoric with an age-based resent-the-boomers it's-our-world now component

i was just watching an argument unspool on twitter abt pensions, which was beginning to touch on this -- it began with the triple-lock (linking pensions to inflation etc, which the tories are apparently considering tinkering with?), and someone joking that one thing tories and labour share is hatred of young people… bcz angela rayner is committed to keeping the triple-lock in place

anyway the meat of the quarrel was that (for the young) the double-whammy of "our taxes pay your pensions" (which is of course built into the concept of pensions) and "pensions in the future may be very different, to our disadvantage" is likely to generate quite a lot of friction if weaponised politically

Throw in 'pensioners keeping the other-demonising newspapers alive' perhaps.

the sooner ver kids are out setting things alight in the streets the better tbh

what's keeping the other-demonising newspapers alive is (i) print advertising of a particular kind and (ii) the continued (elsewhere exploded) belief that print advertising works anything like as well as it's thought to

Some top notch posts in the old brexit thread this morning. Matt DC and noodle vague blazing a trail.

Rachel Johnson, sister of Boris, has defected to the LibDems.

How could someone who is pals with the likes of Littlejohn and Hopkins (and Boris!) possibly vote for the cuddly and compassionate LibDems?

Oh, she is hinting at standing as a candidate as well.

I bet that shambling BJ performance on Today was the last straw.

some of her best friends are mugwumps

maybe she likes the smell of spaniels

Maybot stuck again https://twitter.com/rosschawkins/status/857633537671008256

Radio Derby to PM: Do you know what a mugwump is?
PM: ...what I recognise is that what we need in this country is strong and stable leadership

see she's too statesmanlike and leaderly to listen to questions or respond to them appropriately. conversation is for weaks

she is in full "that would be an ecumenical matter" autopilot for the next 6 weeks!

hope there's scope to turn S&S into a joke against them

Search reveals a surprisingly rich history of mugwump usage on ILE.

actually "strong and stable" and "smell my spaniel" are totally interchangeable: maybe this is the joke comes from

holy shit! search is back.

When we held events, rather than just covering the event and scrutinizing the policy, as they would with others, the press would seek out a trivial issue in an attempt to mock the whole thing...

the lead story on today this morning was literally "boris johnson called JC a funny name"

she is in full "that would be an ecumenical matter" autopilot for the next 6 weeks!

― calzino, Thursday, April 27, 2017 4:50 PM (fifty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ah so she did learn something at the vicarage after all

https://twitter.com/LabourEoin/status/857358855013052416

She's a straight up sociopath.

Sociopaths are popular this year.

From the Jacobin article linked upthread by Corbyn's former press officer:

"Theresa May is not a people-person, she interacts very badly with the public and tends to detach herself from them as soon as the cameras are turned off."

This, I think, is something that Labour should have greater scope to play to than they seem to be managing. It's deeply unfortunate that Corbyn has this image in the press as a grumpy uncle or pedantic fusspot schoolteacher. I remember seeing a video some time ago, probably during one of the leadership elections, and it showed Corbyn interacting with some "normal hardworking people." It seemed like he was attending some event where there happened to be a little workplace birthday party, a woman was being given a cake and sung to by colleagues and Corbyn had joined in. There was a very quotidian warmth and he put his arm around the woman whose birthday it was while singing along. It seemed completely natural. You could never imagine May or most MPs being that comfortable with ordinary people. At the time it was still Cameron leading the Tories and I remember thinking how different it would be had he tried to join in, dressed as a city banker wherever this was, maybe a school or a library or something. The unease and pungent whiff of distaste that I'm pretty sure would be palpable. I think people know in this country do know that many of those that rule have no idea what people's lives are like really, and in all likelihood think of the great unwashed as being different to them. I think that clip of May shows someone who ultimately doesn't see human beings down the end of her policies for the most part. She understands a certain technocratic notion of "fairness" only. Like I said, I think people know this and it is part of what underwrites a more general "populist" turn.

What I mean is that May herself said it best when she talked about the "nasty party," Labour need to stop talking about fairness because fairness has completely contradictory meanings made by neoliberal rationality and the legacies of class. Labour need to make people realise that in fact the Tory party and Theresa May, well sort of hate most of the people in this country. And I think the recognition of this contempt is just barely beneath the surface, held in place by a mix of "aspiration" and masochism.

http://i3.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article10269552.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/General-Election-2017.jpg

http://i3.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article10269552.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/General-Election-2017.jpg

omg plaxico

remember during the last general election when there was this strange attempt to convince people that teen girls thought ed milliband was dreamy?

gr8 post but isn't there perhaps an element that what the masochistic inferiority-complex-ridden genuflecting gbp want IS someone who's aloof, unapproachable, removed from everyday graces? someone who looks like they could just execute a thousand insurgents with a single gesture and no batted eyelid?

I think that is a very real possibility, yes.

remember during the last general election when there was this strange attempt to convince people that teen girls thought ed milliband was dreamy?

I will not stand for this calumny that Milifandom was anything less than a genuine grassroots phenomenon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milifandom

#Cameronettes, a Conservative response to the Milifandom, was suggested by 21-year-old Twitter user and University of Exeter student, Charlie Evans.[11] A Cameronettes Twitter account was created, that claims to be run by a 13-year-old girl. The hashtag has been reported by the BBC to be "less successful" than the Milifandom.[4]

someone who can command, destroy, do what they cannot

Love that Corbyn pic precisely because of how hard it is to imagine any PM of the last few decades or other Labour leader doing it. Plays well alongside the pic of May squirming between two schoolkids also.

one of the differences between corbs and may is that she was in the shadow cabinet (1999) after just two years in parliament (first elected an mp 1997), whereas corbyn -- rather famously -- was a backbencher from 1983 to 2015 w/o break. He worked on anti-war committee and justice for palestine committees and such, but will have had a LOT more time interracting with constituents than she has had, so yes, i think it's very likely he's pretty good at this. Two years* vs 32 years.

*she was a local councillor prior to this i think, but it wasn't full-time: she was already working at the bank of england at the time -- also councillors do a lot less constituency work, unless they're super-diligent and like doing it

(re that photo: michael rosen, author of "it's a bear hunt" and someone who spends his professional life reading to and working with schoolchildren, reported that JC was in fact excellent with them, as the photo tends tot suggest -- he's unselfconsciously prepared to dramatise the story as he reads… obviously it's a hostage to tabloid fortune, as is every unguarded expression while doing your real job and not working the media the way yr handlers say you must)

jezza won't help yer old fella from maidstone live out his arab-slaying fantasies. probably hug 'em. feckless

Blair sez Labour should take defeat as a certainty + concentrate on retaining enough seats to "hold them to account".

Could Blair be any more of a putz? No, don't answer that. It's rhetorical.

as is every unguarded expression while doing your real job and not working the media the way yr handlers say you must

At least Corbyn will never be papped while struggling through a bacon sarnie.

silly and strange as it was, milifandom was very much a counterspell to the sarnie episode -- the fact that a character-quality as interpreted in one platform will generate a totally different response on another (viz that awkward nerds are loveable and this quality could just as easily work for EM)

of course the scales of play were very different, and the different platforms didn't balance each other out at all -- or even, given bubble effects, interract much (they interract more now, two years later)

the victorious war on tabloid affect -- bearing in mind that print readerships are collapsing -- will be enacted in social media, with its weapons and all its irritating absurdities (is already doing so: cf kelvin mackenzie's suspension)…

(not to say that the right can't also use the internet as a weapon, obviously)

McKenzie was out and about today doubling down on the same old criticism re Liverpudlians persecution complex and blaming them instead of his own employers who definitely did not operate any sort of process where a barely-coded racist insult of a footballer in an opinion column couldn't have been deleted before printing.

yes trevor fkn phillips has been giving him cover re persecution complex

Nuttall quoted Phillips about six times in the last interview I saw with him.

the thing about milifandom is that there are teenage girls who think dzhokhar tsarnaev and james holmes the aurora shooter are dreamy so liking a centrist labour politician who may about to become pm is quite a bit more understandable

i can see why nuttall and mackenzie -- both racists after all -- assume that support from this quater does actually somehow absolve them, and that this issue will fade away… but i really don't think it will (and it won't do phillips much good either)

"Theresa May is not a people-person, she interacts very badly with the public and tends to detach herself from them as soon as the cameras are turned off."

Imagine the Conservative Party electing as leader someone like that, a woman too, and expecting them to win an election... oh hold on...

just read an otm comment earlier about how amusing the disparity is between the reality of TM's content-free listless poise + very Kim Jong Un style forays into empty looking warehouses with some happy/bored greetees in Derbyshire and the the fawning AUDACIOUS MAY PARKS TANK IN LABOUR HEARTLANDS type headlines that followed. Another 6 weeks of this and even the BBC might start turning on her.

Thinking about May out on Downing Street behind her podium, railing at the EU for meddling in the UK election feels like a lifetime ago.

Did anyone see Anna Soubry on channel 4 news. Clearly pissed, in the British and North American senses.

I was thisclose to Patsy/vodka/cigarette meme post.

Haha!

Meme From ILX Of Yore Reappears

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39027000/jpg/_39027407_abfab-bbc-203index.jpg

B****cks. Folk might remember I fought a leadership election on the other side of that particular argument.... https://t.co/IQev2xSnUp

— Ruth Davidson (@RuthDavidsonMSP) June 9, 2017

davidson pours water on the idea that she's going to go her own way

http://i.imgur.com/9BcpRXK.jpg

has matthew goodwin ate that book already

She's pretty straight talking but I think she's protesting too much there, probably using the fact they'll keep the whip to mean they're not "going their own way".

I think her constituency is going to force this of her. If she wants to keep those 12 at the next election, especially with Labour and LDs suddenly seeming plausible in Scotland again, she needs to court the huge Remain base, and also acknowledge that not only is Scotland more open to immigration, it'll be in recession without it. Add to that the gay rights angle and she has makings of a party-within-party

Here's a video of Jonathan Powell talking about how this DUP coalition contravenes the Good Friday agreement because because it relies on the impartiality of Westminster.

https://www.facebook.com/JeremyCorbyn4PM/videos/1708919496068789/

sorry, I couldn't find the video outside of Facebook.

I cannot wait for Ruth Davidson to crash and burn. She lucked out because of Sturgeon's stupidity and imcompetence.

poll
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DB6TUQDXoAArfxn.jpg

i found the trevi fountain and the colosseum somewhat deflating when visiting them on a family holiday so i think i'll have to go for ecumenism

Soubry's BBC interview with dimbleby around 5am election night was wild. Worth seeking out.

as ever i must choose 'antichrist'

This tweet is EVERYTHING and its brutality is to be admired:

https://mobile.twitter.com/PolComForum/status/873186390539988993

savage

this article excerpt doing the rounds is great 1 because of the utter stupidity of the suggestion by Fiona Hill, 2 bcos of the impression it gives of May standing back behind the aggression and rudeness of her spads, as the layer between her and the cabinet, and the world really.

Blimey. pic.twitter.com/X9lYAWFa5h

— Theo Bertram (@theobertram) June 10, 2017

also yes that was a hell of a Police Community burn.

call: new circs new thread:
brexit negging when yr mandate is is trash: or further chronicles of a garbage-fire