the day after the deadline: can the union survive brexit and other deep questions

electoral reform is even more of a "surely the grown-ups will now come and save us!!" move than "second referendum now": discuss

Yes it will survive and Ruth Davidson will save it

lock thread

Do you mean the idea that whoever is in power* will be grown-up enough to say "Yes this system that got us here must go for the good of everyone - but probably not of us"? Or just that it will unleash further waves of swivel-eyed loons from every side.

* there is arguably no-one in power right now..

it does seem like electoral reform could go a long way to provoking some meaningful change - the two parties contain multitudes of views that go too far along the political spectrum - a system which reduced their power and increased the chances of coalition, and led to more parties cropping up, would probably be good. but we've prob seen in recent years the strange suspicion of coalitions that exists in the uk and the perception that they are weak or a sign of a decadent state or whatever.

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 5 December 2017 12:21 (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Going to quote LocalGarda here because I feel what he's saying - but with the obvious caveat that we're both from a country that used an electoral system of beauty, nuance and power to elect the same shower of corrupt bastards in over and over for ever.

no i mean the tendency -- which LG's post and yr affirmation of same dpn't really sidestep -- to pass the responsibility for significant change for the good onto a process that doesn't appear to have an agent (the "grown-ups" being the right-thinking people who will somehow to cause this to come about without it having to pass upwards through the extant political thingumajic you want to transform)

il a le pas de hors texte, as someone liked to say

thingumajic is the slovenian for what the old norse used to call the þing

No electoral reform when there won't be a country left to save.

xp surely both these things are inevitable given how dysfunctional a shitheap british politics has become. it's not representative enough to have actually good agents

By far the most politically significant thing in that Waterson tweet is the bit about Facebook. Things will profoundly change again when we really hit the social media backlash - not because of fake news or Trump or Russia or whatever, but just because the next generation think it's lame.

yes that's what i thought: that facebook and twitter are both OLD news (i mean, i'm on snapchat and friends with ppl who use it a LOT but it's more or less a closed book to me, and there's a micropolitics right there)

Actually curious as to why Twitter is perceived as 'boring' in presumably a different way to 'ruined by our parents and big business' re Facebook. If there is a distinction.

If you're 17 you probably don't/shouldn't think of (your) media as not social by default so that term itself is dating speedily.

People spending a lot of time on Instagram were the first non-political people (in the sense that they’re not nerding on threads like us) I heard talking about the Labour surge (am not on Insta FWIW).

That sounds like my first option there, mark - there can be no saving grownups in this scenario except the MPs, who aren't well suited for the job - no-one is going to march for AV.

interesting analysis (again irish academic) of what we can learn outcomes underlying tactics and strategy on all sides -- undermined a bit by annoying and smug rhetoric ("it is essential to analyse the motivations – more academically and more objectively", and also by bad style decision re the formating of dates (superscript -sts, -nds, -rds and -ths are the devil)

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/12/05/a-high-risk-game-of-chicken-is-being-played-over-the-irish-border/

lol s/b "what we can learn ABOUT outcomes VIA underlying tactics and strategy on all sides"

"They care about animals, it's disabled people they hate."

Or in Blairite Labour's case it was: "They care about foxes, it's The Iraqi people they hate."

it seems most of the UK are far more likely to get upset about animal welfare issues than atrocities committed against fellow humans, especially disabled or foreign peoples.

Why do you think this is, Calzino? And is it a particularly British thing or common to all countries? (never lived anywhere else so genuinely don't know).

Don't think that's particularly different in any Western European country tbf. (with the exception of foxes, that is really your thing)

I don't think the UK population are particularly more susceptible to hate propaganda than other nations. But in recent times Blair kept the benefits scrounger rhetoric going for a high viz wearing Gideon to continue with. And in recent times it would easy to believe that much of the UK electorate are callous, hateful, xenophobic, racist etc. But I think that might be an exaggeration encouraged by far too many callous, hateful, xenophobic, racist politicians.

i remember in the 80s having quite an unsettling conversation on the phone -- for a piece I was researching for Dylan Jones lol -- with a young woman from PETA in America, quizzing her about the argument that animals should of course be sacred but that people e.g. with spectacles, bcz unfit, should be herded to the Darwinian die-off, .

I said "but that includes me" and she said "so be it" (to be fair this was the correct response rhetorically to my manipulative gambit). Unsure if this was actual PETA doctrine at the time or since but the distinction being made was p stark. And is in some sense or other quite widespread.

peta are equal parts stupid and stupid, there are a lot of far better animal advocate groups out there that don't just do hateful shit for stunts

EU official on DD's suggestion that whole of UK will align with EU regs. "The UK will not have any say on the decisions taken in Brussels and will basically implement them without having any influence over them... it makes the UK kind of a regulatory 'protectorate" of Brussels'".

— Daniel Boffey (@DanielBoffey) December 5, 2017

DD taking back contrololol

BANTZustan

no i mean the tendency -- which LG's post and yr affirmation of same dpn't really sidestep -- to pass the responsibility for significant change for the good onto a process that doesn't appear to have an agent (the "grown-ups" being the right-thinking people who will somehow to cause this to come about without it having to pass upwards through the extant political thingumajic you want to transform)

i don't have to be able to implement the solution to suggest it, or to have an idea how it could come about. i'm just posting about the situation, i'm not putting myself in a position where i am the one to set the wheels in motion to solve it.

if we discounted all political views that pass responsibility for change onto a process that doesn't appear to have an agent we wouldn't be left with very many views imo.

we're both from a country that used an electoral system of beauty, nuance and power to elect the same shower of corrupt bastards in over and over for ever.

sort of true but every party bar sinn fein has been in power in my lifetime, and several independents have had sway as well for better or worse.

you could argue that "stops things getting done" or you could say it tempers the worst excesses of the bastards.

not sure there's an argument against brexit that doesn't involve some level of condescension towards vast swathes of the electorate. what can you do when people vote for something which will fuck them over?

it's certainly not an endorsement of the current democratic system and it's arguably less patronising to suggest a new system of democracy than it is to suggest going out to people and teaching them why they should value the lives of people whose skin colour is different or whatever.

tbf i wasn't saying that, i was saying that Remain needs to make more of a case for the awesomeness of the EU than they bothered doing during the referendum campaign

cos "hey guys, everything's great, you want this to carry on forever, right?" didn't really cut it

“what can you do when people vote for something which will fuck them over?”

Don’t put forth policy proposals that will fuck people over?

right, but we're past that point.

fair enough LG -- i'm not exactly out manning picket lines myself here -- but i think it's a baked-in weakness of arguments for (and via) electoral reform, that they always seems to elide agency or (which is the same thing) trust in some slightly magical top-down institution to take charge of the process, which (to me)* makes ER quite a bad element to focus on or to foreground

*confessing: it's a bugbear, not least bcz step two is always a unresolvable stand-up drag-out fight between minutely distinct kinds of AV or STV or whatever, that causes the rest of the world's eyes to roll as they glaze over

i'd guess most brexiteers don't believe they will be fucked over, especially the people who are already fucked over. scratch that, those peeps don't really vote. it's the tier above them that are kinda paranoid about going back to being fucked over or have learned to believe that the only reason they're not fucked over is because of their own rugged individualism.

yeah i mean it is essentially saying "some powerful people" need to reshape democracy. but a lot of discussions in recent months have had this element to them - eg the idea that brexit should never have gone to a public vote.

we sort of rely on a fair democratic system to shape its own rules or reform them, maybe that doesn't work or ever happen. maybe that's what we're seeing in america, uk etc, the idea that only a few people actually know the inner workings of these systems and they are all establishment politicians or academics - the rest might want to change the system but have no idea what that means, and are never offered the chance to do so apart from these roundabout tassels that bob above their head every now and again, not intended for that purpose but ripped down as a way of changing something.

xpost

i mean fundamentally -- and this is the root of my politics i suppose -- i think meaningful transformation of the "system" for the better is just no longer going to be top-down tinkering with the machinery: for a variety of reasons, we've moved out beyond the end of the technocratic era (which began with bismarck-gladstone and ended maybe with blair-obama) -- which is also why the "mass education project" is a non-starter, yes, practically or politically

(something like this *did* exist back in the age of empire, bcz it was consonant with the structures and flows of empire -- but the structures and flows are really really different now, in whatever the current era is)

anyway, beyond saying "it must come from below to be meaningful" and "and actually it WILL come from below whether we accept it or not" and then flourishing my red flag dramatically, i don't really have much idea what "it" is actually going to be (except that it could be quite a bad "it" if nice ppl don't involve themselves)

have learned to believe that the only reason they're not fucked over is because of their own rugged individualism

see i think this is a commonly stated belief, that is deep down not believed at all: its most aggressive defenders have often simultaneously internalised serious but unspeakable self-blaming assumptions about their own uselessness

i derive this insight from watching the apprentice feat.sir a.sugar obv

baron sugar i mean

well you know i don't really count those dorks as fully human

"i got where i am today thru the sweat of my own brow" is a pretty common working class trope as well as lol entrepreneurs

which brings us back to Baron Harkonnen i guess

Remain needs to make more of a case for the awesomeness of the EU than they bothered doing during the referendum campaign

I don't buy this really. It suggests there actually WAS a better way for the status quo to have been sold (or resold) to various sceptics and, pessimistically or cynically, I don't think in practice that was feasible (without getting into more general issues like how the Tories like to govern).

prob like 9 out of 10 people think this way, either fully or to an extent.

xpost to nv

yeah that doesn't feel like an overestimate, even if you're trust fund scum you probly like to kid yourself that you're worth it

as a trope, i think it's very often a psychic defence against deep unstated belief in one's own weakness and (same thing ) unworthiness -- hence the outfacing rage that cocoons it

no one is fully human: those dorks are collective manifestations of the most problematic of all the symptoms we share

👉🏽 i'm fired

i dunno if people can function without some sense of "i am who i am because of choices i make"

and to some extent it must be true for everyone, tho not maybe in the ways they think.

"i could be who i could be because of choices i must now make" is the lifeline

what are examples of bottom up change in british political history and why couldn't it happen wrt electoral reform?

Civil war; repeal of the corn laws; agitation in the colonies against being colonies. Electoral reform followed from all of them, but the form it took was not predetermined or even the primary motor of the change.

I mean. maybe a mass movement could be formulated round electoral reform (like the suffragettes): but you'd need a structural change first, for it to be meaningful; for it to "take" (suffragettes achieved their goals as a consequence of the social changes wrought by WW1).

It's very possible that Brexit brings just that major upheaval (so far ofc it hasn't actually happened) that could mean the occurrence of structural changes.

Can't see anything like 2nd ref, not least bcz Europe has huge problems the likes of Juncker don't care and are perhaps unable to solve.

How best can the destruction of the Tory Party be engineered from this?

Chronos

the structural changes are happening anyway, it's just that they're not yet really willed or controlled in any sense (and it isn't yet clear what form the public willing or controlling of the changes might take): party politics is it currently manifests IS non-representative, as ogmor said upthread, and CAN no longer deliver good agents

what isn't clear is even what kinds of things these "good agents" are going to be :| i'm entirely unconvinced that better representation is merely a matter of redrawing how votes are tallied to deliver parliamentary power -- i guess i imagine that the right kind of agitation will shape the new agencies, and modes of representation will (of necessity) adapt to this shaping

BUT i'm describing this at a ridiculously high level of abstraction (bcz unclear etc)

at a mythological level, the tory party is the ur-party in the "modern" settlement: the oldest extant political organisation still functioning that has existed primarily within a democratic set-up

(obviously some royal families are older but they belong to an earlier set-up)

so its ending will only come with the overthrow of etc etc /mythological speculation

xxxp the Tories seem to be doing a p good job self-destructing all by themselves at the moment, though like the COCKROACH POLITICIANS OF COCKROACH BRITAIN that they are they'll find a way to pull it out of the bag

chartism seems like an interesting example of bottom-up politics, especially to inject some realism about the timescale & difficulties, but there aren't any comparably clear or popular goals wrt electoral reform atm

I think I'm going back to despair and not thinking about it

Been watching what has been going at Haringey. There are specific circumstances at play but the *cough* displacement of councillors has been a huge positive. The social movement (s) that are growing are an encouraging sign and hopefully will form more than a check on parliament, leading to a bottom up re-config. V early days on all this.

What's going on in Haringey is of course a good thing - it will give other councillors (especially in effective one-party boroughs) pause for thought before trying anything similar again.

I'm pretty sceptical of the idea that 'bottom up' social movements are always going to deliver cuddly socialists but we're not anywhere near that flashpoint just yet.

yes i think "bottom up" is also a bit a misleading shorthand (not least bcz it more or less belongs to the pre-existing structures) -- which is why i was going to ridiculous (=incomprehensible) lengths to not say it in those actual terms lol

Hopefully it won't be so cuddly lol but I do wonder what the re-config via mass social movements could deliver (the education discussion above)

nice little collection of BJ, Kate Hoey + other brexit campaigners summarily dismissing pertinent questions on the current Irish Border problem during the referendum campaign last year. Yeah they talked mountains of garbage - we know, but it is pleasing to hear them ridiculed from the current fucked up vantage.

On Mair's PM show I should add.

I'm pretty sceptical of the idea that 'bottom up' social movements are always going to deliver cuddly socialists

Isn't the question more whether they could ever deliver that? I don't know anyone who think it's a certainity.

not sure there's an argument against brexit that doesn't involve some level of condescension towards vast swathes of the electorate.

Pick an issue, any issue imo and this is likely to be true

Also on our own electoral system, it allows for fairly rapid change and pretty stable vanilla government with whatever said you like flavouring it.

Also FG are only ever let in to clean up but as an electorate we consider them nothing more than a necessary evil on that score

lol IDS

“You know this Irish stuff was not at this state some months ago, now it’s suddenly become an issue because the Irish - for political reasons internally, presidential elections, disputes between two elements of the same party - they suddenly laid this on.

Are they so stupid
Are they pretending to be so stupid
Do they think there are enough voters so stupid

are you asking that of the Tories?

Yes they are, No they aren't pretending, There are enough voters that stupid.

I was, to be clear, sure of number three

There is probably some section of yeomanry in Berlingo van types, Blaming the fucking Irish tomorrow!

I think this will stoke a fair amount of Irish hatred in parts of England. Perhaps in Wales too but but for other reasons. and In scotland alos but for other plus other reasons. There are vast swathes of the country that dgaf about Ireland or NI and would willingly cut NI loose as part of Brexit since the first time they actually gave NI the merest thought this millennium was this summer w/r/t the DUP deal.

Newsnight about to feature the highly relevant opinions of IDS.

Is there a stereotype about berlingos now? My mum's got a berlingo, she always buys the most practical car available.

I'm referring to Berlingo vans, which are a very popular transport option in the trades/construction industry.

oi my wife's got a berlingo. or at least she will have until the government stop her mobility allowance

i did ask her though and she blames the irish

I thought "yeomanry in Berlingo van types" might have made it clear I wasn't referring to old dames in motors or disabled mobility cars ffs!

Are they so stupid

It's Iain Duncan Smith.

I think most of Britain would be glad to see the back of Northern Ireland tbh.

I don't think that's even in debate

Unfortunately ye give them seats in fuckin Westminster ye fuckin clowns

I mean supposedly we want them back but we wouldn't give them fuckin seats in Dublin lads

I think this will stoke a fair amount of Irish hatred in parts of England.

The old tricks are the best!

I agree with most of Britain not gafing about NI, but only because a fair whack of the country thinks everyone living there is Irish and doesn’t understand why the “Irish” are making such a fuss.

They are all Irish though.

THEY are all Irish though or they ARE all Irish though. Or are they though?

otm

It's one of those things where you wait until they tell you if they are or not

lol IDS

_ “You know this Irish stuff was not at this state some months ago, now it’s suddenly become an issue because the Irish - for political reasons internally, presidential elections, disputes between two elements of the same party - they suddenly laid this on. _

also, assuming everyone knows this here but the irish president is a nominal head of state with no real power. we haven't had a presidential election for several years and if we did it wouldn't be a matter of controversy. it is fairly perturbing that a senior british politician has literally no idea how the democratic system of one of the country's closest neighbours works.

Is it still that Joyce expert geezer these days

http://dlx.b-ok.org/foreignfiction/767000/0923776b0576ed9e7f7dace9b8b11197.txt/_as/[Smith_Iain_Duncan]_The_Devil's_Tune(bookos-z1.org).txt

His novel The Devil's Tune, which never reached the paperback format, probably reveals a lot about the enigma of the quite fucking stupid man.

you have to c+p that link

Iirc that came out pretty much simultaneously with him being dumped as party leader, felt bad for the publishers lol

things like that novel contribute to my sense of IBS as a tragicomic figure, this slightly oikish duffer who keeps trying to prove himself to the big boys but knows deep down that nobody likes him and they're laughing behind his back. he's the Arnold Rimmer of uk politics.

the not-quiet-enough man of british politics

He's a psychopath, but missing the ability to charm and manipulate skillset that usually goes with that

Also my da has a mate from his old canoe club who's a dead ringer for IDS lol

I used to think that all the moralistic Christian stuff he came out with was just a smokescreen for the brutality of his welfare policies but now I'm pretty sure he was genuinely stupid enough to believe both things at once without ever noticing the contradiction.

It just goes to show that the absolute dearth of talent in the Conservative party has been a very long term problem. Nothing about IDS stands up to much scrutiny, including his fabricated CV. Or the pretense that he quit Cameron's cabinet over cuts to disability benefits.

Now enjoying the idea that reality has shifted, Man in the High Castle style, and IDS is the only person who remembers that he was leader of the Conservative Party.

meanwhile, David Davis is doing the whole "a dog ate my homework" routine in front of the Brexit Select Committee.

in fact, not so much "dog ate my homework" as "I do not recall the existence of any homework in the first place" JFC

it is fairly perturbing that a senior british politician has literally no idea how the democratic system of one of the country's closest neighbours works.

Come on, you don't actually think Tories believe the Republic of Ireland is a proper country?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQUYSWeX4AAoXRf.jpg

Williamson vs Hammond fite is an amusing little sideshow.

choppy morning for david davis

trying to get out of it with "I'm running late" particularly impressive

I'M RUNNING 17 MONTHS LATE

here is footage of Davis' response to the committee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDUIGvpDolw

it's his SAS training kicking in - 'improvise, adapt and overcome'.

Q: Did the government undertake an assessment of leaving the customs union before the cabinet took that decision?

Not a quantitative one, no, says Davis.

Q: Isn’t that extraordinary?

No, says Davis. He says the range of different outcomes is too wide. Some free trade agreements have been very effective, and others haven’t. Ministers had to take a judgment. That is what they did, he says.

Davis says cabinet took decision to leave the customs union without an analysis of the economic impact.

There was a piece in the Standard about pro-Corbyn City boys (and more generally City types who voted Labour last time). It illuminated precisely nothing about Labour policy but really did show quite how catastrophically the Tories are trashing their own brand, apparently without realising it. That Davis answer is their whole problem in a nutshell.

fuck it we'll give it a go. over the top lads.

xpost

"Lets just do it and be legends"

Committee chairman Hilary Benn asked whether impact assessments had been carried into various parts of the economy, listing the automotive, aerospace and financial sectors.

"I think the answer's going to be no to all of them," Mr Davis responded.

When Mr Benn suggested this was "strange", the minister said formal assessments were not needed to know that "regulatory hurdles" would have an impact.

"I am not a fan of economic models because they have all proven wrong," he added.

oh so that's okay then

In retrospect it was probably a mistake to let them watch The Hatton Garden Job the night before.

Jim Allister, a former DUP MEP and now leader of the hard-line Traditional Unionist Voice, said today that any moves aimed at keeping Northern Ireland inside the European Customs Union would have moved the border to the Irish Sea.

it's cool they set up a party for that weird way they all speak

they should have called it the Hard-line Traditional Unionist Voice

good alex harrowell piece from a month ago on the causes of these pervasive and seemingly baffling fyre-festival levels of useless incompetent mendacity

tl;dr: most billionaires are deeply stupid but they now basically drive politics and policy

xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxpYW_w5pgo

Davis says cabinet took decision to leave the customs union without an analysis of the economic impact.

and there it is.
no doubt this will get buried in the deluge of crap thats flying around at the moment ...

Wera Hobhouse, a Lib Dem, asks where the misunderstanding that there were impact assessments came from.

Davis says she will have to ask other people. He says he always used the phrase sectoral analysis. He accepts that, at an earlier hearing, when Seema Malhotra asked him about impact assessments, he might not have corrected her.

haha that is great - never saw it before, xpost.

surely this idea they don't have impact assessments is outrageous bullshit right? "our dog ate them" sounds like a classic case of covering up the truth expertly by admitting to something absurd and embarrassing.

lobster magazine -- never exactly unguilty of conspiracy-type thinking (since C-TT is literally its raison d'etre) -- is tweeting its theory that this blur of nomenclature is a ruse to avoid releasing actually existing impact reports (now callled something else) as demanded by FOI requests

We're a Hobhouse

^ basically just ridiculing a foreign name, good job bananaman

that sounds plausible enough, @mark

DD is also doing a lot of "I can't hear the question" at that select committee. Is he actually hard of hearing or pretending to be so to buy time because he does it at almost every question or interjection - at one point he upbraids Seema Malhotra for not giving him the exact date she is trying to tie down when she has already given it to him twice.

Davis won't resign or get the sack, and we'll have to suck it up.

Isn't this wonderful?

This interview will colour everything that happens from now on. A town loses its car factory and biggest employer? They chose to leave the customs union without an analysis of the economic impact. Food prices start spiralling and people slip further into poverty? They chose to leave the customs union without an analysis of the economic impact. Several British airlines find their European flights effectively grounded? They chose to leave the customs union without an analysis of the economic impact.

If nothing else he should be fired for being stupid enough to have admitted it.

the transcript as reported by the Guardian:

Benn: So, just to be clear, has the government undertaken any impact assessments on the implications of leaving the EU for different sectors [of the economy]

Davis: Not in sectors. The Treasury, of course, has got an OBR forecast which has an implication, although even that is pretty crude ... There is no systematic impact assessment.

Benn: So the answer to the question is no. So the government hasn’t undertaken any impact assessments of implications of leaving the EU for different sectors of the British economy.

Davis: No.

Benn: So there isn’t one, for example, on the automatic sector?

Davis: Not that I’m aware of, no.

Benn: Is there one on aerospace?

Davis: Not that I’m aware of.

Benn: One on financial services?

Davis: I think the answer is going to be no to all of them.

Davis won't resign or get the sack, and we'll have to suck it up.

Isn't this wonderful?

i'd say there's a p big chance he's toast now. someone must be sacrificed and theresa may is already dead.

plus everybody obv hates him and he's not a key figure in negotiations.

If Davis had just said there are no impact assessments, it's the will of the people and we are here to carry it out so what's the point of doing one it would have saved him the time and the technocrats wouldn't be boring on my twitter rn.

Yeah, they've got a pile of embarrassing reports somewhere - the FOI requests make it clear that something exists. I'm just not sure whether they're embarrassing because they say Brexit will be a disaster, or because they're terrible, just the shoddiest desperately rushed guesswork padded with c&p filler with no co-ordination or consistency across departments. Probably both tbh.

that's p much what he did say.

xpost

It's actually impressive what a massive fuck-up this week has been, considering it's only Wednesday.

Corbyn says in July Liam Fox said the Brexit talks would be “the easiest in human history”. Does she still agree?

the lady is for turning?

They won't sack anyone, that's just implying that they agree there's something wrong.

May says nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. The only hard border is down the middle of the Labour party.

the fucking nerve of these people

the way he's so insouciant at the committee - hand waving and eating sweets (!) during it - well, it's almost as if he doesn't care about the UK leaving the EU and never has....

I mean he should've said it at the start, not pretended that impact assessments existed xps

full asymptotic allegory convergence: SINKHOLE BRITAIN vs the MIDSOMER MURDERS METAPHORBOT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvUkDFtKsrM

An embattled councillor is found crushed under a fallen piece of stage equipment on the opening night of Macbeth. Suspicion falls on the village madrigal enthusiasts, angry that redevelopment on the land of a down-on-his-luck aristocrat might threaten to make the village do... pic.twitter.com/6x00hxbTOm

— Midsomer Murders Bot (@midsomerplots) December 5, 2017

I'm not sure if I'm stepping on your joke mark, but that conspiracy theory seems at least quite plausibly what's happened? Possibly the "Impact: dinosaur meteor level" has been filed off.

DD & Boris and Liam Fox are there effectively as part of a coalition government, there'd be trouble if they went and weren't replaced by others of the same stripe - unfortunately they may be the most competent of that lot.

it wasn't really a joke, more a caveat attached to the cited source for the reading (lobster is a good magazine! but it does reach for conspiracy by natural inclination)

if that is what happened surely the implications are pretty huge. like he is misleading parliament.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan, a Conservative, asks about new figures showing literacy improving.

May pays particular tribute to Nick Gibb, the minister for school standards, and to teachers around the country.

improving in some sectors

as with any conspiracy it would require an awful lot of people to keep shtum. if it were the case, i'd imagine that there would be a few pissed off civil servants willing to expose davis?

civil service bandwidth presumably too constrained by maintaining the lie that the earth is spherical

Why are we bothering w/ improving literacy when there are no impact assessments to read?

The plans to supply all children with the special glasses are well underway.

DD's options are that he was/is misleading parliament anyway - his best defence seems to be that when Seema Malhotra was asking for these reports, he felt it would be a waste of the committee's time to make sure the clear and obvious distinction was impressed on her in some way unwelcoming ears.

[At a poker game]

Dick Goodwin: I know you're lying.
Charles Van Doren: Bluffing. The word is bluffing.

Why are we bothering w/ improving literacy when there are no impact assessments to read?

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 6 December 2017 13:22 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tick.jpg

I don't think this has to be a big conspiracy - the FOIs imply imply that the departments were basically feeding in information, led by DexEU, in order to produce reports - the standard response is 'we helped, but don't have reports - ask DeXEU' (and ime the civil service's instinct is buck-passing rather than whistle-blowing). So, if DexEU took final responsibility for producing the reports, they could keep a small circle of die-hards who collated the stuff and sat on the existent/non-existent reports.

so Davis can try to get away with fudging the language, but it does look contempt-of-parliament bad for him

One feature of all this is dexeu as an entity whose function is partly to cut-off other parts of the civil service. I don't think you could get to what extent they were sitting on reports or not, maybe we could've had a partial leak of one, if it existed at all.

Their level of staff turnover is reportedly four times as much as other civil service departments so the chances of a disgruntled employee leaking something must be pretty high.

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/12/05/theresa-mays-blue-monday/

lol fintansplaining: "Yet Tusk’s tweet was inadvertently ominous. It was a play on 'I Don’t Like Mondays,' a hit song in 1979 by the Irish rock band the Boomtown Rats. The song in turn was inspired by a mass shooting in a US school playground. Asked why she did it, the shooter, a sixteen-year-old girl, replied, 'I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.' The lyrics, written and sung by Bob Geldof, now a prominent campaigner against Brexit, had her adding that 'I wanna shoot that whole day down.' Within hours of Tusk’s playfully optimistic tweet, Monday’s hopes would indeed be shot down do you see"

omfg

The other departments have Brexit teams as well, my partner interviewed for working on the one in DEFRA (which would be amazing and depressing).

Xp He is awful awful awful if he were only on ilx I would clown him all day

lol! Good job he didn't try shoehorning a clunky Fleetwood Mac ref in there as well.

... something about rumours, that's exactly what I thought too!

Enjoyed Hammond's admission that the Cabinet haven't even discussed what their preferred outcome is. It's like he deliberately picked his moment to drop that one.

Today Hammond says Britain will meet the divorce bill even in the case of no deal. No 10 deny this just hours later. What a mess this rabble are.

neat little highlights reel:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/patricksmith/nobody-said-it-was-easy?utm_term=.eswvLyy1a#.fq5dOQQYL

hammond seems good at this*
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/philip-hammond-uk-productivity-rates-low-because-more-disabled-people-are-in-work_uk_5a281714e4b044d16726b7bd

*gaffeing

Also the story of hammond being banned from flying in any MoD aircraft because of a funding row. What the fuck is going on?

the grown-ups are in charge iirc

https://i.imgur.com/sNrTf8N.gif

not only not in charge but gone on holiday and left us in the house on our own and we need to hope a neighbour calls social services

Moderation in all things including MoDaeration

poor

I didn't have any reports into a better pun

would have bet money on this tbh

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQYtt1-WkAAkoX7.jpg

(ok maybe not the gift of home-made jam but the fact that they got on well) (it's from tim shipman's breezeblock of a book)

I can believe it too. My impression is that McDonnell is the one who truly detests, wouldn't get on at all.

one of the things the deep establishment has always been good at in this country is charming and disarming its stubbornest class enemies

i think they always have charles i in the back of their minds, like great great great uncle charlie who snubbed the bolshy footman and look what happened

i dunno they have TV nowadays they probably have a marginally better understanding of what the lower orders look like and how to behave around them, albeit in a David Attenborough kinda way

She got on like a house on fire with Harold Wilson. Can you imagine having to go from Harold to Ted Heath?

They do rather act like him around ppl I suppose xp

are we talking at a key party or what?

xp

Going from shooting the breeze with cheeky class traitor Wilson to being lectured to by frosty weirdo Heath.

I still see the white heat of his technology revolution every day. I think it's only use these days is as an oversized mobile phone signal booster.

think TV's probably blunted the skill badly tbh: aristocrats* as wary but brilliant diplomats, able to smile and talk their way out of any scrape feudalism can throw at you

*i'm not talking abt the merely posh, or oafs like the bullingdon mob, i'm talking abt the scene in the crown when mary of teck dismisses prince philip's family -- the schleswig-holstein-sonderburg-glücksburgs -- as parvenus, and not from a line that goes back a thousand years (a thousand years breeds formidable survival skills, the kind you don't lose over a few unrocky shallow decades sat in front of mr bean)

The newish snap election book, Betting the House (excellent btw) mentions that Corbyn gave the Queen jam for her 90th, but wouldn't let his staff tell the press.

This before or after he was pipped to the post

by mark s

it was seedless

mark seedless

Ba-dah-BA-DAH!

The newish snap election book, Betting the House (excellent btw) mentions that Corbyn gave the Queen jam for her 90th, but wouldn't let his staff tell the press.

fairly sure i read about this at the time.

yes i think the important takeaway was actually them getting on so well, the jam was the objective correlative at best

lol! first failed search result for that book: Bet the House: How I Gambled Over a Grand a Day for 30 Days on Sports, Poker, and Games of Chance

Richard Roeper

yes i think the Jam was actually them getting on so well, the important takeaway was the objective correlative at best.

I am drunk.

meant to do scorethroughs and that.

The BBC news site doesn't seem very interested in the Davis stuff...

no reason to expect anyone to feel personal ire towards her majesty, I imagine she is v magnanimous and relaxed in her meetings & she's nowhere near as bad as she could be.

She knows the value of mostly shutting the fuck up.

what vibe will charles emanate

gonna suggest some kind of haughty stoicism, coupled with concessions to moral responsibility that will just about keep him onside

Charles certainly doesn't know the value of shutting the fuck up.

on an "endless maundering" tip

Quite the quote from a DUP source to the Sun: “This is a battle of who blinks first, and we’ve cut off our eyelids."

— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) December 7, 2017

hasn't Charles let it be known that he has no intention of ceasing to make interventions on controversial issues when he becomes king? so unlikely to be a late convert to mostly shutting the fuck up, plus think-skinned and whiny, seems unlikely to go well

24 hrs to go till another deadline is missed xp

Btw the Queen will live forever and we'll never get our bank hols sorry to disappoint.

The DUP, a sadistic cyclops in the kingdom of the blind.

Btw the Queen will live forever and we'll never get our bank hols sorry to disappoint.

yup. they're replacing her bit by bit. Cyberqueen.

Queen Elizabeth 2.0

She'll definitely outlive her Mum by a few years and Charles just handing it straight to Wills would endear him to the fourth estate more than he could manage as a monarch himself.

proud to live in the elizabethan era for eternity

She already outlived her mum by a few years tbf

No she hasn't

Well, not age wise..

some ppl i follow on twitter have been putting forth the amusing theory that the queen died last december and has been replaced with a lookalike while they work out when to announce the death

Yes but following these ppl isn't mandatory is it

aw no they're great

my theory which is mine: he was named charles back at the dawn of what was actually often called the "new elizabethan era", when the firm was still super-bullish about the post-war future and thought they were easily dispelling the "walked and talked an hour after his head was cut off" curse of that particular name*

at some point in the intervening years EiiR realised they hadn't and determined to outlive her firstborn, come what may

*there's also an "arthur" in there. another cursed name for royal first-borns

Flat Queen Society, Chairman BoB the rapper

dude i have posted that theory on ilx

Pleased to see regular Queen impersonator Jeannette Charles is still with us, though apparently 'retired':

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

Queen Kong (1976) - HM The Queen (uncredited)
National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985) - Queen Elizabeth
Nipagesh Bachof (1987) - Queen of England
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988) - Queen Elizabeth II
Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) - Queen

That's quite a range within range.

Blinder from @SadiqKhan on BBC news just now. pic.twitter.com/ge1rmGjuUB

— plain old DJ Artwork (@artworkmagnetic) December 6, 2017

'What does it feel like coming home?'
'Home is sarf London m8'

Khan otm

wonder how many times he's had to use that retort

who is the bolshy footman mentioned a few posts upthread? i didn't know Wilson got on so well with the Queen but it doesn't surprise me.

yeah Jeanette Charles was/is uncanny.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/05/24/article-0-1DCF73FA00000578-543_638x564.jpg

David Davis is not facing contempt proceedings, so he should survive this.

who is the bolshy footman mentioned a few posts upthread?

he is entirely figurative: charles I was haughty with everyone who wasn't also a monarch and considered parliament his servants -- as everyone knows this ended badly. my sketch was an attempt to convey how this tale reads from the inside (where charles is a not-that-distant ancestral relative who might as well be an uncle of some sort)

Guess who's to blame for the UK economy's long-term problem with low productivity? Yes, it's the disabled of course!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42265268

They constantly get away with this sort of shit though.

Was just laughing at the bit in Betting The House where Hammond was asking if the rumour he had heard that a lot of his colleagues casually refer to him as a "cunt" behind his back was true!

maybe inappropriate to ask the Queen that

Have read an account of this before, but it still makes me (☝ ՞ਊ ՞)☝

... members of staff at headquarters had already signed up to work on post-election leadership campaigns for the so-called moderate Labour MPs Chuka Umunna and Yvette Cooper. The suspicion ran so deeply that Corbyn's core team were amused to discover that their passes to Southside were deactivated on 9 June - the day after the election. 'They thought the nightmare would end, didn't they?' says one key Corbyn lieutenant.

despite the sufficient progress announcement it’s hard to see how the DUP’s stated desires square with no hard border without some sort of single market membership.

ah i think i see - they’ve effectively kicked the can down the road again

Joint report - key line on "full alignment" in absence of agreed solutions with internal market and customs union rules that protect Good Friday agreement pic.twitter.com/wf7jSpg49v

— Ross Hawkins (@rosschawkins) December 8, 2017

sorry “DUP are surely betting *against* there being agreed solutions”

remind me again what Brexit means?

It means Brexit, Jasper

it reminds me of the definition of “deems” lol in Jowett’s Dictionary of English Law cited by Geoffrey Hill in one of his lectures:

“Generally speaking, when you talk of a thing being “deemed” to be something, you do no mean to say that it is that which it is deemed to be, it is rather an admission that it is *not* what it is deemed to be, and that, notwithstanding it is not that particular thing, nevertheless it is to be “deemed” that thing.”

There's some other handy brexit stuff in there actually, this quoted from Edmund Campion:

"Equity is gracious and calls for gracefulness to invoke it, whereas the voices of the persecuting authority are noisy and ugly with falsehoods, naked and unproved words, bruited about"

naked and unproved words, very handy.

perhaps appropriately enough he compares the cadences and logic of that definition with Alice in Wonderland. I'd quite like to see a Theresa in Brexitland, with Alice's graceful, incisive innocence replaced with Theresa's awkward backing into things, creating further problems and difficulties, and with her just forcing the ball over the line through sheer stubbornness and indefatigability. Mangling language and thought and sense as she goes. Creating a sort of wreckage-strewn, scorched version of Wonderland as she goes.

A deal in Brussels is good news for Mrs May as we can now move on to the next stage of humiliation.

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) December 8, 2017

What's even his position, if one at all, now? He wanted this humiliation iirc.

I think he wanted hard national self-immolation asap.

he wants the earth scorched, all negotiation is an affront to English sovereignty, and anything that commits us to being more than a libertarian tax haven is a humiliation

looking again at that para, it’s prob a decent enough achievement of May in a sense. aiui one of the main criticisms of the EU from DExEU was that talks about how trade would be carried out (which will now take place) were inseparable from an agreement on the Irish border, which had been made a precondition of moving to phase two.

given that some sort of “legal fiction” or fudging or whatever you want to call it was always going to be required.

It's just an agreement not to change things

I mean

Clap that if you want but

A full brexit text that boils down to "we'll say we did obv but can we not pls"

It's just an agreement not to change things

I mean

Clap that if you want but

yeah the sheer unlikelihood of them reaching any kind of way forward right up until yesterday makes this seem unusually competent from May et al

otoh the hardcore Brexiteers are gonna be going full mental by, say, next Tuesday, let's see how that works out for the gov

especially when it dawns on them that the DUP are now the unlikely defenders of the single market

think i said upthread that may's throughline is playing the DUP off against the brexit ultras, a fact that possibly only dawned in no.10 in the cold light of tue morn

she is only a tiny way further through imo, with much dawning to endure

It makes clear the whole of the UK, including Northern Ireland, will be leaving the customs union.

It leaves unclear how an open border will be achieved but says in the absence of a later agreement, the UK will ensure “full alignment” with the rules of the customs union and single market that uphold the Good Friday agreement.

i... huh

it is right out in plain public sight bcz this is the age of the internet but tbf a lot of historical agreements have hinged on similarly baffling ambiguities and contradictory can-kicking

think i said upthread that may's throughline is playing the DUP off against the brexit ultras, a fact that possibly only dawned in no.10 in the cold light of tue morn

she is only a tiny way further through imo, with much dawning to endure

reading myles this morning is helping (when doesn’t it)

“At present it is impossible to say more but an official spokesman stated that it is ‘not unlikely’ that the ESB and the sugar-beer people will be approached not to secure their co-operation but with a view to securing their co-operation in this vital industry”

do you mean playing them off because of their fear of PENNYCORBS, mark?

Ah the esb and the sugar beets

That came out sharp upthread fizzles sozzles

i think PENNYCORBS IS BAD NOT GOOD is a point of agreement so that's probably a bad lever to tug on

the good lever is WHO IS THE MOST STUBBORN IN THE LAND

good from this very particular POV i mean, in every other context it's probably as terrible as ever

.....which land

i guess fear of pennycorbs from both dup and hardcore brexit shitlads strengthens her hand tho?

Likes: unionism in its many forms.
Dislikes: being reminded that we're all in it together with them (for a wide variety of thems).

"the land" usefully unclear in this instance, further precision wrecks all

i've sat here for thinking abt an answer to LG's q and this best i can come up with is, fear of PC is what's keeping her in office, so yes in that narrow sense

i don't think there's any sense it which it makes her hand easier to play: she is going to end up giving away at least one of several farms, possibly more

minutes that could have been spent writing sentences in english, yes

.....which land

DUP most stubborn in the universe so question is redundant.

"this is the kingdom of not, which while it is not, yet is"

as sun ra teaches us

Sun Ra couldn't teach anything to these tin-eared infidels, only the gulags will teach them *something*.

brexit is finally getting good

Sun Ra couldn't teach anything to these tin-eared infidels, only the gulags will teach them *something*.

Couple of Sun Ra titles did pop into my head, "We'll Wait For You" and "They'll Come Back".

The Nu Plebians of Brexitia

The Eurosceptic Worlds of Sun Ra

I don't really understand what the detail of this agreement actually means and but it feels like a fudge to me. The general aim seems to be to cleave as closely to the existing situation as possible while pretending the exact opposite? In which case the howls of betrayal from Tory Brexit ultras should be due any minute now.

It's an Irish solution to a British problem

I can see it suiting everyone tbh

Just accidentally clicked on Torygraph piece with Farage going ham on May. The fading pay-walled tedious and angry words reminded me of that amusing comment that it creates the visual effect of walking away from the pub bore.

"Nope, its the monarch that is supreme." <- a line I've just read

Is that with cheese and ham or is that with mushroom sauce I can never remember

arron banks also squeaking angrily

I look forward to hearing Arron Banks squeaking from a prison cell some day.

This is the first time since the election that I've actually sought out Farage's opinion. Watching him pissing his pants is hugely entertaining.

On the other hand it really does hammer home the extent to which these fuckers are never going to be satisfied.

am i misremembering, or was there a large semi-dodgy handover of actual cash from some shadowy brexiter to the DUP election fund? if so that was money well spent, lol

Expecting leave EU lot (their twitter was hilarious when I had a quick look) to be begging Brexiteers to get a leadership challenge going.

Tory backbenchers are going to have to suck it up. Otherwise you get Corbyn. They have nowhere to go.

Ummmm ... don’t read too much into this: pic.twitter.com/muMCDt7dKL

— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) December 8, 2017

Arron Banks retweeting people pleading with him to set up a new party of the right - just one investment of a few million could make all the difference.

they could call it union of kingmakers in perpetuity except wait

The King beyond the G8

Yes that is a reference to a David Gemmell fantasy from 1985

all our pasts are coming back to haunt us

Reporter on BBC trying to explain trade deals outside the USA by talking about 'cheap chickens' - which he quickly regretted when he found out how difficult it is to keep saying 'cheap chickens'.

... outside the EU, not the USA, that's cholrinated cheap chickens.

Kentuckyfied chicken

yummy, it tastes swimming baths water.

I could imagine (with echoes of Gummer Sr) Gove forcing his children to drink some chlorine for the cameras.

My God, he has children.

I hope not tbh.

it's impressive what you can grow in a vat nowadays

lol!

Yes, Gove has kids - proof he’s fucked Sarah Vine at least thrice.

In every old sci fi movie ever. "For the sake of humanity, whatever you do, don't let them reproduce!"

https://i.warosu.org/data/tg/img/0417/93/1439245049855.jpg

(thread)

There’s a hole in my Brexit, dear Liza.

— David Allen Green (@davidallengreen) December 8, 2017

time for some DAG theory

having a moment of intense self-reflection after finding myself gis'ing michael gove to find an expression mostly likely to be his vinegar-strokes face

A Feast at Midnight is a 1995 British comedy family film directed by Justin Hardy and starring Christopher Lee, Freddie Findlay, Robert Hardy, Samuel West, Edward Fox and Julie Dreyfus. The film is notable for being the feature film debut of future Conservative politician, Michael Gove, as the chaplain.[1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_auQPmnh1q8

i think gove's reaction shot at 1:00 might be a good candidate for vinegar strokes

am i misremembering, or was there a large semi-dodgy handover of actual cash from some shadowy brexiter to the DUP election fund? if so that was money well spent, lol

― mark s, Friday, 8 December 2017 12:08 (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/election-dup-brexit-donations-saudi-arabia-tale-tories-theresa-may-a7782681.html

all bizarro's pasts are comi

let me interrupt you there

the more i read about this i feel like there's a decent chance the dup, in working with this gov at all, and in helping it to enact brexit, is prob leading the way on the path to a united ireland.

a united ireland and a uk forced to pay billions to essentially stay in the eu in all but name would be extremely lol

but mostly sad

mostly lol

(cool that gove got to star in what appears would be his favourite movie of all time)

Empire said of the film: "Nothing about it suggests that it should have been made for the big screen, so modest is its scope."

Sad for the unsuspecting citizens of the ROI to end up with Arlene Foster, Nigel Dodds, Sammy Wilson etc dumped on their doorsteps.

(But our beginnings never know our ends!)

if you read May as the "Lady" in Eliot's "Portrait of a Lady" it's impressively prescient

"For everybody said so, all our friends,
They all were sure our feelings would relate
So closely! I myself can hardly understand.
We must leave it now to fate.
You will write, at any rate.
Perhaps it is not too late.

this is like Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz.

The response below this = Ukraine + customs deal arrangment

and Norway model = free movement... https://t.co/7cf2YXDuP2

— Will Davies (@davies_will) December 8, 2017

Ofc given the madness this may not follows any previosuly known models lol.

somewhere along the line david allen green got mixed up in my mind with facebook alternative-therapy meme made flesh david avocado wolfe and now i have trouble separating the two

The Irish border question has pretty much eclipsed the issue of citizen's rights but a frighteningly large number of people are going to get very angry when they realise all the Romanians and Bulgarians are not going to be sent packing.

They're always angry and hopefully will soon die of anger.

DUPer magic from before the dawn of time

haha sorry i got there via Matt DC and nashwan causing me to think of this: "Call the Ghouls, and the Boggles, the Ogres and the Minotaurs. Call the Cruels, the Hags, the Spectres, and the people of the Toadstools. We will fight."

O'Toolery: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-ireland-has-just-saved-the-uk-from-the-madness-of-a-hard-brexit-1.3320096#.WiqKzMeCIUA.twitter

The Irish: not just good for building motorways/railways and paving your drives, for sure!

fintanpunditspasm needs more discussion of the radiators from space imo

ctrl+f "Bob Geldof" - 0 returns.

Oh it must be because its Friday, and this was a good outcome. I get it.

the more i look at this the more it looks like a classic fudge that actually solved nothing but enabled May to claim a victory. which the EU needs - an enfeebled May is not in their interest presumably

Loved how this was done by about 8am uk time lol. Expect more plots at the weekend, and an article by Boris over xmas.

Meanwhile:

Wow. @jeremycorbyn delivered a stunning speech in Geneva: tax evasion, illicit flows, trade-misinvoicing, structural adjustment programs, Allende's assassination, Thomas Sankara (!!), debt cancellation, climate justice, regulating MNCs, etc. https://t.co/n5bagLS91n

— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) December 8, 2017

bit late to start cobbling together an illusion of competence around the pm tbh

(xp to tracer)

kinda delighted and despondent that that Corbyn speech has more meat on its bones than every public statement made by the last 20+ years of Labour leaders

the more i look at this the more it looks like a classic fudge that actually solved nothing but enabled May to claim a victory. which the EU needs - an enfeebled May is not in their interest presumably

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Friday, 8 December 2017 19:15 (twenty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What did it not solve?

Everyone who matters agreed that the UK isn't going ahead with brexit.

Solved

kinda delighted and despondent that that Corbyn speech has more meat on its bones than every public statement made by the last 20+ years of Labour leaders

― best display name of 2017 (Noodle Vague), Friday, 8 December 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah that was beautiful. No doubt there are thousands of pricks rn who are saying 'why oh why wasn't this wall to wall Brexit, huh, Jeremy?'

absolutely dead at arron banks pissing his pants. going on about 'paedo ted'

READ | @Arron_Banks calls on any Tory backbencher “with any integrity or sense of duty left” to trigger a leadership contest and help save the Brexit 17.4 million people voted for! pic.twitter.com/qHb06qFcn8

— LEAVE.EU 🇬🇧 (@LeaveEUOfficial) December 8, 2017

almost worth the billions we've spunked on uh whatever the fuck we've spent billions on to watch arron banks throw his toys out of the pram

Corbz and O'Donnell are something else, listening to the slimeball Tory barrister Gauke doing his lawyer routine on Universal Credit on AQ, just reminds me of how much hope they have brought to UK politics.

I never realised before reading that Betting The House book that Corbyn's first divorce was caused by his strict ideological lack of ability to compromise on a local comprehensive/posh school argument.

o'donnell? john o'donnell?

are you thinking of john mcdonald

?

lol

can't tell if self-own or joke

yeah SURE it was calz's mum that went to see him.

it was my psychologically deep-seated obsession with Daniel O'Donnell at work there.

She's is off to see him next week, and I just sent her a food possessor for Xmas!

the_food_possessor has logged on

Corbz and O'Donnell are something else, listening to the slimeball Tory barrister Gauke doing his lawyer routine on Universal Credit on AQ, just reminds me of how much hope they have brought to UK politics.

Gauke is literally the most boring man in Britain, I think that's why the Tories have started using him more, you can't listen to him for more than 30 seconds without your eyes glazing over.

Imagine having to shill for UC on a weekly basis, and keep talking up it's social benefits and progressive qualities. His beady little eyes are so indiscernible, you can't even tell l/r are both looking in different while he talks.

directions*

Nick Cohen's piss is busted again.

" They do not shudder when they see Corbyn surrounding himself with aides from the Communist party of Britain and the fragments of the Socialist Workers party because they know little or nothing of communism."

He is obviously completely senile and needs help.

come on, Cohen did 20 years in a gulag, he knows of which he speaks

sorry i meant 20 years at the Observer

Never forget the forced collectivism, mass famines and genocide committed by the Communist party of Britain.

i think Cohen would argue that British Communists cheered for those things and so are complicit in them, in the same way that people who cheered for the 2003 invasion of Iraq are complicit in the deaths of 10s of thousands of civilians and the empowerment of ISIS

http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/006116.html

Cohen is quoting Mark Fisher in that Observer piece, only fair to quote Fisher on Cohen in response.

Not entirely sure how Boris Johnson meeting Peter Gabriel is going to help that woman in Iran tbh.

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/article_small/public/thumbnails/image/2017/12/09/17/boris-johnson-iran.jpg

Boris' hair evolving into a bowl-cut, I see.

Who's in the urn behind them?

British deep state has tried several times to assassinate John McDonnell, but every time they give the wrong name to the wet-ops specialist used. There are a string of John Macdonalds, John O'Connells, John McConnells etc who have died in inexplicable suicides, tragic vehicular fault caused traffic accidents, and unsolved robbery-murders.

Apparently Jeremy was a bit jel when he found they'd named a bridge after his deputy leader in Dublin.

urn contains ashes of humanity's future iirc

Boris' hair evolving into a bowl-cut, I see.

if you didn't know better and were to be asked which of the two people in the pic was the ex-kooky 70s prog rock vocalist.....

Mmmm, the one on the right.

The one on the left could be from Nortside,40 years ago.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQuHb4GXcAA_oK0.jpg

Log off, mark!

#grime4corbyn

love how the lib dems keep attacking labour and not the actual government

that's what they're for

It's also where the votes are more likely to come from.

For labour

Never underestimate the extent to which gullible young Remainers can be persuaded that the right and proper thing to do as a voter with a social conscience in 2k17 is to support the How To Stop Brexit (And Make Britain Great Again) platform. currently spending a lot of my time engaging with such earnest and well-intentioned young ppl

Remarks by David Davis that Phase one deal last week not binding were unhelpful & undermines trust. EP text will now reflect this & insist agreement translated into legal text ASAP #Brexit

— Guy Verhofstadt (@guyverhofstadt) December 12, 2017

lol

Just coming here to post that. Awesome!

lol

a) May just didn't think to ensure everyone was giving out a consistent message
b) She did and Davis just ignored her, either deliberately or through incompetence
c) Davis's statement *was* the agreed message and she just didn't anticipate the EU's reaction here

Whichever one it is it reflects terribly on all concerned.

they need to strip to the waist and start a leadership contest already

i got a nice email from the home office saying that if i've been living in the UK via EEA for 5 continuous years then i can stay. so... my year in France last year has fucked me i guess? thanks for the reassurance you twats

when you opened and read it did it say they were suckers?

Tracer how certain is any of it (or is the shitty uncertainty the point)

they need to strip to the waist and start a leadership contest already

gaaaaahhhhhhh

is it weird to be cheering for guy verhofstadt to royally fuck over the country in which i love and work?

I felt weird and a bit icky seeing how he pwnd Davis tbh. I'll allow it for today.

in which i love and work

ladies

don't think Davis needs anybody else's help to self-pwn

we've got enough royal fucks as it is also

xps

Dear Foreign,

Although there are almost certainly no grounds to revoke your residency status, we're sending this letter to fuck with your head a bit and remind you of your fucking place.

Best,

Home Office Cunts

We’re certainly not at this point suggesting, much less demanding, that you fuck off, but we are interested in hearing from you about whether you’ve considered it.

5 continuous years seems confirmed by this story:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/dec/12/minister-outlines-how-eu-nationals-will-apply-for-uk-settled-status-brexit

i guess i have 5 years continuous residence PRIOR to my year away. which maybe counts? i have lived and worked and paid taxes and been unable to vote in this country since 2006. my children were born here. i love london. i don't want to leave. but the constantly shifting promises/threats are honestly so fucking infuriating that i feel like uprooting my entire life and retraining in another language just out of spite.

Ahem

Ní úsáidfidh mé teanga an Choróin

Pleasure, as ever, to speak to my friend @guyverhofstadt - we both agreed on the importance of the Joint Report. Let's work together to get it converted into legal text as soon as possible. 1/2

— David Davis (@DavidDavisMP) December 12, 2017

oof!

is this the 7th?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQ1n2T-WAAAn0GE.png

Radical SUK 4evah imo

having all those people together will make their eventual arrests much less of a hassle

If you look at this list, appreciate the connections, share the sensibility and the desire to pull our politics back from the edge, please go and lie down in the middle lane of the M25 at teatime

please to share ID of that Tweeter so that I can be prosecuted for posting vile and threatening abuse on the internet

I think that's from my Twitter but I was eyerolling and ranting about it.

I've been saying for ages that this kind of party will happen at some point tbf. its members and supporters will all be vermin, without exception.

It's from Chris Deerin's article here, and it's delusional unworkable fantasy football bollocks but I still sort of feel sorry for Gordon Brown that he didn't make it.

The whole thing feels reheated from this time last year, in any case.

ITS LACK IS UNSUSTAINABLE, NOODLE VAGUE! UNSUSTAINABLE!

(haha, yes, it is from Matt's, though he wasn't the only person hate-sharing it this morning)

I was about to say "the subtext to these things is always that Corbyn is the worst thing that could happen to this country" but then I had a quick glance at that article and it's the whole text

People keep saying this but I don't think our politcos have properly internalised the fact yet that EU people are reading our media.

This quaintly early-C20th notion that they can say one thing in negotiation and another for the audience at home is leading them into a number of (hilarious to me) unforced fuck-ups. Fuck's sake, diplomacy by keysies?

all the xps

- What would these people even agree on beyond a vague 'yay free markets, boo Brexit' stance?
- Why would anyone want to "pull our politics back from the edge" by returning to something that has already led to disaster. Not a hypothetical one, an actual economic disaster that we're all still dealing with?
- Chucking Cameron and Osborne in there suggests that you don't really think austerity was that bad, rather than the cause of the mess we're currently going through
- Imagine what it would do to the electorate to see Major, Blair and Cameron all lining up on the same side. Their respective legacies or what remains of them would be destroyed. All it would do is reinforce the "they're all the same" line that Farage exploited.

It's all bollocks anyway.

always include a war criminal in your list of ideal members for your new party: check

- The LibDems still exist and no one votes for them.

the LibDems are bad and they should feel bad

This quaintly early-C20th notion that they can say one thing in negotiation and another for the audience at home is leading them into a number of (hilarious to me) unforced fuck-ups.

It keeps reminding me of Parker Posey in Josie & The Pussycat, and her inability to keep her "inside voice" inside.

EU people are reading our media

p sure lenin's and bismarck's and napoleon's ppl were also pulling this dastardly stunt tbrr, it's a lesson our upper* echelons seem to have comprehrensively unlearned

*yes lol

I think the whole idea of Macron in France is that he (in theory) is centrism without the horrible baggage of that entire list.

centrism is all horrible baggage

Was gonna say, that sounds more like the whole idea of Macron outside of France; in France he has plenty baggage.

A lot of that is make-up tbf

Clean hit

the english language as an export triumph and a diplomatic problem:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/12/why-guy-verhofstadt-angry-david-davis-because-britain-has-brexit-strategy

actual best sentence:
"When Denis Healey was overseeing the final stages of Britain’s retreat from empire, Aden’s penultimate governor, Richard Turnbull, told him that ultimately the British Empire would be remembered for just two things: the game of association football, and the expression 'Fuck off'."

fuck off and dier

Poll out

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQ1uNGzUMAAFWlX.jpg

Lol

not least at the idea that 'this country has worked'

A list of all centrist parties this year:

People starting centrist dad parties on twitter: a brief thread about 2017’s hottest new trend

— Alan White (@aljwhite) December 6, 2017

can't believe there are so many movements based on middle class Tories trying to protect easy access to their holiday gîtes

totally full of gîte are these purveyors of "sensible politics". They need to realise they are actually dead, not good!

or I meant.. good!

so like... these tory rebels - aren't they just as likely to actually stop brexit happening at all if they vote against this?

they always let you down do these tories!

I mean as in are they actually going to live up to the "rebel" tag for once?

When I think of all the dastardly acts that have gone through parliament in the last 7 years, I raise a glass to these moderate "rebels"!

There’s two things - a Brexit deal can be stopped by rebels, but actually stopping Brexit takes a positive act: the govt needs to try to revoke A50, and get the EU’s agreement to its revocation.

The current Tory Party isn’t capable of the second I don’t think, not with its sizeable minority faction still believing a hard crash out is a good/possible thing.

Brexit SHOCK warning: Britain will be WORSE OFF out of the EU under ALL Brexit scenarioshttps://t.co/TBpkwyzpVm pic.twitter.com/bi5fQteyKO

— Daily Express (@Daily_Express) December 12, 2017

SHOCK

Fortunately Brussels uses a different internet to the UK one so they can't read this. https://t.co/JyzCv3ztGf

— Alan Beattie (@alanbeattie) December 13, 2017

govt defeated on grieve amendment

Breaking: Government defeated by EU rebels to enforce 'meaningful vote' on the final Brexit deal; 309 v 305. Wow.

— Tom Newton Dunn (@tnewtondunn) December 13, 2017

Here comes the fun

Wow

alex tomo currently giving tulip siddiq a doing on channel 4 news

Nadine Dorries and Tim Montgomerie tweeting furious demands that the tory rebels be deselected is some good schadenfreude

You gotta fight
For your right
To Breeeeeeeeeexiiit

merry xmas everyone

Nadine Dorries and Tim Montgomerie tweeting furious demands that the tory rebels be deselected is some good schadenfreude

Trotskyist bullies.

Pretty good day.

lol who is this bloke?

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/914971208281657344/r4u3nLn0_400x400.jpg

@faisalislam
Chuka Umunna now listing the number of time the eurosceptics have rebelled against the Government...Davis - 90 times, Fox - 19 times, Leadsom - 7 times, Redwood - 17 times Jenkin - 95 times, Cash - 100+ times
“None of these people can lecture people seeking to do the right thing”

Newsnight just ridiculously irrelevant these days

Let me just check I've got this right:

- As of last week, no deal eventuality = Britain basically continues under current rules
- Which reduces the risk if Parliament vetoes a deal, when previously this would = crashing out on WTO rules
- Unless something major happens there's no majority in Parliament for a Hard Brexit
- UNLESS that would lead to the collapse of the government, a GE, Jeremy Corbyn in #10 etc, so it hinges on how many Tory rebels can be intimidated round to the government's way of thinking?
- May won't want to see any of this stuff happen anyway so a hard Brexit is pretty much dead in the water? It's been obvious for a while that she is likely to cave on most of what the EU wants her to cave on, but the fact that she wouldn't be able to get it through Parliament anyway means that a reasonably sane outcome is a lot more likely?

Two Labour MPs voted with the government. I imagine I don't have to mention them by name, you'll already have guessed.

kate hoey being a former trot from an ulster unionist background who supports brexit is like someone made a human being in a petri dish specifically for me to loathe

oh yeah and she's pro-fox hunting, anti-cycling and (of course considering she's a brexiteer) anti-immigration

I'm not convinced Hoey is human at all tbh.

Not sure if the undead are human or not tbh, so Frank Field's status is undefined.

Let me just check I've got this right:

- As of last week, no deal eventuality = Britain basically continues under current rules

DAILY MAIL: Proud of Yourselves? #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/sQ3o6P1kNZ

— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) December 13, 2017

Coming here to post that - I have to imagine that there was fistfights in the Mail newsroom over the unwarranted olive branch of not calling for their hanging.

Probably gutted that they couldn’t use Dirty Fozen tbh.

"

Great post!

Meant to say...

"DIEHARD Tory Remainers were accused of treachery last night..."

Yes, by the Daily Mail

*Dozen

pic.twitter.com/Tj80NSwA43

— Mollie Goodfellow 🤶🏻 (@hansmollman) December 14, 2017

alex tomo currently giving tulip siddiq a doing on channel 4 news

I'm surprised more isn't being made of this, cozying up to her murderous authoritarian aunt and washing her hands of british citizens who are disappeared. how is she still in the labour party?

For a start, the people involved are not British citizens aiui.

Having spoken at an event organised by her aunt’s political party (bearing in mind they are the largest in Bangladesh) is fairly light-touch as far as cozying up goes. She has kept her distance from Bangla politics for the most part.

She came off appallingly in the initial interaction with C4 a couple of weeks ago but she is not really under any more obligation than anyone else to take up specific causes.

That interview was awful but the guilt-by-association dogwhistling that's been going on in sections of the press is grim.

Yep. All the ‘where do her loyalties really lie?’ stuff, when her position throughout has been ‘I am not a Bangladeshi politician and I can only represent my constituents’ has been bad.

yes looking at it the person mentioned by alex thompson was a bangladeshi citizen who had studied here. if, as they show in that report, she speaks regularly with her aunt, goes with her to meet world leaders, has spoken at her party rallies and claims she couldn't have won without their support that seems... very cozy? her dismissive, hostile reaction when asked about raising this issue seems like a huge red flag. shades of that (plus some some disingenuousness/confusion/idiocy) in hasina's defense when questioned about disappearing people - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/25/bangladesh-pm-sheikh-hasina-claims-forced-disappearances-take-place-in-uk-and-us

if as the report says other MPs with connections to bangladesh are involving themselves it seems hard to come up with an unterrible motivation for her behaviour

comes from the same place as asking Sadiq Khan how it feels to be home. best press in the world.

If any other politician rang their relative to cut through some red tape, we’d be here talking about how unseemly it was.

xp for real you think the fact that an MP who is cagey and defensive about the fact they're a close relation of a PM who gets their security forces to arrest, hassle & murder journalists and political opponents is of no interest?

i don't think helping releasing ppl from being illegally detained/tortured or whatever comes down as 'cutting red tape'

What do you think her motive is?

I think she doesn't want to rock the boat with her extremely powerful aunt

more information would be good obviously, but I'm struggling to square everyone's blase reaction to what we know so far. it at least seems worthy of further attention

tbf, a lot of the grass roots pressure has come from Bangladeshi opposition groups in the UK who have had a longstanding issue with Siddique being an MP in the first place. By and large it is guilt by association stuff designed to make her uncomfortable / defensive rather than in the expectation that she could effect any meaningful change if she wanted to. She is seen as a beneficiary of the party’s corruption, even if it is mostly by accident of birth.

The RW press going in on her, while handwaving away arms sales to Bangladesh, obv have a different agenda.

I think that's probably true. I also think it's very possible she has no influence with her aunt in any case. It's also possible/likely that she doesn't want to cast herself/be cast as unofficial Bangladeshi liaison officer because of who her family are, which I think would be fair and reasonable given that none of us are responsible for the actions of our older relatives.

I'm not really sure what she's like a consititency MP, and I'm conflicted as to whether she should have been selected in the first place given the potential of her connections to cause (at best) extreme embarrassment to the party. But let's not pretend that the plight of Bangladeshi dissidents is what interests the press here. (xpost)

in general I don't know how it's possible not to be extremely suspicious of people in politics with close personal ties to repressive governments, and political dynasties/family connections in politics more generally, because there's always questions of conflicts of interest, especially when people are so cagey. I don't think you can be a priori dismissive about political associations: the importance of having effective diplomatic ties with even the grimmest regimes doesn't mean that the motives of everyone involved will always be pure or above suspicion; most ppl ITT have probably felt aggrieved by associations in the past (thatcher and pinochet, say); and, from an admittedly out of context speech, she herself seems to have suggested her career has been dependent on her family ties.

The Bangla community in her seat is something like 1% if the electorate so idk how useful the Siddique name has been there.

The conflict of interest line would be extremely valid if she was shadow Foreign Sec and taking a soft line on Hasina, or actively lobbying for pro-Awami policies from the back benches, but she isn’t afaict. She’s just not getting involved in an area some people want her to.

She was originally a councillor for a Camden ward with a large Bangladeshi community.

xp if she had no significant contact with her aunt or bangladeshi politics and was in a position where she felt she could be critical of the govt I'd agree with you!

I remember a Bangladeshi, as in Bangladeshi not UK Bangladeshi, guy I work with talking about her (Tulip, that is) but fucked if I can remember what he said, I think the gist of it was her family are bad people.

A substantial minority of Bangladeshi people would agree.

My contacts over there are not enthusiastic Awami supporters, by any means, but are pretty proud to see her alongside other Bengali-origin politicians in Parliament.

Paul Golding arrested in Belfast. Also WTF he's 35 LOLOLOL bullshit.

speaking as a 23 year old that seems plausible

Kan u not

Also WTF he's 35 LOLOLOL bullshit.

A diet of nothing but roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and a full English every day will do that to a man.

You forgot the side-order of ignorant hatred. P toxic that stuff.

Pollonium Twat.

still amazes me that farage is only in his early fifties

might have to put up with him for another 30 years ffs

No fucking way, he's a coronary waiting to happen.

He needs to stop smoking and cut down on the shouty high-octane r/w soundbites, maybe he could start a Centrist Party?

Oh do Centrist Parties avoid soundbites and smoking?

Probably not, but it would be amusing to see Farage on a platform with Dave M and Chuka. Lol, there is a Centrist Party called Platform as well btw.

flatporm

I thought flatprom but in essence yes

lol a centrist party literally named for a Houellebecq novel is tres jolie

"Against the World, Against Life" would be a pretty good slogan for our new centrist party overlords

@bbclaura
Laura Kuenssberg Retweeted Sebastian Payne
EU says all EU Law will apply until end of transition, assumed to be 2021, and we have to stick with all four freedoms, which means EU immigration carries on as is for five years after the referendum

Have to? LOVE TOO stick...