Rolling Brexit Links/UK politics in the neo-Weimar era

not doing another Gove's mate's out: Raab dn

Anna Soubry, one of the more liberal One Nation Conservatives, has just resigned and has been making a great deal of use of the MoreInCommon hashtag since. She had backed May in the leadership election but it looks like another strong indicator that she's going to govern from the hard right, despite the centrist rhetoric of the initial speeches.

Ed Vaizey, another relative liberal, sacked overnight.

Good lolz:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/16/owen-smith-angela-eagle-labour-contest-anti-corbyn?CMP=twt_gu

"Politics is not about taking sides" should be the party's epitaph.

“Allowing an important and legitimate political actor, ie the leader of the main opposition party, to develop their own narrative and have a voice in the public space is paramount in a democracy. Denying such an important political actor a voice or distorting his views and ideas through the exercise of mediated power is highly problematic.”

Quelle surprise really, LSE study states the glaringly obvious.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-media-bias-attacks-75-per-cent-three-quarters-fail-to-accurately-report-a7140681.html

As far as i can tell, Owen Smith appears to have just said that austerity is right and necessary and agreed with Angela Eagle that they were "both against austerity" within the space of ten minutes.

the visionary leadership this country needs

none of them seem to have drawn any conclusions from their belief that Corbyn is useless and what their own inability to convincingly challenge him must indicate

Oh so we're back to "we're going to give you another dose of austerity but we'll be really sad about it". That worked well last time.

Do you have a source for that, ShariVari?

They were both on the Marr show this morning.

His big policy message is £200bn in investment so there is more to it than a simple return to austerity but the inability to convey any kind of coherent message is amazing.

fwiw, ITV has just reported him saying he is voting in favour of renewing Trident despite being a member of CND so a degree of confusion is to be expected.

Beating Corbyn really shouldn't be an insurmountable task for a well organised candidate who knows how to present a coherent policy vision but these two just seem entirely incompetent.

The again why would any competent politician go anywhere near this clusterfuck?

"Anyone can become registered supporters - giving them a one-off vote - if they pay £25 and "share" Labour's aims and values. There is a two-day window for people to sign up, expected to be between 18 to 20 July"

I'm a pathological liar and think PFI's have massively improved the NHS so I can safely say I share Labour's aims and values, but how the heck are you supposed to prove that after coughing up the pony?

http://projectcede.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/blade-runner3.jpg

someone started a crowdfunding page in which users could pay for recent members who could not afford the £25 shakedown to vote. they got a cease-and-desist.

people's party, social democracy etc etc etc

weird how at general elections they want your vote and they don't give a fuck what your values aren't

not weird obviously but there's the disconnect in their lip-service to democracy

https://mobile.twitter.com/DreamboatSlim/status/754610041618038784/video/1

At a guess, that means keeping with / furthering cuts to welfare / public services but attempting economic stimulus though infrastructure projects, but who knows?

Even the Tories have stopped talking about further austerity, although obv that doesn't mean there isn't more to come - but I don't think it is quite the fashionable vote winner with the electorate any more that Smith seems to think it is. Lol at him rhyming austerity with prosperity, what a dynamic communicator!

At least he didn't try to avoid people who were organising a coup against him?

Haven't heard the non-communicative thing about Jeremy Corbyn from any objective source so wonder if it is just spin or all spin or what.
From what I've seen the media doesn't seem to want to represent his comments with any accuracy and I don't know what he can do about that. Is taht a sustainable thing or is taht likely to cost him any ground he might gain if he was more fairly represented?

I'm just hoping he does get to retain his place and then becomes PM, but lookks like things are working against that.

How much are the 2 rebels getting paid by the tory party to waste time while the new government gets entrenched?

No payments necessary. Not sure if that's better or worse. Voted in the NEC - just want with the straight ticket momentum recommended.

Did he mean to say "anti-austerity" instead of "austerity"? Literally do not understand why he would say that.

Because they done a survey and it said that voters like austerity.

He has talked about being anti-austerity recently. Either he bungled the line or he wants to take the position that 'austerity plus structural investment' is the best of both worlds. Either way, he isn't doing his perception of competence much good.

Because they done a survey and it said that voters 80% of PLP like austerity.

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

That's from https://twitter.com/gusbbaker/status/754612709950382080

Corbyn's office claim that at no point she was sacked, but i guess they would. It sounds more like a bungled and indecisive appointment rather than an actual sacking to me though, not that I'm sticking up for such insensitive behaviour towards someone undergoing cancer treatment though, that shit is inexcusable.

Except, as will come as no surprise, it's not true. For example, she claims not to have met Corbyn before getting the job - the picture from the press story marking her appointment however...

http://m.bristolpost.co.uk/jeremy-corbyn-appoints-bristol-mp-thangam/story-28529472-detail/story.html

Also she had spoken to the press about how she had beaten cancer and was just having follow-up radiography and was already on a planned return to work schedule the day before her appointment so she's being more than a little disingenuous.

http://m.bristolpost.co.uk/bristol-mp-thangam-debbonaire-cancer-gone-m/story-28520824-detail/story.html

Finally, an alternative version of the anti-Momentum story the BBC, Thangam and a Blairite blogger ran after the last Bristol West CLP meeting.

https://labourbriefing.squarespace.com/home/2016/7/10/so-i-went-to-a-clp

Also worth noting she has had her union funding withdrawn.

http://www.bristol247.com/channel/news-comment/daily/politics/union-withdraws-funds-to-bristols-labour-mps

Sounds like Corbyn had been letting his hostiles.xls game slip.

If you have yet to take a course of radiotherapy I think that can be accurately described as "in the middle of cancer treatment".

If I'd been off work for 8 months and was back part-time as part of a 4 week planned return to work then I'm pretty sure I wouldn't call it the middle.

Also pretty sure I wouldn't be declaring to the press I had beaten cancer if I thought I was in the middle of my treatment.

If anyone has time to enlighten a stupid foreigner: What is the procedure for choosing candidates for each constituency? It seems amazing the way the PLP completely disregards their voters, and I would think most of them would face some kind of challenge to their seats from their area. If it was the US, they would be primaried, each and every one of them. Now, I can figure out that probably isn't the case. But then I'm stuck as to what the point of FPTP is, if not to have each MP beholden to the people of their constituency. The UK seems remarkably undemocratic from afar, but, well, you don't need me to tell you.

There is an enormous variance in what the voters of different Labour consistencies believe and how they want the party to behave. It's part of the whole problem.

Prospective MPs are selected by their constituencies but, if they're successful in an election, they're very rarely voted out by them. The local party can choose to put the seat of a current MP up for a contest if they want to but it has typically been done under fairly extreme circumstances in the past.

There have been calls for mandatory reselection votes in the future and there is a strong risk that local parties could choose to deselect anti-Corbyn MPs under the current rules.

Admittedly individual MPs don't always represent that voter base very well, especially those with minimal connection to their constituency who have been parachuted in to safe seats.

Labour's electoral strategy (maybe all electoral strategies are like this) has been to vocally prioritise the people who don't vote for them over the people who do, which is another reason they're in this mess.

I am still unclear under what circumstances an MP can be removed and by whom, I've heard lots of contradictory things over the past few weeks. once they've been voted in by the whole constituency of tens of thousands it wouldn't be very democratic for the local party of a few hundred to be able to get rid of them

but no, the UK is not very democratic at all, we just had a prime minister appointed through a mixture of tory MPs and trial by media

& the tory party voted in by 24% of the population last year. Which should mean taht 76% might be against them if there was any level of unity. Probably not though.
Is this what teh US invented teh Silent Majority to represent, though I would think that there was some pretty heavy anti-Tory feeling. Just a lack of a strong opposition to vote for, which I was hoping labour might just become if it got rid of the elements still hanging around fro the last couple of decades of the party. Tory Lites etc.

I am still unclear under what circumstances an MP can be removed and by whom, I've heard lots of contradictory things over the past few weeks. once they've been voted in by the whole constituency of tens of thousands it wouldn't be very democratic for the local party of a few hundred to be able to get rid of them

They can't boot them out of the seat after an election but they can choose to make someone else the party candidate at the next one.

the duties of a constituency MP vs the party allegiance of the MP has always been an unresolved problem in UK politics i think

I find it hard to believe that Corbyn is rejecting much needed support.

so, did the UK ever get this sorted? /deems