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

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Paul Mason is on Any Questions at 8 pm, it might make it at least 20% less annoying than usual.

I defy anyone to read to the end of Stephen Kinnock's immigration article from today's Guardian without feeling disorientated, like the room is spinning around them - it's written in this bland matter-of-fact style, but it's like some Lewis Carroll-esque masterpiece of broken logic and non sequiturs

also Kinnock's twitter bio is "Pro-business, but not pro-business as usual." which is maybe the worst twitter bio ever. (though it looks like that's a line first used by Ed Miliband's people as far back as 2011? https://twitter.com/search?q=Pro-business%2C%20but%20not%20pro-business%20as%20usual.&src=typd)

if you like to wave your pro-business credentials around then maybe don't be a member of the Labour Party tbh

these fucking Blairites and their nauseating "we nice tory" slogans is one thing I won't miss if there is a good purge. Without any irony Stephen's dad was referred to as "a true man of the left" on R4 yesterday.

Interesting to see a lot of the deeply anti-Corbyn people who pop up in my Twitter timeline completely repulsed by the juvenile backlash to 'Momentum Kids'. Quite a few Corbyn-sceptical journalists too.

Stephen Bush ‏@stephenkb 9h9 hours ago
Sad that Corbyn can't even propose a creche with child-friendly activities that are relevant to their mum's interests without being mocked.

I get the sense that yr Kinnocks, Streetings etc, have pretty much tanked their reputations with a lot of the people who'll end up voting for Smith as well as the wider party.

It's almost as if the people in Wales who voted Brexit didn't do so because of UKIP, but because the people who benefited most from EU projects in Wales were the already quite privileged relatives of people like Neil Kinnock and Dai Smith.

Must hear Mason's Any Questions !

Mason popped up also at the very end of a Guardian essay on the new left - the journo said she liked everyone else but fiery Mason scared her.

There is a kind of aggressive proselytism that's harder to excuse in people who aren't at the sharp end of inequality

he was very polite and accommodating to Angela Eagle on Any Questions, but idk how he acts in less public situations

What is his evidence that Corbyn can’t provide the necessary leadership in opposition? And even if that proves compelling, was nine months really enough time before MPs tried to oust a politician elected by the party’s membership?

“I wasn’t in favour of there being a challenge,” says Smith quickly. “But once a challenge had been made then I felt I needed to stand because I felt that I had something to say about the future of the Labour party, and a lot of other people in the PLP [parliamentary Labour party] felt that about me, which is why they asked me to stand.”

So Smith would have preferred to see Corbyn allowed to carry on for longer?

“Yes, is the honest answer,” he says.

Not that this is an admission of regret about his bid to topple the sitting leader.

“The truth is, things weren’t going well, things aren’t going well. Nine months may be a short period of time but it’s a period of time in which the Labour party has gone backwards,” he says. “We are at a lower ebb than we’ve been in the polls at any time since 1982, and we’re six years into a Tory government and right now they are unfettered, they feel able to act with total impunity.”

solid, unwavering, statesmanlike performance from the boy smith there

That's either staggeringly inept for someone hoping to unseat him, or he's just given up now.

'i didn't like the idea of a challenge but then the plp asked me to stand so i did but jeremy should have carried on for longer but despite that we were going backwards and something something tories and that is what i did on my holidays can i go to the bathroom now miss please i've been bursting for hours'

Delightful Moyesian wordplay. Sounds like he's given up.

the terrible Kinnock article is here btw: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/19/cure-divided-britain-managed-immigration-work-permits

would have more respect for them if they just came out and said "the case against freedom of movement is based on reactionary nativism and is economically incoherent, but immigration is really unpopular with people whose votes we need to ever to get into government again, and frankly we think that arguing for it is a losing battle, so we're just going to admit defeat on this one". instead you get all this day-is-night blather about how our "openess" as a country isn't compromised by letting fewer ppl in, and how copying UKIP policies is actually "rooted in leftwing values". (I'm sure that the Corbynite wing of Labour does not spend half as much time droning on about "leftwing values" as the right does- does this phrase ever get used apart from when someone needs to justify something awful?)

in other depressing "Labour right responds to brext" news, this has just been published as well today as well: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2016/09/rachel-reeves-mp-ending-free-movement-should-be-red-line-labour-post-brexit

both are chapters from this, apparently: http://www.fabians.org.uk/publications/facing-the-unknown/

Rachel Reeves is so terrible. I presume she isn't stupid, and knows that communities like the one she represents are likely to be decimated by withdrawal from the single market, but hey it's better to just compartmentalise the short-termist bit.

"...We are at a lower ebb than we’ve been in the polls at any time since 1982.."

This isn't true, fwiw, things were much worse under Gordon Brown

Really?

He's given up but is slyly asking for a shadow cabinet post is what I suspect that OS thing is about

You can get 20/1 on him beating Corbyn at this stage so he knows the game is up. I think he'd like another crack at it in a few years and wants to be in the clear with the voting membership.

Remarkable that immigration seems to be the only thing they have in their pocket. They aren't going to win votes from it and they aren't going to be able to implement anything so the only effect it'll have is to boost May in her attempts to justify imposing harsh restrictions on EU migrants.

The gall of any Brit, PM especially, to revert to the old 'should claim asylum in the first country you arrive at' chestnut.

Really?

Yep, for three or four months in the summer of 2008 the gap was enormous - Tories 20% ahead on average with some polls putting the difference nearer to 30%. It narrowed a bit after that, but was almost as bad again the following summer.

I occasionally wonder why Carswell hasn't either taken over as leader of UKIP or been ushered back into the Conservative Party, but...

https://twitter.com/kevverage/status/778139865493958658

Post-Miliband, pre-Corbyn Labour policymaking basically amounts to 'do a survey -> read the results -> adopt whatever people are talking the loudest about regardless of whether you believe in it or have really thought it through'. Say what you will about Blair but he was a lot more sophisticated than this shower.

I'm not exactly enamoured by Corbyn's 'make up some shit on the hoof whenever you're asked a question' approach either, but at least you know he actually believes it.

Wait is it true that Labour has somehow contrived to purge away its majority on Bristol City Council?

yes

http://www.bristol247.com/channel/news-comment/daily/politics/bristol-labour-party-hit-by-suspensions

The suspensions leave Labour with 34 councillors in City Hall - one below what is needed for an overall majority.

Anyone else think they may have suspended enough by now to steal the vote?

I might have a nibble on that 20/1 if it is still there

So like what does happen when Owen Smith and Donald Trump get in over the next few months.
Does everything line up for the rapture or something?

if the PLP managed to steal this I will be very drunk and on suicide watch, business as usual really! According to the YouGov poll they would have to ban a shitload of people to win it, probably more than they have the resources and time to ban. But you never know what these fuckers are capable of, especially when they are becoming increasingly desperate.

The purges and reasons given for them have that air of erratic desperation that suggests they lack both sufficient data on new supporters and members and sufficient confidence in Smith. BBC offers some useful figures here - 105,598 £3 supporters for Corbyn last year. Would love to know how many of them are now voting Smith against how many have been purged but can't see either figure getting up to half of 100k. Could be wrong hope not.

The purge purpose may be more damage limitation in trying to ensure that the overall turnout isn't greater than last year's - would be understandable if you take the membership surge this year as an indication of support for Corbyn.

Honestly I think a competent candidate who members believed could actually win an election could probably have beaten Corbyn, but both Smith and Eagle were very obviously neither of those things.

I was charmed by the Eagle/Mason interactions on Any Questions, particularly when she was yicked out by the idea of skinny-dipping Nigel Farage.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/scottish-independence-comedy-sketch-sparks-homophobia-row-over-ruth-davidson-immitation_uk_57dfb54fe4b0d584f7f1b315

The "Dykey D" thing seems spectacularly ill-conceived.

Culture Minister claims to be big fan of Skepta but can't name any of his tracks

didn't Tim Farron have Fuck The Police unexpectedly blasting out of his phone recently or something? I don't think aligning himself with Blair '97 is going win him much ground, either in terms wooing battle weary Blairite MPs or connecting with the tiny part of the electorate that actually still gives a fuck what a Lib-Dem clown says.

For a lot of Labour MPs, switching to the LibDems would be tantamount to just resigning their seat at the next election, it's a non-starter.

Labour's Jonathan Reynolds joins team legitimate concerns:

The Remain-campaigning Reynolds told HuffPost UK that people’s “genuine emotional concerns” about uncontrolled immigration cannot be dealt with just by pointing to reports and statistics which talk up the economic benefit of freedom of movement.

In a dig at colleagues such as Chuka Umunna who are calling for the Government to try and negotiate a compromise over freedom of movement in a Brexit deal, Reynolds said a “tweak” to the status quo “would not wash with people.”

His comments come days after three other high profile Labour MPs – Rachel Reeves, Emma Reynolds and Steven Kinnock – all called for an end to free movement to the UK.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/labour-freedom-of-movement-jonathan-reynolds_uk_57e2be9ee4b0db20a6e82ba3?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004

morbidly curious which way Owen Smith jumps on this issue once his leadership challenge finally limps to its conclusion

Do the "no free movement" guys have a coherent economic framework that supports their position or are they just racist dicks?

Reynolds and Kinnock jr both pretty much explicitly admit that there's no economic case against freedom of movement, but voters are "concerned" about it so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. (also in Kinnock jr's case there is a weird "we have to be a bit racist to placate slighty-racist voters who would otherwise start being REALLY REALLY racist" argument.)

Reynolds again:

“And that’s not always about personal impact on wages or personal impact on their community it is about a concern about what is, frankly, a record level of immigration to the UK and concerns about our ability as a nation to absorb that scale of immigration.

so if the concern is NOT about wages, or the impact on their community (by which I guess he means things like pressure on public services, housing etc), what does that leave exactly?

lol it very well might be "very genuine concerns about our nation's ability to not be racist dicks" which is a kind of pro-level concern trolling

actually, he's just made himself even clearer on twitter just now:

Dirk Singer ‏@dirktherabbit
One final question @jreynoldsMP if I may. Do you *personally* believe EU migrants are a strain on the job market & public services

Jonathan Reynolds ‏@jreynoldsMP
@dirktherabbit No. But I can recognise the desire to see immigration controlled and that concerns are cultural as well as economic

also agrees with Stephen Kinnock's argument that "to deny the reality of white working class people, quite frankly, smacks of ‘class privilege’."

is there a credible argument that "cultural concerns" is anything other that a weaselly euphemism for racism + xenophobia? what would that argument look like?

It's literally just the perceived racism of the working classes. There are a million things affecting 'community feeling' in deprived areas they've ignored or cheered on for decades - from the decline of traditional local industries to cuts to communal council resources to the ongoing encouragement to demonise each other as less deserving of assistance - none of which they appear to be interested in fixing now. They've just decided that everyone outside of the fancy bits is a diehard racist and pandering to that imagined sentiment will turn the clock back to 1960.

There was an interesting suggestion that the Tories are planning to plough huge amounts of 'financial aid' into the Visegrad countries as an attempt to bribe them into not doing this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37396805

idk how well that would go down in the UK or Poland.