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

xp came here to post that. Did not know about how far the pound has dropped.

It's all so fucking stupid

what????? in the US that would be unconstitutional i'm pretty sure

Re: no foreign expertise. Saw someone on twitter calling it May's "Little Britain pathology".

i thought i'd see the usual smug liberal whining about this but what you people forget is that those academics are taking jobs away from British experts

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CmNLK3lXEAAPQnI.jpg

i dunno i was just listening to a story on voter registration i think i'd call it a tie

really disappointed that true Briton and war enthusiast Mike Hookem hasn't got the basic guts to admit to attempting to murder his fellow MEP

at least it is amusing listening to him lying his arse off that not a punch was thrown and then using pugilist metaphors about how he is going "fight his corner" on his position of absolute innocence.

Tom Watson has just been demoted to Shadow culture secretary, you see Conrad I was onto something:p

i guess having a love of landfill, Marr, Roses etc is doesn't preclude one from having a "culture" job title.

Can he still be deputy leader and hold a position on the shadow cabinet?

excuse some of the dumbass posting, I have a bad chest infection and am high on codeine today

https://twitter.com/SteveReedMP/status/784457643192619008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

finally a boost for all the guitar bands

All british bands forced to declare how many of their tunes aren't influenced by the Beatles

Had a theory tonight... is this all part of May's plan to show how bad Brexit could get and then force a second vote at some point?

No

@Jill, I've had the same thought hovering around in my head watching all this unfold.

On the one hand people with that much wealth and power are probably prone to swilling xenophobia around as a strategy (fun game plan if you'll never be at risk yourself) to get more wealth and power, so that's what this could be. The endpoint being a situation where she says, 'Well everyone, unfortunately it looks as though the Brexit is not viable, but you'll agree, I did everything I could to be as nationalistic as possible'.

On the other hand, in this house, IIRC, we are not too sure if there's much difference between opportunistic and sincerely-felt bigotry, and if there is a difference I don't think I can read her well enough to decide what it is in her case.

Theresa May is an earnestly bigoted person

brought up by a fucking Anglican couple with a clergyman dad in Oxfordshire is a very "character building" upbringing.

We’re marching towards extreme Brexit. Someone must speak for the 48%

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/07/marching-mad-brexit-someone-speak-48-per-cent

haven't read the article but do you have anyone in mind?

lol, he describes Nick Clegg as a "serious asset" for ref2 propaganda in that piece.

if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere

vs.

It is the people who are at home both nowhere and everywhere, who do not have anywhere a soil on which they have grown up, but who live in Berlin today, in Brussels tomorrow, Paris the day after that, and then again in Prague or Vienna or London, and who feel at home everywhere. [Man in audience shouts 'The Jews!'] They are the only ones who can be addressed as international, because they conduct their business everywhere, but the people cannot follow them.

wow

Telegraph has taken this beauty down:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/07/theresa-may-is-following-enoch-powell--by-actually-listening-to/

...404 error.

Many will recall the conflict in the Conservative party in the late 1960s and early 1970s between its then leader, Ted Heath, and its great ideologue, Enoch Powell. Powell took issue with Heath on various points, and two resonate today.

One was mass immigration, in those days from the Commonwealth rather than Europe, which had happened without the British people being consulted, and which Powell saw from his perspective as an MP in Wolverhampton was causing tension and unhappiness. The other was Heath’s ill-fated project to take Britain into what was then called the Common Market, which Powell saw as an outrageous sacrifice of British sovereignty, the end not just of our nationhood but of the right of the British government to do what its electorate wanted.

It was hardly surprising that, as I listened to Theresa May’s speech last Wednesday, I was reminded of Powell. When she told some of her colleagues, and their tame pundits in the media, to stop whining about Brexit and instead to respect the votes of more than 17 million people who had found the EU unpalatable, she made a profoundly Powellite point. She accused such people of sneering at the majority who voted in the referendum. In truth, it is a sneer that has lasted for decades.

Even during the Thatcher government, when it sought to return power from the all-knowing state to the individual, there was still a coterie of ministers who thought they really did know best. Powell understood the feelings of the people: it made him, in the eyes of his opponents, a dangerous politician and rival, which was why they rushed to accuse him (falsely) of racism for his warnings about the unpopularity of mass immigration and of Little Englandism for his views about Europe. Mrs May seems to have learned from this – and, as prime minister, is in a strong position to invite those in her party who disagree with her to defy her if they dare.

Britain has lurched slowly towards democracy since the Great Reform Act of 1832. It has taken some in our political class 184 years to realise what democracy really means: the paramountcy of the will of the people. Ironically, it required not a general election but a plebiscite to have that will properly expressed.

Those who for decades have wanted to leave the EU went to one general election after another feeling utterly disfranchised, because neither party likely to be elected had any intention other than to stay in the club, at vast expense to the taxpayer, at ever greater sacrifice of our sovereignty, and with an open borders policy imposed upon us that caused social problems and made us more vulnerable to crime and terrorism. That we now have a prime minister who sees the irreconcilability of those policies with the views of the majority of the British people is a great advance for democracy.

In a country such as ours referendums are only acceptable when a matter of potentially huge constitutional significance is contemplated, as it was on 23 June. They cannot be a substitute for thoughtful, responsive government that understands, as all governments should, what the public really wants. Nor does this mean governments have to engage in followership rather than leadership. But the lead a government should give is one that goes with the grain of public opinion rather than against it. The growing vote for Ukip in recent elections was a portent of the referendum result, even if Ukip has only one semi-detached MP as a result. That the Cameron government chose to ignore this before June was just one aspect of its fatal arrogance.

With the sort of clear choice before them that did not exist between potential governing parties at the last election, the British people gave a clear signal in June not just of their true view on the EU, but of the frustration and annoyance they felt at being treated with contempt by the political class. Mrs May has received and understood this. Her fellow Western leaders have generally not.

Its by Simon Heffer - have avoided that cunt for years.

er, Sorry the rest of it:

For them, democracy is a tiresome advisory process that they can feel free to interpret as they wish, not a guide to public opinion which, if ignored, will build up to a quiet – or perhaps not so quiet – revolution of the sort we have just had in Britain. It is why Donald Trump stands such a good chance of winning the American presidential election next month. It is why Marine Le Pen will do so well in next May’s presidential election in France. And it is why Frauke Petry’s AfD party is eating into support for Angela Merkel in Germany, and may well help depose her as head of the ruling coalition there next autumn.

Given the pitiful state of the Labour party, Mrs May could have ignored public opinion and allowed the Government to carry on sneering. That she did not is a refreshing sign that she genuinely understands that things cannot carry on as before.

Not every aspect of her conference speech was so admirable, though. If she is seriously thinking of pursuing a sub-Keynesian approach to the economy, with state intervention in the private sector, she should think again before the markets force her to do so. In the post-Brexit world she is commendably determined to bring about, interfering with a free-market approach in business and imposing regulation will be the easiest way to shoot our new economic and trading arrangements in the foot. There are certainly abuses of remuneration in some companies, but it is the shareholders’ job, and not the state’s, to sort that out.

That vital consideration aside, our new Prime Minister has connected with the Zeitgeist of the British people. She can lead them properly and confidently once she has won their respect in this way. She deserves the unqualified support of her colleagues for this. It has taken almost 50 years to learn Enoch’s lessons about accommodating the will of the people, but better late than never.

fuck the telegraph for publishing it, and double-fuck them for taking it down. have the courage of your repugnant convictions you miserable cunts

I got in a lift with Simon Heffer once. Sorry to say all I did was give him a dirty look.

Democracy is ok in regards to immigrants except when the undemocratically elected markets say they are unhappy with May's "sub-Keynesian" approach.

There's a lot of people in the UK (and the rest of Europe) who would agree with Heffer's views, and they're not going to change those views anytime soon.

(I'm not one of them by the way, I'm a Guardian reading Green voter)

I really don't know what lefty liberals can do to counter that type of thinking :(

gonna suggest that one way to start would be for politicians who don't share those views to argue against them rather than pander to them

That would seem the obvious thing to do and yet...

secondly i think immigration tends to be far less pressing a concern for people with a good degree of material security and personal fulfilment and maybe the people who lack those things might be a good constituency to aim your economic policies towards helping

Don't worry Paolo our undemocratically elected markets will get the UK running off to the IMF in no time and defeat May's Powellist project! It will be ok in the end.

there is a lot of projection going on towards people who are living thereabouts the poverty line, even the Brexit vote doesn't mean they are all rabid racists who are losing sleep over the immigration numbers. Most of them would probably be happier with either a higher minimum wage or a restoration of in work benefits rather than having wankers like Reeves insultingly describing them as a "tinderbox situation".

there is a lot of projection going on

And how.

Heffer has been unashamedly writing "Enoch was right" pieces for years:

2007 - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643837/When-will-Tories-admit-that-Enoch-was-right.html

2012 - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2158958/Enoch-Powell-A-prophet-outcast.html

2015 - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/12009577/Paris-is-tragic-proof-that-Enoch-Powell-was-right-about-threats-to-our-country.html

I was always kind of surprised he got away with this, but it looks like he was just ahead of his time.

apparently the new article is back up again:

@timothy_stanley
Guys, just so you know the Heffer piece on Enoch Powell was published early by accident & then repubbed at the proper time. Nothing changed!

A lot of Tories are unabashed about their worship of Powell.

This guy, for one, whatever happened to him?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/aug/26/conservative-daniel-hannan-enoch-powell

When you look at his colourful bibliography it becomes apparent he has the same kind of myopia that Enoch was afflicted with, seems like a fun guy.

Oh dear: https://twitter.com/piercepenniless/status/784789209160744961

'Russia deploys nuclear-capable missiles in Kaliningrad'

https://twitter.com/malaiseforever/status/784419300538974208

https://twitter.com/malaiseforever/status/784699693922127872

:D

Hahaha