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

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/world/europe/scotland-gay-politicians.html?_r=0

this was p heartening for me to find in the ny times

Absolutely delighted at that

Weird that it mentions Souter by name but fails to mention his SNP connections and donations.

Still, I agree it's progress. I mean it's nearly 20 years since a Scottish MP was last hounded to his death for being gay.

I will never forget the hilarity when N4ncy Cl3nch decided she loved Scotland so much she had to move to London to make it as a drag star

scottish nationalists shouldn't be allowed to leave the country

Chain them to the stone of Scone.

Anyway, Zac Goldsmith resigned, so by-election.

BJ is digging in as well. Hah! this could get messy.

Kind of wish Corbyn was visibly trying to hold the Vote Leave crew to account (in the way that Chuka Umunna has been doing, over the last few days).

(Perhaps he is and I have missed it?)

No discipline in the ranks. You'd expect it from a busted flush like Goldsmith but for newly appointed Cabinet ministers to be mouthing off this early should be worrying, because they're not going to get any happier over the next few years.

Stephen Bush argues that Goldsmith's "personal following" is exaggerated and that the Lib Dems have a real shot:

https://www.facebook.com/stephenkbush/posts/546869208845145

part of me wants to see Labour not stand a candidate to increase the chances of Goldsmith losing, but they probably can't afford to do that when in the middle of an existential crisis

Can you imagine if a Labour rebel stood down to fight as an independent in protest at party policy and the Labour Party decided not to put up a candidate to stand against them? The press would murder them.

Richmond had a slight Leave majority during the referendum which may have eroded since June but would still be big enough to offset any gains the Lib Dems might make.

The bigger Goldsmith's personal following the greater the chance of a Lib Dem victory, presuming he splits the vote for whoever the Tory candidate turns out to be. Assuming they field one.

(xpost - are the Tories really not contesting the seat?)

The Conservatives said they "disagreed" with Mr Goldsmith's decision but would not field a candidate against him.

I mean it's probably a sensible decision given the size of their majority and the fact that an independent Goldsmith would vote with them most of the time in any case.

I'm sure they came to some sort of arrangement with the plank Goldsmith.

I have a low enough sympathy rating for poor old millionaire's row getting besieged by planes and noise pollution, but for the benefit of Zac Goldsmith and his "personal following" I'd say build another fucking runway while you are it.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/25/exclusive-leaked-recording-shows-what-theresa-may-really-thinks-about-brexit

Oof.

I mean this is huge, right? Hard to see how she could get away with leaving the single market now, and equally difficult to see how she'll get away without howls of betrayal from Brexit true believers.

baldrick-style

I'm sure Corbyn will find some way not to mention it for the next week or so.

at least we know our pm isn't daft enough to think brexit is going to do the country any good ...

just craven enough to ride the concomitant wave of xenophobia to an enduring reign at westminster

i don't think it's going to be very enduring

I'm extremely interested in how Murdoch and Dacre respond to this. I'm guessing by doubling down on the with-us-or-treasonous betrayal narrative.

which is i think quite brittle

I doubt they will mention it extensively. If she was saying this in secret speeches this week it would be huge but this was prior to the referendum when she was supposed to be drumming up support for staying. Her position, in public, has always been that she was in favour of staying but will make the best of the democratic decision to leave. She was extremely quiet at the time but differing degrees of nuance in her stated position doesn't seem a huge issue.

But if she were to proceed with taking the UK out of the single market it would be (virtually) unprecedented for a PM to be pursuing a course of action they'd privately admitted would be hugely damaging to the country? I mean aside from Cameron but his fecklessness is now well-documented.

That is the nature of having a referendum, though. She doesn't need to believe it, she just needs to do it and Murdoch / the back benches will be happy. She has given very little sign that we won't be going for 'hard Brexit'.

(I had been assuming she secretly voted Remain all along and had only kept her head down with one eye on Number 10, expecting it to play out in more or less exactly the way it did).

Felix Salmon has just pointed out on Twitter that she has shown a level of honesty and frankness with Goldman Sachs that she has so far refused to show the electorate.

Boris managed to swerve that Remain article he wrote with that "it was me just ruminating aloud on the EU question" despite having a long rep as being pro EU. The electorate don't seem to care about the legitimate concerns these politicians really have, they are so out of touch:p

Not that I am defending her but it's much easier to say 'Brexit will be a trash fire' when you are responsible for campaigning against it than when you are in charge of making it a reality. Her primary job at the moment is maintaining economic confidence during the process - she pretty much has to talk up the exciting opportunities for innovative jam exports rather than admitting everything will be terrible unless she is going to reverse her position that the will of the electorate shouldn't be listened to.

But the electorate didn't vote for a "hard Brexit", they may have voted to leave the EU but they didn't vote for a PM to walk willingly into an economic disaster with their eyes wide open. They might not care that much about dire warnings right now but they sure as hell will when it happens and the anger is likely to be extreme.

If nothing else the disgruntled Remainers on her own back benches are going to be emboldened and it suggests that, when it comes down to it, she's going to with her Chancellor over David Davies or Liam Fox.

(In any case everyone knew Boris was full of shit from the start).

The electorate voted against freedom of movement. They may have believed that this didn't require hard brexit, but it does. The tory electorate voted 2 to 1 to leave. From the point of view of her position astride the UK state and the Tory party May has played a blinder. She's remained unblemished by her remain stance by being so soto voce with it in the run up to the referendum, and so balls out for brexit in its wake. Her only position that would be ethical or honest would be to lay her cards out - leaving the single market will be terrible for the UK, let's do whatever we can not to do it. It would also utterly destroy her politically.

So once again it comes down to the question of how much of a hit to their wallets Leave voters are prepared to take in exchange for "controls on immigration", and the government would be extremely foolish to overestimate that figure.

is our only hope that the economy goes so tits up before article 50 is triggered that only a rump of fundamentalist brexicists still want it?

that big slab of rock in the canaries could slide into the sea

I had a really unpleasant argument with my mum about Brexit on Saturday. She has recovered from breast cancer in recent years and has a had a tough time, so it left me feeling queasy. But she parrots stuff my stepdad says and he does vote UKIP and is a complete nazi fuckup whose formative years were spent in 50's S Africa.

Another thing was, at the time of the referendum, my partner mentioned to her brother that I was voting Remain and his response was: "I thought he was one of us". Like it rendered me some type of bad element class traitor, and he said it very factually like it was beyond debate she said.

Clive Lewis, Lisa Nandy and Jonathan Reynolds call for Lab not to stand a candidate against Goldsmith:

http://labourlist.org/2016/10/lewis-nandy-and-reynolds-lets-make-this-a-referendum-on-goldsmith-not-heathrow/

it sames safe to assume that there will be a lot of resistance to this idea within Labour? a stunning Lib Dem victory in Richmond Park is obv not a great precedent the next time there is a by-election in a seat that Labour hold, and you'd think they would want to avoid aiding narratives about resurgent Lib Dems at a time when Lab are at historic lows in the polls and people are questioning if they will ever form a government again.

Yeah this isn't a good idea unless Corbyn is prepared to enter into a formal pact with Fallon. And that's riddled with problems - lots of Lib Dems won't want to be associated with Corbyn and the Liberals' Euro pitch isn't going to play well at all in the Labour seats that voted Leave.

I mean you could argue that Labour should favour anything that chips away at the Tory voting majority. They have zero chance of winning the seat anyway.

i think pragmatic individual arrangements along those lines mightn't be hugely damaging. the Blairites can't really moan because "we must attack the Tories" is their only current mantra. most sensible leftists won't get het up about tactical candidacies, it's not the same as a formal alliance with the Lib Dems at all and it may help to develop areas of common understanding that could come into play in future general elections or moves toward PR.

god knows i'm as doctrinaire as anybody when it comes to things that matter i.e. your actual policies, but the tedious bullshit mechanics of politics as a game are unimportant and should be treated as such imo. again, the key problem with a lot of pro politicians of all stripes is that politics as game is literally the only thing they focus their attention on

It will smart a bit to people who have been disqualified from voting in the Labour leadership election due to expressing pro-Lib Dem views oh wait those views wouldn't have got you disqualified.

the "progressive alliance" idea is interesting because it seems to split the Labour party, but not neatly along pro/anti Corbyn lines - there are Blairites opposed to it, but Jon Lansman also has been critical of the idea and Corbyn and McDonnell seem sceptical (though McDonnell has come out in support of PR?). I get the impression that it's partly an age thing, a lot of younger Corbyn supporters seem more open to the concept (by younger I mean people roughly my age i.e. early 30s, it occurs to me that these are ppl who's impression of the Lib Dems were probably formed in the period where they where a mildy social democratic party, led by Charles Kennedy, opposed to the Iraq war, criticising the Blair govt from the left etc, idk if Corbynites 10 years or so younger whose impression of them was formed by the coalition era are more wary of them?) my gut reaction is that it's a bad idea, but then there dones seem to be a shortage of better ideas

Older voters are intensely reminded of the SDP, which doesn't put us in a good mood (if I'm asked who my most hated politician is, I still reflexively think "Dr David Owen" even tho there are many figures objectively more loathsome, with many worse deeds on their charge-sheet).

xp soref

Good point about that narrow generational view of Lib Dems. I fit into the Charles Kennedy era so may be more amenable to them than if i was 20 years older or 10 years younger.

this is the tim farron era

The word "progressive" is smug and self-congratulatory and meaningless but it's amazing how quickly people have fallen back into the trap of believing the Lib Dems are somehow half-Labour.

are Labour even half-Labour etc.

I keep forgetting Tim Farron even exists.