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

I think if there's an ideological school that might come to seriously threaten Momentum while remaining "electable" it's unlikely to come from the Blairite side, and more from some kind of mutation of Blue Labour. A combination of social authoritarianism, industrial strategy and redistributive economic policies could work in Brexit Britain. Whether that 'electability' tell us anything good about the country is another question.

There's also the question of whether, if he were a member of the Tories, Farage or a similar figure would stand a chance of becoming PM. Possibly not, for the same reason with don't have PM Boris Johnson right now. Then again, Trump was able to rinse through, with embarrassing ease, the kinds of Republican electoral processes that were surely designed to prevent someone like him becoming President.

maybe the most political capital could be made by a party credibly offering to create a lot of good jobs - via manufacturing, i suppose, but maybe there are other alternatives. that could be done by politicians from a range of backgrounds, from the centre right to all points left. Trump has certainly made this part of his offer, without the "credibly" bit, obv.

hard to imagine any other way to lastingly improve incomes and equality in the UK that doesn't involve a major restructure of the economic infrastructure

How do you do that without being shouted down by the press and portrayed as a crazy communist/financially irresponsible? Corbyn is also frustratingly vague on how he'd create jobs - the National Investment Bank idea suggests one path that I genuinely think might work, "people's quantitative easing" is another, but neither are exactly something that is going to resonate with an electorate. It also might take years to come into fruition.

Then again the Tories can get away with doing things that even a right-wing Labour government couldn't, and May could be leading the country in the direction of more economic interventionism. I think the neoliberal consensus is over but voters are still rather attached to the benefits of neoliberalism, even if they no longer feel it in their wallets.

Then again the Tories can get away with doing things that even a right-wing Labour government couldn't

Ain't that the truth. Sadly, Paul Dacre is undead so we will never be rid of him.

you can do any sort of borrowing you want as long as you frame it so that the "serious people" i.e. deficit ideologues go along with it. they all went along with the keynesian response to the financial crisis. i honestly don't think most people give a shit about the deficit unless mercilessly prodded about it by the press and conservative think tanks. as you say matt the austerity consensus has basically fallen apart now - there is room for a massive investment programme if it's sold the right way.

you come up with a programme of things that need investing in the UK and sell it hard? of course the usual voices of capital are going to go after you, but i thought we'd already accepted that one way or another the electorate is crying out for "not the status quo". Brexit could even supply a useful context for arguing the necessity of investing in growth.

so basically what Tracer said :)

this - or the next - govt could say alright, we need half a million homes built each year for the next five years, and the govt will do the lion's share of the borrowing, with HAs and local govt doing the building and contracting. this will of course require other infrastructure and services as well. it will require massive borrowing, which we are comfortable with, as loans have never been cheaper. and we are creating assets that will mainly rise in value.

i mean just as an example. this would be a massively popular policy!

Unless it tanked the prices of people's homes.

people's homes have already tanked/ are tanking unless you live in London.

and they will continue to tank unless the economy improves in a meaningful way.

That's the exact opposite of what seems to be happening at the moment.

"The dire shortage of available housing across the UK is continuing to push prices upwards, regardless of the uncertainty linked to the ongoing discussions surrounding Brexit," RICS chief economist Simon Rubinsohn said.

Price expectations for the coming three months edged up and were positive in all areas bar London, where prices have fallen for the past eight months, mostly in central areas.

The Tories are going to have to be remarkably brave to flood the market with new stock when most of their voters are homeowners who see their wealth as inextricably linked to the value of their property.

iirc those "Central London" figs are median prices, and misleading as they are capturing zillionaire properties in Zone 1 whose prices have halved (like from 3M to 1.5M etc)

and again, an investment in say Paisley residential property 10 years ago will have seen you taking a bath for the most part.

that said yes of course there's a problem with property, which is what a massive homebuilding scheme would address. and yes it would require courage to propose and vote through. anything substantial would! (and yes the tories are not the ones to do it)

There are parts of the country where house prices are below their 2007 levels still, though they tend to not be Tory strongholds.

The housing crisis has never just been about reluctance to invest in infrastructure - under Tories or Labour - and seems fairly intractable at this stage. There isn't much alternative to Corbyn proposing a huge programme of house building if it's going to be 'fixed' but idk how popular it will be.

yes the particulars may be troublesome - this is why i'm an internet typist and not a career politician. ultimately i'm saying people seem like they're ready for big ideas even if they cost money. voters are looking for somebody who can "cut through" and fix shit.

i don't really believe in Tory infallibility but there is a key difference, in that centrist Labour has moved so far to the right over the last 25 years as to be no longer credibly part of the left. and the centrists' policies, in power or out, are so disconnected from the needs of the poor and marginalized in the UK that supporting them feels wholly pointless, if not self-sabotaging.

Two Tory MPs have resigned, the elected Tory PM was booted out after a year. Labour - and the energy that has come about via the set-up of Momentum - could revitalise the party, ultimately bringing about a vision that is positive and beyond the 'please don't vote for the other lot'. You saw the results of that in the US elections.

Look at this: http://news.sky.com/story/city-bosses-dismay-over-treasury-minister-talks-10653125

Sources who were present at the meeting say Mr Kirby told them that he was unable to offer detailed assurances about the Treasury's work.

He is understood to have made a convoluted joke about Ed Balls' appearance on the light entertainment programme Strictly Come Dancing, before answering two questions and then leaving after little more than ten minutes to attend another engagement.

If I were Jeremy Corbyn I would be on every TV show, talking to every camera shoved in my face, saying "they don't know what they're doing about Brexit, they don't know how to do it without crashing the economy". Again and again and again until people listen. Make it about their incompetence instead of his, he was pretty good on this a week or three ago and then sort of stopped.

yes

there is room for a massive investment programme if it's sold the right way.

should people be pushing harder for a national investment bank, or is there something else?

Nigel Farage @Nigel_Farage
Especially pleased at @realDonaldTrump's very positive reaction to idea that Sir Winston Churchill's bust should be put back in Oval Office.

it'd be funny if it weren't so depressing

farage rolling up to trump tower uninvited kinda reminded me of gazza's support mission for raoul moat

Farage wasn't wearing a poppy on the news earlier. Not that any newspaper will bother shitting their pants over it.

If I were Jeremy Corbyn I would be on every TV show, talking to every camera shoved in my face, saying "they don't know what they're doing about Brexit, they don't know how to do it without crashing the economy". Again and again and again until people listen. Make it about their incompetence instead of his, he was pretty good on this a week or three ago and then sort of stopped.

― Matt DC, Saturday, 12 November 2016 19:08 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, this. I think.

Once Micheal Foot was sporting a very smart jacket with a poppy an all, and it was even complemented by the vacuous nazi loving queen mom. But the press did shit their pants over his jacket.

The Telegraph is pinning its colours to the mast:

Theresa May is facing a growing Cabinet backlash over her decision to dismiss Nigel Farage despite him being the only British politician to meet with Donald Trump since his victory.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/13/theresa-may-facing-cabinet-backlash-over-refusal-to-deal-with-ni/

It's difficult to believe this could be the same paper whose Chief Political Editor has such a great sense of perspective.

@christopherhope If you click on the poppy on Google nothing happens. Half-hearted design and an insult to Britain's war dead

If I were Jeremy Corbyn I would be on every TV show, talking to every camera shoved in my face, saying "they don't know what they're doing about Brexit, they don't know how to do it without crashing the economy". Again and again and again until people listen. Make it about their incompetence instead of his, he was pretty good on this a week or three ago and then sort of stopped.

Spot on. Something is there for the taking (brexit uncertainty, Tory confusion and wobbling) so why is he not going for it? I'm coming to the conclusion it's a long ball game rather than because he doesn't do that kind of politics. But a long ball game is exactly what the country doesn't need right now. The discussion upthread about housing is all otm. Get the cogs turning again.

Long ball game is a funny expression cos (as eg Matt DC will know) in soccer (where it is also called Route One) it means almost the exact *opposite* of 'playing a long game'!

I watched the Cenotaph event on TV yesterday with Mr Corbyn standing in front of Tony Blair and anxiously hoped he would not do anything deemed 'wrong' or 'disrespectful'. He didn't but I imagine that today's papers still claim that he did.

yes, that he was dancing at the cenotaph.

"Jeremy Corbyn dances his way down Downing Street as he attends ...
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/.../jeremy-corbyn-dances-his-way-down-downing-street-...
22 hours ago - JEREMY Corbyn was pictured DANCING outside Downing Street as he ..."

that article has since been removed.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/no-jeremy-corbyn-wasnt-dancing-9252300

i did notice he was at least miming the national anthem yesterday. that old woman stood at the front kept her mouth resolutely shut though.

'you couldn't make it up' can be a misleading phrase but I couldn't have made that up.

I mean the desperation to make a bad JC story when JC was acting well -- is here at post-truth fever pitch and shows us what a world of savagery we inhabit.

Yep.

In other news, the Blue Labour conference lineup features Claire Fox and UKIP punchbag Steven Woolfe - and has a keynote speech from Rod Liddle:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/blue-labour-forging-a-new-politics-tickets-28306180548

Don't all apply for tickets at once.

None of those people are Labour!

Lisa Nandy is, and is giving the other keynote, which does not improve my view of her, which is already not good.

I am disgusted that this movement has published something called 'tangled up in blue'.

I thought terms like Blue Labour were supposed to be derogatory and highly insulting of someone's integrity, like Red Tory or Rod Liddle.

No, unfortunately, it's a real thing.

Family, faith and flag!

I thought it was a term they used themselves but was maybe past its sell-by date and a bit of a joke so I am surprised they are still using it in a serious way as the title of their event, etc

have been fantasising about some sort of 'cooperative' party that takes non-arseholes* from as broad a spectrum of uk politics as possible and basically doesn't espouse an explicit ideology aside from the need to not leave anyone behind. in practice this means massive education, mental health, infrastructural reform, but the key would be to not express any sort of political leaning. is this completely pie-in-sky or with the right charisma could it take hold as an 'enough is enough' antidote to the bullshit we've been feasting on? nakhers if you're reading you're free to mock

*this is relative - i'd probably have to get yer peter obornes and so forth in

https://party.coop/

hm!

seems a bit polite and retiring

at least you get a return for your money from the Co-op and you can get a bag of kale for 69p. For £25 that I didn't even need to spend at Labour I got nothing but a load of fucking straight in the bin spam mail from Smith + Corbyn.

How could you hope to excise politics from what is a political programme? You're describing a political programme that would be endorsed by the left, and which the political right exists to prevent. The need not to leave anyone behind can't be a non-ideological position when the ruling ideology is devil take the hindmost/fuck the poor.

I said no explicit ideologies aside from 'don't be a dick', but of course there are plenty of ideologies involved

i'd like this party to ideally be quite aggressive/blunt, because fuck getting steamollered by cunts like farage - let's have our own 'tell it like it is'

Oborne's Daily Mail piece on Trump was completely incoherent, he has no place anywhere near whatever movement you're describing.

shall we draw up a list

- ilx
- clive lewis
- some of the green party
- a few slebs but not russell brand
- idk

In a capitalist society you can't truly defeat the right without using deadly force like the Bolshevik/CCP style of anti-rightist campaigns, in which case there would be military coup before that happened in this country!

he's coming home, he's coming - david miliband's coming home

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/11/17/1258494713917/David-Miliband-and-Hillar-001.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=a7a6432bae305447747815194c52674f