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

Niall Ferguson has written a bunch of history books

I think if there is a local, dutiful candidate - well maybe its just me but they won't cut and run on their constituents. Hunt is acting like pure careerist vermin, he knew he would have no opportunity to get into the Shadow Cabinet (no 'promotion') so he left.

Say what you like about MPs like Corbyn and McDonnell. They were shut out from the wider PLP for a long time but they know the value of public service and what it means to be an MP.

Honestly I think that shipping some Momentum hack up from London would be equally disastrous but that quote is one of many reasons why all this pearl-clutching from Blairites rings hollow. Corbyn is useless but Labour spent years obliviously hacking away at their future electoral chances without the slightest thought about about how these things might be perceived by people on the ground.

That's fine though, I'm sure a good dose of Legitimate Concerns will offset years of being treated as voting fodder, then Sensible Labour will be back to halt the rise of fascism in its tracks.

Momentum bending to operate within the traditional bureaucratic party structures was probably the death of it tbh, taking a hammering from some UKIP nazi at Stoke will be the funeral. back to proper business, leave politics to the professionals.

There is a fight around whether Momentum do operate around Party structures or not - saw a couple of things suggesting they wouldn't be.

A 'Momentum hack' from Stoke (perhaps the only Momentum hack in the area) would be a lot better than Tristram.

In the art world some people are welcoming this appointment:

I could easily handle a few more exhibitions about Ruskin’s theory of architecture and a few less about Pink Floyd. I had to apologise to Guardian readers who came to a Masterclass event at the V&A recently because psychedelic music was being played loudly right next to the Renaissance galleries, making it hard for us to analyse the art. In their desperation to get a big Botticelli exhibition on last year, the museum’s curators of proper art had to load it with Dolce & Gabbana dresses and Warhols. So if Hunt brings a more sombre tone to this great museum and gives its unrivalled collections of European and global art the attention stolen from them by Kylie, then good.

's funny i thought Sewell was dead

To be fair Tristram has spent most of the last year banging on about how the party is seen as a remote metropolitan elite. I'm crediting him with enough self awareness that at some point it must have occurred even to him that he was part of the problem. So shuffling off the stage now is probably not the worst move he could make, unless it just hands the seat to UKIP.

The ideal candidate to replace him would be someone who is neither a Corbynite nor a Blairite, but a diligent and hard-working local party figure who knows Stoke well, is aware of all the local issues, and is already fairly prominent within the city. Those are the MPs who tend to hold onto their seats even in tough times.

My mum is involved in her local Labour party, and the infighting and dirty tricks she has told me about are nothing short of astonishing.

I saw an article today saying that the left in the US should learn from the Tea Party handbook and organise in a similar fashion, which sounds a bit like Momentum, and a lot like the last thing anyone needs right now. It isn't like DT was the Tea Party's choice either.

Luke Akehurst looks like a misanthropic potato

and that is being generous.

i was holding out an olive branch

admittedly in order to beat the fucker senseless with it

aw no look at all the violence and hatred on the left, my bad

we need to reconcile with these people, get back to Blair's glorious legacy of winning elections and making wealthy people wealthier

this is an interesting take on Tristram Hunt from someone who used to work for him

http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/goodbye-to-tristram.html

(it's pretty balanced and avoids invective, which arguably makes some of the criticisms it delivers feel more cutting, if anything)

That's pretty much what I would have expected, he comes across as well meaning but largely mediocre and visionless and unused to finding things difficult or any real checks on his mediocrity. The latter is probably why he seemed so frustrated over the last couple of years.

I feel like this sort of thing could really fuck the Brexiters' dreams of a Britannia unchained:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/14/netherlands-will-block-eu-deal-with-uk-without-tax-avoidance-measures?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Like, it's open season on pretty much every aspect of UK trade policy now.

Pretty sure than running the V&A pays less than being the Economics Editor of Channel 4 but whatever.

― Matt DC, Friday, 13 January 2017 15:13 (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I seriously doubt that. The V&A position role pays £300,000.

here is hammond speaking directly about wanting to become dubai/singapore: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/15/philip-hammond-suggests-uk-outside-single-market-could-become-tax-haven?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Oh wow, I'm sure I saw some document that said the position was paying about £130k six or seven years ago. That's an insane level of wage inflation, especially to get a dude who's clearly fucking desperate to get out of his current job.

J Harris proposes Universal Basic Income.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/13/jeremy-corbyn-big-radical-ideas

He suggests: 'To go with the grain of Brexit, moreover, the income could be contingent on British citizenship and the taking of decently funded English lessons.'

He concludes with a cheap jibe at Corbyn's appearance.

fashion advice from John Harris, the indignity

demands for decent standards of English from John Harris, the indignity

"You know, my education didn’t come from school, which I hated, it came from reading NME." - Mark Fisher.

Not if you read it in 1995.

Read this critique on UBI earlier in the week as it happens..

>>> demands for decent standards of English from John Harris, the indignity

Yes. This is fair. He is quite a bad writer.

>>> fashion advice from John Harris, the indignity

This is fair too. Who does JH think he is, talking about anyone's appearance?

Worzel Gummidge by the looks of things.

TS: Gummidge vs. Lenin

Harris's own appearance, which is terrible, is irrelevant, as he is not a politician hoping to gain support and win an election. I think he has a point about Corbyn's cap. I think it probably is a vote loser, although perhaps a lot of the people who especially dislike the cap and its associations would not vote for him anyway.

Fun fact, you can't get British citizenship without being able to speak English unless you are over 65 or mentally impaired so any attempt to impose a language barrier to basic rights could only target people who have already been British for at least five years. Realistically, you couldn't pass the Life In The UK test without having at least reasonable English, which pushes it back to about thirteen years. Harris' brave stance on a handful of Asian pensioners who came here decades ago will have been noted, though.

The cap has polled well, apparently, not that it means much.

Someone obviously got to Corbyn with basic fashion advice ("Jez, you're a 'winter' now!") and I like the Breton fisherman's cap - what the fuck is he calling it a 'Lenin hat' for? No star embroidery and it's not green.

As you say, it's not a 'Lenin hat' as such, but is it not a type of hat that a fair number of older socialists seem to favour?

I think he has a point about Corbyn's cap. I think it probably is a vote loser,

Uh, right.

Like everyone knows what an old socialist looks like.

this is why Corby is so terrible, Blair would've focused the fuck out of that hat until he could be sure how it played with swing voters in key marginals - that's politics

Well it's obviously enough of a stereotype for Harris to vaguely recognise it.

Now here's a guy who could give Corbyn a few tips on how to win over the British public:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/04/18/16/27B3429400000578-3044865-image-m-84_1429372366296.jpg

No caps but salary caps.

If Corbyn wore a striped Breton top, the metropolitan elite would go into meltdown.

I do think that Corbyn's appearance is a factor in why he's so popular with the Labour membership, they recognise him as "one of us" - every CLP in the country has at least half a dozen Corbyn doppelgangers amongst its membership

can't quite get over this look:

http://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/139/590x/jeremy-corbyn-red-socks-sandals-608678.jpg

I don't mind if JC, on his own judgment, does stop wearing his cap, or wear a different hat, or whatever he sees fit to do.

I just don't like the horrible undergraduate-zine-sarcastic whine of Harris, specifically, ordering him to do it, and undermining what gravitas there was in his already characteristically sneering article by abruptly and irrelevantly ending it on that note.

Paul Mason's latest blog.

https://medium.com/mosquito-ridge/pissing-on-the-ritz-b9a320ef3405#.ujwruts5z

Harris is not the worst political commentator. But he mars all his good ideas and reportage with his dreadful weary sneering tone.

It strikes me that he makes an instructive contrast with Aditya Chakrabortty
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/adityachakrabortty

who so consistently says bold, intelligent and good things, probably from a better base of empirical and theoretical knowledge than Harris, and never resorts to cheap abuse or weary fake superiority.

pissing on putin on the ritz

The whole thing is a mess but this seems incredibly fanciful to me:

Let’s get the process stuff out of the way. Buzzfeed was right to release the private intelligence document containing damaging allegations against Trump. In UK terms it was clearly in the public interest to reveal the contents. Any state regulated broadcaster in the UK would have

UK defamation law requires (iirc) journalists to make reasonable efforts to verify the facts before publishing anything potentially defamatory if they want to rely on a public interest defence. Buzzfeed made it clear that thy couldn't verify the facts, which was why a whole range of other US outlets (and possibly even British ones) didn't print it back in October. With this in mind, I can't see the BBC or anyone else publishing an unverified, defamatory set of allegations against a British politician without running a massive risk of a libel action.

Yes, that makes sense.

Do you think the rest of Mason's article equally flawed?

As always, I enjoy his gung-ho commitment even if it seems wildly over-optimistic and over-dramatic.

Yes, it skips from concluding that the document is real (which nobody disputes) to assuming that the raw intel allegations form part of a solid CIA dossier on whether Trump has been compromised, which Obama is mysteriously hiding from the American people and allied states.

This doesn't seem to even make sense:

The clever thing to have done would be to get Trump into the White House and just let him screw up globalisation and the international order with no reference to the Kremlin and no pissing parties in the Moscow Ritz Carlton. Hence the buyers’ remorse.

The clever thing to do would to not get caught?

Anyway, I appear to have gone to school with Aditya Chakrabortty (though I don't recall him) and would agree he's excellent. He's one of the Guardian's best assets.