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

deeply arrogant to say "westminster can't get its shit together so you all need to get off your arses". if she can't lead, why's she doing the job?

even from here this is obviously about exploiting labour's crap polling.

looking forward to finding out the exact depth of scumbaggery that runs this nation tbh

far be it from me to suggest that the Lib Dems are receiving a hugely disproportionate amount of coverage on the Beeb this morning but

new zealand is run by tories too, but a decent option if you can't pull off a canada emigration

starting to think that signing up for a one-way trip to mars might be the way to go tbqh

t/s: living in a post-brexit united kingdom vs dying on the arid red soil of mars

The Graun will probably run some piece on someone emigrating to some Liberal utopia, making a killing with 2nd home, employing an extra domestic with the proceeds .. ad nauseam.

it's hard out there for a middle class liberal

Jeremy Gilbert:

--
Well everyone else is already sticking their oar in so here we go...

Firstly assessing May's motivations, Richard Seymour sums it up nicely

"A snap general election is a very logical move to harvest the fruits of Brexit before they go rotten, get a supermajority before it all starts to go sour, and hammer Corbynism. It also, of course, sees off right-of-Tory rivals. The electoral consolidation of the Right behind a hard-right Conservative leadership and the fragmentation of the Left (and a certain fingers-in-ears bluff optimism from some quarters) has been the major tendency since Brexit last year. May is striking at a prime moment. If you interpret everything she is doing in terms, not of what is good for British capitalism, but in terms of what is good for the political position of the Conservative Party and the composition of parliamentary politics, it makes perfect sense."

And as I just remarked to Cedric, "May would be stupid not to do it - The Tories can’t believe their luck that Brexit has dampened down the support for UKIP and that Labour still can’t get it’s shit together. Plus everyone knows the economy is going to tank again some time soon."

So how could we respond? As Alan Finlayson remarks

"The only route to a rational politics now is an electoral alliance of those opposed to a cliff-edge hard Brexit. The chances of this happening are zero. Remain is now, for many, an identity politics; Labour always thinks it is a lone top dog - and half its members will want it to lose; libs will not turn down a chance to stiff the Left. "

Which pretty much sums up the situation.

I would also add that the recent political developments (Brexit) have demonstrated that the right-wing press can still still basically deliver whatever results it wants to when it is united behind a particular agenda, and it has not been as unequivocally united behind the Tory leadership since 1992 as it is now, so May is right to go for it when she has that chance, and we will never get anywhere until we work out a strategy for challenging their hold over the imaginations and information-flow of a key strategic section of the electorate.

So what is to be done? Yes we have to get out and campaign, and do everything suggested by Holly:

"1) Organise the largest mass canvassing campaign the UK has ever seen, including bussing London activists to other parts of the country every weekend until the GE
2) Organise a huge demo for our vision of a People's Brexit which explicitly lays out Labour's programme to protect jobs, migrants and human rights.
3) Announce a migrant impact fund for working class areas where services are most affected by immigration
4) Make a deal with the SNP to go into some kind of coalition in return for INDYREF2"

But realistically all this has to be done with our eyes on a horizon well past the next election. Realistically, a Tory landslide is simply the logical expression of the current balance of forces in British society, not because the left is especially weak by historic standards (it is weak compared to times when it has been strong, but that's not saying much in the long-term), but because the coalition which it could potentially lead is desperately fragmented. It is a specific problem that much of the left and its leadership thinks that even trying to lead that coalition would constitute some kind of sell-out, and we will have to campaign to try to change that mentality if we are ever to improve our position (see my recent blog post on the concept of relations of forces for more on all this).

The biggest danger we face right now is that after the defeat in June we face a replay of the mid-80s (see the podcast that Holly, Huw, Gabriel and I have been posting about for a detailed discussion of that history and its lessons): instead of accepting that Labour simply cannot deliver what it wants to without engaging in the imaginative attempt to lead a broad coalition of political and social forces, which must challenge the press explicitly at some point, among many other things, the party convinces itself YET AGAIN that there is some magical position that it can aspire to whereby the press will allow it win on a moderately social-democratic agenda because it has a respectable and likeable-appearing leader. No doubt being led by Sir Keir Stamer on a soft-left Millibandish agenda and seeing our poll share back up in the 30s will seem a very reasssuring prospect this September, after the bloodbath which we're probably about to face. But it will only lead us to the same place that Kinnock and Milliband did. Can we come up with a strategically radical alternative response to the defeat? Can we start to build it now and make our campaigning during the election campaign a preparation for that instead of just short-term damage limitation. Let's see.
--

@milton_book1

To bottomless perdition, there to dwell

milton joins BG on mars

it's hard out there for a middle-class liberal on the airless ochre desert in the shadow of olympus mons

the other benefit for May is that this pushes the post-Brexit electoral reckoning out to 2022

who cares what some bloke off The Vampire Diaries thinks?

May: 'Parliamentary dissent must be steamrollered'
Commentariat: 'omg can you imagine Corbyn in a TV debate rofl!'

Not that i expected much better but idk what these people think they're for any more.

themselves

Alex Pareene's "You Cretins Are Going To Get Thousands Of People Killed" as relevant to the UK media as the US

Who's with me on team terrified now?

just trying to enjoy the temperature of the water in the saucepan we're floating in before it starts boiling itself dry

the terror is never the Tory government, it's the thought of living amongst the people that enable it, which is an ever-present tbh

Announce a migrant impact fund for working class areas where services are most affected by immigration

FFS - another one blaming the immigration factor over the austerity factor

i assume Gilbert sees the migrant impact fund as partly a placebo, partly a short-term fix because austerity can't be overturned in a day tbf to the lad

Is there even time to schedule televised leader debates for this one?

what if the Queen dies on Jun 7th?

can you have a placebo for a disease which doesn't exist tho

yeah i don't think "hey we're ameliorating all those very real problems caused by immigrants" is the best way to go

the terror is never the Tory government, it's the thought of living amongst the people that enable it, which is an ever-present tbh

leave-voting tories in your office, on the bus, in front of you in a queue, behind you in a queue, at your family get-togethers

on a lighter note, this article about what will happen when the queen dies is good fun https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-dies-london-bridge

Nice of you to try cheer us all up.

It's almost like Steve Vai is playing a solo, except the solo is Britain

50 posts about Steve Vai

Banks v Carswell cuntbowl confirmed

Meanwhile Nuttall furiously filters his advanced Search on Zoopla

pfft, if only the government was capable of steve vai's level of proficiency

this seems more appropriate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb9dg1R1oPA

"Not long afterwards, Dawson injected the king with 750mg of morphine and a gram of cocaine – enough to kill him twice over – in order to ease the monarch’s suffering, and to have him expire in time for the printing presses of the Times, which rolled at midnight."

They knew how to get the fuckers to die punctually back in the day. I don't they'll give Brenda that same sort of nudge over the line!

the nhs is fucked for real now, isn't it?

along with students, migrants, haha actually hang on ALL OF US

Well tbf, all the disabled people they are killing should take some strain off the NHS.

50 posts about Steve Vai

He's no Allan Holdsworth.

business will be booming in the vast soylent green factories of theresa may's britain

Where's our Kendrick? JME, you ready to step up?

yes, we need a homegrown cover of 'cups' now more than anything

Actually we already have the Kendrick we deserve: Kate Tempest

We have the Kendrick Mark Lamar we deserve!

i'm trying to think of positives

1) corbyn and milne gone in six weeks (soz but let's be a bit real here)

2) following on from this, labour back in power in 2022, rather than 2025

3) PROFIT

Dawson injected the king with 750mg of morphine and a gram of cocaine – enough to kill him twice over – in order to ease the monarch’s suffering

the government should offer a similar speedball of mercy to anyone who can't be arsed hanging around to watch the uk implode, i'd be tempted

A lot of people who think 'Get rid of Corbyn' is the obvious solution are going to get a very rude awakening fairly shortly.

corbyn and milne gone in six weeks (soz but let's be a bit real here)

finally, the advent of the owen smith-led labour party we've all been clamouring for

there is no obvious solution

A lot of people who think 'Get rid of Corbyn' is the obvious solution are going to get a very rude awakening fairly shortly.

there's going to need to be a queue for rude awakenings all over the place tbf.

it's not the solution but surely it's a necessary precondition? that said i thought ol' wooly-jumper had finally been doing a good job over the past few weeks :(

has corbyn actually said he will step down if labour loses?

seriously, who does the labour party have in its ranks who is a) popular and/or b) not a craven corporate low-cal tory