Seizing back control: The ILX lol brexit is how we're all gonna die thread.

members withdrawing, what

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-party-boris-johnson-farage-pact-no-deal-tory-leadership-race-a8964721.html

Boris Johnson - 157

Jeremy Hunt - 59

Michael Gove - 61

Sajid Javid - 34

rip sajid javid, heaven needed your perfectly smooth dome

the govementum is building

Sontar NA

mps are seeing the appeal of an appetising goveussy on the table!

I'm liking the emerging trend of putting Jeremy Hunt second in the rankings even when Gove has more votes.

caller otm

pic.twitter.com/MD10aL1rky

— Will Davies (@davies_will) June 20, 2019

mps are seeing the appeal of an appetising goveussy on the table!

i hate u

2 votes missing it seems, if they both went against Johnson he'd win by ONE

Parliament blocks No Deal

Johnson calls general election and comes to arrangement with Farage

millions of amped up FBPEers realise there's now an obvious and realistic way to prevent No Deal

so they vote for the Lib Dems and Johnson wins a majority

you simply love to see it

In that scenario a lot of the blame would lie with Labour for failing to anticipate that people would behave in that way, or for anticipating it and carrying on regardless.

Labour were to blame for not giving kind, rational and witty centrists like James O'Brien a reason not to vote for johnson in 2008

Imagine having to pay for this:

Hey @UKLabour - here’s some advice for free - Boris is going to be PM. He’s going to call an election. Get rid of Jeremy, come all out for Remain and you’ll beat him.

You’re welcome.

— Emma Kennedy (@EmmaKennedy) June 18, 2019

emma kennedy is one of the most credulous melts in history - she was completely taken in by louise mensch's bullshit about how the death penalty was being considered for trump and bannon iirc

I think that scenario is reasonably unlikely given that there aren't enough genuinely one-note FBPErs out there and a lot of them tend to be concentrated in areas where Labour are already strong. More to the point Johnson is toxic enough that he would bleed a lot of votes to the LibDems especially if a pact with Farage was in the offing. They might gain at the expense of the Brexit Party but would it be enough for a majority?

James O'Brien is a prick but I do think that Boris would have found those Mayoral victories tougher going if he had been up against someone other than Ken Livingstone, who was pretty toxic himself by that point.

100%

yes, ken was an abysmal character and much easier to beat than any if Labour candidate who wasn't a complete prick (i.e. not Frank Field) was running against boris - even though i have no memory of how that mayoral campaign was fought. I was really disappointed when prof D Edgerton described Ken as "one of the more interesting and intelligent characters from the 80's left" in his otherwise excellent book.

erm. not Frank Field.. that bearded shit they ran against Livingstone whose name I can't remember!

Frank Dobson

that's the one!

of course, but labour are not responsible for the centrist tendency to prioritise getting a dynamic strong leader over the welfare of their fellow citizens

The banal truth is that most of West London voted against Livingstone because he had the audacity to add them to the Congestion Charge zone.

Still amazed me how such an image-conscious lot as nu lab could pick a candidate you would avoid standing near for fear of being drenched in spittle

Re: Dobson, of course

xxp
ken probably hadn't revealed his penchant for "eccentric" historical revisionism at this point either, so maybe something to that.

https://t.co/bXPvpHGDx8 pic.twitter.com/pjq1OhVQ3k

— Socialist Dad (@shirleymush) June 20, 2019

So much Brexiter betrayal narrative boils down to "we would have our Brexit by now if people hadn't decided to behave in exactly the way everyone knew they were going to behave all along" and you see a reflection of that in some parts of the left as well. The Labour leadership know that isn't a way to prepare for an election, hence the ongoing evolution of their own policy - and the current one probably won't last beyond the party conference in any case.

I don't think that Labour will lose the next election but if they do it's likely to be primarily due to a strategic error rather than the sudden popularity of the Tories, the person in the leadership seat, or just people being dicks. (I don't think they'll win a majority either but that's a different question).

if labour insist on putting forward these scruffs people will have no choice but to vote for the destruction of the welfare state

I don't get the sense that Johnson is particularly toxic in London, tbh. There's still a fairly widespread belief that underneath the layers of cynical opportunism, he's a competent, City-friendly, socially liberal Conservative.

Labour scruffs...like Robin Corbyn?
https://youtu.be/wZsYvkTw4Rg

xp I think the socially liberal part has been torpedoed by the last three years. I couldn’t see him winning now.

i don't think baroness warsi could be persuaded to join a boris cabinet.

I didn't pay much attention to NV's scenario because it's giving too much power to FBPE in a real world sense which I've yet to be convinced they have.

Great for concern trolling on what the left Labour leadership do or don't do though.

FBPE is just shorthand for centrist scum who will literally do anything other than vote for a leftish government tbf

Everything we've seen over the last couple of years suggests that those people make a disproportionate amount of noise but there just aren't very many of them.

i think that's probably true, especially if we're talking about the professional Twitter side of them, and i hope the dice roll accordingly, but i have been kicked in the face at a lot of general elections by some fucker or other

It's a big reason why the media were so surprised that 40% of voters were prepared to vote for a leftish government, and why they were so surprised that CHUK was a dismal failure.

just feel about 10 % happier after reading that post... but still ready to open a vessel!

That centrist grouping would always find an excuse not to vote Labour. Their Brexit position is only their latest iteration on what is a fragmentation but also reformation of what Labour could be. That's a positive development.

Labour let's brexit position is only their latest excuse, they could always find other things

yeah.. literally any leader of labour not slightly to the right of centre-left is on a hiding to nothing with these cunts, whatever they do. I just wish they'd be more honest and admit that they are tory wets who don't care about the working poor poor and disabled .. and start another hilarious centrist party.

Yes with the caveat that some lines of attack are more potent than others and the Brexit position is one of the potent ones. Having said that the current position is pretty unlikely to survive past party conference season anyway.

The problem seems to me that the position can’t really evolve until the new PM is in situ and advocates for a particular form of Brexit, at which point Labour says ‘no, not like THAT’ again. We don’t even know if the new PM will be able to form a government etc because of the inclinations of other Tories. I too see an over-representation of FBPEs in my timelines who just want to ride roughshod over how people voted three years ago and although I think Brexit is awful, I’m not willing to slate Corbyn for his caution.

By the by, at 10.8% would PM Johnson have the smallest majority in their constituency of any PM (since..?). Would like to think this could yet scupper him.

(I've not checked further back than Thatcher yet)

Labour and Momentum have been campaigning to unseat him since his majority narrowed to 5000 in the last GE. The Labour candidate is 25, articulate, a native of the constituency, and properly working-class. I don’t think Johnson’s keen to call an election and this might have something to do with that.

There's still a fairly widespread belief that underneath the layers of cynical opportunism, he's a competent, City-friendly, socially liberal Conservative.

Hear it all the time, though couched in different language, from Tories.

You have to play to the rubes but, underneath, he's one of us, etc.

I may regret saying this but i think a large proportion of Tory-leaning voters who think of themselves as sensible and moderate are going to reconcile themselves to the idea that their three options in the medium term are hard Brexit under a business-minded, amoral Johnson, hard Brexit under some kind of hardline High Tory 1922-Committee relic or a Corbyn government and they're going to decide that the first suits them best.