ForenSix Opposition - Politics in the Soon To Be Former UK in Autumn 2020

Funny how the complete shafting of NI Unionists by the Tories has been largely unreported now that their votes are irrelevant and no-one cares about NI again.

hah nobody even answers the phone when Arlene calls these days

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55247033

meant to post

International Criminal Court says it won't take action against the UK, despite finding evidence British troops committed war crimes in Iraq https://t.co/QHrC67TiWm

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) December 9, 2020

However, it could not make a determination as to whether the UK had acted to shield soldiers from prosecution.

Good job we're making that absolutely unambiguous going forward.

almost as tho the ICC is not that interested in atrocities visited by 'the west' on other countries.

idk they've let India get pretty powerful

sorry that is a bad cricket joke

Not bad so much as somewhat inappropriate.

the timeless tests are a kind of torture, to me

https://t.co/2GoBTNgWMV pic.twitter.com/9pAdxz8J1d

— jamie k (@jkbloodtreasure) December 10, 2020

sorry that is a bad cricket joke

― imago, Thursday, 10 December 2020 bookmarkflaglink

No please, sir, carry on with your racism

so i guess johnson has a lot of pals shorting the pound

I can't wait for the deep planting, close cropping system that will bring record agricultural yields!

98% voter turnout and 97 of it for the Tories!

sadly I think that stat will be true for the rest of my lifetime tbh

apart from true turnout

This is imago country now xp

oh blimey there is a new Perry Anderson piece. I'll have look at this later ..or maybe when I've got a spare lost weekend!

all hail the glorious march of reaction

In recent weeks there has apparently been a shortage of timber and screws... stockpile it as much as you please lads, but previous modern famines have proven that wood and iron are not useful forms of sustenance without a bit of gravy!

Why in fuck does he keep talking about an Australia-style deal, Australia has no deal and is trying hard to get one. The irony would be if Australia got a deal before the UK.

The emperor isn't wearing no clothes. He's wearing Australian style clothes!

— Ray Monk (@Raymodraco) December 11, 2020

woke: Castlemaine XXXX broke: Lowenbrau

Btw the Australian option includes getting royally fucked by China.

I was reading in a blog somewhere that Australia does in fact have some trade agreements with the EU, so in fact the UK would be worse off than Oz. Johnson should be talking about a Moldova style deal or something

Moldova has a deal! A Belarus-style deal would be more accurate, or maybe a Transnistria-style deal.

it was mentioned on Today earlier Australia do have some limited arrangements on standards etc... but lol probably more than what the UK will end up with!

David Graeber in January this year:
"In Brexit the right had discovered an almost perfect political poison, not only dividing British society into two hostile camps, but bringing out the absolute worst in both of them."

— rachel shabi (@rachshabi) December 11, 2020

Graeber knew the score

for those who liked this govs handling of covid, get ready to love their handling of no deal brexit!

i mean maybe who knows right

I wish there was some profit to be made from the potential end of this grim Boris and the Britannia Unchained crew iteration of the Tories. But now we've got the other Tory party as well, with the promise of competent and sensible stewardship and trusted by the status quo for another decade of austerity. I knew there would be very grim long term consequences from what happened on that very shit day a year ago, and here they bloody are.

lol, when Kieth leaks an exclusive about his bold new vison for Labour that will be revealed in his New Year speech, to The fucking Spectator, that tells you all you need to know about where he is going.

it does interest me about the spectator. like you can see the reasoning with the mail, as given the size of the its readership, it actually* has more labour voters reading it than the guardian (*is this a factoid? i certainly read it somewhere). but the spectator is just ideological wingnuts and dyed-in-the-wool Tories, so no real advantage you'd've thought. i wonder if there's some sort of attempt to shape right-wing messaging against current gov, so you get right-wing commentators saying things like 'when even Kieth Starmer is outflanking the Tories on x the Tories need to start looking at their etc.'

More likely it's the boring pragmatics of a political editor saying 'fancy an interview here kieth we'll make it sympathetic.'

Boring pragmatics of a Kieth countenancing collaboration with a hate rag

yeah the spectator circulation is only around 80000+. But then again a lot of his electoral math is screwy and seemingly more concerned with winning small numbers of grim troglodytes possibly at the expense of many many more BAME and younger voters. He doesn't know what he's doing imo!

In his head I imagine this is statesmanlike, engaging with the grown-up agenda setters. Agendas like transphobia etc

I think Kieth will always be insecure about perceptions of him not being hawkish enough, conservative enough, bigoted enough etc and will always be willing to go one step further to prove his doubters wrong.

I remember feeling the positivity from Dan Hancox posting about the demographic timebomb that would be an existential threat to the Conservative Party and be its eventual undoing for decades, now I definitely don't have any positive thoughts about the future.

I don't think Kieth will ever be PM but what I'm certain about is by the time he's consigned to the political dustbin, the right-wing of the party will have a much stronger hand and the next leadership competition will be between 3 ugly arseholes (that make Starmer look handsome) and 1 hitler.

What a fantastic boost for immigration mug makers. https://t.co/0MZjBpNo1k

— Mr Demos of Pnyx (@gem_ste) December 11, 2020

lol he's such a natural at vacuous soundbites with a sinister undercurrent

xpost

I am a little more sanguine - think the left is in a stronger place than it was in 2015, and the conditions that led to Corbyn - austerity, debt, poverty, precariousness - aren't going anywhere, indeed likely to get worse. The membership isn't going to tolerate a post-Kieth Liz Kendall/Dan Jarvis/Andy Burnham face off. There are some dece young left MPs in the Campaign group now, and hopefully they are more clear-eyed about the wreckers/obstacles within the party, and more ruthless about removing them.

hope your right, but I keep reading about all the Labour-right fuckery going down in the NEC and I've lost a lot of faith in the membership. But I have seen some Kieth voters expressing dismay at the choice they made, that's a start.

Last night I woke up at 4am punching the bedclothes because I was dreaming about KS lying about JC and it made me furious.

I drifted off to sleep again and dreamed about BJ lying about JC. Then about having an argument with someone who was repeating KS's lies about JC.

I woke up again, furious again, and couldn't get back to sleep for a long while this time.

For @LRB I wrote about last week’s deportation flight to Jamaica, “criminality”, and how our rhetorical reliance on the Windrush “scandal” to oppose deportations restrains our imagining for a world without the Home Office https://t.co/zXICevPaRp pic.twitter.com/Z9Y3bPUnjN

— Jason (@jasebyjason) December 11, 2020

^good politics for a different country, a country that cannot even be seen from here on a clear day.

🐦[What a fantastic boost for immigration mug makers. https://t.co/0MZjBpNo1k🕸
— Mr Demos of Pnyx (@gem_ste) December 11, 2020🕸]🐦

lol he's such a natural at vacuous soundbites with a sinister undercurrent

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/10/uk-to-deny-asylum-to-refugees-passing-through-safe-third-country

we've got our country back. and it turns out it's a shithole filled with racists.

yeah, what a little country.

“The UK has a proud history of providing sanctuary to those in need"

I keep hearing this claptrap from idiot pols of all parties.. I mean has it really? Kindertransport aside there are not really many examples these mealy mouthed pols can bring up to back up this canard. Tell that to Jews who were hiding in Clifford's Tower and so on and so on. They've only ever really provided sanctuary to wealthy foreigners or those from the Caribbean whose labour they needed and are now deporting their children, to their deaths in in many cases, "back" to a country they've never even visited. It's nasty little madly xenophobic island nation, always has been.

That reminds me, I had a very peculiar conversation with someone the other day, not a stupid person, about the size and population of the UK. This person - very much a Remainer - seemed to have reacted against the jingoistic nonsense of the Brexit camp by minimizing the size and importance of the UK to such a degree that they were genuinely astonished that the UK was third only to Russia and Germany in terms of population in *Europe. They thought the UK was probably about the size of **Portugal and you could fit four UKs into France!

(*Not counting Turkey. **tbf they had no idea what size Portugal is either.)