"we'll change the things that need changing and that's all we'll change": the paSUKification of post-brexit politics 2021

He should be shot regardless tbf.

As Andrew Marr steps down from the impartial state broadcaster it seems only gracious to remember his finest impartial moment pic.twitter.com/8i7nzrfctx

— Edmund Griffiths (@EdmundGriffiths) November 20, 2021

yeesh

vintage milk

https://thewire.in/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/North-Korean-tv-presenter.jpg

P sure they drag the pink lady in dprk by comparing her to Andrew marr

not a huge grace blakeley stan tbh but i think this is interesting if true (= the UK seen as a strong culturing ground for left thinking perhaps precisely bcz it is now so arid for practical left politics)

Everywhere I’ve been recently - Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium - socialists have told me a version of the same message: they see so many popular socialist thinkers coming out of the UK, and they wish there were more of those voices in their country.

— Grace Blakeley (@graceblakeley) November 20, 2021

"The next Labour government will not be reintroducing free movement," says Labour's Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds.

Here's what Keir Starmer promised during his leadership campaign. #marr pic.twitter.com/deHa3gMdYa

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) November 21, 2021

Just basically laughing at the idea they can outdo Priti Patel on this. Bunch of pricks.

I'm putting people who vote for Starmer Labour in the same bracket as evil Tory Voters now. Fuck anyone who votes this knave!

losing the all the top-tier shitposters with European wide acclaim for the mildest of centre-left concessions seems like a big price to pay.

i enjoy the Twitter normals still going about how Crombone was a racist and the LP was unspeakably racist under his leadership

Yeah where’s that anti racism they assured us was so important to them then? Cunts.

Imagine standing up in front of an audience and saying that reading a fucking David Baddiel book helped you become a better anti-racist.

can't have racism if you keep the country ethnically pure *taps forehead*

"not a huge grace blakeley stan tbh but i think this is interesting if true"

More of a reflection on who she talks to.

of course but still

lol grace blakely just feels like the most typical illustration of declining opportunities for millenials + z, shouldn't she be the guardian's 'young leftist!' columnist? she's kept her stationary very neat since doing her undergrad and managed a book deal but so far her main gig is a podcast afaiui. anyway one of the most bizarre products of the corbyn era commentary demi-boom, literally who needs her history of chicago school economics? good for her that shes getting smoke blown up her arse all over the continental landmass.

hmm i didn't mean to be quite that rude

maybe not

It’s easy to be pessimistic (not least because we treat cynicism as somehow more intellectually rigorous than hope), but looking over the last 40 years it would be stupid to ignore the progress we’ve made over the last 5 in building platforms for communicating and debating ideas.

— Grace Blakeley (@graceblakeley) November 20, 2021

privately educated posh as fuck Oxford grad says pessimism is the easy option, look at what *we've* got .. lol

well its just a really stupid thing to say on its face. like surely a more idk inquisitive thinker might immediately ponder how it is possible to grow a small selection of media friendly 'left' commenters from russel group universities to feed a healthy ecosystem of takes at the exact same time that peaceful protests are being outlawed and anything that even gestures toward basic egalitarianism is easily monstered in the lunatic press. Are these two things in any way connected? and is that anything to be especially optimistic about as ever more depressing standards of misery become normalised for almost anyone not in the #5 amazon non-fiction, uk politics charts but especially the growing numbers of people in poverty. food banks, benefits sanctions, just absolutely normal cruelty but hey its a boom time for socialist content production with growing overseas markets. yes this is the intellectual rigor of this kind of optimism thank you very much

"but hey its a boom time for socialist content production with growing overseas markets."

lool nail on head!

dialectics baby

I get that she doesn't really understand how precarious some people's lives are and the way in which it shapes their outlook on politics. And how a broken washing machine or a conked out fridge probably isn't the start of an existential crisis to her. But the amount of smug class trolling she does is unacceptable to me and completely detracts from whatever message she's putting out there.

its also a truly bizarre understanding of the materialist tradition of marxist etc thought to be like 'well, we're doing really well in the ideas game..."

like: "she doesn't really understand how precarious some people's lives are and the way in which it shapes their outlook on politics. And how a broken washing machine or a conked out fridge probably isn't the start of an existential crisis to her."

back in spring she was doing this awful "if your mam was a cleaner and yer da shovelled shite it has no bearing on yr class status - you plebs don't understand class theory from a Marxist perspective and I'm here to put you straight, ya" and I don't think she lacks the intelligence/self-awareness to know how it sounded coming from someone as posh as her, so it was just str8 fucking trolling clickbait bullshit on a level par with Spiked!

There are some good reporters on the labour strikes front in the states that I follow (some Jacobin affiliated, others not) and they'll do ideas at times but because they are reporting from the front lines I think it really grounds them in the way that I almost never see it from the Novara/podcast lot. One struggle at a time.

Saying that you are winning the ideas battle when the Tories are making moves to crush protest and dissent is a delusion the Corbyn-affiliated crowd really get into.

Yeah this is v otm as most of the very prominent ones are doing at best Westminster stuff, not often particularly interested in more prosaic stuff of people's lives outside of 'theoretical' framings of such

James butler is another one that really grinds my gears in this way

Real Rachel maddow stuff

anyway yes, incurious and annoyingly tone deaf are precisely why i'm not a GB stan -- and in retrospect me calling this "interesting" rather than "surprising" probably made me sound a bit incurious and distanced myself BUT i still think it is surprising (if true) (and whether or not it begs only a despairing interpretation), simply bcz i just don't know the last time the UK was considered some kind of a hub of useful vanguard thought? i mean since 1848 or whenever

nor am i especially expecting blakeley and dr bastano to make good use of this situation lol, if good use can even be made of it -- tho i did grin briefly at the locked-account twitter that responded "send paul mason in a sealed train to norway"

"send paul mason in a sealed train to norway"

lol that's a good one!

lol mark i dont think anyone was suspecting you of being a blakely dupe

I'd never assume the worst about anything that da sinker posts because he's always very thoughtful and good - apart from when he chats shit about mozart and mahler in a manner that displeases me!

they suck!

tbh i have to go find what i actually said abt them now

you were probably quoting GG on mozart and then summarily dismissed mahler as bad once in yr own voice, but I'm not really that bothered - honest!

schoenberg, mozart piano concerto no.24

^^^

this is good shit, mark!

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/JWgAAOSwcj1aOklo/s-l1600.jpg

this I mean, completely on topic of course - sorry I'm pished and have a broken tooth

im sorry to hear abt yr tooth! i had to check to see if robert craft was still alive but no, he died in 2015 aged 92

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FEwOYwgXEAIpQ_J?format=jpg&name=medium

so fucking grim

The angels are winning - I understand a last minute argument resulted in dropping the word 'eternal' before work!

anyway yes, incurious and annoyingly tone deaf are precisely why i'm not a GB stan -- and in retrospect me calling this "interesting" rather than "surprising" probably made me sound a bit incurious and distanced myself BUT i still think it is surprising (if true) (and whether or not it begs only a despairing interpretation), simply bcz i just don't know the last time the UK was considered some kind of a hub of useful vanguard thought? i mean since 1848 or whenever

fwiw I struggle to think of any names on the continent that have the kind of reach the UK left has - part of which is simply the UK benefiting from American linguistic imperialism, of course. Telling that xyzz's point of comparison is Jacobin and not writers/thinkers from countries with more robust leftist cultures than the anglosphere.

on a more trivial note Portuguese left twitter 100% taking its cues from US dirtbag left/UK shitposters in style, even though in substance they are far to the left of them

Good.

cultural imperialism not really good I think, but whaddyagonnado

the style-as-content is a material and a materialist consequence of the technology, is how i break it down to an extent, i have a proof for this but these margins are too small to contain it

For my part, of course I can only follow people who write in English unless translated. Do note I said some of the writers are affiliated to Jacobin, some aren't.

I think the UK 'left' has benefitted from Corbyn's leadership and the prospect that he could've been PM as he got closer to the top than Sanders did. It would make sense for others outside of the UK to latch onto that.

xp

Late last night I had a scan of this piece which looked at the old UK left media ecosystem.

50 years ago this autumn, a socialist weekly newspaper called '7 Days' appeared on British newsstands. It lasted less than a year – but its brief revolutionary spark still holds lessons for the Left today. https://t.co/McVBNX3nbe

— Tribune (@tribunemagazine) November 21, 2021

For my part, of course I can only follow people who write in English unless translated.

Sure. I wasn't trying to gotcha you, I was pointing out that most non-anglos also only speak English besides their native languages, and so writers in English are at an obvious advantage in having an impact outside their countries. The fact that very few leftist European thinkers get translated or get translations that manage to penetrate outside academia is a problem.

So Blakeley is basically right, but this is down to the structures in place as much as it is down to Corbyn (whose shot at govt was inspiring, yes - important to note that even tho most of Europe is to the left of the UK the govts still end up as uninspired melt with minority left coalitions).

7 Days was a very interesting project!! it's in the ambit of the underground press tho of course more self-consciously political. and like the rest of the underground press it haemorrhaged money and when editor alex cockburn closed it down and moved to the states he was basically fleeing colossal debts lol

(maybe the tribune piece says all this i will never click the link)

(i researched it for dawn-of-UK-rockwrite purposes but decided the work required didn;t justify the likely output in my book = one sentence at most lot) (sometimes i am not so disciplined! also someone recently told me they had an attic full of 7 dayses but i totally can't rememeber who it was so grrrr there) (also one day i will completely my large adult essay perry anderson! rock hack! but that day will nto be this year i fear… )