the day after the deadline: can the union survive brexit and other deep questions

more information would be good obviously, but I'm struggling to square everyone's blase reaction to what we know so far. it at least seems worthy of further attention

tbf, a lot of the grass roots pressure has come from Bangladeshi opposition groups in the UK who have had a longstanding issue with Siddique being an MP in the first place. By and large it is guilt by association stuff designed to make her uncomfortable / defensive rather than in the expectation that she could effect any meaningful change if she wanted to. She is seen as a beneficiary of the party’s corruption, even if it is mostly by accident of birth.

The RW press going in on her, while handwaving away arms sales to Bangladesh, obv have a different agenda.

I think that's probably true. I also think it's very possible she has no influence with her aunt in any case. It's also possible/likely that she doesn't want to cast herself/be cast as unofficial Bangladeshi liaison officer because of who her family are, which I think would be fair and reasonable given that none of us are responsible for the actions of our older relatives.

I'm not really sure what she's like a consititency MP, and I'm conflicted as to whether she should have been selected in the first place given the potential of her connections to cause (at best) extreme embarrassment to the party. But let's not pretend that the plight of Bangladeshi dissidents is what interests the press here. (xpost)

in general I don't know how it's possible not to be extremely suspicious of people in politics with close personal ties to repressive governments, and political dynasties/family connections in politics more generally, because there's always questions of conflicts of interest, especially when people are so cagey. I don't think you can be a priori dismissive about political associations: the importance of having effective diplomatic ties with even the grimmest regimes doesn't mean that the motives of everyone involved will always be pure or above suspicion; most ppl ITT have probably felt aggrieved by associations in the past (thatcher and pinochet, say); and, from an admittedly out of context speech, she herself seems to have suggested her career has been dependent on her family ties.

The Bangla community in her seat is something like 1% if the electorate so idk how useful the Siddique name has been there.

The conflict of interest line would be extremely valid if she was shadow Foreign Sec and taking a soft line on Hasina, or actively lobbying for pro-Awami policies from the back benches, but she isn’t afaict. She’s just not getting involved in an area some people want her to.

She was originally a councillor for a Camden ward with a large Bangladeshi community.

xp if she had no significant contact with her aunt or bangladeshi politics and was in a position where she felt she could be critical of the govt I'd agree with you!

I remember a Bangladeshi, as in Bangladeshi not UK Bangladeshi, guy I work with talking about her (Tulip, that is) but fucked if I can remember what he said, I think the gist of it was her family are bad people.

A substantial minority of Bangladeshi people would agree.

My contacts over there are not enthusiastic Awami supporters, by any means, but are pretty proud to see her alongside other Bengali-origin politicians in Parliament.

Paul Golding arrested in Belfast. Also WTF he's 35 LOLOLOL bullshit.

speaking as a 23 year old that seems plausible

Kan u not

Also WTF he's 35 LOLOLOL bullshit.

A diet of nothing but roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and a full English every day will do that to a man.

You forgot the side-order of ignorant hatred. P toxic that stuff.

Pollonium Twat.

still amazes me that farage is only in his early fifties

might have to put up with him for another 30 years ffs

No fucking way, he's a coronary waiting to happen.

He needs to stop smoking and cut down on the shouty high-octane r/w soundbites, maybe he could start a Centrist Party?

Oh do Centrist Parties avoid soundbites and smoking?

Probably not, but it would be amusing to see Farage on a platform with Dave M and Chuka. Lol, there is a Centrist Party called Platform as well btw.

flatporm

I thought flatprom but in essence yes

lol a centrist party literally named for a Houellebecq novel is tres jolie

"Against the World, Against Life" would be a pretty good slogan for our new centrist party overlords

@bbclaura
Laura Kuenssberg Retweeted Sebastian Payne
EU says all EU Law will apply until end of transition, assumed to be 2021, and we have to stick with all four freedoms, which means EU immigration carries on as is for five years after the referendum

Have to? LOVE TOO stick...

Same thing happened when we voted against the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

We chose not to use the tape. It was poisonous stuff. But it was one voice; a few sentences; totally unrepresentative of most Tories and their leadership. Most of all we worried about its impact on the public debate. We never released it. (And it will certainly be gone now).

— Theo Bertram (@theobertram) December 15, 2017

^^ twitter thread from a former Blair/Brown advisor Theo Bertram (tldr, during the 2005 election campaign Labour's research team had a tape of someone from the Conservative party making racist remarks, Bertram says that if the tape had been made public it would have completely discredited the idea that the tory focus on immigration "are you thinking what we're thinking" etc was anything other than racist dog-whistling, however the research team chose not to release the tape)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/stopping-brexit-labour-tony-blair-jeremy-corbyn-eu-referendum-general-election-a8114531.html

well i've gotta say i'm shocked

the left don't care about winning

What is it with Blair trying to be 'statesman like' well past his date? Why is he in the news at all? Does he have any leverage or influence at all? (being in the media is not the same)

i wonder if there's some conspiratorial sense in which his thinktank influence is greater than we can realise from our vantage points. In the media he is a pretty pathetic figure, issuing pearls of wisdom to the eyerolls of all

but there is a whole generation of new-labour ppl in quango/tertiary positions or idk university vice chancellorships that are still intent of steamrolling through kinds of NL/Coalition consensus reforms to "energise" their agencies. There is a very real sense in which the alveoli of the state are all being poisoned by these ppl. These are Blair's people who I think he is really speaking directly to(?) I doubt he has any interest in "common people", Blairism, as such, has always had a strong seam of technocratic rationality (and the post-Trump conflation of democratic process with populism and weirdly by extension fascism, largely plays into this) and the administrators of these kinds of "expertise" still are very powerful at more local levels. This is less easily addressed than the horrors of zombie new labour councillors turning every council estate into an investment opportunity and the link between the third sector and government was badly severed by Cameron's big society bollocks.

sorry, gibberish

ctrl-f 'iraq' one result found

welp guess i'm not gonna be reading that then

can we stop giving press coverage to war criminals without hounding them relentlessly about their horrific decisions pls

not gibberish plax, booming posts imo

This is literally exactly what Corbyn did during the referendum campaign and got him accused of being a lazy, useless tosser who was secretly in love with Brexit pic.twitter.com/WMRmK6pF6I

— Dan Howdon (@danielhowdon) December 16, 2017

i’d add to plax’s post that people like Blair and Mandelson are at the centre of international agencies where they are basically prostituted around on the basis of their name and their address books, to offer “analysis” and “consultancy”. they exist (always existed?) in a grey space between the political and the corporate.

in some ways it’s the apex of the technocratic, neoliberal, third way approach - the corporatisation of politics, the notion of managerial politics.

appearing in the paper every other weekend as if they matter is partly free promotional consultancy (advertising in other words), partly because they need to appear still relevant in order to have currency, partly because they are perpetually surrounded by people who tell them and pay them on the basis that they are relevant, and so believe it themselves, partly because they believe they operate at stratospheric levels of international power - an ultra version of the adults in the room, secular power gods in the world, which means they believe that they have value and other people just. don’t. understand. everything in their world points to their centrality. it is profoundly undemocratic and kinda absurd and embarrassing. they are also deeply vain.

Blair's right about the importance of staying in the EU or at least campaigning against withdrawal, but otherwise his argument doesn't really stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. There is no way of stopping Brexit if the Tories are still in still power, certainly not given the make-up of the party right now.

It's just another example of Blair's astonishing naivety around people who are more right wing than he is. The article is entirely right to point out the contradiction between his stance on Brexit and his weird Trump blind spot.

Booming posts all

Give Blair to the provos imo

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/darts-diane-abbott-tweet-blackface-alexandra-palace-pdc-world-championship-labour-a8114276.html

Where to begin.

You said it.

“We tweeted it and it has had an unprecedented response in terms of retweets and likes.

“Ultimately you’re not going to please everybody all the time. We have never had anything on our social media that has had such a positive response.”

The bookmakers then courted further controversy when they replied to Ms Creasy: “This wasn’t some guerrilla marketing stunt Stella; one of our team attended on a social night out. We thought it was a very impressive attempt at fancy dress and merely shared it with our followers.

“Please stop taking things so seriously.”

I've got a couple of other ideas for them to tweet to get unprecedented response.. jfc.

Michel Barnier said it was unavoidable that British banks and financial firms would lose the passports that allow them to trade freely in the EU, as a result of any decision to quit the single market.

“There is no place [for financial services]. There is not a single trade agreement that is open to financial services. It doesn’t exist.” He said the outcome was a consequence of “the red lines that the British have chosen themselves. In leaving the single market, they lose the financial services passport.”

This is so self-evident and has been from the very beginning that you wonder how the govt. have the brass neck, frankly. it's truly embarrassing.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/dec/18/uk-cannot-have-a-special-deal-for-the-city-says-eu-brexit-negotiator-barnier

Nonsense! It's simply a matter of being stronger and stabler than those stuffy bureaucrats

i don't get how the discourse has gone from the vote aftermath last week which was "uk will never really leave the eu/brexit in name only" back to "uk will leave the eu and the single market"

I *think* the latter statement is Brexit ultra face-saving by Davis and co but who even knows any more.

if they keep saying different things to every constituency then every constituency might think they're only lying to the others. genius.

not sure which side's indignation when they realise they've been played will be most delicious

I think the fuss about the first stage was the right massively overreacting to the transition rules but the final destination has always been as Barnier sets out.

The government must know by now that they have no real power in this negotiation and they will have to swallow whatever concessions they are made to. Their entire continued political existences, both individually and as a government, are based on pretending otherwise.

The EU must also be calculating that, as infuriating and incompetent as May and Davis are, they are at least known quantities and preferable to sitting around the table with Boris Johnson and/or whichever headbanger they come up with next. So they have a vested interest in allowing them to continue playing to the gallery as long as they don't overreach themselves.