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

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DWV3bx_X4AYnLd-.jpg

for the first time in my life i understand Liberalism

If someone had explained earlier that Liberalism was a smug brylcreem tosser in a C+A suit I would have voted for the scruffy cunt who looks like he's on m-cat much sooner.

Is his arm all right?

Five Liberals And IT

Meanwhile IDIOT MAY idiotically distinguishing between "students and taxpayers" again.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/19/david-davis-brexit-britain-mad-max

"It'll be more like Children of Men"

(was sleepy when i saw the liberal poster on twitter and brought it here: not too tired to think it wd be better framed via an "IT ME!" joke but too tired to frame it)

also what is the thing rushing part him? did he just miss his train? was is lenin on that train, TO THE FINLAND STATION PERHAPS?

that's the winds of change iirc

"is Lenin on the train" no doubt fifties teen slang for some unspeakable filth

Also a Stump lyric iirc.

Omg, May making Phillip Schofield/Holly Willoughby combo look like 2 Brian Waldens in a bad moods. They were just handing her out bunches of kittens and asking her what her favourite colour is and she was falling to pieces.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/19/theresa-may-phillip-schofield-this-morning-sofa-student-loans?CMP=share_btn_tw

“Has he betrayed his country?” asks @afneil after claim from defence secretary about the Labour leader

"Jeremy Corbyn, I think, is a grave danger to this country because of the ideas in which he believes and what that would mean..." @SteveBakerHW

#bbcdp pic.twitter.com/Foay2XphNZ

— BBC Daily Politics and Sunday Politics (@daily_politics) February 21, 2018

Neil is terrible usually but this should be the tenor of all responsible coverage of this nonsense..

"I've got the govt on the ropes here and you've just interrupted.."

was quite amusing as well.

once in a blue moon neil decides to get his teeth into something and he's really not bad at it when he does

sometimes that scruffy old brillo-pad that was quite useless at cleaning the dishes, might be worth one more use before you chuck it in the bin.

steve baker looks and sounds like fucking beaker the muppet

Omg Neil was absolutely spot on

fucking beaker the muppet

*meeeeep*

neil's interviews of party leaders in the last election campaign were quite good as well, in my memory of them

That "back in your box" to the Labour muppet was straight out of Scum

idly wondering here whether neil -- who of course is and was a malignant actor in many ways, back to his sunday times days -- nevertheless feels a fair amount of professional contempt for what newspapers have become, compared to even a quarter century ago, in re professionalism and, well, what journalism used to be (obviously this is much over-romanticised, but the slope of degradation really is a distinct downwards slope). the newspaper group he was head of after he left rthe sunday times -- admittedly a barclay bros holding -- did not thrive in the changing era…

also he massively fell out with murdoch in the mid-90s and i don't believe that rift was ever papered over

(i know this was a politician not a press baron he was roasting, but the sheer feebleness of the story is plainly apparent to him: it offends his professional pride if not his basic politics?)

What on earth was Gwynne, the wet lettuce, thinking of by interrupting him ffs? That moment when A N is shutting down this nonsense in a such an authoritative fashion - and you interrupt him?

because politicians are stupid and he was stupidly trying to parrot his standard stupid messages

Yes, also I think Neil is occasionally riled by the stupidity of politicians he has to deal with, no matter what party they represent, who wouldn't be?

yeah who is that labour twonk, somehow managing to come out worst out of that haha

Andrew Gwynne, who's probably not an evil person or anything but he often seems like a bullied child + out of his depth on tv. During the last election campaign Boris dismissed him as a "big girl's blouse" on live tv and he didn't have any comeback. Sometimes you need more than weak soundbites read off a bloody card.

Good piece on how the immigration climate is affecting people who, for example, came here aged three in the 1960s and are now at risk of deportation:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/feb/21/ive-been-here-for-50-years-the-scandal-of-the-former-commonwealth-citizens-threatened-with-deportation

I get the sense that commentary on this is much less visible in UK liberal/left circles than opinions on DACA, etc, but idk if that’s true.

colville has shat the bed again

For when it gets deleted pic.twitter.com/ojV8MoIesM

— Elliot Bowker (@Wlleiotl) February 22, 2018

In before the bloc

jesus that immigration article

I don’t think this is a mistake. I think they are deliberately doing it.

otm

xps: in my left circles this commentary is highly visible but they include people in the anti raids network who come out to protest and challenge all immigration checks & raids (@AntiRaids if you want to boost their signal, which IMO you should)

robert colvile is very bad at this

that immigration article sv posted, holy shit

amazing that in 2018 the uk is still finding new ways to squeeze fresh new horrors out of colonialism

Colvile doesn't have to be good at it. the most depressing - literally depressing - thing about looking at politics in social media now is this witless back and forth of grandstanding hysteria, not from the attention-seekers themselves but from the cadres of sharebots that follow them. i don't know exactly how what happens on the internet reflects the way people think about politics in general but it seems like there's no lie, simplification or conspiracy theory that won't get eagerly latched onto by whichever team wants to believe it.

i know it's old news but i've reached tipping point of reading this insanity this week, probably in the wake of the last mass shooting in the US but there's no barrier any more, just culture warring sea-lions honking along

otm, unfortch

i guess it's funny really because this is the culmination of the great lie of representative democracy, neo-Classical orators seeking to change each other's minds with the logic of their arguments, a polity built on rational debate hohoho

diane abbott’s immigration speech yesterday was class

What a truly foul ambush it is to pull the rug from under someone when they've been here since the 50's. That has all the hallmarks of May's vindictiveness as HS + PM.

an injustice that could be brushed away in a minute if it was a real oversight or unintended consequence...therefore, it's not unintended. the people responsible for this aren't people.

i actually do think the rightwing press has been rocked back much more firmly than it expected this week -- the botscape is something else of course, tho i am much less convinced than some on the borads that its effect is more than marginal

(and the counter to this is to ensure that political victories are not merely marginal: rovian 51% is a good tactic but a terrible strategy, and liberals and the left should not settle for it)

this is the real kicker in that piece

Howard, McIntyre and Griffith all have a legal right to stay in the UK because the 1971 Immigration Act gave people who had already settled in Britain indefinite leave to remain, but all have struggled to gather enough documents to convince the Home Office that they arrived before the cut-off point.

quite literally guilty until proven innocent

i genuinely don't know how the meme landscape reflects the general political (un)conscious mark, this is partly where the doubt and depression comes from i guess

http://www.dorseteye.com/north/articles/you-need-to-read-the-letter-from-corb-s-lawyers-to-ben-bradley-tory-mp

(pleased to note dorset eye using the approved ilx contraction there)

would have preferred 'absolute boy' instead, 8/10

ben bradley tho eh, what a cunt

NV: no i don't know either and i haven't weighed on US threads abt bcz i don't really have anything like a feel for the presence of this phenom in offline life -- i'm not sure anyone, not least bcz the US is just so vast (population 320 million)

the uk is not the us though: uk's primary amplifying puke-funnels are still its the daily newspapers, and i i really do feel that they're in disarray and retreat, numbers-wise and in terms of competence (as i said upthread, i'm inclined to read andrew neil's response as professional disgust at the latter, as much as anything: in his day, the print media knew how to line up and unleash a smear, these millennial hacks tho… )