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

"he carries the trait of ‘ríastrad’, in which he undergoes a sort of distortion, becoming an unrecognizable monster who knows neither friend nor foe."

the inspiration for the Hulk maybe.

Read into it, it's powerful

Osborne likes it: https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/evening-standard-comment-brexiteers-have-handed-labour-an-open-goal-a3775721.html

ben bradley's apology up to 47,831 retweets now btw

extremely good

Labour MP Rebecca Long-Bailey calls on political editors of C4, Guardian, then Newsnight as: “The gentleman with the red tie and the glasses… the lady sat down with the blue dress on… the gentleman with the blue tie and the lovely blue jumper" pic.twitter.com/AmCFpxkTwh

— Mark Di Stefano 🤙🏻 (@MarkDiStef) February 26, 2018

enjoying the unanimous 'who gives a fuck' responses to that tweet

oh noes an mp doesn't pay constant attention to their masters in the media, what a disaster for socialism

Not sure it was meant as condemnatory, tbh.

You know the Tories are fucked when the CBI is publically favouring the Brexit position of the most left-wing Labour leader in generations.

i mean i'd like to think so but i'm not convinced the tories won't somehow manage to seal a ruinous brexit deal before they get turfed out of office

"The government will not be joining a customs union. We want to have the freedom to sign our own trade deals and to reach out into the world."

pretty weak response, not like they will have a choice if Clarke, Soubry and chums vote against it.

lulz

Ben Bradley's apology to Jeremy Corbyn has got more shares than every tweet by the Tory party in 2018 combined https://t.co/CN72FOmAm3 pic.twitter.com/HnLjvizDkQ

— Political Scrapbook (@PSbook) February 26, 2018

To appreciate the full magnitude of the response to Bradley’s apology, here’s a Donald Trump fact: It’s been retweeted more times than all but one of the US President’s posts in February.

this is already one of history's greatest (non-violent) owns

When the Mail say Corbyn's speech has "caused fury among the Labour Brexiteers" are they taking about...Kate Hoey and six other weirdos? I mean fair play that's the kind of internal division you don't come back from

Biscuit wtf u been

daily mail in 'disingenuous reporting' shocker

Speaking of disingenuous, there’s a scorching take from Rifkind here:

How about "Jeremy Corbyn has been brilliantly outmaneuvered by Keir Starmer but hasn't realised it yet"?

— Hugo Rifkind (@hugorifkind) February 26, 2018

#justremoanerthings

hell is being caught in the middle of a dan hodges/hugo rifkind conversation, forever

i still get this confusing bundle of laughter, anger and bafflement watching angry centrists getting their angry centrism on, it's maybe the purest form of genteel entitlement in the world

or maybe the purest form of class consciousness idk

i think the mail's purpose is to provoke fury -- or at least truculent disapproval -- among voters aka labour-voting brexit-leaners, who are a rather larger group than vocally pro-brexit labour MPs

(adding:i am unconvinced the mail has the traction to effect the provocation on an significant scale)

He really is Schroedinger’s politician - he’s either too thick to realise he’s being cunningly outmanoeuvred (by a member of his shadow cabinet whose six tests he agreed to!) or he’s a wily old fox cynically plotting for power. He’s a dictator carrying on the path to hard Brexit, or he’s weak and in thrall to the whims of the party. No wonder he doesn’t bother with the media.

A lot has been made of this but is there any evidence labour leavers didn’t already think the party was pro-European? Sure, they’ve fudged it, but aside from the legit crew the vast majority of the party campaigned for Brexit. The betrayal argument clearly applies far more to Tory leavers than it ever did Labour.

reading the comments to that hodges/rifkind exchange because life is awful and i hate myself and found this extremely galaxy-brain take

He won’t get to Number 10. Starmer, or whoever else fancies it, is pulling Corbyn’s strings to get Momentum into power. He’ll be put out to pasture, job done.

— Victoria (@RabonaNutmeg) February 26, 2018

"Former consumer magazine journalist"

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/06/15/was-this-a-brexit-election-after-all-tracking-party-support-among-leave-and-remain-voters/

"In the range of seats where the vote to leave the EU was below 50 per cent, Labour’s vote in the general election was reduced as support for Brexit increasingly approached the half way mark. But in seats where support for Brexit was well above 50 per cent the Labour vote in 2017 was unaffected. This reveals how voters in safe Labour seats in the North, Midlands and the North East, where Brexit is also popular, did not desert Jeremy Corbyn and his party in the general election. Instead, they stayed loyal."

Essentially it's complicated! I think there are some marginals in the midlands where the MPs feel under pressure and are passing that pressure on. But labour has very effectively reduced the salience of brexit as a single-issue determinant on its vote-share, and I suspect will continue to do so.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/files/2017/06/Screen-Shot-2017-06-15-at-12.47.12.png

(i included the graph bcz i have no idea how to interpret it)

also lol:

Kate Hoey says she’s quite happy with Corbyn’s customs union speech. “It’s carefully crafted” to avoid upsetting anyone and UK can broker it’s own trade deals, she insists. Surprising praise.

— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) February 26, 2018

apparently well known walking mummy frank field was also pro the speech -- so no labour rebellion

if Field is mummified gammon does that make him biltong?

Kate Hoey, quite happy. wtf!

If the Leave voters in question are Labour, they’re probably willing to accept the form of exit that allows Ireland/NI to maintain open borders.

I liked the bit of the speech where he dealt with what his Euroscepticism meant, and tied it to his Remain vote. More of this and often, please.

If the Leave voters in question are Labour, they’re probably willing to accept the form of exit that allows Ireland/NI to maintain open borders.

Do you mean the MPs? If not, I think you may overestimate how much of England cares about the island of Ireland.

i still can't work out the dup's position. ok ok stop laughing, hear me out. they don't want any divergence from the rest of the uk fine, we all know that and understand it. they also want no hard border. but now they've said corbyn's aim to have a british customs union with the eu is dangerous, hypocritical etc. but surely they know that is the only way those two goals can ever be reconciled? what is the game they think they have a chance of winning here?

Cake and eat it. That's how we ended up with Northern Ireland in the first place.

fair

(i included the graph bcz i have no idea how to interpret it)

It doesn't make any sense to me either. I don't understand what the red line is supposed to represent or how it was drawn. And I would have thought the y-axis would make more sense if it showed percentage change in the vote share between 2015 and 2017.

re the graph: it's not measuring change over time though*, it's just setting out where the constituencies landed in 2017, measured against the relevant brexit vote in 2016 -- so i think the red line simply marks the divide between lab wins (presumably above the line) and lab losses

*this would be an interesting thing to measure of course

No, I don't think it is showing wins. Looking at the other graph on the page you linked to, that would mean the Tories won a heavily 'remain' constituency with less than 20% of the vote, but lost lots of strong 'leave' constituencies while getting over 40% - doesn't seem likely. Also, you couldn't draw a line with wins above and defeats below because you could have two constituencies with identical leave scores and in one the party could win with 40% in a three-horse race and in the other they could lose with 45% in a two-horse race.

DUP don’t need a position to make any sense for them to argue it. And there’s no way that they’ll accept anything from Corbyn full stop.

Fwiw, Yougov’s post election analysis suggested that 2017 Labour voters chose the party for reasons other than Brexit, whereas it was the main reason for Tory voters. Agree it’s complex though. https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/01h35vzc5b/InternalResults_170613_Coding_WhyConLab_W.pdf

It’s also interesting to explore the dissonance between the stated reasons people voted Leave - a lot of it chalks up to anger because of austerity etc and reasons that do not equal the low-tax Singapore position of the hard Brexit crew. I would be genuinely surprised if more than 10% of Leave voters were voting for that specific arrangement.

Corbyn’s focus on worker rights and a good standard of living isn’t just a reflection of his own values - it’s aimed at that coterie of people. But obviously he’s too much of a Keir Starmer/Momentum puppet to have come up with that rationale himself...

Don't even see this customs union idea as a significant thing rn - doesn't this contradict on Diane Abbott's immigration speech from last week (basically against a more humane approach to migration in general)? 'Goods yes, people no' approach keeps business and the likes of Hoey happy, but how sustaianable is it in the long run?

Its another EP of let the Tories sort it out, as long as we make it look like we know what we'll do on day one. The manifesto and policies since the General election and of course events (Grenfell being the most significant) have meant that Brexit is just one of a number of issues. They can keep ppl at a distance on this one.

Coupled with what's happening in Europe (Italian election but also a permanently on the way out Merkel) Labour aren't the only ones facing the big questions.

Cake and eat it. That's how we ended up with Northern Ireland in the first place.

― Video reach stereo bog (Tom D.), Monday, 26 February 2018 17:13 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fair

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Monday, 26 February 2018 17:16 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Heh you might think so but

gyac: yes i hadn't thought of that

the piece says "Each dot represents a constituency and the lines summarise the relationship between voting in the two elections" (but not how they do this): i think it's just a median line of some sort to indicate where the average lines (even when i was actually a maths student my grasp of stats was hopeless)

also i just noticed one of the authors (goodwin) is the "eat the book" guy lol

"to indicate where the average lines" by which i mean "to indicate where the average FALLS"

Conservativehome: At times he sounded like he was reading out a carefully phrased armistice deal signed between different wings of his own Party – probably because that was exactly what he was doing.

Which is probably true, but also definitely what his job is, and May's job as well except she is hilariously terrible at it.

Just to throw some more stats into the mix - this thread composed of analysis from the British Election Survey is really interesting:

Labour Leavers are loyal to Labour for a reason!
They care least about the EU and most about Health/Education/Housing. While their concern for immigration caused them to vote Leave, it is still too much of a leap to vote Conservative on the basis of Immigration and the EU. pic.twitter.com/BG60f1LygD

— Dr Kevin Cunningham (@kevcunningham) February 25, 2018

https://i.imgur.com/lBSzN2E_d.jpg

No wonder he looks crestfallen, if that poll is accurate.

Pleased to report that Ben Bradley rt-ing has now reached 50K

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DXCCqL5WAAUIlyw.jpg