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

How do you know Louie?

If we get the Russians out of here how will you eat?

oh I'm sure some of it has been dirty lol

To really know what is going on in the UK London's Russian community you really need talk to that McMafia writer, or Hitchens, if you can stop him talking about The Berlin Wall for 5 minutes!

Russian money to fund Louie's 2nd never-to-be-proper-published novel.

The Cyprus Connection.

feed my sandwich addiction morelike

it's strange how normalised the practice of MP's taking huge wads of cash from dodgy lobbyists is now, compared to the 90's. To the point where there is literally nothing to see here, unless the money was from some Putin operative.

meanwhile, sir robin wales is OUT as mayor of newham! momentum-supported roxhana fiaz is labour candidate! FUCK YES

http://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/seasonal/election/breaking-councillor-rokhsana-fiaz-beats-sir-robin-wales-to-become-newham-labour-s-next-mayoral-candidate-1-5438468-1-5438468

sorry ROKHSANA why because she ROKHS

could there be a more Mail-enraging succession of names?

Who is this dimwit Frederick b?

suspect Sir Robin Wales is more orthodox on STICKING IT TO THE RUSSKIS too

hahaha xp

BREAKING: Internal Labour Party coup ousts veteran council leader Sir Robin Wales after 23 years in charge of Newham, east London. @itvlondon

— Simon Harris (@simonharrisitv) March 16, 2018

Democratic election, covert coup...who cares what words mean?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZwuTo7zKM8

call me a Tankie but if you want to accept an honour then gtfo of the Labour party while you're on

i like how Simon Harris doesn't see any democratic issues in somebody holding a fiefdom for 23 fucking years

well done E15 mums!

right??

Imaginative stuff from the head of Conservative Home ("The home of Conservatism")

I’m particularly enjoying the “Surely Russia would be more subtle about it” excuse. Yes, because Vladimir Putin famously makes a secret of being a bloodstained bastard. Whatever will become of his ambition to host Songs of Praise now?

— Mark Wallace (@wallaceme) March 15, 2018

Leak of the week: https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexspence/these-leaked-whatsapp-chats-reveal-just-how-brexiteer?utm_term=.rraPNGKYN#.er327jbJ7

That read like what I'd expect something written by the ERG to say, to be honest: "Shadowy ERG 'group' uses 'What's' 'App' to co-ordinate"

Yeah, I'm not too far into it, but it starts out with brexiters organising to complain to the BBC about a factual inaccuracy, which...fair enough?

Chris 'Hasbeen' Leslie being asked by a BBC newsreader, not a BBC reporter or correspondent, "Are you not embarrassed by your leader?" Then trying to goad him into saying what he's going to do about this Corbyn character in a sort of "Are you man enough?" way, which Leslie was sensible enough to sidestep.

Would have warmed Fred's cockles, if he'd seen it, which he didn't because he lives in Denmark.

That's what the World Service is for.

james o’brien should log off

he's going on a winning run is Corbz, he tipped The Cheltenham Gold Cup winner to actor who plays Kevin Webster in Corrie!

James O’ Brien has never liked Corbyn, iirc?

Anyway, the vote is holding up in the polls, Corbyn would undoubtedly win a third leadership contest if they had one and he enjoys huge support from rank and file members. Of course these guys are sticking the knife in. They can’t see an exit plan in sight.

(Chris Leslie trivia - he was formerly MP for Shipley before losing the seat to Philip Davies.)

O' Brien referred to Corbyn as a wally recently, strong stuff from the flipping pilchard!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYbEU8PW4AAyMxY.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYbEbqMX0AAVzN0.jpg

I didn't realise the BBC had also done a backdrop of Corbz as Trump.

hat gate is (even for 2018) very, very dumb but lmao this doesn’t exculpate the editorial. if anything it makes it seem worse.

And finally, the Russia background was a rehash of one Newsnight used a few weeks ago, for a story about Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary pic.twitter.com/0MaoKiiJrz

— Jess Brammar (@jessbrammar) March 17, 2018

What this week has shown is that, in this country, what they really hate the most about Corbyn is his anti-imperialist stances. Atlee might have stood with May against Russia, but its just not the case here. Obv Corbyn's stance is the product of decades of anti-colonial thinking (stuff that wasn't as available to Atlee), which is the result of a lot of events since the 50s. The expectation of Labour to acquiesce is very deeply rooted - the expectations by the establishment, centre-left, by Europe/US looking in (Fred B representing that view here) as well as a lot the soc-dem left. Bernie has severe weaknesses from a foreign policy POV (although he is far more willing to be educated - at least this is what I am seeing from the gun debate rn).

The right can take some form of re-distribution again (especially given Brexit) but if Corbyn ever gets to be PM this is what they will see as most damaging.

How on earth does anti-imperialism factor into a conflict between UK and Russia? You don't think Russia is an imperialistic colonizer? God, this is so painfully stupid.

Well, something's painfully stupid

The bloodthirsty commentary and mob-like mentality shown by the majority of the political class for some type of conflict w/out enough evidence is an imperialist tendency. Corbyn has cited Iraq, Libya and Syria as examples of why he isn't buying it.

Senior Labour MPs appalled by Jeremy Corbyn’s performance over the Salisbury poisoning have been in secret talks with the Liberal Democrats and at least one Conservative MP about forming a new political party called Start Again.

loool!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qx8ZkFflnQ

Like the Velvet Underground, only 100 people voted Lib Dem in 2017, but each one of them went on to form a new centrist party

— Will Davies (@davies_will) December 1, 2017

looool

please please please make Start Again happen, it will lift the nation's spirits

In the year 2525, if man is still alive
If woman can survive, they may find
there are now literally more centrist parties than years

this seems relevant to Fred's interests re the poisonings and Corbyn's foreign policy

The British government, led by the Tories, has shown itself more than willing to permit this money laundering because it has disproportionately benefited the upper crust of UK society. Billions have been brought into the London-based banking industry, propping up a massive expansion of the City’s financial services industry. Property rents in London’s neighborhoods have skyrocketed as the corrupt money is protected in British real estate, pushing out middle and working class people for oligarch’s vacation homes or to act as “gold bricks” for investment. To protect this, Russia’s nouveau riche lobby Tory politicians to the tune of £820,000 to preserve the status quo. Meanwhile London now serves as the “de-facto capital of the post-Soviet mafia state.”

Corbyn and the Labour Party have done much to bring these facts to the forefront of British policy-making, but the remarks of his office this week miss the links between Russian president Vladimir Putin’s powerbase and British money laundering. Instead, his comments focused on the slight possibility that Russia had lost control of the nerve agent in the 1990s, allowing mafia or rogue members of the state to use it for these purposes. Corbyn’s spokesman echoed these comments, saying that that it was still unclear if Russia was behind the attacks.

Corbyn’s comments have drawn predictably strong rebukes from the Tories, as well as his own party. But Corbyn’s (and his detractors’) comments miss the obvious connection to the greater fight against global oligarchy. As Leonid Ragozin wrote in a later tweet, reforming Russia means reforming the West, and obfuscating Russia’s involvement only distracts from Labour’s (and the Left’s in general) vision for a more equitable society.

https://fellowtravelersblog.com/2018/03/16/the-skripal-poisonings-and-the-chance-to-build-a-left-foreign-policy/

That is not too badly wrong, the rest of the article goes off the rails a bit. Russia is not the problem, it’s as true of extracted wealth in Nigeria, India, Uzbekistan, etc, etc. It ends up here. The Magnitsky act is arbitrary/ partial and hasn’t stopped much Russian wealth going to the US. This is, to some extent, not even a foreign policy question.

Wealthy people invest / settle here for a variety of reasons that aren’t directly related to the government being particularly compliant (which is not to say they aren’t). It’s an English-speaking country with access to the rest of Europe, the court system is stable and largely uncorrupted, expensive private schools and state universities are very good, the housing problem makes investments in property reasonably stable, it’s one of the world’s biggest transport hubs, etc, etc. None of that is likely to change.

There are certainly easy things the government can do to make it slightly harder for people to sink illegally extracted money into the country - stronger use of Unexplained Wealth Orders, enforcing fines on illegal use of land trusts, which are rarely ever collected, stoping the practice of giving automatic residency to people investing £5m+, etc but that’s tinkering at the margins. In many, probably most, cases wealth that was originally tied to criminality and corruption is fairly ‘clean’ now. You might discourage the regional governor taking a few million in bribes but not the billionaires bribing them. Anything the UK does, at the moment, would also be unlikely to stop people sinking their money into Malta or Cyprus and still sending their kids to Eton, buying flats in Knightsbridge, etc.

Corbyn is likely to be a major disincentive in himself, simply because the reputation of the UK as a country that doesn’t do politics might go away, but the key things we need to do are equally targeted at the British rich, rather than simply a handful of foreigners. We need to start taxing wealth, not just income, and end the use of blind trusts, dummy corporations, etc to hide money behind. You can make the country a much less attractive place simply through normal soc dem policies.

Nick Robinson: "(in Russia) the state media is entirely rigged". That sounds like a real problem.

windmill jolyon speaks

Just remembered I have a written message from a senior BBC bod explaining (unambiguously) that the BBC does code negative messages about Corbyn into its imagery.

— Jo Maugham QC (@JolyonMaugham) March 18, 2018

I saw an interesting suggestion yesterday that Putin's project for the next six years might be to build a stable system, outwardly looking like 'liberal democracy', in which power cycles between different groups every few year but nothing fundamentally changes, which seemed familiar.

thank god there is ppl like Applebaum in the free world to denounce this sham democracy :p

I had missed the windmill thing somehow; I gain new appreciation for the fine work of Simon Hedges every day.

The Jolyon thing is both intriguing and ridiculous, I think the best thing I saw was someone accusing his account of having being hacked as they couldn’t believe he’d defend Corbyn.

The BBC and Jeremy Corbyn https://t.co/ISQxPI7fF3

— Jo Maugham QC (@JolyonMaugham) March 19, 2018

Hitchens is also sticking up for Corbyn and said he is near enough the only person in parliament without a "questionable record" on foreign affairs.