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

that's a mess but it finishes with: there is one word to describe the party in London: Screwed.

the Jewdas seder beetroot on eBay is over £22k!
https://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/Anticapitalist-beetroot-Jewdas-2018-seder-pickled/112919562341?hash=item1a4a87c865:g:0vUAAOSwjI5ax29k

(The horseradish as provided by Corbyn is cheaper at ~£113 lol)

While figures from across the political spectrum are said to be involved in Franks’s project, much of its policy platform appears to be aimed mainly at a liberal, centre-left audience. Potential policy proposals include asking the rich to pay a fairer share of tax, better funding for the NHS and improved social mobility. However, it also backs centre-right ideas on wealth creation and entrepreneurship, and is keen to explore tighter immigration controls. A source said some Brexit supporters are involved.

mould-breaking = the Lib Dems but with immigration mugs

Radical Suk dot com
https://radicalsuk.com/

At this point any respectable News outlet leading with a New Centrist Party story is either a complete fucking joke or someone has paid them well for the advert!

lol! I wonder if the Rawnsley opinion piece with a Macron photo will be a good click.

I keep hearing "complex" when Tories talk about the causes of crime/homelessness/poverty. I was talking to someone on the bus yesterday who was on their way to a church for food handouts. Not Fucking Complex! Complete fucking Tory party mandated poverty in this case.

Return of the Gammon. He's just popped on The Big Question, from (where else) York. Stuck his oar in a debate on modern slavery to say that people picking vegetables on farms are doing so willingly - and, guess what he's a farmer!

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRHS5kZT3y5p_Si3OKnaePUqYcnDv2jjoo2o7ihlB5vyrWalyhGBw

he never knew the "some idiot in Iran" would turn out to be Boris.

I'm increasingly coming round to the idea that the country doesn't need a centrist party that breaks off from Labour, if there's a new party then it should be a new right-wing party without the baggage of the Tories and their membership.

I mean when people talk about a centre party they really mean what they want is a more palatable right wing party so just come right out and admit it. Pro-free market, globalist, socially liberal, perhaps not quite so gleeful about brutalising the poor and with an acknowledgement that a successful capitalist country requires decent public infrastructure - it would either fail or it would permanently hobble the Conservative Party or both and either would be fine.

Labour has over half a million members it's clearly responding to demand, as opposed to a party whose geriatric membership could fit in a modest football stadium quite comfortably.

apparently they can't count their membership numbers - it's very "complex" and not at all embarrassingly low for the governing party of the UK.

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The Tories without the baggage is just the Lib Dems, no? So surely people should be rallying around them and joining en masse if the demand exists? Given the policies and party infrastructure already exist?

As Matt says, the demand exists for Labour. This is just astroturfing to try to split the left vote.

it's almost as if there's a section of the Labour party that would rather destroy it than not have it be a more palatable right wing party

Just split the Tories into two new parties - Moggnitude and Soubriety.

This is quite well done https://centrismdotbiz.squarespace.com/

delightfully trenchant!

My guess is that the LibDem brand is just comprehensively trashed at this point, otherwise they are ripe for infiltration and takeover but no one seems arsed, which is as good an indication as any of why a centre party would fail.

They have quite considerable baggage of their own to lug about.

I found it odd that Cable was practically not ruling out another ConDem coalition the other day, after the last one completely wiped out any pretence that they are an alternative to Tories and shitloads of their voters.

You can take the man out of the coalition but you can't take the coalition out of the man

http://viz.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/014_viz206_vince.jpg

Ha, what's the date on that strip? For one of the 2010 tuition fee demos I made a placard graphically alluding to 'laying a cable', tho I think the humour was too subtle for most fellow demonstrators

it was just a one-off from October 2014, so maybe a Viz cartoonist noticed!

Haha, a close friend and former housemate of mine was responsible for that, not seen it in a while.

I think it is quite hilarious classic Viz tbh, with the added bonus that it is lampooning a complete twat, who I genuinely hope took this in very bad humour!

lol

Pro-free market, globalist, socially liberal, perhaps not quite so gleeful about brutalising the poor and with an acknowledgement that a successful capitalist country requires decent public infrastructure

Isn't that the Cameron/Osborne makeover of the Tories again? Austerity was the cover for brutalising the poor (straight responsible face masking the gleeful-ness somewhat, which is as true for the politicians and the voters that didn't care).

The realisation of Brexit is the blocker for any of these nerdish centrist projects poppping up. Labour has thought its way around that.

is there a definitive list somewhere of all the prospective centrist parties people have tried to get off the ground over the last couple of years? I think someone was doing a twitter thread that was updated every time there was a new one, but I can't seem to find it

The fundamental pitch of a new formation would be as the “Sensible party”, but it couldn’t call itself that because, when I checked with the Electoral Commission, I found that the name has already been taken.

From the Rawnsley, though the idea that he might be taking the piss out them doesn't last past the next sentence:

“Mainstream” is one potential label I’ve heard mooted, which sounds moderate and inclusive without being as anaemic as “Centre party”.

The fundamental pitch of a new formation would be as the “Sensible party”, but it couldn’t call itself that because, when I checked with the Electoral Commission, I found that the name has already been taken.

Monty Python reference.

looking at the electoral commission website 'The Centre Party' has also been taken, as have 'Renew', 'Engage', 'Aspire', 'Resolve' and 'Viva Europa'

I wonder if there's money to be made in registering various names that a new centrist party might call itself and then getting prospective centrist parties to pay you to use one, like domain name speculation?

I wonder if Feckless Cunts is taken?

http://www4.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Nigel+Farage+Joins+Fishing+Leave+Flotilla+jBRODdICVyvl.jpg

the future is looking good!

ok this is definitely what the new centrist party should be called: "Apolitical Democrats"

https://data.electionleaflets.org/cache/ec/59/ec596f60b38d3b7edf8176513c1940cf.png

"This is a complex crime, a complex area, it is not all about police numbers."
Will have to start a swearbox for every time one of these arseholes uses "complex" to wave away the state of things after 8 years of austerity.

I mean when people talk about a centre party they really mean what they want is a more palatable right wing party so just come right out and admit it. Pro-free market, globalist, socially liberal, perhaps not quite so gleeful about brutalising the poor and with an acknowledgement that a successful capitalist country requires decent public infrastructure - it would either fail or it would permanently hobble the Conservative Party or both and either would be fine.

I think that a decent amount of the types who are clamouring for a centrist party wouldn't want the right wing tag, even moderate right wing, because they see themselves as left - but also "sensible", aware that issues are complex, politics is about compromise, yadda yadda. It's a self-identification thing.

(not saying this is a particularly strong demographic, though it is unfortunately one I tend to run into often)

Most of those names been taken by "The Apprentice" teams.

Just call it the Entitled Middle Class Wanker Party and be done with it?

I'm more surprised nobody's started a "Brexit Party"

It's called UKIP. How are they faring these days?

they became citizens of nowhere.

Well, like I say - hold their victory word high, drop the failed version, that's kinda what the NF did and presumably what the BNP will do next.

i'd love to hear what the sensible left's objections are to the direction under Corbyn if you stripped away the personality and the foreign policy stuff - none of the latter has much effect on electoral choices except amongst hardcore nutters anyway i suspect.

i feel like they're too embarrassed to say "we're fine with public spending at Tory levels and allowing the wealthy to dictate employment law" out loud right now but what else have they got or have they ever done? plus for "social liberals" most of them have very deep authoritarian instincts. the thing about the grown-ups is they really believe they are the grown-ups.

It's also worth pointing out that politicians whose entire career and approach has been based around political expediency/the art of the possible aren't going to jump ship to something with no infrastructure and chimerical support, where they will inevitably be voted out in favour of whoever is wearing a red rosette next time around. Better either to stick around and work with what they have (ie what Corbyn etc did for years) or go off and do something else entirely.

i assume most of them aren't economically savvy - neither am i tbf - so do they have economic ideas at all or just a received wisdom based on being sensible and moderate? the idea of towing the middle line that all right-thinking people hold has been wrecked by Brexit, which wasn't even (fought as) an economic issue. by ceding all ground bar some kind of Briticized version of the Culture Wars - the main strategy in the run up to the 97 election imo - they've forced themselves into becoming this wooly "us vs them" option where "us" is everybody who identifies as a (potential) winner of the status quo and them is everybody who either is already losing or is terrified of the consequences of social liberalism gone mad

If they weren't such slippery quasi-Tory fucks, they might not have to re-invent themselves as new party every bastard week.

i'd speculate that there's never been a point in parliamentary history when the political class has been so far away from understanding the lives of such a sizeable chunk of the electorate. even in the 18th century the patrician class were mostly courting the votes of the comfortably yeomanry.

I think the PM might get the odd subtle hint when mobs are baying for her blood whenever steps out of safe Tory spaces like Cricket clubs etc