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

oh it was a stunning move alright

gosh who could have foreseen this

One long-term former employee, who worked for the Home Office for many years in Liverpool, told the Guardian there had been a stark change among immigration staff‘s behaviour following Theresa May’s announcement of “hostile environment” immigration regulations when she was home secretary.

“The introduction of the hostile environment policy meant the mentality was: ‘I’m going to say no, unless you can prove me wrong.’ Whereas before we’d been a lot more lenient towards the Commonwealth immigrants. We had no problem about going after everyone else, but the Commonwealth immigrants had always been a different kettle of fish,” said the official, who asked not to be named.

“That changed about five or six years ago with the hostile environment. Some of the immigration people welcomed it. There was a ’gotcha attitude’ – some people enjoyed it; I didn’t like that.”

“There were some people who enjoyed saying: I’ve caught you, you are illegal. But they weren’t illegal at all. I’ve got no issue with people getting rid of illegal immigrants but the Jamaican and Trinidadians – these are Commonwealth people, who were British subjects or citizens of the UK and colonies before their countries became independent.”

I've even seen people who are casually Islamophobic getting angry about this, May is taking hits.

Pretty sad to see her still holding on a year after the aforementioned debacle tbh

Mark S last december:

three things in may's medium-term survival's favour:

1: the structure the EU has kindly provided (stage 1: talks abt talks, stage 2: details) does allow her to kick the can a little down the road re the stuff foster (and others) want to lose their shit abt -- she can say "plz to not lose yr shit until we reach the stage where it's relevant" by which time enough other things may be in place to mollify key pressure groups (e.g. not sure they have an actual pressure point to lose their right-now shit at: parliament doesn't have to vote for us to go through to stage 2, and the vetoes all happen at the end) (a threatened veto can distort a negotiation but actually it needn't in the diplomats on point keep their heads)
2: no one faction or party can bring her down and the anti-may coalition is surprisingly hard to configure
3: LITERALLY NO ONE ELSE WANTS THIS CHALICE IT IS VERY VERY POISONED

caveat: "politics, dead boy, politics" (in which a week is a long time iirc)

two and three still pretty strong, I reckon.

lol again at the dead boy typo

https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/asc-triple-brexitcoup.jpg

l-r

some of the Mark S ilx posts have been more incisive and prescient on May than most of these fools who have been paid to write.

There’s a double whammy effect - some immigration officers definitely have that attitude but the cuts have also played a huge part. Case officers are so overloaded they can’t keep up with paperwork and can’t provide much assistance to anyone with issues. There’s a target-led culture, too. You often need to deal with X number of cases per day, etc.

The combined effect, against a backdrop of laws and procedures that have been deliberately over-complicated to catch people out, means that valid cases get rejected on minor technicalities like missing data or incorrectly filled forms - often because it’s quicker to say no than to work through problems. There is also a strong suspicion that a lot of officials are too busy to read casework properly / at all, before taking decisions.xps

Said dead boy is possibly the thing that's changed as regards mark's point 2, if only because he's risen out of the pack for next tory leader.

https://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2018/04/rees-mogg-tops-our-next-tory-leader-survey-for-the-third-month-running.html

pictured: jacob rees-mogg attempting to pick his way through the brexit maze towards leadership, yesterday

http://pop-verse.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/STK635316.jpg

My experience going through the system with my wife was that you very rarely deal with the actual home office staff, VFS Global dealt with the whole process in their usual opaque, unaccountable way. Probably different for the Windrush people as they are in the UK already mostly, but worth noting at least that the face of the arbitrary cutting is mostly done by an outsourced company.

some of the Mark S ilx posts have been more incisive and prescient on May than most of these fools who have been paid to write.
Otm!

Coming late to pmqs, but see Corbyn’s first question is about Albert Thompson, whose case he raised last month and who May said she didn’t know about. Lots of heckling already. Looks incredibly tense. Bercow having to quiet the chamber (with his robe hanging half off his shoulder).

not to be all Cap'n Save-a-DAG but he did tweet earlier 'The "Windrush affair" is not what happens when a policy works badly, but when a bad policy works' so... yes?

― a passing spacecadet, Tuesday, 17 April 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok, don't follow DAG - someone I follow faved those tweets.

glad pmqs is back to focusing on the real issues

Iain Duncan Smith, a Conservative, asks May if she agrees that all parties should kick out antisemites and apologists for antisemites.

May says she agrees. It is very important for parties show a clear signal that antisemitism will not be tolerated.

She pays tribute to the Labour MPs who spoke out in last night’s debate about the antisemitic abuse they had suffered. That was a fine example of what parliament is for, she says.

Bitter lol at May having scored this bullseye:

If Corbyn wants to question what is being done about illegal immigration, he should question Yvette Cooper, the former shadow home secretary, who said in 2013 tougher action was needed to deal with illegal immigration.

Imagine if she was leader now.

She’d be PM according to some people. Being slightly to the left of the Tories working so well in 2015 and all...

i could look at this all day

a more innocent time

https://secure.i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03390/labour-leadership-_3390756b.jpg

I wouldn't even bother voting again if Yvette "ATOS" Cooper was LoTO.

Whatever happened to the landing card archive in 2010 was down to the government at the time - tons of Labour initiatives bit the dust the second the Coalition took over, such as EMA.

You may be able to claim Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) if you’re studying in Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales. EMA is now closed in England.

the not so UK

This DISunited kingdom

Those percentages aren't the actual results are they? Sure Corbyn got more than 50% on first preferences

Yep, 59.5%.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK)_leadership_election,_2015

I can still remember hearing Andy Burnham saying how he wanted to "harness this energy" - complete harnessing of energy fail, pal!

Popular vote JC 251,417 AB 80,462

HUGE thank you to @AngelaRayner for coming to @IlfordNorthCLP fundraiser/episode of Don’t Tell The Bride and delivering a heartfelt, uplifting and inspiring speech. And now she’s already off back up North #grafter x pic.twitter.com/LxsxXl5dwt

— Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) April 18, 2018

wait, is Wes making a joke that's gone over my head or is this literally going to be an episode of Don't Tell The Bride where the wedding involves Illford North CLP

waht

If you're wondering why, when all I wanted from life was to be famous,
I have tried for so long, it's all gone wrong... https://t.co/GDWBFTcoyw

— stellacreasy (@stellacreasy) April 17, 2018

She normally likes trolling ppl using grinning selfies with other Tories, but now she's using using crap indie-racist man's lyrics Eh?

good job that she hasn't really got a reputation to protect, because that is extremely embarrassing behaviour for an adult MP.

not to mention the casual racist offence to many of her constituents etc...

it doesn't really look like glorification of morrissey to me, she just seems to have spent the day yesterday reponding to tweets ironic-ish lyric quotes. really fucking weird though and a pretty clueless activity for someone in her position to indulge in

I'm expecting the Labour MPs who have been attacking Corbyn over his lax attitude to known anti-Semites will do the same to over her attitude to known racists.

if only Morrissey was Antisemitic as well as Islamophobic and generally just racist against black people.

Ever since she did that *oh for goodness sake* eye roll when the Chakrabort was talking about dead disabled people on QT. I have really wished the worst on Creasy and hope her political is a fucking disaster tbh.

*career

tweets from stella creasy about...
disability: 17
ESA: 0
benefits sanctions: 11
indie music: 277

*with the obvious caveat that I realise twitter isn't the be all and end all (apart from to me)

— joe (@cillanoir) November 10, 2017

^ ^ ^

Tories eh?

Glad I only voted for her once tbh

Tbf to her, she wasn't championing Morrissey. The whole thing started with her saying "All of us are asking just what it is that can make a good man turn bad..." and linking to that interview, then she got people replying to that tweet who didn't seem to understand it was referring to Smiths lyrics ("Turn bad? In what way - erm that’s incredibly rude, dismissive and short sighted Stella. I think you’ll find it’s his opinion. #freespeech", "You are the one who is prejudiced and cannot tolerate the idea that people have different views to you. The so-called tolerant left has become intolerant. People are entitled to voice their opinions without being insulted. But you like to insult.", etc.) and she replied to them with more Smiths lyrics...and then just kept running with it.

And in other news R4 wasn't championing Enoch Powell this weekend, NBS.

REVEALED: UK govt refused to assist a French investigation into suspected money laundering by telecoms giant Lycamobile – saying the company is the “biggest corporate donor to the Conservative party” & gives money to a trust founded by Prince Charles. https://t.co/dBYEISUUay

— Heidi Blake (@HeidilBlake) April 19, 2018

Incredible. pic.twitter.com/PKPQWHd1BS

— Alan White (@aljwhite) April 19, 2018

BBC News is leading with (clutching at) straws.

6Music bulletins leading with Dale Winton.

That Buzzfeed story is an absolute humdinger, the quote is astonishing, like how could anyone possibly self-clown like that?

almost worth starting a new politics thread just to use "not some third world banana republic where the organs of state are in hock to some sort of kleptocracy".

an amazing quote. I say go for it

It doesn’t look like it has been picked up by anyone other than Buzzfeed yet. Four hours in, you would expect the Guardian, etc, to have mentioned it in the live blog, at least.

I wonder if they have their doubts as to whether it holds up.