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

George Osborne and May were famously at odds over immigration policy; he was one of the opponents to the idea of counting foreign students in immigration stats and the LRB article on May from last year mentioned a fight beteeen the two at cabinet about a Chinese businessman Osborne knew being strip searched at Heathrow.

The two would go hand in hand; are you going to make a fuss about your treatment or join a union if your employer has Border Force waiting for you at work one morning?

And it applies in a lesser way to all immigrants - the proposed registry of foreigners at all workplaces? That doesn’t care if you’re documented or not, or if you’re highly skilled or not. That’s about targeting people for the sole fact that they are foreign. Every time I think of the Home Office since I’ve lived here I can think of another horrible little story or initiative that all feeds into this.

The thread I was talking about drew useful parallels with apartheid or Jim Crow laws

The terrible truth is that May is neither - she was given a job to reduce numbers and saw it as a duty. Various ways to do so are just tools to an end.

The thread mentioned above:

(1) Here's a thought. Racist laws aren't often designed to just "get rid" of black people or other minorities. They are designed to force minority people to be 2nd class citizens.

— Solomon Hughes (@SolHughesWriter) April 18, 2018

That was Runciman’s theory and not one I particularly subscribe to. Why was TM making up lies about not being able to deport people because they owned cats? That doesn’t speak to the plodding diligence he attributes to her, it reminded me of the anecdote about her mocking George Osborne at an awards ceremony.

Anyway, Bloomberg have just posted a story about a further email leak from the Home Office that gives more info about the van story. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-19/former-may-aide-s-attempt-to-defend-her-undermined-by-email-leak

well as I say, she's a functionary, a racist functionary, but the shit system is bigger than her alone.

Thanks for the link AF, I'm crap on my phone

and if course there's a difference between individual intention and overall consequence

"Far from objecting to the plan, May’s only objection at that point was that it might look too soft on illegal immigrants."

being "soft" seems to be a cardinal sin in her book, but FFS!

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/charities-delivering-dwps-work-programme-must-promise-not-to-attack-mcvey/

Disability charities that sign up to help deliver the government’s new Work and Health Programme must promise to “pay the utmost regard to the standing and reputation” of work and pensions secretary Esther McVey, official documents suggest.

honestly, I'm not making this up.

Re: working in detention, yeah, the spin the centres try to put on it is that it's primairly a way to help detainees feel useful and that none of the work done by them substitutes that of paid professionals. All very credible, of course.

I've mentioned before that the UK detention system feels very much like a way of importing the US prison-industrial complex to some extent - especially since most of these centres are operated by private security firms.

Fair enough but that's a really low bar xp

well yeah, yet to meet all the thousands who have been helped by amazing scheme!

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/20/amber-rudd-boasted-harsher-immigration-strategy-leak-reveals

It’s not been a great day for them. Nick Timothy deleted his account, and this story came out: https://www.vice.com/amp/en_uk/article/ne9m9d/vice-exclusive-the-tory-council-candidate-who-supports-far-right-extremists

Nick Timothy deleted his account

FUCK I'M ON CHAMPAGNE TONIGHT

When he’s not knocking on doors for the local election with high profile Conservatives, Darren is attending events organised by Generation Identity, a racist group that wants to repatriate migrants. Our investigation shows that Harrison attended numerous events by the ethno-nationalist group.

^ this is perfectly confluent with the amber rudd approach tbh

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DbOWSRKWkAAnN6M.jpg

casually wafting away a fart

ooh i just had a safeguarding warning this week about Generation Identity

Generation Cunts amirite?

it's the undone zipper that's more worrying tbh xp

Dan Hodges is defending Nick Timothy(!), who he says has been “hounded off Twitter” by the hard left (rather than his own incompetence).

I know we're saying "peak lib dem" a lot these days but peak lib dem pic.twitter.com/axFWQLN38U

— Crowsa Luxemburg (@quendergeer) April 20, 2018

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DbNZ7XJWAAETgNe.jpg

wait did he not run away because somebody amply demonstrated he's a fucking liar?

Yeah he was hounded off by the hard left mainstream media doing their job for once.

i want to live in a world where i can pelt nick timothy with rotten eggs with no fear of comeback

he can't moan about being no-platformed and become a martyr, if he took the ball home of his own accord! the fucking dickhead!

He's probably deleted it out of embarrassment and being so uniquely terrible at his chosen career path.

I mean you’d think that but he went from one of the biggest political misjudgements ever to a career as a political commentator within a few weeks, so...

No no he was HOUNDED OFF TWITTER you monsters have you no SYMPATHY?

WHAT ABOUT HIS HUMAN RIGHTS?

Dunno how you can say all journalists are posh when Nick Timothy got comprehensively schooled

— Here's what I reckon: (@angryaboutbikes) April 20, 2018

I like the elegant simplicity of this one:

Could be worse, could be hounded out of the country you've lived in all your life https://t.co/5C6J8ETJbM

— Dawn Foster (@DawnHFoster) April 20, 2018

I miss the old politics, where you would be civil to the people denying cancer treatment to citizens in order to mollify racists.

fkn fire our journalist class into the sun already.

according to the front page of bbc news, none of this is happening.

I know this government latterly has been kind of resilient but it feels like there’s a resignation in the offing soon. when do we think rudd might go? is may at risk even? in a more benign context she would have gone already surely

I forgot she stood in for May in the party leader Brexit debates - and then ended up with a majority of two men and a dog in Nick Timothy's General Election.

probably need to roll with the punches until locals out the way. must be painful at CPHQ rn

Matt made me grimlol

https://static.wixstatic.com/media/8a99fb_d71d24ce865e404b90e7ff3dffda606d~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_588,h_392,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01/8a99fb_d71d24ce865e404b90e7ff3dffda606d~mv2.webp
"That is what is going on at the moment. I didn't expect when I took on this voluntary cross-party role for my wife to be sent by a Labour Marxist anti-Semite a dead bird through the post."

It seems John Mann was lying in Parliament the other day. The dead bird incident was a whole 3 years pre-Corbyn and was "the action of disgruntled Labour member Roger Dyas-Elliott, who felt he had been unfairly barred from standing for a council seat later won by Mr Mann's wife."

can we just post the best of all the absolute witlesssness that’s been going around on twitter this week in response to owen jones claim that journalism is a middle class cabal

excuse me while I suffocate from irony

One of the reasons I love journalism is that it really is meritocratic. If you can write or edit (and you'd be surprised how relatively rare those abilities are) you generally tend to make it. Have known many posh kids who rocked up due to connections, were useless, and vanished

— Robert Colvile (@rcolvile) April 21, 2018

oh it turns out loads of them are real sons and daughters of toil, never seen so much grit and determination, lols!

OJ's comment completely backed up by All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility paper, yep thought it would be.

david allen green’s thread was amazing

More like Robert LOLvile.

Fixed: Have known many posh kids who rocked up due to connections, were useless, and vanished either got the job anyway or walked into another one.

TBF this is more likely if you’re a man....

Private school + multimillionaire parents + country house = posh kids
Private school + millionaire parents + four bed house in Islington = ‘normal’

Any of these people have anything to say when Aditya Chakrabortty was attacked as posh because he went to school in Edmonton? Or even about Owen Jones having Churchill’s grandson call him a “shitweasel” on Twitter only yesterday? Thought not. Brutal tone deafness from the media here.

Did Aditya go to Latimer? If so, good on him. Half of North London tries to get their kids in there - I know of a few people whose parents sent them to Habs when they weren’t offered places there.

This is a bit like actual aristos calling Corbyn a posh kid.