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

only if it involves cannonballs dropped from a minimum of 20 metres

and since it's national taking out the trash day

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dd4So22U0AIdiDU.jpg:large

god rees-mogg is such a fucking moron

Lammy (and countless others) point out that the acceptance rate for black applicants to Oxford is lower than it is for white applicants. But if you control for the acceptance rate in the subjects applied for (most popular in case of black applicants) discrepancy largely vanishes.

— Toby Young (@toadmeister) May 23, 2018

is this correct? if so, is the answer for Oxford to increase the number of places available for the most applied for subjects and reduce the number of places available for less applied for subjects?

Yeah Rees-Mogg is a moron, but when I see interviews with him he is so completely convincing in his self belief in regards to his superiority to everyone else and his sole ownership of the truth that I honestly find him chilling.

anyone watched "a very english scandal"?

I watched the first ep, didn't seem as terrible as most BBC drama these days.

xp
he get's a bit flaky when people actually challenge the spurious bollocks he often talks. As seen in the BBC NI interview the other week. It is just unfortunate that doesn't happen frequently enough.

Even with that interview I saw a lot of people saying that JRM came off on top, and you can see why, he's giving a certain kind of person exactly what they want to hear

He's still a joke here in Fife, if that's any consolation.

xp yeah, the sweet satisfaction of knowing their place. He appeals to a certain kind of authoritarian mindset and knows it, no matter how much he tries to disguise it. Matthew Parris wrote about him a couple of months ago.

When he’s right (which he usually is) Matthew Parris is very, very right. Superb article putting the preposterous and dangerous @Jacob_Rees_Mogg firmly in his place. pic.twitter.com/23TF69EcOY

— 🇪🇺 Paddy Briggs #FBPE (@PaddyBriggs) March 24, 2018

hats off to the sunday times’ picture editor for choosing that pic

Our Fash!

this owns
http://renewal.org.uk/articles/the-institutional-turn-labours-new-political-economy

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/23/opinion/international-world/centrists-democracy.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

I was wondering what people here think about this article ("Centrists Are the Most Hostile to Democracy, Not Extremists") wrt UK politics? I've seen criticism from people who think the article is flawed in that it doesn't do enough to define its terms or to distinguish between 'centrism' and 'the beliefs of ppl who self-identify as centrists'. But I think there's something to the idea that fascism = the authoritarian centre (different from the liberal centre, but with with occasional overlap) and maybe that's part of the explanation for these results?

I'd guess that in Britain a lot of UKIP inclined people might define themselves as centrists rather than 'left' or 'right', and obviously you could say it's misleading to lump them in with #FBPE types? Stephen Bush frequently argues that polling shows there *is* room for a new party based on a section of public opinion that's currently underrepresented, but that section of public opinion is ppl who are economically left wing and socially conservative, hostile to immigration - pretty much the opposite of the 'new centre party' that Jolyon Maugham and various Economist journalists envisage. But I think there is potentially some crossover between the two centres - the way both define themselves as being motivated by 'common sense' and what's 'sensible' rather than ideology, both define themselves as representing 'the people' rather than interest groups. A lot of the pro-EU centrists are obv nostalgic for Blair/New Labour, which had its authoritarian tendencies - 90s days detention, indefinite sentences, appointing 'czars' who could go other the head of moribund bureaucracy, general disdain for checks and balances etc (I don't know enough about French politics to say, but I've seen it argued that Macron has similar authoritarian tendencies when it comes to law and order/security and overriding checks and balances to push reforms through?).

And enthusiasm for direct democracy is maybe something that unites the two centres? That might seem like an odd thing to claim when the pro-EU centrists are trying to undo the results of the brexit ref and position themselves as champions of checks and balances against the tyranny of the majority, will of the people etc, but a lot of them are also pushing the idea of a second referendum, the new centrist alignment they talk about seems to implicitly have a majoritarian subtext even if they don't have a majority of public opinion on their side, frequent referendums became a feature of UK politics during the Cameron era, which these ppl now look back on a kind of golden age etc.

i've been banging on about democratizing the economy for years, at least as a viable first step towards curbing the worst excesses of neoliberalism, it's nice when the stars align :D

i think more to the point soref is the streak of technocratic contempt for genuine democracy that's writ large in yr Blairs, your "ignore the referendum" Remoaners, a cross-section of NHS and social services administrators etc. etc. they know better than some lumpen unwashed mass, which they live to protect from the horrors of populism.

the figures and questions in that poll are more international and a somewhat different thing but no way on god's earth are the centralizers in New Labour and its remaining PLP shock troops democrats in any meaningful way

detailed chat about the nuances of the l-r political spectrum are like forensically analysing the splinters you get from hammering a square peg through a round hole

is like, even. there's clearly a lot of marginalised and paranoid ppl in the so-called centre ground though including lots of ppl who see themselves as being against the political classes in general

Is genuine democracy some 'Real England' shit? Otherwise I don't know what it would have to do with the referendum.

There's something majorly wrong with those numbers, the European averages is lower than it is in any country.

ppl who are economically left wing and socially conservative, hostile to immigration

sounds like my dad and he votes BNP when he can be arsed to vote, which isn't often, thankfully. I assumed he'd voted Leave, but he just didn't vote.

Wow. Russian pranksters managed to call Boris Johnson pretending to be the Armenian PM and discussed Skripal & Putin with him...

Big Qs about how the jokers got on the line with him, with Guardian suggesting they have links to Russian security services. https://t.co/0NrJVB8EW1

— Lucy Fisher (@LOS_Fisher) May 24, 2018

The laugh at the Novichok comment!

They have done that about a dozen times.

Which is to say, it’s astonishing people keep falling for it

tbf Boris is pretending to be Foreign Secretary so it balances out

A lot of extremists are very much in the 'democracy until it stops suiting us' mode, and they're being so vocal about it now because recent democratic decisions have favoured their point of view.

The obvious bone to pick with that survey is that it doesn't really define what a 'centrist' is. At least not beyond 'respondents who put themselves at the center of the political spectrum', which is fair enough but loads of people think they're at the centre of the political spectrum regardless of whether or not they are, which is entirely different again to 'centrists' as defined in current Westminster terms.

ppl who are economically left wing and socially conservative, hostile to immigration

sounds like my dad and he votes BNP when he can be arsed to vote, which isn't often, thankfully. I assumed he'd voted Leave, but he just didn't vote.

― Colonel Poo, Thursday, 24 May 2018 10:06 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Interesting parallel down here in Victoria Australia. The wonders of preferential voting in a double dissolution election has given this constituency representation in the for of Derryn Hinch ‘The Human Headline’. A talk radio host who is for ‘Common Sense’ in the form of locking up criminals, continuing operating immigration concentration camps but also in favour of reinstating compulsory overtime rates for service industry workers. As a cross bencher in a hung senate he’s disturbingly powerful.

A centrist on the opposite side of the polical compass.

after the rise of Nazism von Hindenburg was probably considered a centrist, albeit a half senile pissing his pants one, but he still signed off on that Reichstag thing that fucked off civil liberties. Centrism to me is just career politicians that go with the weather, which is nearly all of them imo.

probably an extreme example, but a recent example of centrism's essential rootlessness and being completely useless as an opposition force was of course Ed Miliband's lot, abstaining on the The Welfare Act votes etc and complete cowardice against austerity etc.. yawn I'm probably a stuck record etc!

On the plus side it got us...here.

I think Miliband was gone by the time they abstained on the Welfare Bill, and in his case it was more likely to be down to cowardice than ideology, just being totally cowed by the prevailing right-wing narrative on what Labour did wrong in government and with no clue how to combat it.

xp
aye, [takes a swig from can of warm special brew with cig floating in it] this gilded age ! Jokes of course, it could be much worse.

Yeah, I totally agree Matt. I was trying to say it is a fixed ideology, it is more about "sensible politics" which is often as meaningful their language gets.

was wasn't

lol @ the state of this

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/25/galileo-uk-will-build-own-satellite-system-if-frozen-out-of-eu-brexit

The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has warned that the UK will build its own satellite navigation system to rival the European Union’s €10bn Galileo project if Brussels carries out its threat to block access.

lol

firsties on Galileo farrago

these brexit scaramouches got us in a right fandango

The EU is insistent that the UK had agreed in 2011 as an EU member state on the rules on blocking non-EU countries from access to secure elements of the project.

how many times is shit like this going to come back and bite us in arse?

THE arse even

LOL could be the Brexit theme tune given the number of apt lines. (xxp)

we're just gonna pony up billions for a satellite system huh

this magical money tree just keeps on fucking giving, it's incredible

i guess we would've already contributed a few hundred million to the original EU project, so you can add that to the cost too

anybody linked to this yet?

https://dominiccummings.com/2018/05/23/on-the-referendum-25-a-letter-to-tory-mps-donors-on-the-brexit-shambles/

I'd guess that in Britain a lot of UKIP inclined people might define themselves as centrists rather than 'left' or 'right', and obviously you could say it's misleading to lump them in with #FBPE types?

The two sets are quite different from one perspective (one loves experts, the other hates immigration more) but in terms of voting choices you can see the way the wind is blowing. Many remoaners would back Tories or even some sort of Lib Dem-Tory pact if it could get them the softest Brexit possible. That's not on the cards.

That or just simply having issues or struggling (the way LJ on here struggles) to vote Labour. They are ready to sit it out, and how is that different from acting like a UKIP inclined voter.

If everyone could stop parroting dumb Daily Mail speak it would appreciated okthxbye.

Loads of people identify as 'centrists' because no one wants to think of themselves as being out on some weird fringe, *especially* people who are actually out on some weird fringe who tend not to have a great deal of insight into other people's thought processes. The idea that everyone else secretly agrees with them on everything has formed a big part of Farageist rhetoric for years.

Is being torn between Labour and Green really much of a betrayal, in a safe Labour seat?

You were the nearest I could find to the weird hashtag ppl on twitter.