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

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.

Totally understand someone voting Green and not Labour tbf. Never done it myself but I'm strictly Old Labour.

On a national election it depends - their manifesto was good iirc and if its a Green Lab fight then ok. If you are going to act smart and end up splitting progressive vote to allow a Tory or a Lib Dem in then stop that.

Battle of the boneheads.

Ian Austin's piece for us yesterday criticising Jeremy Corbyn has certainly created waves. So we got Chris Williamson to offer an alternative view. https://t.co/QuMUbYeD7T

— Kevin Schofield (@PolhomeEditor) May 25, 2018

Not read either of these and don't plan to.

both of them are complete wasters.

i read the chris williamson one and it includes both the phrase 'common sense socialism' and signs off with a 1983-vintage quote from tony blair which reads 'socialism corresponds most closely to an existence that is both rational and moral'

reader, i am now a tory

I don't know why I embedded the tweet, just LOL at garbage site PoliticsHome. I'm sure Schofield will follow up 'gosh, Williamson's response also created waves and now nobody knows what to think as we drown in all these tit for tat waves' noble journalismz

i refuse to be rational or moral fuck you Williamsong

Williamson is like a lot of so called Left Twitter, he's continually retweeting Canary, Galloway, RT type dross and was adding fuel to the Antisemitism row by completely dismissing it out of hand. Just an embarrassing fool who needs deselecting just as much as the Streeting type detritus do. Austin was rightly exposed as Hepatitis on a recent Tory leaflet.

I'd argue the Williamsons of this world need to go before anyone else if only because the damage they could do is so much greater.

Please do :)

fairly stonking speech about where we are w brexit at the moment

https://policyscotland.gla.ac.uk/blog-sir-ivan-rogers-speech-text-in-full/

Apologies for posting from the Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5775673/Moggs-Moscow-Millions-Brexiteers-firm-poured-fortune-Russian-companies.html

Andrew Marr almost asked for his permission before asking him about this this morning, if only he still had a forelock. To be honest, I was distracted by the fact that the studio lighting contrived to give JRM a Hitler moustache throughout most of the interview.

I feel like my day + general mental health has been 100% improved by choosing not to watch Marr this morning, but JRM's special treatment did sound as predictable as watching the national Test Cricket side getting arseholed, again.

Also predictable that he gave Labour's Parrott-like (John, that is) Shadow Health Secretary a harder time over some Tory policy that hasn't even happened yet.

i tell you what guys, not watching current affairs programmes makes every day a little bit more beautiful

I put on 5 live's Pienaar show earlier and someone was saying (without any sense of irony) that statist broadcasting channels in countries like Russia should be forced to carry a propaganda warning with any political content they broadcast, or something similar.

i heard that, he was some Tory "Backbencher of the Week", and i had similar thoughts about labelling dishonest propaganda on TV i.e. it will be great

i was intending to make sure the warnings were carried by all bullshit news outlets tho

Looking fwd to russia being forced to put propaganda warnings on its state run broadcast channels by some tory employee if the week

Someone just made the very good point that the BBC should be compelled to reveal the funding sources of the various right wing think tanks that keep sending their spokespeople to QT on a weekly basis.

Kate Andrews is on our screens more than Ant & Dec.

She obv needs to get pissed more often.

The increasing use of Spiked and Spiked-related talking heads is worse tbh.

agreed, especially that imbecilic plastic paddy dickhead.

the latest Spiked hot take is something like: Left wing Momentum gammon sneering at that endangered species - The White Working Class, Frankie Boyle is probably avidly reading it rn, I'm certainly not.