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

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.

Oh God, the point of gammon is that it describes RIGHT WING people.

and they should at least have a very ruddy complexion and come from N Yorkshire.

Its a ruddy disgrace, whats point of having nuclear weapons wiout using em? If you wont fire em get someone in who knows what thas doing and get em fired

speaking as a white working class dude i'm happy to step down tbh

also Brendan O'Neill can go fuck himself, the middle class twat

the beauty of the gammon furore is how protective certain elements have felt about nine furiously nuclear patriots from QT and how they have been variously said to represent all old people, all brexiters, the entire working class and anyone to the right of diane abbott. the way ppl show themselves up in their wrongheaded attempts to take offence is delicious

tbh it's a phrase wide open to that kind of willful misinterpretation and should probably be retired at this point.

I'm not a fan of any appearance-based criticism but it was a funny word and kind've passed the Henry Fielding test for meanness so what the heck

Absolutely, when applied to the nine people it was originally given to. It’s on shakier ground when broadened out.

it shows the inconsistency and absurdity of centrist calls for respect and polite discourse. the idea that it captures something distinctively nasty about some part of the left is nonsense, and I don't think it will go anywhere as long as it keeps hitting a nerve

it reminds me of that amber frost piece on the necessity of political vulgarity: I found it v uncompelling and she ends up with a very unattractive position praising trump for his raw honesty or w/e, but I think the more instructive issue is not so much on the value of vulgarity so much as the way attempts to police it reveal the motives and reasoning of a certain class and the imagined political tensions driving them

concern about polarising discourse is too selective to be credible, especially when it is so readily deployed against imagined middle class corbynite rudeboy folk-devils in defence of people's right to aggressively barge into public forums to represent murderous hegemonic authoritarianism

"manners" have always been a class shibboleth so it's only natural when people use them to shut out discourse they don't want to hear

I think gammon is really the equivalent of the loony left, which I've never heard anyone complain about, and I expect it to stay around. the dickens quote from nicholas nickleby is ofc further proof of its timeless appeal

It certainly revealing how many centrists jump to the assumption that the gammon stereotype is intended to pillory the whole of the working class or all white men, etc, but the sloppy way it has often been used on Twitter leaves that door open, imo.

The value of vulgarity aside, it feels like a lot of people have been searching for a kind of counterpoint to pejoratives applied to the left and there’s a risk that is just playing into the culture war narrative .

Either way, giving people with a persecution complex an excuse to argue they really are derided on the basis of their race, age, etc is probably generally unhelpful.

i don't think your real gammons are open to the loving embrace of logic and persuasion tbh