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

Not getting a strong sense that she voted tbh

Sunday Politics just did a whole piece themed around this after chiding the pm for not ever having watched it.

Chris Williamson has managed to express solidarity with the current govt of Venezuela, the current govt of Nicaragua, Marc Wadsworth and Ken Livingstone in a single tweet

ttps://twitter.com/DerbyChrisW/status/1005519963518570496

Pleased to speak alongside Nicaraguan Ambassador Guissell Morales-Echaverry, Marcos Garcia from @VenezEmbassyUK & @sianlou82 today to express my support for self determination in Latin America and opposition to Trump's attacks. Great to see @Marcwads & @ken4london in attendance pic.twitter.com/gHd48hB2hb

— Chris Williamson MP (@DerbyChrisW) June 9, 2018

Mr radical 2 homes bringing the party into disrepute again, fucking arsehole.

fuck me, I bet if he could have resurrected Steve Biko's corpse for a one off selfie, the cynical cunt could have got Galloway on board as well as Ken.

cool and normal over here

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jun/09/whitehall-secrecy-cripples-brexit-plans-says-thinktank

Many suggesting it all leads to another GE before the year is out.

Today is potentially seismic. One senior official (very much NOT a Brexiteer): “We have now removed every incentive from EU for doing a deal by the end of November.” What happens after November? Parliament takes over. What does it want? EEA+. Who else wants EEA+? Follow the logic

— Tom McTague (@TomMcTague) June 12, 2018

you can still get 6/1 on a 2018 election, lump on quick!

This was a good response to dumb tweeting. This country (as much of Europe) have been forever maanging increasing levels of decline and inequality. Brexit may speed up what was already happening. Going back to the EU (which isn't possible) is going back to hardly managing.

Not picking an argument with DL here because we're pals, but a good opportunity to point out why this tweet profoundly misrepresents MY position on Brexit and (I would imagine) Corbyn and most other Corbyn supporters too. [thread] > https://t.co/g1KvxBY06J

— Ally Fogg (@AllyFogg) June 12, 2018

Anyway, this thread has been quiet so I am now here for the vote (yeah baby!)

"There is simply no going back to the pre-2016 consensus, it is impossible, it's not there any more."

no point trying to explain that to ppl like DL, who seem completely oblivious to what austerity is actually doing to other humans, or the history of how right-wing party rhetoric has often been most successfully utilised during "stabbed in the back" nationalist type narratives. I know he's an eminent ILXer and all that, but what a complacent, smug arsewipe. I can't stand reading anything by the fucker tbh - music or politics.

I’m reading The Candidate by Alex Nunns which talks about Corbyn’s election for leader and the broader political trends and it’s like reading an alternate history. I was pretty disengaged from politics at the time so I’d missed a lot of the Corbyn buildup and all the debates.

All these FBPE types can talk, quite truthfully, about the damage Brexit will do to the UK. But we wouldn’t have Brexit without years of cuts and austerity hurting people and the broad political consensus on both sides just handwringing and going “oh well sorry, nothing to be done”. To say nothing of the years of legitimate concerns that paved the way for the outright racism of both Leave campaigns! So when I read someone say, with great confidence and such sorrow, that Corbyn is just playing politics here? Just utterly contemptible. The current leadership was protesting cuts and speaking out against austerity while the supposedly sensible were ignoring suffering to play nice with the tabloids. Did any of these people ever speak out about the harm caused by their passive support before? Did they care then?

Tl;dr the penny has not dropped for any of these people and any second referendum/people’s vote will reflect that fact.

Errrrrrrr, isn't that the other guy saying that? (xp)

wtf is FBPE?

follow back pro eczema (for all!)

xp yes, I'm simply re-positing it to the DL type consensus!

PCPEU is another one that isn't intentionally related to drugs.

the history of how right-wing party rhetoric has often been most successfully utilised during "stabbed in the back" nationalist type narratives

I'm going to have to ask you to unpack this one - the pro-europeans are likely to to be the ones accused of stabbing in the back (on both sides, by the look of it!)

There is nothing to unpack, apart from your own myopic life throw a monocle pov!

Ah go on, give it a go - my monocle's in the shop at the moment, for a start.

that's what happens throw it, rather than looking through it!

anyway, people like you are always the worst commentators on brexit. Nothing personal, but you are.

ha! what

fuck me, i can barely put a fucking cogent sentence together at the best of times, jed! What?

no idea! people like A Farrell? there aren't many people like him.

People who incessantly, mono-manically cry about Brexit, tend not to give a fuck about lots of other issues that affect the working poor, the disabled, and other forgotten ones. So I basically don't care about their "concerns" either!

what the actual fuck

I don't think people like that are allowed here you must be mistaken. My monocle's AWOL too though. xp

nothing to "unpack". They chat much shite but have little of substance to say about those that need protecting. I'm cool with that. but will never agree with cunts like this!

Andrew is certainly a comrade with particular concerns and i don't know why you would think otherwise.

My fave remoaner hit is: "it's gonna worse for you ppl first". Cheers, but it's already shit and i didn't vote for it you fucking prick!

sorry I wasn't intentionally directing it all towards AF. I'm just a bit pissed tonight and sorry about any offence.

yeah, I can dig that. It's a truly awful time. Let's move on.

No offense here, it's been a shit day.

and I know it's been a bad time for you Cal x

if I'm ever in London again, i'll get you a beer in Andrew!

I'd be on for that - I know I'm a clever arsehole, and that obscures the fact that I know a lot of people are under the cosh for a lot of things. Because I'm Irish, the cosh for most of my loved ones largely reads 'Brexit'. But yeah keep your head up man.

Andrew doesn't half get some stick sometimes.

Hard-earned!

https://img.cdandlp.com/2017/08/imgL/118905627.jpg

I still think DL is a risible clown, but I feel I'm going into a terrible spin cycle here and better go to bed!

wtf is FBPE?

― We can be herpes (Tom D.), Tuesday, 12 June 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Its a twitter hashtag where Remainers can basically congregate to talk about how Brexit is terrible and its all Corbyn's fault and Neil Kinnock is a real Labour leader. I am sad to report I am mutuals with one of those ppl, who faves this lot like a drug so I get to see quite a bit of it, where its not someone from left-twitter mocking it.

There was a late night tweet from this person as to why this wasn't working.

the history of how right-wing party rhetoric has often been most successfully utilised during "stabbed in the back" nationalist type narratives

I'm going to have to ask you to unpack this one - the pro-europeans are likely to to be the ones accused of stabbing in the back (on both sides, by the look of it!)

― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 12 June 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not to pile on or anything in the morning after some colourful exchanges here but I saw a point someone make a couple of days ago, of a possibility - should the referendum result be turned back by a 2nd ref (and that is only 52% the other way), or by any means necessary - of an upturn in fascist-type attacks, where a lot of migrant communities would suffer.

Don't think anyone posted this but a really good piece by David Runciman - which is what various people argue (on here and elsewhere).

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n09/david-runciman/too-few-to-mention

And the last sentence:

But for anyone to undo Brexit, someone is going to have to do it first.

there have been multiple Dacre-bot "national betrayal" type headlines in the dying r/w printed press in the last few days, and no doubt May's continuing weakness and prevaricating will inspire many more. But I could imagine them becoming much more dangerous in a post 2nd ref landscape. I mean they only go out to a couple of mill these days, but are parroted by millions more on the parts of social media that hurts my eyes. During the first ref there were some violent flare ups between Asian and Eastern European communities locally. And that poor guy who got murdered in Peterborough come to mind, I'm sure there was much of this type of shit going down at the time. It would be absolutely foolish to ignore the dangers of these forces having a totemic "betrayal" narrative, whilst being useful idiots for the billionaire hard-brexiters who like the Singapore model very much.

oh, also the small matter of an MP getting murdered in cold blood by a far-right nationalist, that obv had no connection at all with "the message" they were putting out at the time.

sorry for shitting up the thread last night + no hard feelings Andrew, sometimes I forget finishing off the wine-box isn't quite like finishing off the bottle!

Xp to say nothing of various Labour MPs being threatened and abused constantly! One of the most persistent criticisms of Corbyn in the mainstream is that he hates Britain, and on the far right this transfers neatly to “loves foreigners AND hates Britain”. The betrayal narrative is very real and there are a lot of unsavoury people waiting to make capital from it.

no point trying to explain that to ppl like DL, who seem completely oblivious to what austerity is actually doing to other humans

In fairness I had a Twitter exchange with him about this and he was actually railing against austerity for most of the coalition years (and still says it's important as Brexit). I think a lot of London media Remain Twitter is a little oblivious to how monomaniacal and annoying it can be. But its also very easy to fall into the trap of believing the right of, say, Diane Abbott is an austerity-loving Blairite. God knows some Labour MPs have hardly helped themselves here but they've blown their wad on this and will probably never regain the trust of members, and rightly so.

TBH I didn't know about that Ally Fogg thing and assumed he was responding to this unbelievably stupid Zarb tweet:

If Brexit is the biggest issue affecting your life then you must be doing alright. I’m happy for you. Most people have to worry about more pressing issues than the UK’s post-Brexit institutional arrangements. Stop confusing your only concern with the country’s main priority 🙄

— Matt Zarb-Cousin (@mattzarb) June 9, 2018

I mean he's right that for most people in the country healthcare, jobs, housing, education etc trump Brexit as a voting concern every time. And I'm hugely mistrustful of people for whom Brexit is suddenly the only thing that matters. But at the same time Brexit will fuck all those things up, the whole problem is that Brexit and austerity can't be separated, they exacerbate one another. I don't think it's invalid to question whether Labour would struggle if they suddenly inherited a rapidly deteriorating economy.

I'm also very suspicious of people like Zarb for the unrestrained glee they're showing here. There's also a very good reason why Corbyn himself isn't taking such a gleeful line (ie it would be electoral kryptonite in a lot of Remain-voting marginals). (I do wonder if some people on the left would be taking a more vociferously anti-Brexit line if Corbyn himself also did, but that's neither here nor there.)

Also nowhere in Zarb's thinking does Northern Ireland exist, or indeed the concerns of any Europeans (especially Eastern Europeans) living in the UK whose lives are being fucked up by this. The people who are actually likely to be at the sharp end of the increasingly emboldened arseholes who think they've voted to end immigration, or have carte blanche to shit on anyone who looks a bit foreign. Zarb is framing it as a privileged conceit while revealing a lot of unexamined privilege of his own.

In short it's complicated. I wish any of the vocal Remoaners were demonstrating that kind of nuance tho Matt - that they don't is why they infuriate and so are fun to bait.

It's enormously dispiriting to see notionally sensible people banging on about "brocialists" but the elevation of sections of the Twitter left (Zarb, Bastani, Sarkar, etc) to figureheads / spokepeople for the politically-engaged youth has massive drawbacks and this is one of them.

(That Ally Fogg thread is very good by the way but then again it basically approximates my own position so I would say that)