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

Sounds like they spent too much time watching those daily reports on the BBC and Sky on working class voters deserting Labour for UKIP, every time you turned on your telly there was some liar standing in a High Street somewhere in England being interviewed saying they'd voted Labour all their lives but never again.

May has revealed Trump’s advice was to sue the EU and not to negotiate, which was the UKIP fantasy

as relevantly -- if i'm remembering this correctly -- they were working from very thin and outdated canvassing info (and the snap election didn't help here)

I was scrolling down some thread and the CLP Chair of Itchen said there was some backstory to this and it was regional + HQ that threw it away, but he wouldn't expand on it.

Has Greig taken over at the Mail yet?

not yet I don't think. Dacre appears to be getting the bed all nice and shitty for his arrival.

Not social media, but I think it's pretty clear that hq, because of their pessimism about Corbz, misallocated campaigners to seats Lab won comfortably and away from seats they v narrowly lost?

This is basically it; everyone was predicting a Tory rout (if I saw one smug piece about how the Tories would take Bolsover, I read them all). HQ were doing damage limitation; it was Momentum and the nearest marginal campaign who were targeting seats offensively.

The story here is 'Labour HQ tried to deceive their own leader' not 'Labour HQ incompetence cost Labour the election' - virtually everyone, including Team Corbyn, thought they were going to be annihilated when the election was called and everything needs to be understood in the context that they were in damage limitation mode. Last election is as much a story of the limitations of data as anything else.

(xpost)

More to the point I think the emerging story of the last few years is that Labour - and maybe the political establishment in general - don't understand how to interpret data properly. What people are saying is less important than why they're saying it, and MPs and journalists tend to stop at the former. Nowhere is this more important than around immigration - but also welfare. I get the sense that if Labour MPs, and Harriet Harman in particular, had been able to interpret polling data at anything more than face value then Andy Burnham would probably have been leader by now.

What people are saying is less important than why they're saying it

succinctly put and very otm. working that out is pretty tough though and v hard to prove

a few years back alex harrowell proposed that, alongside sub-editors (for grammer and spelling and some fact-checking), newspapers shd routinely introduce numeracy-checking editors who would be tasked with reading what people say against what what the poll (or economic data or whatever) is actually saying, and correcting it

with the caveat that this would introduce intense political friction into the subbing process, and thus be quite hard to do, i actually think it's a good idea -- politicians will only get good at this is there's an *immediate* counter-incentive (as opposed to the medium- or long-term counter-incentives of "losing the next few elections")

agree with all this, but i'm sure a key factor in misinterpreting data is wishful thinking - for whatever ideological hobby horse the analyst rides - alongside incompetence

FWIW I think Mark's suggestion would make things worse not better - the last thing we need is more pseudo-objectivity - there are enough people wanting to use economics (and data in general) as a way of 'proving' their own political point of view as it is.

the last thing we need is more pseudo-objectivity

... and not just in politics (personal grumble there).

Also lol no media organisation is going to voluntarily invest in that and the people who could do it properly and at speed would be expensive and in very short supply.

i guess the bulk of polling and focus group stuff is intended to shape public opinion rather than to describe it

*glumly deletes an entire paragraph from current job application cover letter*

the notion of Blair, Mandelson etc being conviction socialists who were reluctantly dragged to the centre as a result of their rigorous scientific analysis of people's legitimate concerns is not really gonna fly

insert tasteless "Harriet Harman PIE charts" joek here

you can make just about anything stand up with data, if you are selective with the stats then just about any spurious assertion by some politician/gov minister can be made plausible. Like finding some shit non-league forward who has a similar shots to goals ratio as Mbappe and claiming he's worth 100 mill or when Burnley did an attempt at Moneyball and the data led them to believe Brian Laws was the best manager outside the Prem! As people have said there will always be incompetence or ppl conveniently finding the data they needed.

I do think that the Labour MPs who were voting (or failing to vote against) the dismantling of their entire political project were doing so out of cowardice and stupidity rather than ideology fwiw.

In any case, "relucantly dragged to the centre" is pretty misleading given the whole point of the project should be to move the centre to where you are - Blair and Mandelson were incredibly successful at that until suddenly they weren't. But you can't win without the support of the conviction socialists who are reluctantly dragged to the centre and it's why repeating 90s political tricks 20 years on won't work.

It's the same reason why I think it's missing the point to argue whether Brexit is about national identity or economic anxiety - it's clearly both, but the cunts can't win without getting the economically anxious onboard. The whole project for social liberals should be to work out how to split those constituencies.

There was an excellent series of articles by Mark Wallace not that long after last year's election about how this screwed up the Tories (who you'd have expected to have some advance warning) even more - outdated data and letting go the people who'd won the previous election leading to funneling activists (who now fucking hate them) away from seats that they considered safe (but lost by small margins) into the advance front, where they ended up losing by 5-6000 votes.

There’s a lot about Labour Southside vs. Team Corbyn in the Alex Nunns book, everyone should read IMHO.

many xps but Re the novichok, the poison being dumped by the assassins in a skip for civilians to die of sounds very plausible to me. The logic being, what sort of person would sign up for a job as an assassin? Someone a bit unhinged who would make a mistake exactly like that, no?

Or else they would be extremely businesslike and professional - like they are in the movies.

well you'd think their employers might discourage them from doing anything to cause further diplomatic problems with the nation where they are murdering their targets. Maybe make them watch that Assassins movie with Stallone!

Or else they would be extremely businesslike and professional - like they are in the movies.

those people are very expensive to train, retain and keep quiet afterwards. and in the end they get caught on tape anyway, so at this point it probably makes perfect sense to just hand off the very specific toolset and instruction manual to some local thugs and hope for "good enough" results?

fiction authors & screenwriters like to paint the world as if there's a steady stream of work for extremely intelligent, careful and capable thugs, because that's how you build a franchise; but no such thing exists (outside of a particularly cynical view of US SOCOM, I guess) in the real world.

I mean the easiest answer to the novichok shit, in my mind, is that it was provided through a series of middlemen to a local criminal or two, and somewhere along the way the dosage amounts and the disposal requirements got muddled (or ignored)

& yeah it's totally a trial balloon to see what they can get away with now that an anti-NATO, anti-EU POTUS is in place thanks to the abysmally antidemocratic nature of our Constitution and the ratfucking machinations of various GRU and affiliated fucks, dressed with the useful idiocy of Jim Comey

am completely losing track of wtf is going w/votes today

any news?

this could be the day this govt unravels, so perhaps BBC radio is not the best option for updates.

They've accepted ERG amendments, saying they fit in with Chequers while everyone else says they undermine it

Source says government imposed one condition in agreeing amendments to Customs bill made by ERG and @Jacob_Rees_Mogg, which in effect kills Chequers plan - "that no one from the ERG crowed about it and that there was no triumphalism". It is all about the substance you see

— Robert Peston (@Peston) July 16, 2018

May was originally proposing to collect EU tariffs but one of the key amendments -- proposed by Priti Patel -- would ban her from doing this unless there was a reciprocal agreement in place for the EU to collect duties due on goods destined for the U.K.

They're all fucking mental

how many can the govt afford to lose in a vote?

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/theresa-may-accused-of-running-scared-of-her-brexiteers-amid-plans-to-let-mps-take-early-summer-break_uk_5b4cbd9ee4b022fdcc5bf073?hdt&utm_hp_ref=uk-homepage

sounds about right

the government can only lose 1 or 2 votes if everyone turns up, right? 650 mps, 316 conservative + 10 DUP?

is it that simple?

how many of those 5 independents are likely to vote with the government? elphicke is presumably not there for a start

of those 5 independents, 3 are ex-labour and 1 is an ex-conservative all with sex-related allegations. not sure if any of them will vote.

one is a legit independent from northern ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Hermon

I’m not sure what you mean by Elphicke?

In order to beat the government labour need to minimise abstainers/defectors. Of the 4 independents only one (Kelvin Hopkins) is likely to vote with government on Brexit, but it depends what the argument being made is. They obviously aren’t subject to the whip.

This also relies on all Tory MPs voting with the government and several have indicated that they will oppose.

It’s really down to Tory remainers, as it always has been.

xp the independents definitely do vote

Public Service Announcement. We expect seven divisions from 9pm:
1 - NC 11
2 - NC 13
3 - NC 16
4 - NC 36
5 - Amdt 21
6 - Amdt 73
7 - Third Reading

— Labour Whips (@labourwhips) July 16, 2018

This thread will tell you which votes are which and vote breakdown is usually here: https://commonsvotes.digiminster.com/ (though the app is quicker)

xp to Simon - yeah, this just such an amazingly terrible look, even by this government's standards.

Here is is: Government lay down a motion to give MPs an early summer holiday! This is NOT going to go down well... pic.twitter.com/nAeBlQVAGU

— Zach Brown (@zachjourno) July 16, 2018

i don't mean are they entitled to vote. i mean do they vote in practice. i'm guessing elphicke is not voting as of a couple of months ago given the nature of the allegations/police involvement but who knows. obviously there's nothing legally stopping him.

Yes they definitely do vote in practice. Elphicke spoke in the debate an hour ago.

Recess thing is like, on the one hand they’ve got a ticking clock to debate Brexit legislation and basically no time to do i; on the other there’s been barely any legislation passed in this parliament so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

45 mps did not vote or abstained in that first ballot so i give up trying to count rebels ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There are six independents, I should say - 4 ex Lab, 1 ex Conservative and Lady Hermon as mentioned. Looks like enough Labour MPs abstained & no Tory rebels. (Also don’t forget the Sinn Fein MPs in parliamentary maths)

the government can only lose 1 or 2 votes if everyone turns up, right? 650 mps, 316 conservative + 10 DUP?
is it that simple?

Sinn Fein

27 votes = 14 needed to go the other way.

ah right

Liz Truss has just said at the IEA the Tories need to support the free market like Beyoncé and quoted: “All the women, who are independent. Throw your hands up at me. All the honeys, who making money.”

— Grant Tucker (@GrantTucker) July 16, 2018

Truss has been on the spice again.