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

He's not dealing with this v well is the thing, which leaves it out there as one of the few obvious cudgels to hand

it's a classic 'when did you stop beating your wife' situation, i am genuinely not sure as to how labour can unpaint itself out of this extremely stupid corner

particularly enjoyed this pungent concern-troll from sajid javid, which skirts pretty close to calling corbyn a holocaust denier

Margaret Hodge’s family were murdered in the Holocaust. Instead of listening to her, Corbyn chooses to condemn her. How on earth can he claim he doesn’t have a problem with Jews? #disgraceful https://t.co/Lv2Rk2wTFY

— Sajid Javid (@sajidjavid) July 19, 2018

Could stop doing pointless shit like the current shenanigans on ignoring the IHRA definitions which has no positive rationale as far as I can tell except to keep a few antisemites onside

tru

or if there is a rationale maybe come out and convincingly defend it idk

It’s not stupid and the issue continues to come up because it hasn’t been dealt with sufficiently. I’m not interested in the bad faith actors but the point is that many Jewish people do feel strongly about it, including friends of mine, and at no point should the argument be that it’s all a load of nonsense. It is a problem because it is a problem and several fuckups don’t give the Jewish community any reason to take it in good faith. Genuinely don’t understand what’s so difficult to get about that, nor that people you dislike aren’t wrong about this.

Like, the rumour that they didn’t consult with the Jewish Labour Movement on the code? The oldest affiliated group? That’s really unbelievable, it looks awful and it sounds awful and it’s just not surprising that any of this has happened.

part of my theory is that there are enough people who are Corbyn friendly/adjacent who believe Israel has no right to exist, hence this obfuscation

Discusses from a legal standpoint, including the
IHRA definitions...

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n09/stephen-sedley/defining-anti-semitism

(xp) definitely

this is also interesting and useful i think (klug urges readers "to go back to the two primary sources so as to check my analysis and to judge for themselves whether etc", which i haven't done -- part of the question he's asking is whether the rewrite doesn't IMPROVE on the original in key respects)
https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/brian-klug/code-of-conduct-for-antisemitism-tale-of-two-texts

probably don't read the comments :(

this is one situation where the comments - o god the comments - add an important contextual layer to Klug's argument

Could stop doing pointless shit like the current shenanigans on ignoring the IHRA definitions which has no positive rationale as far as I can tell except to keep a few antisemites onside

From what I can tell the rabbis who are all in agreement on this don't really all agree on anything else, which should be a huge warning sign. It's a stupid, self-defeating own-goal for Labour. My suspicion is they know that if they adopted the IHRA definition in full they'd have to start expelling people left, right and centre, but that would probably be worth it to put to bed an issue that's potentially toxic for them.

Also on an issue of pure principle surely a minority group should be able to define what is and is not racist against them, rather than have another group try and define it for them?

lol 2 this non story:

The Ministry of Defence is to spend about £4m reimbursing 8,000 military personnel who are paying higher income taxes in Scotland, with some highly-paid officers getting back £1,500 this year.

Gavin Williamson, the Defence secretary, said military personnel who have to pay higher Scottish income taxes would get a lump payment at the end of this tax year worth between £12 and £1,500 per head.

The move is designed to fuel the battle between the Conservatives and Edinburgh’s Scottish National party government over its decision to use Scotland’s new powers to set its own income tax rates.
Williamson claimed that unfairly penalised Scottish military personnel, many of whom are based overseas but are taxed at the Scottish rate, and would make Scotland a less attractive posting for army, navy and air force staff.

It could also put off some Scots from joining the armed forces because they would be paid less than their counterparts elsewhere in the UK.

“It is completely wrong for the brave men and women of our armed forces to be punished for serving in Scotland by unfair raids on their pay packets by the Scottish government,” he said.

I think the only solution is to move the UK Nuclear missile base from Faslane to the Thames Estuary. Everything else of any note in the UK is in that vicinity.

fwiw, the brave men and women of our armed forces would have to be earning £24,000 in order to be paying £12 per annum more in income tax in Scotland and, by my calculation, somewhere north of £250,000 in order to be paying £1,500 p.a. more.

it's true, there are far better and more pressing reasons to punish the brave men and women of our armed forces

lol

Yes, good luck finding deep enough waters for nuclear submarines anywhere else in the UK but Scotland. Pay up or shut up.

I briefly got in what the brits would call a row with a far-leftie on twitter who earnestly believes ash sarkar is a psyop and I need to lie down

seems legit

shd've told them to literally go fuck themselves

http://www.itv.com/news/2018-07-19/chief-whip-julian-smith-cannot-keep-his-job-say-tory-mps/

Fucking w/pairing is startlingly stupid. It might get you one vote, but with a margin like that do you really, really want to get into the business of trying to make sure you can get the entire DUP to rock up from Northern Ireland at v. short notice? (Actually, didn't that happen in the 70s? Lots of hospital-bed-wheeled-to-chamber voting etc)

1. This is a very big deal - Theresa May is reportedly going to denounce the Irish border 'backstop' at a speech in Belfast tomorrow. https://t.co/4D6cuVt63o

— Henry Farrell (@henryfarrell) July 19, 2018

holy fuck at that thread, good luck UK

This has been a genuinely astonishing couple of weeks from May. I’m not sure what, in terms of British leadership, you could compare the depths of her cowardice to. idk how she isn’t too embarrassed to get up in the morning.

I think she’s ultimately just delaying having to deal with the ERG, rather than expecting the EU to cave in to a raft of increasingly impossible demands, in the hope that when the implications of crashing out become clearer to the public but it’s a terrible strategy and, unless there are parallel secret negotiations going on with the EU27 behind the scenes, leaves her negotiating Brexit looking like a lunatic.

*in the hope that when the implications of crashing out become clearer to the public they will be on board with a compromise

My background knowledge is cursory but this is a kind of flabbergasting development. I truly hope that the yknow armed sectarian conflict doesn’t pick right up where it left off.

.@theresa_may says 70 "technical notices" for businesses and households will be published in Aug and Sept setting out how we can all prepare for a no-deal Brexit (should that be what happens). Yikes

— Robert Peston (@Peston) July 18, 2018

Reprint of the Dig For Victory posters pending, I assume.

I’m 99.5% sure the UK will fold like a cheap ironing board before it gets to that stage but the slight possibility they won’t has me idly considering exit strategies.

better start stockpiling some canned basics!

If May had any sense of shame she would have died of embarrassment by now. I can't even stand her, but still feel the odd twinge of sympathetic embarrassment on her behalf, so embarrassing is her game.

xxp I don’t really have ANY faith in this analysis.

All signs are pointing to the government preparing to foist the blame on variously the EU, Ireland and anyone who stands in their way of getting a deal that takes all of the benefits of EU membership but none of the costs. The situation in NI is more fractious than it’s been in a long time. Couple this with a media keen to offer coverage to the most revanchist and nakedly bigoted people in the country, and it’s incredibly dangerous territory. Even if they somehow fudge a deal they will still have divided all the country and stirred up so much trouble for people.

You can blame this on the Tories - Europe has taken down three prime ministers and will no doubt take down May as well - but British exceptionalism and short-term thinking is behind every twist and turn here. They will fuck the UK but they’ll fuck Ireland too and if that leads to unity in my lifetime, it’s no less than they deserve.

Oh and by the way, fuck the complicit media letting people parrot “no deal is better than a bad deal” completely unchallenged. That something favoured by maybe 10% of people at an absolute maximum is seriously under consideration is nothing less than a dereliction of duty and everyone who let this shit go by unchallenged or undiscussed deserves to be completely ashamed.

wow otm.

Yep.

I should say I am a naturally pessimistic person (no shit) and I hope what SV says is true, but I am almost as angry this morning as I was when the vote happens and regardless of the outcome nobody should ever forgive or forget this.

two most likely outcomes BRINO or no deal ?

I’m confused. I thought after the 2017 GE the parliamentary arithmetic meant that hard brexit was dead in the water but all of a sudden everyone seems to be talking up the prospects of no deal being the most likely deal ?!

It would be dead in the water if May was prepared to oppose it, but she isn't. It's difficult to overstate how colossaly, dangerously irresponsible she's been in trying to cling onto her job - which is obviously untenable - for so long. Or at least it would be if her likely successors weren't all even worse.

I can only assume she believes that Corbyn or the right of the Conservative party would be so damaging she needs to cling on in order to save the country from itself but it’s not a sustainable position. At some point she is going to have to face up to the ERG.

It's more about the terror of going down as Britain's worst post-war Prime Minister I think.

On page 2 of the FT this morning was an article saying that the government is going to ‘waive’ collection of customs duties and some customs inspections for a period after Brexit which sounds like they just worked out how complicated and expensive that is and how unprepared for it they are. The lost revenue will be billions.

that ship has definitely sailed xp

I can only assume she believes that Corbyn or the right of the Conservative party would be so damaging she needs to cling on in order to save the country from itself but it’s not a sustainable position. At some point she is going to have to face up to the ERG.

I'm not sure why she would object to the the right of the Conservative Party, she seems to be dancing to enough of their tunes.

She’s a racist authoritarian but I think she’s a racist authoritarian who is under fewer illusions about Britain’s global competitiveness in a situation where European airspace is closed, where the entire financial services industry has decamped to Frankfurt and Dublin, where food costs 50% more, etc, than Mogg is.

it's just super-cool that we're being steered off into the abyss by a pm no-one voted for

It's both sobering and making-me-want-to-drink that this era of unfathomable challenges is in the hand of perhaps the worst politicians in living memory, across the board.

it's an all-star lineup of idiots, fucking idiots, total fucking idiots and michael gove

She’s a racist authoritarian but I think she’s a racist authoritarian who is under fewer illusions about Britain’s global competitiveness in a situation where European airspace is closed, where the entire financial services industry has decamped to Frankfurt and Dublin, where food costs 50% more, etc, than Mogg is.

Yes, she did well to stand up to him for 5 seconds.

gyac otm

yeah

good mourning obv