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

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Di2zzgNXgAA_aSR.jpg

speaking of which, this popped up the other day..

looking at the Paul Embery tweet i notice that the first two of his RTs beneath it are Jordan Peterson and spiked

Douglas Murray in conversation with Jordan Peterson - typical viewing for a self-defined Democratic Socialist.

honest to god something something gulags something something blood pressure something something blue Stalinists

Some potentially positive stuff here:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/27/fake-news-inquiry-data-misuse-deomcracy-at-risk-mps-conclude

Also good that they are going to stop using the term ‘fake news’.

Starting tomorrow!

when gov ministers don't get pumped or resign for misleading parliament they are setting quite a bad example from Westminster, before you even get to shadowy dodgy fuckers like Cambridge Metallica.

i do have questions about who will be the arbiter of Real News

this guy

Facebook fighting fake news... pic.twitter.com/1r2MHoGhoN

— Christopher Bouzy (@cbouzy) July 27, 2018

lol sorted

lol!

(l) the politically neutral BBC (r) neo-fascism in plainly neo-fascism clothing.

Excellent that, after all the wailing about Momentum-dominated CLPs deselecting 'moderate' Labour MPs, the (iirc) first actual deselection has set off a war between the moderates and Blue Labour.

Great to see that Remainy moderates have actually done this. Hopefully this can set off further deselections.

This was v good on the whole process - its selection:

https://newsocialist.org.uk/mandatory-reselection-view-outside/

far too sensible and obvious

Indeed.

Didn't know this happened to Frank Field too: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/28/frank-field-criticises-local-labour-members-confidence-vote

Things are truly gonna change if he is given the boot.

i can hear the counter-arguments they would make about stability and etc and they all come from a place of technocratic contempt for democracy which is the Centrist Way as any fule kno

I always thought in my lifetime I would witness a dead person getting deselected, just thought it might it might have took another few decades!

I dunno, I think deselection is one of those 'be careful what you wish for' things - clearly being able to get rid of a lot of sclerotic, lazy, contemptuous or just out-and-out bad MPs is a good thing. Being able to hold onto a safe seat forever, regardless of performance, just because you've been there for years and wear the right colour rosette is clearly not a sign of a healthy democracy.

But it's not necessarily any more democratic - constituency parties don't always accurately represent the views of their consituents for one thing. And it's all about who they get replaced with - any party needs healthy dissent and debate if it's going to survive and it's not hard to envisage a scenario where a hard-working constituency MP gets replaced with a bigoted crank who's able to make the right noises during the selection process.

My gut feeling is that any half decent MP would probably survive a deselection process but there are enough ways in which it could go wrong in practice, particularly in Blue Labourish constituencies let alone in the Tory party.

Also some of the worst individual decisions are made in environments where job insecurity is rife and people make choices with self-preservation in mind. You see it all the time in the private sector, but it's also why some of the worst rhetoric tends to come from MPs in marginal constituencies.

If it means getting rid of Kate Hoey, Frank Field and (please God) John Mann then I am prepared to careless over what I'm wishing for.

I want Sheerman gone, but that fucker enjoys the life of the MP so much he avoids the type of controversy Hoey and Field have courted. Who can blame the first registered lobbyist.

it's not deselection, it ought to be winning selection at a general election and i'll take the potential negatives if it adds to the level of democracy in our terrible system

They’re meant to represent the views of the party, not the constituents, so I don’t see it as undemocratic. If other people want to run, they still can, but the endorsement of the party should be a matter of democratic control by the party.

But it's not necessarily any more democratic - constituency parties don't always accurately represent the views of their consituents for one thing.

neither do MPs or indeed any individual or group, but this the nature of representation. for more radical parties there would always be someone more moderate who wld be closer to the views of ppl outside the party than whatever candidate the members prefer, that's wouldn't't make them a 'more democratic' choice

And it's all about who they get replaced with - any party needs healthy dissent and debate if it's going to survive and it's not hard to envisage a scenario where a hard-working constituency MP gets replaced with a bigoted crank who's able to make the right noises during the selection process.

this is an argt against democracy

yeah, the point of an automatic reselection process for each election would be that potential MPs have to maintain a dialogue with the party and its members, rather than display the kind of detachment and contempt that the bulk of the PLP has had for the party for the last 5 years

and as i say, that's a dialogue - good politicians, good democrats, should be able to argue and dissent without bowing to absolute orthodoxy and also without being Frank Fucking Field and his personal fiefdom

even thinking of being an MP as a job is a big part of the problem here

Yes, seeing MPs as a job for a lifetime when actually representing the party, its members and constituents is a specific kind of priviledge. Therefore this should be earned every election cycle.

I think if a good selection process was put in and - after a certain amount of upheaval as some of these awful MPs are cleared off - it would eventually be fuss-free for the most part. Times change as do parties and their members so I would expect periods of turnover.

Democracy has to be able to take it.

Otherwise the guy who wants to "clear the swamp" comes in.

or Drain blah. Part of the Brexit vote was the voter's desire to do just that. Re-selection wouldn't even fix that by itself, its a beginning.

if an MP personally beloved of his/her constituency is deselected by the party they can in fact always stand as an independent, and test the depth of that connection!

The whole idea of MPs representing their constituency and also following a party whip fundamentally does not work, in effect they represent neither, just themself and their career. Of course whistling in the wind as far as electoral reform is concerned but let's at least identify the real problem here.

this is an argt against democracy

It isn't really, I'm basically fine with it as automatic reselection when that's the accepted rule for everyone, because it encourages MPs to continuously make the case for their own reselection throughout the course of Parliament, that's healthy. You'd also hope it would encourage the sort of transparency that would prevent a Jared O'Mara or Christine Shawcroft getting the nomination in the first place, because they'd be shown up for what they are earlier on. Deselction as punishment in isolated cases is more likely to lead to rush jobs or abuse of the system - in most cases it's probably better to just expel people and let them Danzcuk themselves.

surely the only sort of transparency that would prevent someone who'd made offensive comments getting into office would be someone combing through their history (or the threat of it). if you want to make sure that more voting will produce better candidates before you support it you're more of a technocrat than a democrat

I was saying that more voting would be likely to produce better candidates anyway, it would encourage would-be rivals for the selection to show their hands much earlier in the course of a parliamentary term and create a situation where they're subject to proper scrutiny. If someone's been sharing holocaust denial memes or whatever it's likely to come out anyway and better it does so before they win the nomination than after it.

<extremely that cunt off have i got news for you voice> although some have complained that exposing a prospective parliamentary candidate for sharing holocaust denial memes would give them an unfair advantage in the labour selection process

Rightwing UK thinktank 'offered ministerial access' to potential US donors

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/29/rightwing-thinktank-ministerial-access-potential-us-donors-insitute-of-economic-affairs-brexit

My God, Mark Littlewood, what a repulsive specimen.

jfc this suit of clothes

https://i.imgur.com/vLMhzAO.png

His Gestapo uniform was at the cleaners.

gd I'm bombed, when representatives turn to leaders, nah

I assume the BBC will think deeply about this before each of Kate Andrews' next 250 or so appearances.

It's almost as if our democracy is a false veneer.

’he’s able to get into ministers’

don't really understand why right wing pressure groups need ministerial access "hey Boris have you considered doing something really right wing?" "no i hadn't thought about that cheers"

Hopefully the Charity Commission will properly crack down on "think tanks" this time but it's highly unlikely.

Jeremy Hunt off to a great start by referring to his Chinese wife as Japanese in a meeting with the Chinese Foreign Minister.

they've done a cracking job of stripping dubious organisations of their charity status so far, great bunch of lads!

I've just got my NEC ballot and voted for the JC9. My fuck off and die Izzard motivation to participate this year was just looking at the Progress slate for 10 seconds, and seeing that glowing Akehurst head.

Shocking when there are genuine charities out there, in need of support, like Eton College.

don't really understand why right wing pressure groups need ministerial access "hey Boris have you considered doing something really right wing?" "no i hadn't thought about that cheers"

― the Joao looked at Jonny (Noodle Vague), Monday, 30 July 2018 5:08 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

When there’s so many nasty things they could be getting up to, think tanks are there to remind them of the choices they have. Like this old canard from today:

Brexit will undoubtedly change the UK in many way, and this morning a centre-right thinktank, Policy Exchange, suggests the government should use withdrawal from the European Union to resurrect an idea last popularised during the Tony Blair era - identity cards. The report says the new “settled status” system for EU nationals who stay in the UK after Brexit (which does not at present involve a card, although the Brexit committee said recently it should) should be converted into a national ID card system.

It says:

The one welcome consequence of the Windrush scandal has been a revival of the debate about ID cards. With more people living in the country temporarily, with more conditions on their residence, some form of unique number identification for establishing status (with the state, employers, landlords and so on) is vital for all those without permanent residence status. The identity management experiment for EU citizens remaining in the UK after Brexit should be a prototype for a national system.

And it claims that having a national ID card scheme could avert the repeat of another Windrush-style scandal.

We also strongly recommend re-opening the debate about ID cards or some form of national identity management system to reassure people in a world of ever rising human flows that we know who is in the country, for how long, and what their entitlements are. This is surely a bulwark against ugly forms of nativism. The move from a low control to a higher control border goes hand in hand with the move from a low documentation society to a higher documentation one.

The often elderly Caribbeans caught up in the Windrush scandal were victims of that process being mismanaged, not the process itself. The justified outcry over the Windrush failure should not extend to challenging this shift to a higher control border, indeed a proper national ID system would have prevented the harassment of the Windrush victims. The system has evidently been too tough in some areas and not tough enough in others

god bless Progress, heaven needed some middle class liberals