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

some of these idiots keep referring to JC as hard left, when most of his manifesto would be regarded as centrist in northern/central Europe.

funniest thing I heard this morning was IDS kicking some street knowledge on gang culture!

Straight Outta Chingford, crazy muthafucka named IDS

I am not reading it either but there was some interesting commentary around whether the policy areas he views as neglected and in need of forward-thinking intervention would mean that a ‘centrist’ platform would actually be further to the left than Labour’s current one.

This seems to be pretty common - on one hand suggesting that a centrist government is needed to ‘fix housing’ or ‘save the NHS’ while, at the same time, suggesting that Corbyn’s proposals to run an additional bus from Bromley to Swanley on Thursday evenings is pie-in-the-sky fantasy talk.

There is I suppose an argument that, for example, schools policy is being 'crowded out' of the national debate at the moment in favour of Brexit or Labour's stance on antisemitism. Which is true, and both of them are self-inflicted wounds by the Tories and Labour respectively, but that's also a problem that the media itself creates in choosing what not to pay attention to.

when the likes of Harris are ready to acknowledge that Blairite centrism kowtows to right wing economics, and can achieve only very limited social reform because of this commitment to entrenched economic inequality, then we'll talk.

I think he does sort of acknowledge that in the piece when he mentions the financial crisis but the whole thing is so confused and obviously written in an airport that it doesn't really come out.

he should have read Tooze's Crashed on his hols.

in fact if any of them had a coherent explanation of how barely-fettered predatory capitalism as the motor of the economy will increase social equality then they'd have more credibility than they do now

Honest "Centrism" should begin with burying Labour 1997-2010, not praising it.

these are all good points but i must intrude to post this bone-chilling video of our great nation's leader getting down with the kids in cape town

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0YfFfVCzEA

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ConsciousPersonalItaliangreyhound-small.gif

Bizarro - thank you for destroying my life.

you and me both tbf

"to be funky"

good grief. the little kicks otm

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DloRFitWwAEq4oB.jpg

a profoundly moving and inspirational story of "working your bloody socks off" to get ahead in journalism, rather than going through all that costly higher education rigmarole.

wow

aw, dad taught her how to monetize trolling

I realize it's not worth trying to put together the faintly discernible logic of his petrolheadery and her needless reference to traffic cones, so I'll stop thinking about it now.

There is a Clarkson St down the road from me. Back in the day his family were big players in the glass manufacturing biz. Not suggesting that twat got a privilege boost in his career as well though, perish the thought.

he talked abt the glass industry in his "who do you think you are": he wz angry that victorian do-gooders had forced the factories to stop poisoning everyone who lived near them with fumes and blamed this for him not being wealthier than he is -- tho it was fairly obvious even in his telling that an ancestor had just been a v bad businessperson and that's where the money all went

Blaming regulation (or tax) for your terribly-managed business going under is a very commonplace right-wing thought trail.

gah yes. that and "not enough skilled workers" cf. our business is incapable of turning a profit if we pay the prevailing wage

lol students and cereal eh

no plans to watch the original

pic.twitter.com/A0q5EQ7qxC

— cyriak harris (@cyriakharris) August 28, 2018

Salmond does the full Keith O'Brien and resigns.

Then launches a crowdfunder to pay for his legal action against the Scottish Government.

at least he's no antisemite eh?

runs the official line

£25k on his crowdfunder already!

Could've bought a Farage portrait with that.

Imagine donating to that crowdfunder.

this ignominious display is probably the nail in the coffin for scottish independence imo. imagine you're an apolitical sort, especially if you're a woman, and seeing this unhinged rallying round of a shameless dick from indy supporters, hardly appealing.

it seems entirely obvious to me that there will be more women coming forward

there's a similarity to the way that Nu Labour focused heavily on the moral shortcomings if their opponents in the absence of much ideological difference. You might expect the outcome here to be similar but in the same way, Rone wasn't levelled in a day.

Mandelson's "They've nowhere else to go" comes to mind!

Newsnight tonight had a lengthy feature on the Salmond debacle followed an interview with a female comedy writer on the Louis CK debacle where she stated that there should be "no way back" for comedians accused of abuse.

The programme then closed with a tribute to "Michael Jackson, The King Of Pop whose 60th birthday would have been today"...

o_O

Mandelson's "They've nowhere else to go" comes to mind!

Except for the voters who vote SNP because they are more worried about delivering social democracy than independence, there is another place for them to go - Corbyn's Labour. A significant shift from one to the other would be a big hit for the SNP and derail the cause of independence anyway. (Disclaimer - I've not been following what's happening in Scottish Labour or how they're polling up there).

Salmond himself always seemed ideologically slippery, more so than Sturgeon.

SLab still polling p terribly i think but a metoo-inflected battle within the SNP between two of its neolib factions is going to do the corbs-mobile no harm

Unfortunately think Ruth Davidson will benefit much more than ScotLab from this.

can't believe you're implying that the SNP has a load of crypto-Tory support

it seems entirely obvious to me that there will be more women coming forward

i know a few women who worked with him in one capacity or another and every single one of them said he was a handsy creep, so yeah it seems inevitable to me

Richard Leonard doesn't seem right to me, not just the two first names either. I think I even prefer Ruth Davidson to him tbh. Maybe being a bit facetious here, but I can't imagine him spearheading a ScotLab resurgence any time soon.

If there was that much smoke around Salmond then it's very unlikely that other senior SNP members didn't know what he was up to, presumably before he stood for election in Westminster.

indeed

frank field gone

yay! hopefully Sheerman next.

Gone over anti-Semitism.

What's the real reason?

About to be deselected by his CLP?

that sounds likely.

Meanwhile Sky are happily reporting the news about the Sadiq Khan balloon while conveniently omitting to mention that the guy behind it is a massive antisemite and racist.

I'm not a fan of Khan, but props to him taking it in good humour.

Not death obv., what has never lived can never die.