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

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.

Expect Field is boarding a ship for Whitby as we speak

Owen Jones is saying deselection. There were moves in that direction but I didn't get a sense of it actually happening.

I would like to express mild disappointment that the first post after devvvine's announcement wasn't maracas.

FF lost a no-confidence vote tabled by his constituency party a month or so ago (for voting with the government when he could have helped topple it)

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

Also he knows the whole point of it was to troll him into accusations of hypocrisy after he let the Trump balloon go up, and he's not stupid enough to take the bait.

The Khan balloon sort of looks like it could've been designed by (a racist misogynist) David Shrigley.

wait shrigley is bad not good??

nashwan means *if* shrigley were bad not good in these ways he might have done this

Aye, I could've done words better there.

*deletes half-composed tweet*

Appearing at the state house in Nairobi in a joint press conference with May, Kenyatta was asked about an agreement to allow stolen funds in Britain to be returned to Kenyato fund health, education and other development projects

He said: “Last year, if you recall, the foreign secretary – then Boris, erm, Boris, Boris Johnson – the bicycle guy ... Boris Johnson was here with ambulances. These ambulances were bought courtesy of funds that had been seized, returned and utilised to buy ambulances which were distributed across the country.

“I believe this only strengthens that and the ability of our two countries and legal systems to be able to work together to ensure that any assets that may have been acquired in the United Kingdom – that are associated with corruption or any other such crime – are successfully returned and put to use for the benefit of the people of the republic.”

the bicycle guy because none of his own schemes were worth shit guy

Sheerman must be next, he's been on the counter-offensive to Momentum in the local rag and mysteriously an old racist tweet of his emerged the other day. Field was a mess on PM. He seems to think his massive majority in a Merseyside seat is down to him! Same with Sheerman, often people are saying he's just an old dodgy bastard that lives in a castle outside W Yorkshire, too busy with his lobbying/grifting income streams to gaf about Hudds. He pissed off the football fans by mistakenly cheering Sheff Wednesday's goal in the playoff game last year. And then he was criticising a proposed safe-standing area at Leeds Rd. Every time he opens his mouth something either completely wrong or bullshit comes out.

Field isn't entirely wrong, brand recognition counts for a lot amongst the bovine end of the electorate.

altho on his Five Live interview he didn't seem to appreciate the irony of complaining about people being allowed to rejoin Labour after standing against them in earlier elections, and threatening to run as an independent at the next one.

i'm high fiving TM on her latest dance moves, there's something there.

I feel a lot of empathy with socially awkward weirdos, but alas this one has long since crossed the rubicon, and would love to see her dancing off a bridge tbh.

simon danzcuk got just 883 votes when he stood as an independent against labour in 2017 -- field's been in place for a lot longer and probably will garner some residual personal loyalty but the "brand recognition" is as often as not the party rather than the person

I know in Hudds there has been a lot of ppl voting for the Labour brand, rather than the MP, and getting increasingly vocal about how the Sheerman brand makes entering that voting booth and voting in his name feel like an act of trudging through deep puddles of vomit.

Most people in Vauxhall have been voting Labour through very gritted teeth (I was going to say "for many years" but I don't know how many people who live in Vauxhall have lived there for a very long time. Vanishingly few, I'd imagine)

"Most people in Vauxhall have been voting Labour through very gritted teeth"

sometimes imitation is the most sincerest form of empathy :p

LOL @ Emily Maitlis' entirely balanced coverage of Frank Field's resignation on Newsnight.

great show of unity from the party members there "refusing to talk to each other directly"

tbf I'd refuse to talk to Chris Williamson directly.

what an absolute cunt he is. He makes me want to dance with Theresa May.