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

I haven't read what was in the Torygraph yesterday, but if Kershaw was peddling that same Nazis=left-wing claptrap as Tebbitt then he might find some of his peers are laughing at him and will never take him seriously again.

I think the article was a refutation of Kershaw, et al in the New Statesman?

wouldn't it be problematic for future evil Tory governments to reverse something

yes but it hasn't stopped them before iirc

xp

ah, that explains it!

I think the tory party would struggle to take ppl's shares away

I have worked for places where people got encouraged to buy company shares - not loads (you couldn't call it emergency fund-raising, exactly), about £200 worth. The idea, as you say, to get people interested in the success of the company in a small way, and get people interested in investing in shares in a more general way. We had to sign pre-sale notifications, though, because if we left the company we weren't allowed to keep them. I eventually moved on, got a pay-back (about £230 or so, not bad for 1 year later), and bought a leather jacket yeah.

About six months later, the firm went broke, and the remaining worker shareholders got nowt.

Anyway, I wouldn't say it was something yr natural Tories would be adverse to, put it that way.

xp
they could get some tips off some of their oligarch pals on how to shake down workers for their shares! (the Russian word for privatisation apparently translates as "grabification" in English). But I'd imagine the nationalisation of utilities and transport would be a real pisser to reverse, especially if they continued to be popular policies - but that's supposing that a complete pig's ear isn't made of the job, with all the media reportage saying "I told you so!".

Starmer has not ruled out Remain being on a ballot.

Idk how this would work if the vote split was:

45% remain
33% leave under May’s preferred terms
32% leave under other terms tbc

But I suspect it will never actually come to that. It might help May get her troops in line to avoid a snap election though.

Looks like Dennis Skinner really enjoyed Keir Starmer's speech pic.twitter.com/ltoPXTnyYt

— Alain Tolhurst (@Alain_Tolhurst) September 25, 2018

Starmer’s announcement wasn’t in the planned text, apparently.

If that's the case he may need to go..

If the whole point is that conference decides then it isn't factually incorrect though.

It's also quite difficult to sack someone on the basis of something that's just been rapturously recieved at your own conference, especially so soon before Brexit.

If that's not on the agreed text and he is going off on his own with it...and as Sahrivari explains it this sounds stupid. He might not be sacked tomorrow but at some point.

isn't a 2nd ref completely futile when relying on the arithmetic of hypothetical tory rebels that will put party before principles/or the economy/anything every time.

Unless there's an election yes.

The Tories can get to say Labour are betraying the people next week.

they might be able to put their factional war on hold for a few days- but I doubt it, and it will take some work to polish that chequers deal turd into something shiny and impressive!

They're going to do that even if Labour vote against the final Brexit deal, as has pretty much already been pledged. Problem is this 'will of the people' stuff falls down pretty quickly when you're proposing to... ask the people.

The firestorm from the Tory press is going to be immense but if you're going to let them dictate policy you might as well have Blair back.

I'm trying to work out what is positive about this Starmer move when it isn't going to improve the likelihood of a snap election and a 2nd ref isn't happening any time soon??

it sent a thrill down the leg of every centre-left journalist in the country

productivity in centre-left publications already up 25%!

gotta get some of that precious #FBPE constituency back from the Lib Dems

Ultimately it's about keeping as much space on the fence as possible, a decline in youth turnout next time is still a significant threat to Labour given how narrow some of their majorities were last time. Whether that would outweigh losses in Leave-voting seats is the question, as is whether those seats would end up voting Labour anyway.

It's also probably about Starmer sending up a flare for any future leadership contest as well, let's not be naive here.

if he ran without Corbyn + McDonnell approval - I don't see any reason why he wouldn't lose as heavily as Smith did and it would take some dramatic changes to the makeup of the membership for that to change any time soon.

the current makeup of the membership = mostly sheep like me who will blindly vote for whatever slate of antisemites, dickheads pro-hepatitis campaigners etc.. that Momentum tells us to.

lol

I was thinking more post-Corbyn than against Corbyn, no one will run against him now.

May's "slash corporation tax to the lowest in the G20" is a repeat of the "Singapore Model" talk from the period of her pre-election pomp. I thought they might be pressured into reversing somewhat on austerity by events and Labour's luxury Castles in the sky, but it seems they are going to double down on it.

this is the "new thinking" among brexiters iirc i.e. singapore/Britannia unchained/etc. Really it's just an acknowledgement that no deal means the only levers they have left are those that seal the pod bay doors on their own people

there's me thinking these are reasonable people and they might actually be thinking about unpopular domestic policies other than the brexit clusterfuck of their making. I think this is going to be the grimmest Tory conference in history in terms of what they are offering the electorate: We might have to ration insulin, but don't worry, we'll bring the army in to burn the corpse piles and so on.

Should probably ban the use of ‘Singapore model’ - which implies a much heavier hand in state planning and, crucially high-quality, low-cost housing for anyone who wants it - and replace it with the Wild West tbh.

this "Singapore model" of shit food and shit weather, a rental sector with abodes not fit for human habitation, is a massive slur on Singapore.

at least singapore's police state is a competent one ffs

i hear the food's nice

have visited, can confirm

even the food at the zoo is good! police states work, folks

finally making progress on this board

control-f "gulags"

Hard to see how it can work with only lazy British proles as a workforce.

prole offices

for too long, our lazy british proles have been getting caned on legal highs and cheap cider

for now on, under our new sinapore model, they'll be getting the cane if they so much as try to cross the road without waiting for a green light

I think that is the full range of Priti Patel's repertoire.

Singapore and Hong Kong are the two most regularly cited points of comparison and they're both city states, inconcieveable that would translate to the UK and it wouldn't benefit most Leave-voting areas one bit. London and other metropolitan elitist hubs might do alright (or at least some people living there would). It's the most blatant Brexit con trick imaginable and it might be a pertinent line of attack for either Remain or Labour more generally, certainly more so than repeating "bargain basement tax haven" again and again.

The more than ever deregulated City state of London + its crumbling, decaying provinces of no real importance, was probably not what May had in mind when she was talking about the "Singapore model" or if it was, she's even more evil than I thought and would definitely have trouble selling that vision to Hartlepool!

good speech

still no pledge to scrap UC though, at this stage no consulting is necessary to find out if it is wasteful, cruel and a complete fuck up!

Lots of praise for the speech here.

The olive branch @jeremycorbyn has extended to @theresa_may could save or destroy her. Just to be clear, his offer is what some in her cabinet, and many on her benches, in Whitehall, in Brussels and in EU capitals have been mooting as a Brexit compromise that would solve both... pic.twitter.com/PrENJaQZLp

— Robert Peston (@Peston) September 26, 2018

is there a party that can, tho?

unionists