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

obviously i very much disagree with this list but i can kinda sorta see how someone could make an argument for 1-9, individually if not as a collection -- but 10 is just like "fuck it who else was british in the 20th century, i can't think of anyone" (i mean if yr going there E2R makes more sense)

should have just put tony blair again

where's ruth davidson

what would be the argument for John Major as one of the 10 ten? the same sort of thing as when ppl argue that Gerald Ford was the best post-war president because even if he didn't achieve much he didn't do a huge amount of damage either?

Agree with Adonis that Lloyd George gets mad props for destroying the Liberal party

architect of the good friday agreement (or the secret talks that led up to it)

i think he has a better case than heseltine, who i genuinely struggle with and seems well down any list even of tories: if you want a consensus britain tory go with macmillan, who also recognised the inevitability of the end of empire

LG was the first ever "BIG BEAST", we established that elsewhere on ilx

(he in my first two sentences being major, in response to a sceptical soref)

Robbie Williams

xpost Timing!

unless he means "best" as in most adept at working the floor and juggling the factions (but heseltine doesn't come very high on that list either)

Noted Europhile Adonis, I assume picked Edward VII for cultivating the Entente Cordiale, though in common with the time some of his views were less progressive.

I guess he would have picked Heath if it weren't for the accusations of paedophilia.

Entente Cordiale which made such a positive contribution to the death toll of WWI

agree that Heseltine is a lazy nonsense pick but so's the whole list really. admiring politics as a skill divorced from ideology, intent and results is for horrible assholes anyway.

Lloyd George wasn't no wizard, that's for sure. He was a bit like Boris in many ways - a mendacious windbag who could talk up a storm without knowing his arse from his elbow and with a penchant for casually dropping racial slurs. Presumably Wilson get's a low showing for keeping us out of a evil and pointless US war, unlike his fucking chum.

Apropos Chris Leslie’s tantrum in the Guardian, this beautiful thread:

Today’s the day! The big one. Yep: the third anniversary of Peak Leslie.

Exactly 3 years ago Chris Leslie’s historic interview with the Observer was published. It stands as the most succinct explanation for the demise of New Labour, a masterpiece. Thread> https://t.co/Xml1t3Fh2a

— Alex Nunns (@alexnunns) May 30, 2018

great thread. alex nunns needs to ditch the wellend haircut tho

haircut Nunn grata! Which? Magazine strata??? What fucking drugs was this numpt on?

This unexpected insight may have been inspired by Tristram Hunt's claim that Lab needed to win “John Lewis couples and those who aspire to shop in Waitrose.”

and ppl wonder the word "gulags" kept popping up on this thread!

cracking thread!

that the likes of Chris Leslie + Tristam Hunt aspired to be a big beasts at this juncture of the PLP's history, should never be is quite easily forgotten.

Reading various bits of commentariat this morning would appear to suggest that the Labour conference this year marked another turning point. All the build-up suggested it would be overshadowed by rows about antisemitism and Brexit but the former barely came up and the latter was dealt with reasonably neatly. It didn't even feel like it was about Corbyn, really. Instead it was about eye-catching and forward-looking ideas that are being taken seriously in and of themselves, even if they're obviously ideas in development and need work.

They're also freaking the hell out of Tory commentators because they know that these ideas are attractive to voters. There's an argument that things like massively expanded employee share ownership or universal basic income form the basis of a new centre ground because they appeal to both left and right and allow them to see elements of themselves in them. They also appeal to ordinary people who identify as neither. It's also increasingly difficult for the Tories to recast them as 'back to the 1970s'.

Contrast it with the intellectual bankruptcy of that Chris Leslie piece, no one seems to have mentioned a new centrist party for a couple of weeks.

Especially fun to contrast it with the Tory conference having its first exploding comedy clown car moment before it's even begun.

I see boris johnson wants to do another bridge

That's the thing with employee ownership, are you socialising the means of production or are you literally giving people a stake in capitalism? As long as ordinary people are benefiting, does it even matter which?

It's one reason why I think the £500 dividend cap is a mistake, some employees would stand to get a lot more than that and if the rest goes to the state it's very easy to recast it as corporation tax by the back door. It's also easier for a future Tory government to roll it back, whereas proper employee ownership schemes could become embedded into British society and politically impossible to get rid of precisely because they would be so popular.

maybe McDonnell was expecting the "this Class War must be stopped!" onslaught to be as strong as Chakrabortty was predicting it would be took a more gradualism type approach? This onslaught has been pretty weak so far, so perhaps that is a sign that it isn't really as radical a policy as some of the commentariat made it out to be.

Chris Dillow has been looking at it in a similar way, here

Which raises the second question: mightn’t these plans be just too mild? Is a 10% stake sufficient to create a feeling of ownership? Are £500 a year of dividends sufficient incentive to boost productivity? As Tom and Jon point out, these are mild social democratic plans, which might arguably give workers less power over firms than they currently have in Germany.

What’s going on here, I suspect, is that McDonnell is laying down some stepping stones. A 10% stake isn’t the end of things. If it proves mildly successful – as it might well – it’ll lead to demands for bigger stakes and a bigger worker say. And let’s face it, the case for worker-shareholders is in some ways stronger than that for outside shareholders: it’s long been known (and was proven by the collapse of banks in 2007-08) that these are incapable of overseeing management properly.

He does get quite concerned about the performative or rhetorical framework of such policies to depress investment, due to a perception of an assault on capitalist institutions:

Another barrier, though, might be more intractable. It’s that neoliberalism is partly performative. For decades, the dominant ideology has been that economic growth requires a quiescent labour force. As a factual claim, this is wrong. But if firms believe it, they’ll respond to the sort of policies advocated by the IPPR by reducing investment. To this extent neoliberalism might be self-fulfilling. And even if this is not the case, a government implementing a meaningful shift towards social democracy would be seen as radical, which in itself might create uncertainty – and uncertainty, we know, often tends to depress capital spending.

This might make a gradual implementation the better approach. In one sense this is central to Labour's challenges – that any given policy comes from Labour affects the perception of it, and subsequent reactions, regardless of its benefit. In another sense, it's so central that you *have* to ignore it to a degree, or at least, what would not ignoring look like? Well, it probably looks something like a perception of a Blair government – winning business over – and, assuming that's effectively centrism, that's simply not a goer.

As Chris says further down (from a piece on the recent IPPR report, which i really must get around to reading):

One reason is that it is obvious to everybody except the 1% and their shills and lackies that capitalism is failing in its current form. Equally, though, capitalism has served us reasonably well for decades. It therefore deserves the chance of reform, which is what the IPPR offers.

So as with much of Labour at the moment, and to use a McDonnell phrase, it feels like tightrope walking.

what calzino said.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/theresa-may-gives-standing-ovation-to-speech-branding-boris-johnson-irrelevant-and-offensive-2018-9

Lol.

"wealth creators don't like business haters"

words to live by (the words of lord digby jones, best of all the nu-labour lords)

also:
"Business is so important that when I heard a former Foreign Secretary say 'F business' it showed him up for the irrelevance and offensive person he is and I take great exception to that."

lol this^^^is a poorly constructed sentence *stands and ovates*

(not to take away from the excellence of them all fighting among themselves)

gerry adams should be on that list

not till he takes his rightful seat in westminster imo

or actually his seat as rightful crown steward and bailiff of the manor of northstead

The Festival of Brexit Britain.
My poster based on the 1951 original. pic.twitter.com/APZwCM5JBc

— Richard Littler (@richard_littler) September 30, 2018

I'm predicting a bumper harvest in '22, especially after the peasants take JRM's ingenious deep ploughing, close cropping advice to heart.

"deadest of dying ducks"

If they are dying they are by definition not dead

BREXIT festival anyone?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DoXv05vXkAwmVzj.jpg

Phil's "searing" attack on Boris didn't go as far as saying he smells and he's a meanie.

holy shit pic.twitter.com/1wWiS7ud45

— gal gathot (@ryxnf) September 30, 2018

Chuck E Chequers

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DoW5Ae1XoAEvyN_.jpg

The Tory Boy biological determinism is strong in this one.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/01/police-super-database-prompts-liberty-warning-on-privacy

"The government accepts that large amounts of the data will have nothing to do with crime."

what like "asocial and dangerous elements" that didn't celebrate the Brexit Festival or "looks a bit weird, must be a trot" type UKVD profiling, this is obv very bad.

The law enforcement data service (LEDS)

even the acronym is pure evil.

Dirty LEDS

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-hunt-eu-membership-ussr-latvia-brexit-foreign-secretary-a8562726.html

Hunt comparing the EU to the USSR feels cringe inducing in a similar way to Michael Portillo's SAS speech, they both *know* that what they're saying is ridiculous and embarrassing, but they say it anyway because it will go down well with party membership

causing grave offence to lots of EU citizens living in former parts of the USSR is a real fucking winner for the upcoming brexit negging!

This exchange between @AndrewMarr9 and @theresa_may needs reading
(via @MarrShow, @MichaelPDeacon) pic.twitter.com/oIa9H2rWRZ

— Jeremy Vine (@theJeremyVine) September 30, 2018

A Hunt for Red October.

Hateful sorry-not-sorry from May on Windrush deaths natch.

i've seen more convincing chatbots.

great when you can open your party conference with "it's been a great year, sorry for killing some people"

Boris Johnson has managed the impossible - a worse quickfire Sunday Times interview than Theresa May’s legendary 2017 effort pic.twitter.com/ViUOOh6aHo

— Henry Mance (@henrymance) September 30, 2018

People's republic of Jam Jar or Bongo Bongo Land?

Esther McVey dismisses their murderous treatment of the disabled as "fake news". Well that is very nuanced and has totally changed my position on the BMJ paper that says otherwise, gr8 speech!

Increase motorway speed limit to 80mph to drive Britain's productivity, says Government minister

wow, Truss has been blazing the ol' crackpipe again.