one out all out: a brexit from the modern world and every one of its problems please (we're all gonna die lol)

It’s possible the Lib Dema might do better in the next election with a new leader (Swinson, maybe Moran or lol write in non-party member nonsense candidate), but third parties tend to benefit most when the outcome of an election seems a foregone conclusion (you can vote Lib Dem or Green without worrying you’ll let a Tory candidate or government in) and we have a big piece of evidence in last year’s GE where they picked up seats but got squeezed by the two main parties. They haven’t made any arguments in favour of the EU much removed from your average #fbpe person; Nick Clegg has been banging on about controlling borders too iirc. As much as they continue to attack Labour, they’ve made absolutely no progress themselves in terms of policies, vote share or anything of note.

I think any passing football managers might do well to read the fucking article they're discussing.

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

Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll went against the clock to see if he could make something beautiful out of vocal samples from a variety of British politicians. Why? He says it best himself: “Why not make some sense out of a load of old rubbish?”

The Breunion Boys are the European boyband on a mission to win back the United Kingdom.

“BRITAIN COME BACK”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncHAwux70u8

then there's that EU concept album with the sampled claude juncker speech. what a time to be alive.

god, I can't imagine a Breunion going well; I assume the Euro would be a non-negotiable point for the EU at that point

Possibly Schengen too

Possibly Schengen too

Which might all be for the best, who knows.

I did read the article Andrew - perhaps take your Christmas xanax

I also read p much anything else published on the same subject including the initial report, also from the judiciary which led to court reforms happening in the first place - so I suggest you try something other than certainty and condescension for once though I won't hold my breath - the habit of a lifetime dies painfully hard.

@ calzino I don't trust their motivation at all but good things can still happen given civil service ends up enacting the reform, or changes can happen which have an effect the government didn't anticipate or intend.

A good example would be something like register to vote - it now can be done online in a few minutes and was obviously a fairly big part of Corbyn's success in the last election, tho I'm sure the government just intented to save some money

Digital reform is a pretty interesting area in that whoever was in power would probably support it but for different reasons - those same power struggles play out in departments and programmes and teams - things are up for grabs.

I didn't realise register to vote was post 2010. Definitely a good thing, and something they probably do regret to some extent, and their Voter ID shenanigans in recent local elections and proposed boundary reforms show how much they really love democracy.

xxp Okay, that's fair enough, sorry about that - I jumped to the wrong conclusion because you talked only about the section I quoted regarding IT problems, rather than the main of it, which (to the room) was about how the judiciary weren't happy that access to justice was being cut back in pursuit of cost-cutting.

You may say that I could have actually quoted a part actually relevant to that - it would be a fair point.

Also I admit I may have been affected by the fact that you are, you know, literally a joke.

we are all literal jokes really Andrew. and bad. I thought this had already been established on here long ago. As someone who doesn't know jack shit about the interaction between the government and civil service, I thought it was an interesting post by FH. not taking fucking sides here though!

cal I’m sorry but I saw this thread and immediately thought of you:

🎄 Only 5 days left until Christmas!

In the song Twelve Days of Christmas, what is given on the 8th day?

• Geese a laying
• Swans a-swimming
• Maids a-milking
• Ladies dancing

— Let's Get Questionable! (@IQtrivia) December 20, 2018

https://www.dreadcentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/salemslot.png
I actually first met Barry Sheerman at the Our Lady of Lourdes primary school in Sheepridge circa 1980. And he's still fucking there! he give us a talk about how many hours you have to put in and what a tough job it is to represent the people!

Ah no that wasn't a criticism, I meant only that (the other) Fernando Hierro is the manager of the Spanish football team, and this one was, as far as I know, created for a joke on one of the football threads.

I think I had a pop at him before on similar lines after he called me a thick cunt! But it all adds to the rich tapestry of the thread!

#FBPE crowd now in full flow:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/21/jeremy-corbyn-labour-policy-leaving-eu?CMP=share_btn_tw

in the tory-sphere isn't it quite big that Gauke would resign over no-deal? I think he's a complete bell-end but ...

Brexit would go ahead even if Labour won snap election

well... yes, of course

'You want a clear Brexit policy? Ok, it's the same as yours.'

smdh

"I was angry because they suddenly found £4Bn."

They needed to find £4Bn because you're going to vote against them despite agreeing with them because you think you personally can do a different deal while your negotiating partner says you can't.

It's only one-fifth of the cost of a new London underground line. No big deal.

A snap election is so unlikely at this point he might as well be talking about Brexit policy in the event of the rapture. Doesn't make it any less unhelpful at this point.

Meanwhile...

apologise, @DerbyChrisW. just deleting this isn’t good enough. educate yourself. stop embarrassing yourself and the left. pic.twitter.com/P7iPXbuHRg

— Michael Segalov (@MikeSegalov) December 21, 2018

While I believe Brexit is 17.4 million people cutting off their noses to spite Remainer faces, we can’t change the fact that they voted us out. Re: Brexit negotiations being different under Labour, of course they would be. They’ve been meeting with EU leaders all along, just in case. Different ‘red lines’, A50 extended out of necessity, staying in a customs union. Until Labour voters in Leave areas turn against the whole thing and start agitating for a ratification referendum, the frontbench are unlikely to offer one. But he does say membership can work to change the policy, so maybe the best way forward is to do exactly that?

otm. Brexit would still be shit but it would be a different, somewhat improved, deal. The EU are almost certainly only saying this is the only deal for the Tory Brexiteers - a message that will potentially get through.

They needed to find £4Bn because you're going to vote against them despite agreeing with them

That 4bn would make many people's lives a lot easier rn but sure keep going like this.

Overall Corbyn is not (as Stephen Bush says) not spending an ounce of political capital on people's vote - and with good reason.

My FB and Twitter timelines are full of Labour Remain voters who are extreeeemely butthurt right now and only about half are classic FBPEs or bourgeois voters who are used to their views being acted upon, but didn’t complain at all when Labour was to their right politically (apart from Iraq). Know in my bones they’ll still vote Labour so *shrug*

Williamson's excuse that he didn't read the petition properly will really be cutting the mustard amongst Jews who know his history of tin ear and already consider Labour as dodgy as fuck. Streeting vs Williamson is like Hitler vs Mobuto though.

Nahhhh, 100% with Streeting here! He represents one of the most Jewish constituencies in the country, one that went from being a marginal in 2015 to a 10k+ majority in 2017. He’s representing his constituents and I’ve anecdotally heard that he’s trusted by the Jewish community because he does speak out on antisemitism and takes time to attend events and meet various groups and figures there. He also calls out Islamophobia pretty consistently and has spoken out on trans rights recently, which matters when certain fucking disgraces are out there whipping people into a frenzy about this.

Or, shorter:

I get as annoyed by centrist Labour MPs as anyone else, but Streeting specifically gets a harder time than many of his politically worse peers because he's queer and perceived as weird/vacuous

— glossy ibis (@tinnedpears) December 18, 2018

I wouldn't vote for him but he's been consistent in his support for genuinely decent, progressive LGBT people and organisations. I like him.

— glossy ibis (@tinnedpears) December 18, 2018

He’s not Gavin Shuker or Ian Austin. So yeah, fully support him and 100% agree that Williamson needs to be booted.

I never had any conception of Streeting as gay or "weird". Just thought he was a fairly predictable rote career politico melt tbh who often makes completely ignorant and ridiculous comments in the Service of Labour Right. Fair point, about his heavily Jewish constituency though - because there doesn't seem to be many of them left.

Not talking about you obviously, but there is an element of that to some of the criticism of him. I think his heart is in the right place and iirc he does do the yards campaigning as well. Much worse people in the PLP.

like Williamson for starters!

JC needs to crack down on dickheads like Williamson and there should some clear rules on what is bringing the party into disrepute and this should include ppl like him re-tweeting Galloway/Livingstone trash on social media, appearing on RT, publicly defending other tin eared dickheads that have the antisemiticism bug. I think as Bush was saying yesterday, it probably won't happen and is a huge weakness of Corbyn's.

It's the faux-naivety of the apology that's enraging, he's pretending he didn't know about the background and that it was just about some jazz saxophonist being banned by a council for expressing "pro-Palestinian views". When has anyone ever been banned from anything in this country for being merely pro-Palestinian? He knew full well what he was doing.

Williamson represents such a marginal constituency that he may well be deselected by the electorate next time round anyway. Not only is there nothing to lose by replacing him with someone less toxic, there'd be emblematic value in binning him. It's impossible for Labour to claim it's serious about antisemitism while he's still around.

Going back to Corbyn, while it's nice to see people have so much faith in his delivering a better Brexit, it does depend on the clock and the EU's willingness to renegotiate. For all the talk of expending political capital, there's nothing that's going to have a worse impact on Labour's political capital than *actually delivering Brexit*. He didn't actually need to make this comment this week, it was obviously going to be the headline, that's why it's unhelpful. And while it's true most FPBE types will probably end up voting Labour anyway, you don't need to reach far back into Labour history to see what happens when voter groups are taken for granted.

Yeah, and it was a Labour council as well. I didn’t even know he was a musician before all this!

If you think that May's deal is unpopular wait til you see how a Corbyn-led deal would be received. They've already promised things that are undeliverable - eg "the exact same benefits" as the Single Market without actually being in it. Even if they keep us in the Customs Union then it's unlikely that Remainers would just accept it.

The howls of Brexit betrayal from the right would be ten times as loud as they are right now. The Tories, hungry for revenge, would happily join in. It's a deal that would please precisely no-one and there is no way he'd be able to get it through Parliament without a majority and it would need to be a sizeable one and I don't see how Labour get that with things balanced as they currently are. It would be a complete clusterfuck that would seriously hamper their ability to do anything else.

Which I suppose is my way of saying that there are only really two viable approaches for Labour here. One is to accept that Brexit is going to be a disaster and oppose it, in the knowledge that they'll reap the benefits later on. The other is to STFU and ensure that the Tories have 100% ownership over the disaster. Both are full of risks and anyone claiming they aren't is either lying or deluded. This week's comments don't amount to much more than interrupting your enemy while they're making a mistake.

Matt otm: zero tolerance for bigotry. And MPs aren’t especially rare, skilled labour - they’re tools (yeah, yeah) and they can be replaced.

I get what Matt is saying. As I see this its either May's deal or a general election - and I'd rather the deal was voted down because there is a chance the government could fall over it.

Brexit would be a number of issues facing any government.

What is a non-starter is People's Vote - not least because of the way they behave...these ppl are totally unable to do politics.

Here is the petition. Its started by a Lab MP but FBPE ppl are signing it:

https://www.change.org/p/jeremy-corbyn-labour-must-now-lead-on-a-people-s-vote

These ppl aren't getting Labout MPs to split and form a "real opposition" so after screaming out they are pleading with St Jeremy.

re: Williamson, one of the things in that Corbyn interview is on a more democratic process in regards to selection of MPs.

anybody who doesn't think "People's vote" is a foul, ugly, patronising, antagonising phrase is probably on Mandelson's dick tbh

IRRESPECTIVE OF THE POLITICS BEHIND IT, ANGRY EU FANS

I mean it sort of makes sense as a popular vote on the deal as opposed to a Parliamentary vote, but I'm increasingly sceptical of the phrase "The People" being used in any context.

yeah, that's a lot of it. and the implication that people who don't want it are non-people.

it has the tang of the eternal centrist claim of reasonableness, straights and normies

otm, just screaming contempt at the part of the population they need to win over.