"oh you don't get me I'm the end of the union": lol brexit is how we're all gonna die

do labour want to whip for this grieve amendment (which allows a minority of MPs to control parliamentary business, under certain conditions) ? seems potentially risky to rip up the rulebook like this even though potentially expedient in this particular scenario

are we allowed to link conhome pieces or nah.

anyway they have a good one on "25 questions about (another) early general election – and the horror show it could be for the Conservatives"... which doesn't even touch on the fact that they'd be calling an election when the prevailing UK economic environment is currently pretty challenging and trending south

What would the manifesto say about everything else bar Brexit? The spending review? Tax? Social care? Universal Credit? Reducing net migration “to the tens of thousands”? Health and food and lifestyle? Selective schools? Knife crime? The pursuit of British servicemen through the courts? Tuition fees? Home ownership? HS2? And what would it say about how Britain should be different after Brexit?

do we get the sense they've done any of the necessary hard thinking on any of this

I’m starting to feel like this could one of those times where the rule book gets rewritten for the better.

I FTPA is turning out to be far more consequential in practice than was understood. It was sold as a limitation on the exec that removed its ability to call an election. But that was always nonsense - which opposition votes against an election? What it does do (as ppl pointed out at the time) is protect a zombie exec: any other govt would have collapsed over the Deal vote.

Now, so long as it has a confidence agreement, any exec can cling to power as if it had a huge majority, and naturally can control parliamentary business like it does. That is proving to be a bad situation. Parties with tiny minorities shouldn’t be able to act with impunity in the way the May admin has.

Strengthening the minority parties seems like it will benefit everyone, and is the only way to make sure weak execs don’t wield disproportionate power, at the cost of potentially limiting strong ones.

Yes, that might cost Labour a bit if they ever got a Blair-like majority again, but the way the Leave/Remain splits across party lines that seems an incredibly remote prospect. And even if they did, it still might save Labour from itself the next time a Blair tries to pull an Iraq. Xp

It’s a Swift quote.

Begging Swift's pardon, but citing that quote at this time in regard to the politics of the moment in UK is still a sign of pudding for brains, because inapt quotation of a well-respected author, while no ill reflection upon the author or the quotation, clearly reveals the inadequacies of the one quoting. Swift would brush that man off his coattails with a harrumph.

in completely unrelated news a car bomb seems to have gone off in derry

Yeaaahh, that's nothing that anyone in Great Britain has ever paid any attention to, unless there's dozens of casualties... well, actually, even then.

Parties with tiny minorities shouldn’t be able to act with impunity in the way the May admin has.

Those are all bad things but is any of that caused by FTPA? Even the "any other govt would have collapsed over the Deal vote" bit? For the government to have collapsed they would still have needed to lose a confidence vote, which in reality they wouldn't have lost because they maths is still the same.

Yes. No Labour MPs rebelled to vote against Callaghan or abstain in the 1979 confidence vote. They lost by one as Alfred Broughton couldn't vote as he was on his deathbed apparently!

As long as the government has a majority or a DUP on its side I guess confidence votes are always a bit of a show rather than a way to directly bring a government down.

He died four days later. He should have let himself be wheeled in, and die in the division lobby as a martyr to the party and parliamentary reform.

Back to the Boles amendment, as far as I can see it makes no provision for Article 50 revocation should the EU decline the request for an extension, so it's not really ruling out no deal at all. At best, assuming the EU agrees, it's just kicking it down the road, right?

https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-8476

I've heard people say the EU are up for extending to July, but not definitely not past this: I note that December is the preferred Boles date. I don't really understand all this: can someone explain the EU's position re: the EU elections and an extension past July?

As long as the government has a majority or a DUP on its side I guess confidence votes are always a bit of a show rather than a way to directly bring a government down.

This is not the same as Callaghan. If it looks like we might go into no-deal (I still don't quite know how the House can really stop that without voting for any other option or May resigning if parlianment can indeed stop it) then there are several Tory MPs who could be under a lot of pressure. A GE is a very difficult path but its very much a who blinks first game.

Or many Lab MPs could vote for May's deal too. All the options -- some of which seem more likely, others less so -- are on the table.

The difference FTPA makes I think is that No-conf (two VONC in fact) is now mandated rather than convention. Previously, losing a vote on a supply bill or the primary piece of legislation would be considered a VONC by itself. This govt has lost both and we still have two more hurdles to cross. Xxp

Yes, sorry xyzzzz you're quite right that it's not inconceivable Tories or DUP could vote against the government at some point in the weird future. I guess I'm mainly thinking about the "any other govt would have collapsed over the Deal vote" thing re: the one we've already had, and wrestling with what difference FTPA had made.

The way it was described to me (will need to get the links when back in office to see if this is right) was that a vote loss like that would have showed they could no longer command majority. You’d then be expecting the govt to resign and Corbyn invited to show he could command majority. A further VONC would not have been necessary.

This stuff is historically rare for obv reasons.

There’s no way a Corbyn government would be able to ignore Opposition day motions without a huge fuss being kicked up over it, or to be held in contempt without the papers screaming for blood about it.

While all this is true, the problem is only partly this, the larger part is behaving in such a way as to not provoke the paper beasts - it becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. The bigger problem isnt that the papers do this, its setting out with a defensive mindset. Policies on the left should not be treated like guilty secrets!

What AOC has done w marginal tax rates in the US is incredible - the type of policy previously would have been treated as a guilty secret, scared the papers might make a noise over it. Weird defeatist mindset seems difficult to overcome, both in terms of self and also in terms of the public.

let them kick up a fuss, fuck them, use the energy they generate!

I don’t think that they have? They’ve been fairly upfront about their intention to nationalise things in government, and Corbyn himself is definitely not running scared from the press - he baited them at the 2017 conference and again after the nonsense of the Czech spy thing with that video he put out. Miliband was very much running scared the whole time. I mean the point about the press painting a Corbyn government that did those things as uniquely dangerous or treacherous.

I understand the point re marginal tax rates but is this necessarily a point that travels (or needs to here?) the public do support higher taxes on higher earners to pay for the NHS, infrastructure etc. And regarding marginal tax rates themselves, I learned what they were at about 12/13 in school - that’s the kind of thing that’s a failure of the education system rather than the political one. (Idek if this is taught in schools in the UK though?)

But on that same point - I thought the austerity video was bang on in terms of breaking it down to an audience who may be disinterested in or alienated from politics. It’s easy to understand and it’s fast and it demolishes the George Osborne “maxing out the nations credit card” shit in just a few minutes. I think they should do more stuff like this (and hope to see it in a general election).

Except I'm not sure any of that will matter if a Labour Betrays Brexit narrative is allowed to take hold in parts of the country.

I've found Twitter's worst Remainer!

Can we split the UK?

Can we put all the Leavers in the north, they can keep the whole "Brexit dividend" and pay all of Brexit's costs? They can Brexit.

The south Remains in the EU, and we take all the "Brussels tyranny", "scrounging EU immigrants" and Freedom of Movement?

— Interrogator #brexit #fbpe 🇪🇺🇬🇧🇫🇷🇳🇱 🇮🇱 (@Eddystone506) January 19, 2019

I mean the alternative - and I'm increasingly of the belief this might be the case - is that they could flip the whole Brexit table over and take the opprobrium without it costing them any seats at the next election because at the end of the day other stuff just matters to the electorate more. And the people who would care won't vote Labour anyway because they don't trust them on Brexit.

Won't someone think of all the Labour voting gammons who will never trust them again?

xp I think you have good instincts on this so I hope you’re right!

broadly agreeing, gyac - you're right - and the austerity video was very good...and Corbyns position on brexit has probably been right. Ive not really been thinking he should 'come off the fence' - just the idea that some of the papers power is because its been given to them by politicians too frightened of a nasty headline instead of taking the initiative - especially now when no one reads newspapers anyway

I'm increasingly of the belief this might be the case - is that they could flip the whole Brexit table over and take the opprobrium without it costing them any seats at the next election because at the end of the day other stuff just matters to the electorate more

This for reals. I dont really look at polling stuff so maybe i'm missing this but whenever i see anything it only seems to measure viewpoint not how much of a fuck is given. easy to fall into trap of thinking brexit is number one issue because media and tv are on it all the time but idk what levels of importance are attached. are there that many non-pensioner pro-brexit labour votes going to be lost? even pensioner pro-brexit labour voters...not really seeing those vote tory though i guess they'd potentially stay home

watching the 1992 BBC election broadcast (because I'm a fun guy who does fun stuff.) god that must have been a depressing night

I was in London that night and remember seeing the early edition of the Scum reporting on a catastrophic Kinnock victory.

had to be restrained from hitting somebody who gloated about voting Tory the next morning iirc

My shared house full of council estate acid house geezers (in Camden) went all over the place shouting GLENDA IS OUR LEADER football-chant style the next day, which mitigated things slightly.

The chants of "five more years" still ring in my head.

it's occurred to me that remainers today are in the slightly strange position of opposing the EU's official policy on Brexit i.e. that the WA on the table is the only way forward

Remainers and soft Brexit advocates have different ‘red lines’ to Theresa May’s. The EU has indicated that their agreement could change on that basis.

right hence the "slightly" - it is just a bit of a funny wrinkle

like I'm kind of surprised we haven't heard a chorus of "if you love the EU so much why don't you vote for the deal they're offering?"

Right, but that's not the EU's official position at all, is the thing.

if it's not then i think Ireland should be told!

Lol @ this whole thread:

Raab tells Sophy “we can’t let the EU bully us or call the shots” and so if no changes to deal should leave with no deal on WTO terms; EU will demand a negotiation “reasonably swiftly” and as a third country we would have more negotiation leveragepic.twitter.com/zlSg3lcEj0 #Ridge

— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) January 20, 2019

Special mention to the idea that Leo is “less moderate” compared to Simon Coveney - Leo is awful but he’s just a basic Thatcherite and the notion that Raab thinks someone is too extreme...well.

more local gov fun

Plan to redirect inner-city funds to Tory shires 'a stitch-up’

if this is serious it’s grotesque. the increased reliance on business rates and council tax already punishes lower income areas, who clearly can’t raise as much and where people have more need for public services and infrastructure.

Where do all these profound delusions come from anyway? Is this what empires look like when 'decline' slides into 'dementia'?

I wonder what it is about Leo Varadkar that is so uniquely “threatening” and “extreme” 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

xxp
this is the type of corruption* (like when the v wealthy Surrey C C got a sweetheart deal to stop them having to raise council taxes) that our state funded broadcaster should be all over.

* I mean this kind of thing gets reported as corruption on BBC WS when it occurs in African nations.

i know. very much has the same reek as that surrey cc thing.

this is the key bit:

But critics believe ministers have bowed to pressure from the Tory-dominated County Councils Network to shake up the grants system. The CCN has argued its members are unfairly allocated less money per head of population than inner-city areas, and face higher costs of maintaining services in sparsely populated rural areas.

This isn't going to end well.

Exclusive: Theresa May mulls amending Good Friday Agreement to get her Brexit deal past MPshttps://t.co/XGNdAqbg4a

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) January 20, 2019

Can't not end well if it just never ends /smartguy

Weird, I could have sworn that was a bilateral agreement.

Presumably that would need the agreement of the Irish government and the various groupings in Northern Ireland? Good luck with that

Just 🤔really🤔weird🤔how this idea materialised as a result of a shaky confidence and supply agreement with the only party in NI to oppose the GFA.

let's do it and be legends

see yis lads

im off to join the ra

Good lad

if we're going by subs then it's time we started talking abt one of the most important influencers in the media landscape: hbomberguy

the twitch feed of his marathon donkey kong 64 session to raise money for mermaids seems to have become a rallying point for the whole online left. AOC popped on to discuss govt shutdown earlier

they had chelsea manning & george romero earlier, paris lees & owen jones now. $246k playing donkey kong. this is rad