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

She knew what she was doing with the hostile environment policy, with Windrush, and she knows what's she's doing with Brexit. She has her constituency, which read certain newspapers, and her only goal is to preserve the power of her class.

She is an underrated liar, people believe that she is stupid more readily than that she is straight up lying.

both those last seem true, she is utterly impervious to accusations of malevolence while she can so easily be held as helpless

She has her constituency, which read certain newspapers, and her only goal is to preserve the power of her class.

yes, I mean that she is so committed to this as a goal that she is unable to think through the consequences of her statements. for no other gain than to continue on in as entitled a manner as she has spent her life, she will destroy the lives of her constituents and the economy and global standing of her country.

but not through venality or ideology: despite being a Remainer, she lacks the mental openness to have done anything, at any point in the last three years, to handle Brexit in a way that would even make Leave voters happy enough to re-elect her. let alone to bridge any of the gaps in society that led to the vote, or to perform outreach to the Leave voters to gently explain, to slowly turn their minds, that they cannot have what they "voted for," not least because they don't know what that is and it couldn't exist if they did.

if she was only as smart as Bannon, let alone Stephen Miller, the whole fucking thing could have been knocked down simply by touting things that already exist as post-Brexit-vote victories for the Tories. Blue passports had been back for years - "Our goverment has brought blue passports back!" Change the name of a policy regarding immigration from some brown people countries - "This new policy sets a firm stand on our borders, without the control of the EU!" Photo op in front of some crates of brown bananas or bendy bananas, whatever the fucking made-up issue was. Hire more fucking immigrant nurses fr the NHS, send some heinous cunt backbencher onto Sky News to bleat nineteen times a day that "we have refreshed the staff of your local hospitals, bringing highly skilled graduates of lesser countries here to look after your grannies and children, freeing up Good Honest Britons from having to wipe the arses of other Britons:" by the end of the week, gammon will have smugly registered it as a victory

do this for three years, and appoint someone slightly more competent than David Davis to lead an Exploratory Committee on Methods Of Brexit, then announce at the end of the three years that you've achieved most of what Brexit was meant to do, so the committee will be reassessing its scope. they should be ready to release a report in two years. (18 months later the head of committe can resign, and a further committee formed to appoint a new head.)

The difficulty she has is probably not so much with the general public, who can always be finessed to some extent, it’s that there is a large enough constituency within her party - both in Parliament and the grass and roots - who would view anything less than total withdrawal from EU regulations and freedom of movement as a capitulation. They have been working towards this exact moment for thirty years and fundamentally don’t fear the consequences. I am not sure they are as reliably venal as the people lining up behind Trump out of convenience.

both those last seem true, she is utterly impervious to accusations of malevolence while she can so easily be held as helpless

― ɪmˈpəʊzɪŋ (darraghmac), Wednesday, 6 February 2019 00:28 (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm. the lying thing is interesting in this regard - stephen bush points out that politicians try wherever possible to avoid it (very different from the process ogmor outlined up thread), and when they do, they do it badly. but theresa may does it well and comparatively frequently. my conclusion is that somehow she doesn't see it as lying, either because she believes it because she's been told it and she's not inclined to look past what is immediately in front of her (the cat deportee maybe?), or because she's so inept at triangulation that she believes that saying factually incompatible things to different groups is in some way 'politics' - ie wot ogmor outlined.

"You have to respect that she's marching on in this mess"
Me: "No you don't"
"But she could've also resigned, easy way out, but she's taking responsibility"
Me: "She should have resigned, this is not taking responsibility"
"But it's admirable she's facing this head on w/ all sides divided"
Me: "No it's not"

^^ Had variations of this so many times lately it's enraging. A lot of people whom I thought to know better have some weird sense of admiration because her batteries haven't ran out. It's enraging.

good
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2019/02/labour-changing-its-tune-irish-backstop#amp

this is one big problem with JC (see also “trigger A50 now”) - he can run his mouth sometimes

I was surprised by that although I understand the ideological beef, but I would have thought his constituents would be giving him a hard time about it too. I certainly would have, if I lived there.

^^ Had variations of this so many times lately it's enraging. A lot of people whom I thought to know better have some weird sense of admiration because her batteries haven't ran out. It's enraging.

Absolutely.

labour people starting to make heynote speeches on policy is it ?

recosting the manifesto is it ?

*keynote

tom watson speech on regulating social media today. thornberry speech on future labour foreign policy too

God, yes, that "You've got to admire her" shite is infuriating, though I have never heard anyone say it irl. The idea that there is anything remotely admirable about Theresa May is 0_o

she's got a 2:1 in Geography which probably makes May cleverer than a whole heap of other MP's but low cunning might be a bit generous, I'd go with low moral fibre or something instead - because her brand of shameless mendacity is completely transparent and lacking in cunning imo.

I have had that conversation irl a few times and my response, because I am a boring cunt irl too, is to go “no I don’t” and mention a few of her worse policies.

A legally binding limit won’t pass in Parliament. The Prime Minister would suffer a further crushing defeat. It’s open the Withdrawal Agreement, remove the backstop, or No Deal. https://t.co/zWVNtUvVgi

— Nadine Dorries (@NadineDorries) February 6, 2019

There’ll always be something wrong with the deal.

i cant figure out if theres a large element of "it wont be the thick fucking paddies tellings u what to do whatever happens" in their strong aversion to the backstop or if they genuinely just cannot comprehend the inherent contradictions in what they're demanding

they don’t take yes for an answer

Someone at our NYE party didn’t realise she was in a room full of left writers etc and tried to argue Theresa May’s KBO stance was admirable, and the entire room turned to her and pretty much as one said ‘hostile environment!’

I would thought their contempt for Ireland and the Irish would have been obvious by now, deems. It's not like anything's ever really changed in that regard.

xxxp we aren’t a nation to some of them, we’re that Punch cartoon of the drunken caricature threatening poor civil Britain.

Not a proper country.

i guess and like look i dont know from where but i guess i thought well...i dont know what i thought

https://youtu.be/6OdEJyMywU4
I mean, they’re caricaturing this lad from Castleknock as some sort of Provo ffs. (Also while looking for that video I found the one of Gerry Adams saying in the Dáil that they attended the same yoga class, lol.)

Re: May - having low cunning is an utterly worthless skill if you lack the broader political compass that informs it. She thought that a bit of "just about managing" and a lot of anti-immigrant and "red white and blue Brexit" bluster would be enough to turn whole swathes of Labour heartlands blue. She was wrong.

This combination is even worse when combined with utter blind stubborness.

Re: Corbyn, I don't understand what he was doing when he was mouthing off about the backstop at all. It was inconsistent with most of his other lines and potentially actively harmful.

agreed - I think he was still trying to triangulate to strip off DUP. while they are still most likely faction to collapse the govt, triangulation should not be done at all costs ie the backstop is good not bad

"red white and blue Brexit"

when the colossal behind-the-scenes history of brexit is written, i think one of the things i'll be most interested in reading about is wtf they were thinking when they came up with this lunatic branding effort

I think the depressing answer is there's nothing behind the scenes on that one

yeah, all the answers are depressing i guess

I mean the other thing about May's total lack of political compass is that all of her thinking was about the voters she could attract. All evidence suggests that not a second's thought was given to the voters she might alienate, and there were lots of them.

Having said that, she still got a huge % of voters and that in itself is worrying, although weirdly I think she was good for getting more of them than almost any other alternate leader.

Tories were the main beneficiary of the UKIP collapse.

Yes, that has been mentioned before. May doesn’t get her % without a huge amount of Tory remainers and moderates voting for her anyway.

Delighted to have won my High Court case against The Sun.

Their slur attempting to link me to “Nazi symbols" was held to be false and defamatory.

The Judge ordered The Sun to pay £30,000 in damages.

With that I'll fund a paid justice internship for a young person from Leeds. pic.twitter.com/uWlsdhSUoR

— Richard Burgon MP (@RichardBurgon) February 6, 2019

kudos

Yeah that's great news.

Will that rag have to publish the decision in a prominent place, or can they stuff it in between the horoscope somewhere?

Stanstead 15 not going to jail.

some good news for a change

Good!

Good news day!

there was an 8am demo in manchester this morning in support of them

More good news.

Probably.

but who will remain to ask the probing questions like 'why doesn't the republic of ireland just rejoin the uk'

QT seems to have got even worse since Dimbers left, but saying that Today is already at such a nadir...

As well as leaving Today, could he also just generally fuck off?

today asking tom watson this morning whether corbyn is actually still secretly leave (on the back of that clip surfacing yesterday)

Nah, he'll do those programmes where he wanders about pondering shit and looking into the distance.