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

xps to gyac - totally understand. Sad thing is I can't see any end to it. I mean look at that Harris bollox, does everyone have to imagine horrible violence being done to people they don't like or only second rate thriller writers?

It also makes it harder for the Tories and Tory press to make political capital out of it.

it’s totally normal to fantasise about having ur political opponents taken out back and shot

I can imagine a few wavering Labour MPs thinking, "Fuck getting into bed with Tories for the sake of Chuka Umunna's career".

the calls for by elections are going to get VERY loud now surely

Make it stop pic.twitter.com/2vGwBJJVA8

— Natalie 🌹 (@nataliefaulkner) February 20, 2019

omg

Not sure why Heidi Allen was ever in the Conservative Party in the first place tbh.

Christ I know this post moves fucking fast but it’d be really good if people could acknowledge a point I made earlier in the week, which is that the LP concealed a threat from Berger, and that she shouldn’t have to put up with this shit from her own side. Just so this isn’t so novel every time it comes up? Either that or I’m just killfiled so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I did actually miss that and only read about it just now - concealed from her and from the police until someone just took a copy and handed it to a radio station. Anyway you've been otm!

I would like to double down on my earlier post which was clearly a call for the expulsion of Jewish people from the Labour Party.

I'm taking that as close to "Yeah I didn't think of that" as you're physically able to express.

There's video of Joan Ryan discussing getting a million quid off the Israeli embassy in the next post.

No, fair enough - I misread that as referring to the whole lot, including Berger.

I know the point Andrew was making and he's right but please don't put that shit in brackets. It's just as real (opens brackets) if not more (closes brackets).

No hang on, it's not more real - she'd already been told to kill herself so "an actual Labour MP can take your place". I'm not trying to minimise that it's louder and worse from the right, but it's already bad enough from the left.

I'm taking that as close to "Yeah I didn't think of that" as you're physically able to express.

I was writing that post for most of an hour, over which time my thinking has evolved and I would like to recant my earlier comments.

um

🐦[This suddenly looks like it might be Corbyn’s Ceausescu-on-the-balcony moment: stuck in the 1970s, utterly out of touch with the opinions even of his own supporters https://t.co/lkfsxYR0eX🕸
— Robert Harris (@Robert___Harris) February 19, 2019🕸]🐦

it's interesting what this says about attitudes to party politics, organisation and democracy, at least among the centre. I think this odd 'group' biz is a reaction against the mass membership which brought corbyn to power

1st policy:

#PMQs is just so awful. Everything people hate about UK politics. Abolish the thing and put something different in its place. #ChangePolitics #TheIndGroup

— Chuka Umunna (@ChukaUmunna) February 20, 2019

"something different"

People outraged they can’t demand the party serves people like them anymore - definite strong class component to people joking about Corbyn talking about bus fares and having failed his A-levels. Plus when you add in some of the dogwhistling about identity politics...

the IG is a broad church: the biggest chuka fan I know is fond of letting off steam with incoherent outbursts about how corbynites detest the working class

Fair play to the tabloid yesterday that got a photo of Corbyn down on his allotment at the same time as the IG announcement and went straight for "LOST THE PLOT"

xp they mean the white working class.

In fact he was at Jeremy Hardy's funeral service.

It is dispiriting the extent to which FBPE-centrism is essentially identity politics for the zone-2 metropolitan middle class. An old friend of mine seems to find John McDonnell's "1970s salesman's suits" as infuriating as his policies.

John McD is usually pretty well turned out I would have said? Of the three, Abbott, McD & Corbyn, it’s Corbyn who’s the worst put together.

Can easily the same snobbery being applied to Angela Rayner when/if she becomes leader, depressingly. Think part of the reason UK centrists are unable to criticise AOC, despite her policy positions they could never endorse from a UK pol, is that she still codes as aspirational to them.

heidi allen is so credulous

business people are dumb and bad

lol for a moment i thought the chuka tweet was abt #BBCQT and i was all "I AM IG NOW, at last a sane voice in politics"

No hang on, it's not more real - she'd already been told to kill herself so "an actual Labour MP can take your place".

Three Nazis are in prison for threatening her and another one killed a Labour MP, so...err..."equally real"? Call it a draw?

Actually I presume Bonehill is out.

No idea where this will lead, but for many that are politically homeless this could conceivably be a place of shelter from the increasingly extremist political duopoly. https://t.co/Um5KE6kKMA

— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) February 20, 2019

Shat on IG

so it’s a party for journalists and sensible centrists on twitter?

Plus when you add in some of the dogwhistling about identity politics...

Including Tom Watson’s statement on the whole affair.

Obvs being ‘’politically homeless’ is more traumatic than being physically homeless so massive sympathy to them all.

Well after watching that I feel like I'd vote for Heidi Allen over Chris Williamson any day. Wonder how many voters feel the same?

— Sonia Sodha (@soniasodha) February 20, 2019

Twitter centrism = the politics of people rightfully upset about the Labour shitshow but strangely comfortable with the current situation. I honestly wonder who these people who’ve never had to hold their nose & vote for a party before are.

I often vote holding my nose because of my own rank stench after going on the usual three day suicide bender, in preparation for tory-geddon.

<3 cal

I’m sorry to announce that there is a new Chris Leslie interview:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/02/chris-leslie-interview-labour-have-massively-underestimated-new-centrist-party

Angela Smith, one of the original seven rebel MPs, referred during a BBC interview to people from ethnic minority backgrounds as having a “funny tinge”. When I raise the remark, Leslie replies: “I think she’s apologised… it’s clear that it was something misspoken rather than with malign intent.” He adds: “This is the way it’s going to be: we’re going to be under a lot of scrutiny. We’ve got a lot of big enemies with vested interests trying to shoot us down at every opportunity.”

Leslie does not dispute that many of the left’s policies are popular with the public: rather he questions their desirability. Of the renationalisation of the privatised utilities, he remarks: “It speaks to the controlling instinct of the hard left because there is a sort of view that John McDonnell sitting in the Treasury can mandate how many tractors are sold, or what trains should leave Euston at what particular time of day, or what should be the price of a stamp. The problem with the Marxist ideology is that it assumes this omniscience on behalf of the central controller.”

omg

He is similarly sceptical of Labour policies such as a 50 per cent top income tax rate (“it depends on the use of that revenue and the economic impact”) and the complete abolition of university tuition fees (“sounds great, the minor problem is: how do you pay for it?”).

Honestly this has been a banner week and it's been too long coming.

lmao at the stephen bush AMA

“I think they should choose an unpronounceable in the XXXtentacion model”

I doubt this group will meet on anything else other than Brexit votes for the next few weeks. lol @ Chris for trying to settle a score with McDonnell or Chuka for pretending this is a new politics.

Stephen Bush knows his audience.

Funny that Corbyn and Abbott are so popular with working class people in their own constituencies - of course a lot of those are unpleasantly tinged.

The working class are only white though, I keep forgetting that.

Well after watching that I feel like I'd vote for Heidi Allen over Chris Williamson any day. Wonder how many voters feel the same?

Finally, someone's speaking the language of Guardian leader writers. Huzzah!

She's on fire...

The route to a referendum - that doesn't involve Corbyn - just became a bit clearer. Independent group MPs force May to agree to putting her deal to a referendum when and if Labour next calls a confidence vote.

— Sonia Sodha (@soniasodha) February 20, 2019

How would this work? Really, they haven't got a clue. And how would something "that doesn't "involve Corbyn, also involve Labour calling for a VONC? Does she think he's going to resign?

How to people become leader writers? Serious question.

i would prob be opening myself to the normal or implied accusations of faux naivety or bad faith questioning if i were to again ask, as i did a few days back re brexit, exactly wtf my ukilxors actually feel about this.

genuinely im sure you all feel and read and ride the currents but as an outsider looking in it does look like no two of ye agree on anything and most of yr posts, while v interesting, dont seem to refer vuch to....the gist of things, its all periphery and smoke and stuff i mean i like it its very atmospheric

Eh? I’d say the thread is fairly united on Brexit being bad and in despair about knowing what could realistically be done about it?

I feel exhausted.

no im clear now on brexit but tbh i did have to ask.

now im doin the same re the blairite splitters who are also maybe the only ones who care about bullying and antisemitism

The answer you’re after is Luciana Berger, the rest are terrible.

genuinely im sure you all feel and read and ride the currents but as an outsider looking in it does look like no two of ye agree on anything and most of yr posts, while v interesting, dont seem to refer vuch to....the gist of things, its all periphery and smoke and stuff i mean i like it its very atmospheric

― ɪmˈpəʊzɪŋ (darraghmac), 20. februar 2019 16:43 (forty seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's got to be a new board description in there somewhere

its not a criticism i promise carry on carry on

The positive press these guys are enjoying will last until the exact moment they table a motion for a second referendum upon which moment the Brexit tabloids will devour them like a swarm of locusts.