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

Grieve and Justine Greening have said they'll quit in the event of No Deal. Presumably while continuing to vote against the deal on the table.

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.

or they express any opinion more specific than "everyone else is bad", at which point everyone will disagree with the specifics, same as with Labour's delicate fence-sitting act, or the no deal crew's less delicate fence-and-bridge-burning act

Just enough damage to get what we want is a pretty stupid gameplan.

I'm not even clear what they want tbh. what do these people want? some column inches to go "we're not like other MPs, when everything is on fire please remember us striking a pose and forget that we didn't actually do anything to stop it"?

by ILX standards I am a total centrist melt (NB I mostly like Corbyn, but only mostly, which == total melt iirc) and also have become perhaps unreasonably terrified by the prospect of no-deal Brexit, so I might be the target audience - buuut most of these people are bad and AFAIK they have no policies except they say they don't want Brexit, but they don't say what they'll do about it or whether there are softer Brexits they'd settle for, and meanwhile their existence only seems to nudge us closer to the cliff edge

not that anyone needed to know where I stand, but just so dmac can fill in the .xlsx (xp)

Perhaps intended as to put pressure on May? Can't see May being worried by that tbh xp

Oh I just read that Gilbert article! It's fantastic. Dunno if xyzzzz wants any filthy Greens mixing with his pure bois tho

Great piece indeed. But do I really have to listen to Chapo Trap House now? :-/

I don't mind reading about CTH. Other people can do the actual listening

I’ll have to read the piece later. But yeah, incredible how the media have closed ranks and just glossed over that massive fuckup they had. Never mind that the people they’re fawning over now are part of the reason Labour lost five million votes in the first place!

Ofc they’re all drooling over soubs saying TM is racist despite none of them calling for TM to go at the height of Windrush or pressing her on any of her policies, but hey.

I say it often but the infamous pmqs where Corbyn talked about buses was a masterpiece of commentariat sneering. The British election survey found that people outside London not owning a car was one of the biggest predictors of being a Labour voter, but it’s Corbyn who’s out of touch!

can someone point me to the CTH episodes on antisemitism pls

That Gilbert piece is very good but I think Stevie T's burn yesterday said it a lot more succinctly.

It's pretty good but jarring in a few places - I don't know the writer (unless I do - I'm rubbish at remembering bylines), but does he really mean "I'm not saying that this thing I'm clearly painting as bad is bad"?

not that anyone needed to know where I stand, but just so dmac can fill in the .xlsx (xp)

― a passing spacecadet, Thursday, 21 February 2019 10:29 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3

That piece was ok, ran through a lot of stuff I knew before it got to the meat.

This bit is a bit out of place - he puts this in then answers it in the next para?

Tom Watson’s recent interventions make this very clear. He calls movingly for a kinder and gentler approach to politics, expressing moral outrage over the horror of antisemitism. But what he wants is a shadow cabinet reshuffle to represent ‘the balance of opinion in the Parliamentary Labour Party’. Presumably he doesn’t want one that would actually represent the politics and views of the current membership: if it did, then it probably wouldn’t include Tom Watson.

I mean, as he himself says later on Corbynites aren't the sectarians of media portrayal (although there are probably elements), which explains why the membership elected Watson as Deputy Leader.

Somone asked on here yesterday: how many Lab MPs leave before this becomes a problem? And the answer is just let them leave.

As per the article he wrote for the Statesman last week the model is for all sorts of alliances - outside of Labourism - is what would come from being in a memebership led org that can have both Corbyn as Leader and Watson as Deputy. It sounds like Syriza and we'd need to learn the lessons of how that went wrong so the same thing doesn't happen here.

That Telegraph article on Luciana Berger from 2005 that Gilbert's piece links to makes for some choice reading: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1487989/Labour-should-have-fought-back-on-immigration-says-Euan-Blairs-girlfriend.html

Trigger warning: your cringe reflex might never recover

It is fairly unpleasant that 'Rumours of a close friendship with Euan Blair' get turned into 'girlfriend' in the headline, alright.

Miss Berger, who is studying a masters in government, politics and policy at Birkbeck College, London, said that it had been "misguided" and "wrong" for Labour to portray Michael Howard as a flying pig and Fagin in posters.

0_o

Bubbly and nervous, the strikingly beautiful postgraduate student spoke at breakneck speed

o dear sweet torygraph, never change

I'd like to think this wouldn't get past today:

Miss Berger has been repeatedly described as a future Labour leader. However, as she talked it was unclear how she would fit into the identikit world of New Labour where rising female stars tend to be shorn-haired and more than a little dull. One senses that it would have to be a different Labour Party that took Miss Berger to its bosom. As things are, she is, well, far too fabulous.

but I am probably wrong.

Seen this? I fear I may have to bleach my phone. pic.twitter.com/kLtTqJku8U

— Bertram (@Bertie_Wooster) February 21, 2019

She pulled no punches in accusing all political parties including Labour, of which she is a member, of inflaming racial tension by campaigning vociferously on immigration.
Miss Berger, who last week resigned from the executive of the National Union of Students in protest at the union leadership "turning a blind eye" to anti-Semitism, accused all the main parties of behaving badly on the issue.
"I think the insensitivity surrounding all parties' approach to asylum and immigration has a lot to say for the rise in not only anti-Semitism but any form of racism directed at immigrants. All parties have been responsible for not dealing with the issue in an appropriate manner.
Asked about Labour's stance on immigration she sighed and said: "I have to be very careful what I say here. I'm disappointed by the fact that they are playing to other parties' policies in order to discuss it all. Whereas the Labour Party in the past have been so strong and so active in combating and standing up for themselves, I'm surprised that on this particular issue, it's unfortunate that it's been played into."

Who'd a thought the guy behind "hello boys" and fcuk would be..er..a bit of a dick? Xps

Nobody is suggesting that it submerge its identity or dilute its programme: that isn’t what leadership means.

There is definitely a paper to be written about masculinity and virility and the English political fear of coalitions (strangelove.jpeg, basically)

In a rare point of agreement with Berger, the treatment of Michael Howard was frequently both xenophobic and antisemitic imo. Awful man that he was / is.

Yes but 2005 Labour rhetoric on immigration was vile too!

Everyone cooing over @Anna_Soubry suggesting that May has an issue with immigration as though @DawnButlerBrent didn’t lay this out clearly enough in April. pic.twitter.com/4klofCIRjI

— Simon (@bitginger) February 21, 2019

There’s something strange about the way female members of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet are targeted, dismissed, or derided by the girls’ night out crowd. Can’t put my finger on it. 🤔

I want ian murray to leave pls

if I can have anything pls give me that

Gilbert piece is excellent tho it would've been good if he could have acknowledged that just occasionally a little bit of moral condemnation of your class enemies will leak out, at least into your own head.

Or maybe it wouldn't, just we all get tired and angry. His analysis is right anyway imo

"This isn’t to say that they are bad people"

disagree with this pov very strongly, and always will till my dying breath!

we're all bad people sometimes

ugh sorry I'll keep that out of this thread

it doesn't excuse Labour's campaign tactics against Howard, but lest we forget he himself was responsible for the Tories' "Are you thinking what we're thinking?" campaign, up there for the most racist campaign themes in modern British history

xp
micro-level badness like being a shitty person or whatever vs some cunt who is quite happy to prop up austerity for millions of people for another decade of misery + privation tho NV!

I’m a bit 👀 at Joan Ryan’s resignation letter citing her parents’ experience as Irish immigrants as reason to stand up for the middle east’s only democracy - has she ever been to NI?!

After 4 decades, I have made the terribly difficult decision to resign from the Labour Party. It is the greatest honour of my life to represent the people of #EnfieldNorth. I will continue to represent and speak up for them as a member of the @TheIndGroup of MPs #ChangePolitics pic.twitter.com/BroRRoVSGk

— Joan Ryan MP (@joanryanEnfield) February 19, 2019

xp never change

lol us second gen paddies are so full of shit sometimes, I'll keep my (hypothetical) UK passport for now!

most southerners have never been to ni, right? i was there once for a wedding and afaict that level of interaction is pretty common. when people over here ask me about it i say it's part of britain and they should prob be telling me.

that letter needs a mournful fiddle a few paragraphs in.

yeah probably not the best point to make but I’d be surprised if you say most? I went twice as a child pre-GFA despite my dad’s absolute hate of the place.

But yeah if she wants to cite her heritage in this matter, it’s pretty funny when you consider how lots of nationalist areas of NI will have Palestinian flags and stuff on the murals.

It needs a mournful fiddle and ideally a picture of her parents digging in the muck despondently. Maybe she and Brendan O’Neill could collaborate.

like Brendan O'Neil she learnt all about racism by having Irish parents.

michael segalov article in the guardian on what labour should do next on AS is excellent

There is a rumour Ian Austin has gone but nobody at his office is picking up the phone so journalists can’t check.

Most southerners who are a few hours' drive away (which is probably more southerners than it used to be) will have taken a trip to investigate price differentials at some time, I think.

Please god let it be true. xp

I don’t want ian austin to go - only because it makes it less likely for ian murray to jump

I wonder which of the TIGs tried to swipe the Labour mailing list?

I hope they enjoy their gigantic GDPR lawsuit.

corbyn has done a comment on shamima begum

The correct one though I did laugh at his old man rambling towards the end

She was born in Britain, she has that right to remain in Britain and obviously a lot of questions she has to answer but also some support that she needs.

She obviously has, in my view, a right to return to Britain. On that return she must face a lot of questions about everything she’s done. And at that point any action may or may not be taken.

I think the idea of stripping somebody of their citizenship when they were born in Britain is a very extreme manoeuvre.

Indeed I question the right of the home secretary to have these powers when the original law was brought in by Theresa May when she was home secretary.

The entire liberal establishment of America and Britain has spent the last two years tying themselves into increasingly tight knots to convince themselves that all of their misfortunes are down to Russian subversion. pic.twitter.com/Dg2EXwzTc1

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) February 21, 2019

This take burnt my eyelashes off and I find it deeply hilarious that people are still on the “Corbyn bad, McDonnell good” track.

up to do the shopping on the first saturday in december lads, religiously

and i do mean religiously

all gone now alas, this was our spade, no more we'll dig it to the beat of a lambeg, mullahinch no more and the union jack kerbing our eyesll see neer again *switches into seannós wail* hush at the back and a bit of respect for the song