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

LOL, quick dash round Streatham by Sky News struggles to find anyone who would vote for Chuka Ummuna again.

otm plax + SV. I know she has took some horrible abuse and some say she has done good + righteous campaigning for mental health services, but that was an embarrassing shitshow and she's making Liz Kendall look good.

Gotta say she seems like a typical Habs Girls product to me ie. super-entitled and ‘professional’.

well its also bizarre, if you have been an MP for X years, surely you have some idea of what the evidence is "from other countries" on rail renationalisation. A lot of people would say the evidence in Germany, say, shows that a nationalised rail service can be managed infinitely better etc. It does seem really cheeky to act like political vision and approaches to key questions of policy are somehow unrelated. Also, the idea of evidence based policy is complete nonsense.

a bit like the moral maze on R4 when they get Sir Rog Scrote and +1 each spectator/spiked crew and then say let's see where this discussion goes...

Marr couldn't have been much gentler with them and they just collapsed. Also it was clear that Berger doesn't actually like or agree with Allen and was visibly cringing throughout.

it was obvious that allen wasn't going to go to bat for any of their shared vision beyond a few profile-raising media appearances.

i think this group will end up just as divided as the main parties. And they can't maintain this nebulous "but we're the good guys, trust us" spiel forever. however much the BBC seem to want to maintain it.

by their own admission and tacitly there is no sense of communal identity from the get go other than we want to fuck corbyn on the former labour side and we don’t want brexit but will support the tories on the other side.

the tactical advantage it gives May is meaningful (that vonc buffer) and is probably partly responsible for the really undemocratic further delay. ummuna and co deserve to be thrown in the pit, tho obv it’s hard to be sorry to see them go.

Berger can keep on message and react quickly, which, when your entire party is based around maintaining a thin veneer of professionalism, is handy. She has always been terrible though.

The Marr interview was quite useful in confirming the obvious- they do have policies, they just don’t want to share them out loud.

Should water be nationalised? It doesn’t feel like it should but let’s have a conversation.

Should the top rate of tax be 50p? It doesn’t feel right but let’s have an evidence-based conversation.

Should we have tuition fees at university? Well, I want to deliver a memorised answer on early learning...

I’m not sure there really is that much of an ideological difference between them in practice. Allen, Soubry, Berger and Gapes are all from different traditions but I’m pretty sure they’d all be happy to sign up to a ‘socially liberal, economically conservative’ centre-right platform.

Plax otm about ‘evidence based politics’, of course. Its entirely rhetorically consistent with the model of Singapore-style authoritarian technocracy Boris, etc, are hankering after (or the Thai junta, Putin, etc - ideology notionally taking second place to ‘common sense’, ‘expertise’, etc.).

ideology i think you’re right but the current tactical space is a mess for them. afaics they’ve enabled May’s deal, which wouldn’t surely have been any of their stated intents.

ok so we have coalesced around (or at least are now explicitly of) the opinion that the splitters are awful, including berger?

good, thats good

it always amazes me when they talk aloud about Singapore as a socio-economic model for post brexit UK. Cos of course it definitely isn't a good thing for vast swathes of voters, who might just google Singapore.

The last fifteen years have clearly been training young people to respond positively to the question ‘would you trade all your employment rights for good street food?’

lol!

FWIW I think IG is a sideshow compared with the fact that half the Cabinet are in open rebellion.

always amazes me when they talk aloud about Singapore as a socio-economic model for post brexit UK

Always amazes me that almost any country is used as a socio-economic model for post Brexit UK. Especially countries with a population of London.

ireland

1845 but ah well thats life dont forget to write x

I can appreciate Tories being such demented ideologues that they don't give a shit about what damage their *economic strategies* have on most of the country. But i thought there were rules dressing things up so they sound a bit palatable to the electorate!

perhaps I should be praising their forthrightness tbf. But I bet even in 1845 they weren't saying aloud: I think the Raj model of feeding/engineering a mass famine will be just a perfect policy for our troublesome colonial neighbours. Or they probably were tbf, just thinking live here.

Er...

Many members of the British upper and middle classes believed that the famine was a divine judgment—an act of Providence. A leading exponent of the providentialist perspective was Trevelyan, who was chiefly responsible for administering Irish relief policy throughout the famine years. In his book The Irish Crisis, published in 1848, Trevelyan later described the famine as "a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence", one which laid bare "the deep and inveterate root of social evil". The famine, he declared, was "the sharp but effectual remedy by which the cure is likely to be effected... God grant that the generation to which this great opportunity has been offered may rightly perform its part ..." This mentality of Trevelyan's was influential in persuading the government to do nothing to restrain mass evictions.

Trevelyan wrote to Lord Monteagle of Brandon]], a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the famine was an "effective mechanism for reducing surplus population", and was "the judgement of God". Further he wrote that "The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people".

I've read more about holdomor/chinese famines/russian rev famines than the one where my own ancestors got tossed into death pits and cannibalised etc. Just scared of turning into Brendan O'Neil!

Well now you can say you truly get The Fields of Athenry?

Brendan O’Neill is a special brand of fucker, can’t believe his ancestors survived the famine to eventually have the family produce him.

"The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people".

Politicians have always dressed up ruthless brutality as pious morality.

The Guardian attributing anti-Corbz tweets to Corbz

Can anyone find a clip where Corbyn says this? I can only find a tweet where a user paraphrases a video where he says something entirely different https://t.co/u4GgdSTOSs pic.twitter.com/DoIrLZ5iRo

— Dawn Foster (@DawnHFoster) February 24, 2019

McDonnell said he had met with two Labour lawmakers, Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson, who have proposed May’s deal be put to the public in another referendum but he did not think enough Labour lawmakers would want to vote for it as it stands because it would involve backing May’s Brexit agreement.

“We’re working with them to see can we have a redraft of that amendment which people could vote for. I think there’s a high possibility we could,” he said.

Last night sources close to Corbyn said that the party was considering backing the Wilson-Kyle amendment and would make a decision in the coming days. The only stumbling block, they said, was tweaking the amendment so that it was consistent with the party's original red lines on Brexit

Phil Wilson also saying that he's spoken privately with cabinet ministers about this and received a positive response. Does all this mean that we're moving towards a situation where a deal put forward that is basically the same as May's deal but that Labour can semi-credibly argue doesn't break their red lines, Labour leadership agrees whip their MPs to vote through deal on the condition that it's approved by a referendum where the options are this deal and remain?

and on that subject, a v.rare instance of a piece which recognises the only route to a second ref is through the labour leadership's office and that it does PV campaigners no good to excoriate and alienate them:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/02/labour-must-back-brexit-ratification-referendum-end-uk-s-crisis#amp

A public vote allowing the UK to accept May’s deal, or stay in the EU, is the best means of uniting Remainers and Leavers.

ummm

I just lose the will to live before I even finish sentences like that.

Saw that clip on Marr earlier. Allen was dominating the convo. From one min "we will meet to discuss policy on Monday" to "we are backing May all the way" was the highlight. Giving IG about a month, maybe less.

FWIW I think IG is a sideshow compared with the fact that half the Cabinet are in open rebellion.

― Matt DC, Sunday, 24 February 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Saw a random tweet urging Amber Rudd to save the day and force May's hand. Its where we are at as a country.

I like Chakrabortty and all but this backing 2nd referendum business is really misguided.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/25/labour-aids-tory-brexit-destroyed

Leave voters would not punish Labour at the next election anywhere near as badly as its remain base, according to polling from the TSSA transport workers’ union that has been presented to John McDonnell and others in the past three weeks. Just 36% of Labour leave voters rank Brexit in the top three topics they care about. For Labour remainers, that shoots up to 60%.

To me the quesiton is how this is distributed. There are areas in London that are heavily remain but heavily Labour. That line doesn't answer how this would play out in the marginal seats though.

(btw I am not accounting for Scotland though)

and obv even if Lab came out with 2nd ref Corbyn can't do very much to make all his MPs vote for it but I suppose is about perception with that 60%.

I still don't see a 2nd ref solving anything, but at this stage lots of good and bad ppl seem to be losing their minds with this eternal clusterfuck. An interesting take i read last night was Labour should still push for VONC so those TiG melts have to get their hands dirty, and piss off some of their remainer supporters.

I don't think it's necessarily misguided, any conversation about "the voters" always begs the question, which voters? The voters now or the voters in four years' time? What if Brexit is a moral and economic catastrophe and unemployment spikes in Leave-voting constituencies? You think they're going to thank Labour for respecting their wishes and getting it over the line? They're not going to thank the Tories either, but it doesn't look good to aid and abet a disaster because you'll end up benefiting from it in the long run.

A lot of Labour defence right now seems to hinge on three things:

- That Corbyn and the wider leadership know what they're doing here
- That it will ultimately benefit Labour at the ballot box, whenever that is
- That when it does happen they'll have economic and political room for manoeuvre to implement their programme, rather than firefighting

I'm sceptical about all of these. I'm sceptical about a second referendum as well but every other alternative, including a Labour-backed softish Brexit that May won't agree to anyway, is worse. Losing a second referendum would at the very least force May to resign, collapse the government and force a General Election, which is better than allowing her to claim victory and keeping the Tories in until 2022.

if we did end up with a second ref where the options are 'May's deal'(or something similar) and 'remain' then how would the ERG and extra-parliamentary hard brexiteers respond? Would they campaign for the referendum to be boycotted on the basis that neither option represents 'true' brexit? Or fall in line behind May's deal because at least we'd be out of the EU? Would the hard brexiteers who have described May's deal as worse than the status quo stick to that position in a crunch?

and if remain wins a 2nd ref by a small margin, but the margin of victory is plausibly smaller than the number of voters who boycott the vote, then what happens?

Any Brexit deal that gets over the line will be loudly trumpeted as May's victory, she'll step down after that and we're left with whichever headbanger the Tories vote in. That's our immediate future if Article 50 isn't extended or the process is derailed in some other way. A General Election feels as remote and fantastical a possibility as the magical FBPE fairy at this stage. (xpost)

Losing a second referendum would at the very least force May to resign, collapse the government and force a General Election

I don't know whether it will happen like this if its a small margin either.

(btw I am not accounting for Scotland though)

I fear Labour might be forced to write off Scotland and concentrate elsewhere, like the Tories did before they (re-)connected with the Orange Bastard vote.

wouldn't an SNP coalition (of chaos) be their only way into no. 10 if Scotland is as fucked as it is looking for Labour rn?

or the slim hope the SNP wipe out the tories as well.

I’m still not convinced we really know what would happen in scotland. all the polls before the 2017 GE portrayed a similar picture - the eventual result was a lot better than expected with many SNP supermajorities reduced significantly. the labour machine would be able to fight a lot more attacking a targeted campaign - ie they wouldn’t just focus all resources on edinburgh south.

it must be hard to model the interplay of the three currents at play: vocal remain Vs respect the ref; unionism Vs independence; anti-austerity Vs being a right cunt.

remember labour’s 2017 manifesto (though it wasn’t a central focus) actually had a commitment to investigate most popular position w/r/t the constitutional question in scotland: increased UK federalism (or devo max)

scottish labour need to get a fkn grip tho

it might sound a bit facile, but in the current febrile atmosphere I think they need a scottish leader.

A narrow victory is still a defeat for May, just as it was for Cameron, impossible to see her continuing in that scenario. And whoever her successor is may struggle to keep the DUP onside and will otherwise struggle for legitimacy. I'd say it's a reasonable route to a GE. Of course her successor would be very likely to be a fervent Brexiter which would cause it's own problems, it certainly wouldn't be over and done with.

looking at scottish twitter and it seems nobody - I mean nobody has a good word to say about Richard Leonard. And a lot of the abuse seems to be of the "sassenach fud should go back sooth" variety.

Cameron resigned for one because he backed the wrong horse but also because he doesn't like to work. May could say the vote wasn't very conclusive either way and didn't we have another one because people kept screaming 52/48 till they were blue in the face? idk..I guess this is all taking the hypotheticals quite far for today.

yes I too am looking askance at "May will of course then resign" -- I mean yes she's said she will but this is a terrible metric for her actual behaviour. #banterheuristic says she ends up leader of a TIG-centred "government of national emergency"

government for creating national emergency