Seizing back control: The ILX lol brexit is how we're all gonna die thread.

making ridiculous melt-tastic fantasy Labour XIs could be a symptom of losing your grip on reality.

I saw Yvette Cooper and Stella Creasy chatting over a cup of tea. Which got me thinking: it was no stretch at all to imagine these two talented politicians as prime minister and chancellor, discussing the forthcoming comprehensive spending review.another decade of austerity - but done with a heavy heart this time!

that's what i love about the piece, it's like a beautiful daydream

Glinner is a total zoomer and has been for some time. Extremely cool how he targeted an RSPCA employee as being a threat to children, just because the guy had a kink profile & was gay.

OK Graham Linehan is an Irish man that I have no problem with the Brits claiming as British

— adam (@RummHammm) June 1, 2018

100% chance that shadow cabinet fantasists don’t really get why people hate Blair.

Clearly not awake enough to have realised that I wrote RSPCA when I meant NSPCC - imago, make sure to stick that on the xls

it's not even so much that D'Anconas still exist as that the Graun is still plugging away with them

Where do I get that kind of conditionless funding to write my own witless screeds? I mean, I’ve never voted Tory or had a failed website which puts me ahead of him on several metrics.

I'm guessing it gets clicks and can be spun as broadening 'debate', ditto Simon Jenkins. D'Ancona - the former editor of The Spectator - is better when writing about the Tories' problems because he actually understands that world and comes from it.

But he's also the guy who described Osborne's disastrous 2016 Budget as "deeply moral" which shows you how he can write an entire column on The Sensible Grown Ups In The Room without austerity occurring to him as a contributory factor. These people aren't seriously engaging with the question of why their favourites aren't trusted by the membership they need to win over.

That is a truly amazing article (though I agree with gyac about Lammy, if he'd take the post)

I think there might be a translation issue with these articles to be fair, they probably look better in the original language before the clapping emojis between each word are removed

Also since these people seem to like torturous football metaphors so much every time they hail someone from either party as the future - latest example is Rory Stewart - it puts me in mind of some Ligue 1 YouTube wonderkid who you know is going to end up playing for Newcastle, Galatasaray and then in the Swiss second division.

he uses populism as a pejorative to dismiss a quite tamely centre-left (in the EU scheme of things) Labour manifesto because it opposes austerity, and he seems have zero curiosity as to why austerity might be very unpopular with 40% of the electorate. Just let the adults get on with grown up politics.

*I'm probably repeating what has already been post xps edit*

More plausible explanation - Matthew D'Ancona had about 15mins to write a column in between shopping and packing for holiday.

If only these Political Lionesses were given free reign, they would comfortably beat Farage and Boris with incisive and persuasive argument, switching the play with wit and logic. One even wonders if there might be a place on the bench for Toni Duggan! Watching the country get behind our Political Lionesses on a strong Remain platform would be a joy to behold. I would wager money that they could go one further than their footballing counterparts and bring the EU Membership Trophy home, defeating a bedraggled Leave side devoid of ideas (and with their own strikers banned due to financial irregularities the karma would be complete). One can indeed dream!

xp
Peter Bradshaw once used that excuse for giving a hot 4 star review to some execrable pile of garbage.

Lammy's too busy actually bothering to respond to his trolls on Twitter too often - the pigs like it etc.

Luckily I have access to funding to write bottomless screeds about how being a mere liberal is not good enough in an age of austerity, corrupt government, rising homophobia, racism and sexism, widening inequality and all the rest. I’m on it.

Lammy was probably offered a shadcab role but turned it down.

Lammy has spoken about this and said he wasn’t and he wasn’t under Miliband either and seems bitter about it.

the book of Lammentations

This prompted a further thought: how easy it would be to construct a pretty decent cabinet from Labour’s backbenches: Jess Phillips, Seema Malhotra, Owen Smith, Stephen Kinnock, Gloria De Piero, Angela Eagle and David Lammy for a start. Then add in a handful of existing frontbenchers – Tom Watson, Keir Starmer – and, before you knew it, you’d have the basis of an electable Labour government with a fighting chance of uniting the country and governing it competently.

aren't Kinnock and De Piero both outspoken critics of Labour backing a second referendum? it's difficult to imagine them finding common ground with Lammy, Starmer etc

Tom Watson has been terrible as shadow DCMS for the entire time he’s been prioritising palace coups and the like, he ought to be told to fix up.

Kate Hoey is not standing again, which avoids the need for removing her. idk if the DUP have any vacancies.

Hooray!

(Just wait, Amy Lamé will try to win that seat, having come very close to being selected to replace Tessa Jowell).

Lol wtfffff

Sad to see you leave the Commons. A principled MP.

— John McTernan (@johnmcternan) July 8, 2019

I mean, she is quite principled? Her principles are like "fox hunting and Hard Brexit are good, accountability to your constituents, gay rights and spitting in football are bad", but they're certainly out there

anyway, good riddance, may the good people of Vauxhall never have a headbanger parachuted in as their MP ever again

do any of you have a suggestion of something to read to understand the Labour anti-semitism hullabaloo ? I’ve tried googling around but seem to find only cagey, meta-level commentary: eg “so-and-so said xyz which reignited the abc controversy” and I can’t decipher what the issues are. I was thinking, is this like “is it racist to say Zionism is racist”? but I can’t tell from what I’ve read. And one reads that the issues of Labour with anti-semitism are historic and long-standing: what of that can I read?

Just totally lolled at that piece on Universal Credit scammers on pm. Job centre staff talking about false claims made for peaple with 3 kids called hah, hah and hah! A 19 year old women with 6 blind children. Someones claim made for a landlord called Harry Kane!

Euler this Vox explianer seems decent imo (I favour articles that quote Michael Segalov generally tho)
http://www.vox.com/world/2019/3/8/18249953/

And one reads that the issues of Labour with anti-semitism are historic and long-standing: what of that can I read?

I might be wrong about this, but I think when ppl refer back to "historic" problems with anti-semitism in Labour they're talking about the fact that British society was (is) anti-semitic and Labour failed to deviate from that, not that Labour was more anti-semitic than society at large.

Just totally lolled at that piece on Universal Credit scammers on pm. Job centre staff talking about false claims made for peaple with 3 kids called hah, hah and hah! A 19 year old women with 6 blind children. Someones claim made for a landlord called Harry Kane!

The BBC reporter on this irritatingly kept saying Universial Credit - though, as it appeared as if he might be a member of the BBC Scotland Gaelic Mafia, maybe that's how they pronounce it in Stornoway.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2019/07/sir-roger-scruton very good the NS doesn’t have any beef with his comments about Muslims. Can’t wait til they go bankrupt.

Going to bring this up regarding Jason Cowley and his outright veneration of white supremacists and the violent colonial expansion of the British Empire @JasonCowleyNS pic.twitter.com/yo5YFXwrSJ

— Muzakir Ahmed (@MuzakirAhmed) July 8, 2019

was... this not already policy

💥BREAKING: After talks today the unions have agreed a common position on Brexit: whatever deal negotiated by Boris Johnson OR exit date on No Deal should go to a second referendum.
Remain vs that deal should be on ballot paper.
Labour would campaign for Remain.

— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) July 8, 2019

Yep. Go to @judeinlondon2 for all your FFS FBPE needs.

Not exactly - Len @ Unite was strongly opposed, wasn’t he? And Unite are Labour’s biggest backer.

just reads like a subtle unscrambling of the rorschach to me - will no doubt be interpreted as a continuing fudge

the centrist narrative is "corbyn is swaying leave because he's the puppet of the extremist lexiteers milne, murray, len, and murphy"

💥 In event of general election, Labour’s manifesto position would be:
- negotiate a deal with EU to respect Brexit vote
- any final Labour deal then put back to the people
- ballot paper would have Labour deal vs Remain
CRUCIAL: Labour position would depend on deal negotiated.

— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) July 8, 2019

stunning stuff

(re: the "reporting" i mean)

Xps
Imagine pissing away tens of millions to ruthless doorstep scammers so easily like that. I can't wait till an audit reveals UC has been a costly mistake and most of those responsible for the travesty get lifetime peerages.

I might be wrong about this, but I think when ppl refer back to "historic" problems with anti-semitism in Labour they're talking about the fact that British society was (is) anti-semitic and Labour failed to deviate from that, not that Labour was more anti-semitic than society at large.

It very much depends on the people you ask. iirc polling over the last twenty years suggests that Labour members are less antisemitic than the baseline British public and about half as antisemitic as a percentage now than they were under Blair (with the caveat that the party is more than twice as large) - but the polling tends to be based on the extent to which members agree with what would generally be considered overtly antisemitic statements.

Segalov, Wolfson, etc, are right to say that 11% of the membership is 11% too much, irrespective of how much worse anyone else might be, and the party should make every effort to root them out / make it clear that they’re not welcome.

Extend that out, in good faith or not, to a broader range of more contentious opinions and it gets a little more hazy. Support for Palestine has traditionally been stronger on the left of the Labour Party than other political movements. If you sincerely believe that criticism of Israel without equal criticism of, idk, Morocco, is likely to be rooted in antisemitism then you’re probably going to think that Labour is more antisemitic than the polling suggests. Extend that even further to the argument, made a number of times over the last few years, that critiques of capitalism are inherently conspiratorial in nature and anti capitalist conspiracies are generally antisemitic, you also bring in more people. As the left has grown in strength, the perception might be that Labour has become a vehicle for antisemitism, irrespective of what any polling says to the contrary.

Inevitably, there is a crossover at times between the 11% of overt antisemites and the proportion of the membership that is vocal about Palestine / the abuses of capitalism, so rarely any shortage of incidents to point to in order to suggest it is all part and parcel.

This is true, I’d also add the low level of political education of older activists and members especially - they share stuff uncritically in Facebook groups that they maybe only partially understand - and you can see this from responses - and get angry when being accused of being racist, because to them racism is conscious.

Eleven percent? That many? I thought the figures were .01%?

I think that's the percentage for "Yes, I'm an antisemite, make sure you spell that correctly, A-N-T-I.."

It’s likely to be the percentage of members reported to a disciplinary committee, rather than the number who will agree with statements anonymously.

has anyone here read shami chakrabarti's report?

If the road to the disciplinary committee goes through Karie Murphy, that's going to be the same thing, so.