PMs change and lol we're all gonna die (but brexit will never end)

Not sure how nastier the press can be - not as if they were giving him a free pass last time. But their decline has also been a factor in that election, and that hasn't moved.

Their decline has arguably increased, but at the same time they can do a lot worse than 'Stick Him In The Cor-Bin' - and indeed they did to Ed Miliband, who they genuinely believed could become PM. They didn't see Corbyn as a serious threat in 2017 but they will this time, especially with their man in Number 10.

Thought they really went for it after his speech post-Manchester attacks. And looking at that JohnSUN headline today is basically an inverse of CorBIN lol. One hopes it has the same level of impact.

only upside from brexit that i can see

― bookmarkflaglink (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 25 July 2019 22:54 (yesterday) link

Scotland also gone too, my friend. Lower rents. Capital flight, maybe? Very de-growth policies here.

Listening to Evan Davies and some Labour melt talking about how significant it was that Corbyn didn't attack Boris with the correct style of playground insults at PMQ today.

I tht Corbyn was p. good and reinvigorated at PMQs y/day but then Boris just went "lol didn't notice a question wifflewaffle Venezuela" or something (not sure, had to turn it off as soon as Boris started tbh) and was immediately crowned the winner by our eight billion horrible pandering commentators who will later be very surprised when something happens and Boris is Officially Bad and say "why didn't anyone say anything sooner?!" so fuck everything.

Also I am the whiniest Brexit-bad remoaniac melt ever (at least on ILX) and still all these fucking FBPEers being outraged every time Corbyn says anything about anything that isn't Brexit can get in the bin.

The right playing divide and conquer pretty nicely, setting everyone else against each other as they order up their microtargeted Facebook ads to be all things to all people. The mixed messaging may not work quite as well at a GE as in a referendum, but it still might not need to in a country with FPTP and a press with 0 interest in holding these people to account.

"Also I am the whiniest Brexit-bad remoaniac melt ever (at least on ILX)"

For the record you are far from that.

his attack on Boris was quite pointed and correct. If leadership is all about zingers in the playground then too bad because hardly anybody is watching this crap anyway!

yeah spacey get in the queue

that spacey queue in full

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic01.nyt.com%2Fimages%2F2016%2F06%2F20%2Fwatching%2Fusual-suspects-watching-recommendation%2Fusual-suspects-watching-recommendation-videoSixteenByNineJumbo1600-v2.jpg&f=1

I think that a Labour government led by Corbyn is the strongest bulwark the UK has against a slide into ultra-nationalist politics.

I also think for that to be the case at the next election (which might be much sooner than anticipated), certain issues need addressing urgently.

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) July 25, 2019

This sums my feelings up reasonably well. I think focusing on FBPE types underestimates the growing sense of frustration and unease among Momentum types. Shifting into election mode as soon as possible would probably solve that, if only to end this seemingly endless torturous deadlock.

Cummings's referendum strategy = there are a lot of sponge-brained non-voters who can be flattered/cajoled into believing that a vote on one specific issue will be their affirmation against the void

i don't think that plays out the same at a GE, and i think his strategy will be closer to "how can we max out the hateful would-be fascist vote" and relying on liberals to do their traditional job of supporting fascism on the down low

it's gonna be absolutely "fun" to see how this works out

They include building high-performing teams, using forecasting tournaments, conducting “pre-mortems”, creating “red teams”, harnessing new data-visualisation techniques, utilising computational models and drawing on some recent thinking about mega-projects.

some of Cummings ideas to reform Whitehall sounds like more barmy shit that works just gr8 in US big tech.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/25/dominic-cummings-no-10-nasa-control-centre-adviser-civil-service

lol we're al..

The fashtops got spooked by Corbyn's chances after the manifestos so yeah they did go hard but he was still the 'Jezter'. This time they will probably paint him more as too stern and dictatory (ie project onto him what backfired for May).

i think alongside the "lunatic Trot who will sell out our nation and usher in a socialist dictatorship" you're gonna get a lot of "confused old duffer unfit to match wits with super-smart 2010s kid BJ" stuff

Yeah the press might as well have been writing Miliband’s name with echoes around it for the worst parts of that campaign.

The best route for Labour is to double down on the stuff that worked last time, win the social media election and have crystal clear policy positions. It's going to be tougher with Boris lying left right and centre and pledging to throw money at things that are more popular than "we'll sell your house from under you to pay for your care in old age". But he's also more toxic than even May was and the LibDems might yet end up doing Labour a favour by eroding into the soft Tory base.

xxp this doesn’t work well with reality, people might not like Corbyn but he is very much a certain type of weird & that doesn’t go along with what they’re trying to project onto him. He was very chill during GE17 campaigning apart from the end of the Neil interview.

Also there are very few Cabinet ministers who can be trusted not to completely shit the bed during an election campaign.

IIRC when election broadcast regs kicked in, people got a more rounded picture of Corbyn. The past two years there’s been endless chipping away at that, which is bad for left morale. I’m never shocked now by the amount of weird instant lines taken by Westminster bubble types that are wrong or unfair, which get all over the news before being quietly walked back to reflect actual facts.

Last I checked, Dominic Cumming was still held in contempt of Parliament so how is it he gets a Palace of Westminster pass?

nothing matters anymore iirc

Can't wait for the election so that Sarkar and young Momentum members can stop asking for a fucking babysitter. Yes uncle Corbyn will be there at a rally near you soon!

Most of the 'new' government are also in contempt so it's...fine

welp

Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, has restated her view that congress will not pass a UK-US trade deal if Boris Johnson’s government puts the open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland at risk, the Irish Times reports. Pelosi said:

"We made it clear in our conversations with senior members of the Conservative party earlier this year that there should be no return to a hard border on the island. That position has not changed. Any trade deal between the US and Great Britain would have to be cognisant of that."

Thank u Nancy!

yaaass kween slay etc

lol @ the amount of bootlickers in the replies upset Corbyn wants to take away their right to boil to death at a desk

Everyone should have the right to basic protections from working in unbearably hot conditions.

In government we'll demand that employers look after their workers during heatwaves like this.#heatwavehttps://t.co/tXyRqfKh8o

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) July 25, 2019

lol @ the amount of bootlickers in the replies upset Corbyn wants to take away their right to boil to death at a desk

Everyone should have the right to basic protections from working in unbearably hot conditions.

In government we'll demand that employers look after their workers during heatwaves like this.#heatwavehttps://t.co/tXyRqfKh8o

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) July 25, 2019

Seriously, what is the point of even looking at this stuff?

grim lols before the power goes out forever and we start butchering our neighbours over the last can of beans iirc

If you're lucky you might get one of these irrational ham-faced social media pricks.

it's all i have to look forward to anymore tbh

Also I am the whiniest Brexit-bad remoaniac melt ever (at least on ILX) and still all these fucking FBPEers being outraged every time Corbyn says anything about anything that isn't Brexit can get in the bin.

I will slap-fight you for that position, but otherwise OTM (as is the Ash Sarkar thread)

Everyone wants to take my badge away! But yes, good Ash Sarkar thread.

xxp this doesn’t work well with reality, people might not like Corbyn but he is very much a certain type of weird & that doesn’t go along with what they’re trying to project onto him.

I think possibly you (gyac) or someone here described him as a stereotypical chill older gardening type (I forget the exact wording, so sorry if I've misremembered) and I laughed because I realised an older friend who is suspicious of JC the politician is married to someone very Corbyn-like!

not for me to say but S Bush, or similar, said people understand him even if they don’t like him and every English person knows someone like him. Odd but in a way that people recognise - as opposed to Gove, for example.

Corbyn the weirdo meanwhile Johnson paints a box bus

corbyn a frail old man whilst johnson is a picture of health

yeah i was gonna say, corbyn as weird in a world where our current prime minister is a bumbling public-school solipsist and our previous one was a transporter accident that melded together a terminator and a vulture is... not a reality i recognise

I’m not saying he is objectively weird, I’m saying that’s part of how he’s portrayed - I guess he’d be “eccentric” if he was on the right - but nonetheless it’s a portrayal that is both more accurate, more benign and more recognisable than any of the shite trying to paint him as autocratic or aggressive.

don't think i suggested that unsympathetic journos would paint him as weird but as a duffer, the PMQs bullshit the other day is the prelude to that. the truth of it has got fuck all to do with whether it will be continually pushed as a story.

very sick of that very old out of date photo of Cummings the press keep insisting on

"he totally freaks ordinary people out, like some kind of GEOGRAPHY TEACHER lol!"

and of course the idea of him as autocratic and aggressive is already well-established among a certain subset of perma-Tories especially in the working/lower middle class, the pure strain that goes back well beyond Robert Tressell's totally accurate portraits.

all future press pics of Cummings should just be of Cummerbund

as smaug

yes

one's a terrifying reptile intent on hoarding wealth for himself and the other is &c &c

(self fp'd for antisemitism obv)

yeah the irl NASA command genius doesn't look half as clever and mysterious as he is portrayed. then use Mads Mikkelsen as a stand in for Milne.

meanwhile let's check in with legendary british entrepreneur and proud patriot james dyson

The inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner, James Dyson, has reportedly lined up the purchase of a second luxury property in Singapore, complete with an infinity pool and indoor waterfall.

Weeks after it was revealed that he had snapped up the city-state’s priciest penthouse, the Straits Times newspaper reported on Friday that the British billionaire had been given approval to buy another hugely expensive home.

The house, which was marketed at about S$45m (£26.5m), faces Singapore’s Unesco-listed Botanic Gardens.

For foreigners and permanent residents to be allowed to purchase landed property in Singapore they must have made “exceptional economic contributions in Singapore”, the newspaper said.

Dyson, 72, a prominent supporter of Brexit, announced plans in January to move his company’s head office from Britain to Singapore to be closer to its fastest-growing markets. His firm plans to build its first electric car in the city-state.

Dyson has also purchased a three-storey “super penthouse” at the top of Singapore’s tallest building. He reportedly paid £43m for the five-bedroom property which comes complete with a 600-bottle wine cellar.