Ne'er get thee stitched til Booris be ditched: UK General Election 2019

Of course I’m on it - thanks for the heads-up - and my very best wishes to #tbeu - what a tragedy - someone will be at the club tonight at 11pm - wearing a club strip and carrying a copy of the Tooting Trumpet - you can trust them.

— Rory Stewart (@RoryStewartUK) November 21, 2019

no flies on hepcat Rory, he's down with the kids on the tweets

useful context to suggest Labour’s spending plans might not be quite as extraordinary as some think - via The Times pic.twitter.com/IM13my70CT

— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) November 22, 2019

this graph (from a murdoch owned Tory rag) makes it seem like the Labour manifesto is a comparatively tame spending spree in the scheme of Western democracies.

Yeah but those are all – *shudder* – socialist countries.

The Times' coverage has been sensible compared to the Telegraph's tbf.

god that sam gyimah interview is painful

nv otm re: fuck small businesspeople entertaining the idea of voting libdem (and small business tyrants in general) but tbfttl, he was doing a better job holding gyimah to account than most journalists would have

'sensible compared to the telegraph' is not a high bar to clear tho

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4499-the-long-conservative-decline

I never knew the internal Conservative Party Stop Boris campaign, yes the one that miserably failed was actually code-named Project Arse!

The 'remain bonus' being talked up as £50bn of new money is a fabulous. Not even sure that the Vote Leave campaign could match the chutzpah.

it's some galaxy-brain creative accounting alright

Maybe not for here, and not for right wing brainworm thread either but....

What is the deal with Rachel Riley (and to a lesser extent those other two but they are way less famous and I can't remember their names). Is it just Corbyn Derangement Syndrome? It has to be counter-productive at this point, and career-wise its weird (or is it?).

What's her end goal...and what does she do if Corbyn stands down next month? Just move on to whoever his replacement is? She's a LibDem, which presumably closes off the Katie Hopkins route, I don't see where the longevity in this is

I can respect grift, but I don't think this is grift

It's not a grift. An old Nazi like Simon Heffer talking about Corbyn re-opening the concentration camps is cynical. Riley (like Linehan imo) is 100% sincere and has fallen into a weird internet hole where they've lost all touch with reality. Not being glib but it's a form of radicalisation.

When Riley had a go at the Durham Brass Band for playing a Jewish standard, she said the level of offence was like "a black panther showing up at a khlan rally". She's either thick as a plank or just really is very right-wing and borderline fascist.

got one of them LibDem leaflets today with Swinson quotes attributed to The Guardian and a quote from The Irish Times saying "Labour is a shambles". There is good vid doing the rounds where Swinson is slated by a young articulate and quite softly spoken Glaswegian lad about her role in austerity and people he knew and are dead because of it while she robotically does the nodding dog routine.

xp I think the most unsavoury thing about the whole t-shirt thing, besides literally ignoring black people who are angry about it, is the alternative history of the nonstop picket spread by various ne’er do wells and fantasists. This is based on a Telegraph article that distorts the views of the actual historian who wrote it, and a ~popular centrist account that spends all day attacking Corbyn in a really unselfaware pontificating style.

The nonstop picket, as covered in the detailed New Statesman piece about the anti apartheid protests, did conflict with the main ANC protest. But it wasn’t without value or counterproductive to the aims of the movement, as stated in the piece. The main ANC protest focused on Mandela but the nonstop picket was for other prisoners of the apartheid regime.

One of the most high profile was David Kitson.

I leave the rest of this to one of the historians of the movement whose replies have gone ignored.

Hi @RachelRileyRR it's worth pointing out that all of the charges against Jeremy Corbyn and the other arrestees were dropped after it was demonstrated that the ban on anti-apartheid protests was unjustified: https://t.co/IfxigOX7HA

— Gavin Brown (@lestageog) November 21, 2019

Yes, the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group contained members of the Revolutionary Communist Group, but its Non-Stop Picket of the South African Embassy was also sponsored by the Parliamentary Liberal Party and the Bishop of Croydon

— Gavin Brown (@lestageog) November 21, 2019

Jeremy Corbyn first supported City of London Anti-Apartheid Group's campaigns at the request of his constituent, Norma Kitson, a Jewish South African recognised as one of the Jewish heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle pic.twitter.com/kggo2SXgNr

— Gavin Brown (@lestageog) November 21, 2019

She's either thick as a plank or just really is very right-wing and borderline fascist.

it's entirely possible that it's all of the above

aye, it doesn't really need to be either/or

Yair Wallach also very good on this as per. If anyone bitching about twitter links knows a better way of easily accessing educated opinions by SOAS academics, I’m all ears.

The Rachel Riley T-shirt is the best visual illustration of the staggering myopia which characterises some of the response to antisemitism. A thread with some thoughts.

— Yair Wallach (@YairWallach) November 21, 2019

i think SV has it, i'm sure that the tunnel she's gone down was at least informed by antipathy to "extremist" politics but she looks like somebody who really can't bear to be wrong and the continuous doubling down when challenged has driven her into a monomania she won't let herself back out of

yeah, i dunno what else to call it other than radicalisation, sv otm

i read that Yair Wallach thread yesterday and it really is excellent, he calmly and civilly tries to explain why she's wrong without being antagonistic or sarcastic. i'm guessing she hasn't responded.

I'm not sure she's particularly right-wing. She strikes me as unwell and being goaded by a lot of people on the right into increasingly extreme behaviour / positions. It's unfortunate but it's also not worth trying to correct her / argue.

I often notice hyper bigots on forums always have some dubious hackademic longread from the Mail or the Telegraph to back up some unsupportable nonsense they are posting. But these are just racist plebs, when celebs do it and don't seem realise that they will be thoroughly scrutinised or perhaps "bullied" or "trolled" as they would have it. They are doing all their celebrity mystique in by completely revealing how transparently dim and hateful they are. Should just stick to boasting about their rugs in Hello magazine.

I find her genuinely unnerving, much more so than Tommy Robinson or Katie Hopkins or similar, because those guys have an internal logic, it makes sense, and you expect them to exist.

Riley has a mania about her that's different. ShariVari I think you're right this is what radicalization actually looks like. Less coherent and thought out than a grifter that may or may not believe what they are saying. Weird to see it in a public person not a family member, guess it does belong on the brainworm thread. its no coherent enough to be right wing per se, its the more muddled self-radicalization of a member of the public

i think SV has it, i'm sure that the tunnel she's gone down was at least informed by antipathy to "extremist" politics but she looks like somebody who really can't bear to be wrong and the continuous doubling down when challenged has driven her into a monomania she won't let herself back out of

Rachel Riley’s t-shirt is anti-black, offensive and utterly inappropriate.

We must fight antisemitism within and outside of the Labour movement.

But erasing any racism and the fight against apartheid is not a part of that fight. We must always stand together.

— Miriam Mirwitch (@mrwtch) November 21, 2019

BG, is the *popular centrist account* trying to rubbish Corbyn’s anti-apartheid bona fides a former Melody Maker journo? Because if so he’s all over FB threads saying those in his peer group who differ with his opinion are gaslighting Jews. I feel that a lot of journalists who should know the difference are presenting personal opinions as fact on this topic.

Riley certainly tweets about the evil of the "hard left" and i assume she automatically equates "hard left" with "antisemite" now which, oh god the historical irony

i've reined myself in on here about the former MM journalists and their chums who still seem to be out there fighting the Blair wars, because i've got nothing helpful to say that wouldn't degenerate into kneejerk radge spite about class solidarity etc

but what a bunch of fucking maroons

It's an anti-left position but it's also a very specifically anti-Muslim / racist position. I think a lot of those attack accounts on Twitter aren't just positioning against Corbyn because they're wedded to third-way Blairism, they genuinely think there's a zero-sum game between British Jews and other minorities and Corbyn has thrown his lot in with the latter. It's the 'clash of civilisations / Eurabian hordes' narrative that also engergises the extreme right.

BG, is the *popular centrist account* trying to rubbish Corbyn’s anti-apartheid bona fides a former Melody Maker journo? Because if so he’s all over FB threads saying those in his peer group who differ with his opinion are gaslighting Jews. I feel that a lot of journalists who should know the difference are presenting personal opinions as fact on this topic.

you can tell me and gyac apart by the fact that only one of us is MR seamus milne

Well, I don’t mean you because it’s a man, for starters.

It's an anti-left position but it's also a very specifically anti-Muslim / racist position. I think a lot of those attack accounts on Twitter aren't just positioning against Corbyn because they're wedded to third-way Blairism, they genuinely think there's a zero-sum game between British Jews and other minorities and Corbyn has thrown his lot in with the latter. It's the 'clash of civilisations / Eurabian hordes' narrative that also engergises the extreme right.

you can tell me and gyac apart by the fact that only one of us is MR seamus milne

an MI5 spook currently pouring one out in hell, Des fucking Lynham, Rachel Riley.. she's definitely part of a lineage of abysmal people associated with Countdown. The other night there was a comedy edition with Jimmy Carr hosting that I caught for like 30 secs whilst channel surfing... jesus fucking wept. Lots of performative chortling at unfunny/or ones own jokes, everything that is wretched about bbc comedy was there.

Well, I don’t mean you because it’s a man, for starters.

It's the 'clash of civilisations / Eurabian hordes' narrative that also engergises the extreme right.

I hadn't thought about this, but there's overlap with some of the brainworms thread here - belief in a deeper more fundamental truth rather than a prosaic tangible truth that may be present at any given time ("you don't need to prove each rain drop is actually rain to know that its raining, what difference does it make if one isn't. what difference does it make if this criminal isn't actually an immigrant. what difference does it make whether they actually committed a crime"). They're seeing things you aren't because you're looking at raindrops they're looking at rain. They're looking at stories, you're looking at 'facts'. There are no facts

an MI5 spook currently pouring one out in hell, Des fucking Lynham, Rachel Riley.. she's definitely part of a lineage of abysmal people associated with Countdown

is Stelling in on it? huge if true

Gah wariotifo was like the best account on there

you’ll be pleased to know there is a similarly themed account now operating

He is back as waluigitifo, inevitably.

xxxp

lol knew there were other Countdown twats, just couldn't remember Stelling at the point of typing. He's probably murdered more people than Fred West.

My response to Labour's transformative manifesto - I'll be in Shipley tonight campaigning to unseat Philip Davies - anything is possible! pic.twitter.com/buVMkhkfbl

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) November 21, 2019

Soz gyac, I was responding to BG in my post about the ex-MM dude. I tend to lurk on the threads where AS is being discussed by Gen X music hacks who, if gentile, rarely shouted about AS until JC led Labour. Also I couldn’t bear being called AS by some centrist numpty who has no idea about my upbringing, and wasn’t paying attention to the times I’ve called out racism right across the political spectrum before 2015 (and since).

Was this linked?

Seen Jo Swinson in Glasgow and my pal confronted her about austerity’s impact here.

Glasgow wont forget what the Lib Dems did when they were in government!#JayTellsJo pic.twitter.com/AtunH8vxyA

— Daniel McLaughlin (@Drusus2000) November 22, 2019

nice use of nodding dog routine while someone talks about austerity deaths.

she is so fucking bad at this

Squirrels, the poor, foreigns- it’s all the same to Jo

fucking hating 80k question time guy with an all-consuming passion. there's too much talk of millionaires and billionaires and not enough talk of just the awful petit booj cunts who deliver tory government after tory government and are the footsoldiers of ruling class revanchism

— Brigata Posta di Merda (@NParticipacion) November 22, 2019

willie rennie “what do you think about brexit?”

haha get fucked