bojo is king, brexit is on, stuff is fvcked, tomorrow starts here -- new govt new thread new battle

I was reading this having misread about these being your thoughts and not AS’s (I was going from “wow these are sound” to “TELL THEM ANAS” at the wreckers bit). But I like what you’ve said here!

The Tories also seldom put what they are going to do in their manifestos. We should reflect on these points.

there is definitely a argument that sometimes too much manifesto can be a bad thing, there was such a dizzying array of gold standard policies when maybe just nationalising the trains would have done for now.

Comrade Zebra that was banging and has articulated some of the thoughts I hadn't fully reached yet.

I suppose another argument is that keeping your a lot of your planned policies under wraps would invite even more Marxists wrecking our economy conspiracies from our lovely gutter press than usual, although by the next election the economy might already be wrecked.

I feel like the things you've discussed under radical democracy are elements of the most important path towards long-term change and unfortunately they're also the least sexy or sellable elements of a political platform under the UK's parliamentary and electoral systems

Now I have to work out how to cobble together membership money if only to fight for the direction of the party

NB one of my currently half-formed thoughts is the extent to which we need to question the Labour Party as the preferred site of struggle to achieve socialism (in its broadest sense - another area that needs retheorising imo) in the region currently constituted as the UK

there's been a lot of talk in the 3 years post-referendum of the failure of what we could describe as the UK's 20th century political settlement, and one metric for thinking about the election result is as a consequence or symptom of that failure. i don't think that a tweaked Labour party based on refining some of the elements of presentation or even representation is necessarily gonna be an adequate response to the new realities.

I'm a "reduced circumstances" poor bastard member of Labour for £2 a month, you don't have pay the full fees if you can't afford it.

i'm gonna look into it calz, i'm technically employed at the moment, and i've always been wary of political parties and how they function, i'm only thinking about this now because maintaining the achievements of Momentum seems a fight worth taking on - at least until after the leadership election

tbh I'm about as likely to join the Labour Party as I am that 77 Board thing on ILX.

I want my £23 back now! But having a vote on the leadership of the labour party feels very important rn.

yeah with you on that elitist sub-board, to get away from the hoi polloi!

zebra that is HUEG

Lads!

booming post zebra

^^ nothing to add but wholly agreed.

yeah much better than reading twitter rn

lots of positive talk this evening at a panel event with hilary wainwright, brian eno, zarah sultana mp, dawn foster and others

join the labour party

brian eno is really a thing now isn't he

No Boaby Gillespie no credibility.

there will be plenty of burnt out motorbikes and "cool" dystopias to go around for everyone soon enough!

Dawn Foster is another person who helps me maintain my sanity.

So basically if Alex Salmond had been less of a sex pest we wouldn't be in this situation now?

I think slab might see an upturn if other SNP figures get muddied by revelations of their conduct (surely there was some degree of cover-up?) but cant imagine any election with corbyn second ref vs boris and get brexit done was not going to be disastrous

Is Sturgeon going to get dragged into this scandal - as in if knew he was an offender and did fuck all about it turns out to be true?

*turns out be true* is a bit shit but y'know comes out in the was or whatever is the right phrase to use.

the wash

Surely Dan Jarvis is the type of leadership candidate that Labour members from all sides can unite on. Northern MP, ex soldier, intelligent, charismatic and a politician who has the ability to reach out way beyond the core vote. pic.twitter.com/vxMhsCE2c1

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) December 16, 2019

some green shoots of hope here, all is not lost!

Where is the Alex Salmons news happening?

he's discovered he has a preternatural ability to swim upstream when he's facing serious charges, nominative determinism at it's worst.

I find Sturgeon so untrustworthy and teflon-like and has received so much bullshit praise from melts about what a great inspirational pol she is - I'm hoping she get's dragged into it tbh. probably nasty + unfair of me but she is so overrated.

while you ask my mom owned a tiny house in france which I declared because she died before I was elected and French inheritance law is weird, house gone now as is she,I made no money from it as was never mine but I declared it while I owned 10th of it.Unlike say J Hunt who forgot

— Jess Phillips MP (@jessphillips) August 12, 2018

what would UK politics be without these earthy w/c MPs bringing their oh so novel regional accents to Westminster and blah blah truth to power, electibility .. etc

Is Sturgeon going to get dragged into this scandal - as in if knew he was an offender and did fuck all about it turns out to be true?

― calzino, Monday, December 16, 2019 4:21 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hard to say but seems unlikely you could get away with being a serial sex offender without any of your colleagues having an inkling. I think it's quite likely that Sturgeon might not be implicated but other party figures may be, theres also the real chance of a split in the party between salmond loyalists and others who treat the charges seriously

those Salmon loyalists should have a bridge built for them

sorry before I get a misogyny rap off Andy F! RLB-AR is my ticket! and I'll forgive Rayner for abstaining on the welfare bill - but one more strike and she's out as well!

now here's how you negotiate
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/16/boris-johnson-will-amend-brexit-bill-to-outlaw-extension

that's prime minister DEALZ esq to you

without being reductive about people whose lives are being ruined by this gov (which could include me very soon). On a personal level I feel like watching them completely fuck up the economy might be less stressful than it would have been watching a corbyn gov getting attacked by the state/right wing media on a daily basis for trying to improve peoples lives.

So given this amendment are we looking at an increased likelihood of no deal?

I find Sturgeon so untrustworthy and teflon-like and has received so much bullshit praise from melts about what a great inspirational pol she is - I'm hoping she get's dragged into it tbh. probably nasty + unfair of me but she is so overrated.

― calzino, Tuesday, 17 December 2019 00:41 (six hours ago) bookmarkflagli

I've said before I'm particularly susceptible to the sturgeon kool-aid but Scottish governance is on a very different scale to Westminster politics which is in many respects the dog and pony show it's constantly accused of being. This is why it's possible to pretend that all these know nothings are "in charge"

Whereas in holyrood committees and civil servants and third sector people have actual access to politicians including first minister and their actually expected to know their briefs. The kinds of question and answers that happened in the sturgeon section of the 1on1 audience question leader thing were markedly different to all the others, especially the kind of detail in the answers.

This makes it v difficult to compare her to other prominent UK politicians who literally only grant access to journalists and have no time to read briefs. For this reason I find it difficult to say she's "overrated" when this is the frame in which she is usually assessed by this doing that overrating.

I see a certain Scottish blogger has been banned from twitter for going full Glinner. A tragedy.

kinda begs the question why Glinner hasn't been

Xp Anyway long story short I am impressed by a politician who can give a nuanced account of multiple dependency and crime interventions over time rather than tub thumping for topline policy and announcements of plans to increase or cut funding for things. I realise there's also a smarmy local councillor managerial class smarmy vibe this gives off but with the SNP there's at least a social program attached

Also lol I find her "relatable"

kinda begs the question why Glinner hasn't been

This is being shared widely on Facebook. Labour leadership has spent much of last few days blaming traditional media but Facebook is their problem. Repeatedly in traditional Lab constituencies voters would tell me about things they’d seen about JC there. That’s not going to stop. pic.twitter.com/dirZTGJp0J

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) December 17, 2019

I love hoe Thornberry is what passes for a lefty with FB gammon

how .. lol

Is that solvable if you create communities, do the work that bypasses this? We leave people vulnerable over decades of neglect.

Agree it's not the be all and in the short-term we will have to get dirty online too. Then again it's easy for me to say.

Leave.eu is the scummiest but by no means the only one. They were pushing the Muslim vote stuff openly and the Naz Shah bit is an extension of same. If you read DM comments this shit filters down into mainstream via stuff like this.