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

This year by the numbers:
✊✊Two People’s Vote Marches
👩‍👩‍👧‍👦Over a million people at each march
💷Record fundraising year
📃5 Million leaflets distributed
🎤3,000 events all over the country
✉️Hundreds of thousands of letters sent to MPs

— People's Vote UK (@peoplesvote_uk) December 28, 2019

They missed out "Helped Get Brexit Done"

i for one am glad these plucky underdogs managed to fight back against overwhelming odds to oh ffs

One fox brained by baseball bat.

80 MP majority! 0 chance of 2nd referendum.

imagine if all that energy had been directed towards something actually useful eh readers?

like... fuckin litter picking or running on giant hamster wheels to generate renewable energy or building pipe bombs

I can understand the pressure to pay lip service to the brexit voters in northern marginals that went blue. But “progressive patriotism” is just absolutely rank Blairite style nonsense, that hurts my ears and eyes!

Is it really any better than "legitimate concerns" Arguably yes... but it still stinks of garbage.

Horrible.

The Guardian is making a huge deal of it. This seems quite distinct from Blue Labour:

From ex-miners in Blyth Valley to migrant cleaners in Brixton, from small businesses in Stoke-on-Trent to the self-employed in Salford, we have to unite our communities in all their diversity. Britain has a long history of patriotism rooted in working life, built on unity and pride in the common interests and shared life of everyone. This history is internationalist: as in 1862 when Lancashire’s mill workers supported Abraham Lincoln’s anti-slavery blockade of cotton from the American south. To win we must revive this progressive patriotism and solidarity in a form fit for modern Britain. While Boris Johnson criticises single mothers and likens Muslim women to bank robbers, we must stand for pride in our communities, dignity in our work and a common purpose that unites communities across the country.

This history is internationalist: as in 1862 when Lancashire’s mill workers supported Abraham Lincoln’s anti-slavery blockade of cotton from the American south.

... and Clydeside shipbuilders provided the vessels which helped the Confederacy to break the blockade.

exactly! also just need to channel that spirit of 1862 when roughly 0.00001 % of the UK population was non-white - seems a bit awkward! I can't see a phrase like PP cutting the mustard with bigots and can see it annoying non-whites who might consider it at odds with their own experience of "patriotic" types.

While Boris Johnson criticises single mothers and likens Muslim women to bank robbers, we must stand for pride in our communities, dignity in our work and a common purpose that unites communities across the country.

just got to lose the bigots to the tories if you can't win them with policies, this kind of ahistorical and retrogressive claptrap is not doing her rep any favours.

The pitch is to the membership not the country so I'm not too bothered by 1862 and all that.

Progressive patriotism vs solidarity. Comes down to what policy we can have for migrants. The question is how far it's removed is it from Blue Lab.

of course it is directed towards the membership, but jesus wept it's still an awful pitch.

You can't and shouldn't try condescending to or winning over bigots on their own terms. It fell flat on it's arse for Labour in 2015 and will do again, as thick as many of them are - provincial racists can discern between genuine racist pols and a "concerned face of Lisa Nando" faux-racism sham and will vote for the real thing.

Matt is correct that it comes down to policy. As it stands, it’s not substantially different from Corbyn’s position on viewing patriotism as (an inclusive) care for other people in society. If that morphs into a hard line on Legitimate Concerns / tabloid talking points, as per Blue Labour, she won’t win the leadership.

I suppose it might be an attempt to squeeze the Lavery vote? Not that I even know if such a group exists in the membership, but have seen people stanning for him on twitter.

and the Nandy vote as well obv.

Some of us just get a sour taste as soon as talk turns to patriotism

there is something quite Garry Bushell about "progressive patriotism". Even though he'd probably choke on the word progressive!

union flag staircase

Some of us just get a sour taste as soon as talk turns to patriotism

Bingo.

... good old British working class salt-of-the-arse bingo, gorblimey.

between this outrage and her linking MES with Madchester - it's a good the rest of the candidates are absolute garbage!

calz + NV = metropolitan elite, don't understand the English w/c the way Jess Phillips do.

Apologies for tique bleu

“Progressive patriotism” is apt, where not utterly vacuous, to become soft nationalism (sops to migrant bashing at worst): exactly not what is needed. If it’s intended to overcome Labour’s problems with Brexit voters, it won’t. If it’s supposed to stop media attacks, it won’t.

— Richard Seymour (@leninology) December 29, 2019

if these "patriots" who have been spraying anti-Semitic graffiti on synagogues in London become more "progressive" does that mean they start murdering people instead?

Rhys -- single issue poster whose heartfelt 'Who are the Real Fascists?' thread excoriates Gareth Bale for joining Real Madrid. Doxxed by deems as a former Swansea University geography student and editorial board member of UniLad. Unrepentant yet evasive, he advocates 'a properly progressive banter' and leaves the 'embittered and unengaged' ILX to write a series of thoughtful and engaged Comment is Free posts concerning the plague of steroid abuse in the Valleys and the progressive values embodied in the work of Malky Mackay and Biffy Clyro. Later appointed as Andy Burnham's Youth Tsar.

― Semih Semih yam Semih yay Semih Şentürk (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Wednesday, 28 August 2013 20:32 (six years ago) bookmarkflaglink

There are already existing threads for giving patriotism a kicking but the question is "who are you reclaiming it for?" I feel like anybody whose primary political motivation is patriotism, especially in a state as rotten with murderous colonialism as the UK, is not a cause worth pursuing.

I'd expect someone from RLB's background to balk at that word tbh.

Bladdy politicians, they're all the bleedin' same.

my mum was right all along!

There are already existing threads for giving patriotism a kicking but the question is "who are you reclaiming it for?" I feel like anybody whose primary political motivation is patriotism, especially in a state as rotten with murderous colonialism as the UK, is not a cause worth pursuing.

This is true but I can understand why politicians on the left who are consistently told their policy platform is unpatriotic might want to turn that around and suggest that solidarity, fighting back against atomisation and collective action for the common good are actually much more in line with ‘British values ‘ or whatever, than dismantling society while waving a little flag. I don’t think it’s a great idea or going to be effective but it’s not necessarily evidence she’s triangulating to win over diehard racists, as Nandy is.

it still feels like a blunder to me. You can allude to community cohesion or whatever without playing to whatever shit the right wing media throw at you. You are on a slippery slope when you frame your campaign around whatever shit they are going to throw at you imo

I agree, though I don’t think this was intended to be the main thrust of the campaign and there is some mischief involved on the part of The Guardian and others in framing it that way.

It's going on a drunken rampage when England win in the football, daubing St George's flags on the homes of migrants - but only when the women's team win

— Dan Hancox (@danhancox) December 30, 2019

lool, dan otm!

agree with you SV about the motivation behind this, but it's clumsily done. as comrade alph said that doesn't really matter at this point in the process. gutter press gonna gutter.

it's necessary to have a response to "you hate us for our freedoms" but i wouldn't wrap a flag around policies

My inkling would be to try pushing local, civic or social pride over national pride where pride is something you can elucidate with evidence (positive stories from the area you represent).

The idea of 'Britain' is nonsensical in 2020 anyway.

Apart from the usual Orange headbangers in NI and Scotland no-one knows or cares what it means.

Was just gs-ing it and Biden was hawking about the same expression back in April _(´ཀ`」 ∠)_

municipal pride ftw

The idea of Britain might be nonsensical but the idea of things being ‘un-British’ is still potent. It’s not just (or even particularly) the right-wing conception of Britishness that needs to be addressed, it’s the pervasive idea that the national character is inherently small-c conservative. I think a lot of the centrist hostility to Corbyn, which more than anything else was also reflected in stuff like the BBC coverage, stemmed from the belief that the British have essentially agreed that ideology is dead. The Thatcher / Blair model of neoliberalism (which is not seen as an ideology) fits the national character and attempting to do anything else is somewhere on a spectrum between silly and dangerous. I don’t think RLB has approached it in the right way but whoever wins probably has to do something to situate left-wing politics as congruent with Britishness, however nebulous and dangerous that term might be.

I’m not 100% sure that municipal pride get you over many of the barriers.

maybe not but towns and cities might be the only counterbalance we’ve got to 10 more years of tory policies

clive lewis apparently saying corbyn should have backed remain

Clive Lewis says a lot of things

however we try to reassemble the wreckage i don't think Labour will come out worse from not going full FBPE