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

xp is it? I don’t see this playing out well for them

Alex Salmond has been charged with 10 counts of sexual assault, two of indecent assault, one of assault with attempted rape, and one of attempted rape, but here’s a Scottish journalist likening that to “touching a woman’s arm.” pic.twitter.com/w09Ejz6MK3

— thot catalog (@see_em_play_) March 9, 2020

The Alex Salmond apologists are grim as fuck.

The Tory line for a decade now has been that it's fundamentally irresponsible for a government to increase borrowing during an economic crisis. The current lot have already proclaimed an end to austerity so should be able to borrow with impunity and they're shame-faced enough to row back on any previous commitments in any case.

The argument that UK pensioners benefit heavily from government borrowing was never actually made but it's true, for as long as lots of people want to buy gilts the government has to run a deficit.

The ongoing crisis is not going to benefit them but if things sour badly it won't be because they're short of access to funds.

it seems like at least a free hit for them, and more likely presents the opportunity for all sorts of unseemly shenanigans if they were a government run by lunatic ideologues which fortunately isn't the case

Is this prick an appalling concern troll in a landscape already past capacity with them? Seems so!

Phillips has been a vocal opponent of moves to extend a definition of Islamophobia drawn up by an all-party parliamentary group, as now used by Labour among others. Muslims were a multiracial group “united by a faith and a belief” and could not thus be treated as a race, he told Today.

Phillips, who chaired the EHRC when it launched in 2006, was among 24 public figures who last year wrote to the Guardian declaring their refusal to vote for the Labour party because of its association with antisemitism.

It'll be interesting to see who comes out to defend a Daily Mail columnist who once proudly boasted of having been crowned 'Islamophobe of the year'.

Sonia Sodha, who has been persistently on the right-wing of all the Labour party discussions, has pointed out how awful he is.

i'm sure Trev has fully thought thru any parallels between Islam and Judaism when drawing up his ideas on who can experience bigotry

I’m sure we can expect the former member for Dudley North soon, unless he’s preoccupied with other matters.

Maybe he's spent the last few months reflecting on how the people of Dudley weren't right behind him on everything after all ha ha ha

I think he might be reflecting on his decision to attend AIPAC last week tbf!

The man is already a walking virus tbh

Ayesha Hazarika doesn't seem to be sticking up for Phillips either, it's almost like he doesn't any British Asian/Muslim friends in the party at all.

Asked about his warning in 2016 that Muslims were becoming a “nation within a nation” being adopted by the far-right anti-Muslim campaigner Tommy Robinson, Phillips said he had not heard about this, adding: “As my grandmother says, just because the devil picks up a tune doesn’t mean it is a bad tune.”

"if it's me and Hitler on the bongos..."

The Alex Salmond apologists are grim as fuck.

Cybernats are the absolute worst.

Ayesha Hazarika doesn't seem to be sticking up for Phillips either, it's almost like he doesn't any British Asian/Muslim friends in the party at all.

the e-bay seller clearhygiene, who sold me 108 bog rolls for £16.49 two days ago have now put it up to £23.99. I wasn't panic buying - was just calmly buying in batches as i normally do. I buy rice by the sackful as well. Shit-paper is like a license to print money right now!

Rory Stewart, ex Tory cabinet member turned independent candidate for London mayor, becomes the first politician to properly break political consensus around the government handling of Covid-19

- Calls for immediate shutting of schools and cancelling public events

Statement: pic.twitter.com/7GqMMbYGp9

— Sam Coates Sky (@SamCoatesSky) March 9, 2020

he's probably got a point there tbf!

This press conference is interesting. Pretty sure it wasn’t in the big plan for the PM to be asked he can keep the country fed right now. Reassuring statesman is not a comfortable register for him

“Outrage on behalf of those accused of racism seems to have overtaken the moral outrage we should all feel at those engaged in it” 🤷🏽‍♀️
My opinion piece @guardian https://t.co/jof4Np8uG7

— Sayeeda Warsi (@SayeedaWarsi) March 9, 2020

When you find yourself agreeing with a Tory peer whose politics otherwise suck absolute shite about a member of the Labour party.

I’ve found it. The worst video you will ever see in your life. pic.twitter.com/nyou906Ffh

— Fatima Said (@fatimazsaid) March 9, 2020

Warsi is right.

That said, I’m sympathetic to the idea that Labour is a massive political party and generally shouldn’t be in the business of kicking people out if they hold objectionable views. Labour has always been a home for racists, religious bigots, homophobes, terfs, etc, and trying to regulate that through opaque, arbitrary and subjective disciplinary processes is a dangerous path to go down. However, it’s a path that Labour has been forced down over the last two years and nobody who has been complaining about the lack of instant suspensions and failure to elevate the feelings of notional victims has a leg to stand on here. You either apply the same rules for everything or you enshrine a hierarchy of acceptable bigotries.

very depressing as fuck realpolitik there, but probably correct. Although Mr fucking Phillips has stepped way over the line of just holding objectionable views whn he is disseminating them widely in the Mail every fucking week!

Openly bigoted people is where I draw the line for Large Coalition thinking. I think it's somewhat naive to think that you can have them in w/o that ultimately reflecting on the policies adopted towards such issues.

this week's Trevor Phillips outrage is blending into last week's Melanie Phillips outrage, I can't tell who's who when there are people on Twitter referencing some Phillips always getting media coverage for Islamophobic views

(always found it odd that MP is - was? is still? - married to J0shu4 R0z3nb3rg, I mean I know he's probably an arch-Tory but he always seemed calm & measured & into "evidence-based" conclusions... of course the rise of the Silicon Valley libertarian/D0minic Cumm!ngs and his band of L3ss Wr0ng enthusiasts should remind us that "evidence-based" has only ever meant "agree with me or be tone policed, PS not even looking at your evidence")

<3 2 g00g£3pr00𝆑

Openly bigoted people is where I draw the line for Large Coalition thinking. I think it's somewhat naive to think that you can have them in w/o that ultimately reflecting on the policies adopted towards such issues.

I think we can probably all agree on the idea that openly bigoted people shouldn't be in the party. Determining who is openly bigoted and trusting the enforcement mechanisms to be applied fairly is the problem.

For a lot of the people complaining, enshrining a hierarchy of acceptable bigotries is the whole point, not an unexpected by-product.

Yes, exactly.

There’s been a ton of disgraceful barely concealed talk about this that has touched on the Aron Banks line that Labour “needs” the Muslim vote and will look the other way at anything British Muslims do, are terrified of offending them, etc. You compare the persistence of this idea with the fact that several Labour MPs were sent Punish a Muslim day threats in the post less than a year ago - a story that sank without trace as soon as it happened - and it’s so blatant! It’s horrific.

this is where I think a more dictatorial model of party leadership would be better at dealing with politically suspect or bigoted members. No appeals, no pissing about, just load them onto the trebuchet and fire them into oblivion. Too much politeness and a respect for democratic process was Corbyn's big weakness imo. Look at the dire direction the party is heading now and all the melt/right wing commentariat still accused him of doing ruthless purges.

A system in which a handful of high-profile Islamophobes are booted and every single prospective councilor, MP, etc from a Muslim background has semi-professional teams going over the last ten years of their Facebook history to see if they've ever liked a post about 'Israeli apartheid' so they can be flagged to Compliance and immediately suspended pending investigation does not present a net positive for British Muslims imo.

It's a very fine act but Left Labour must attempt to walk that line.

I remember one of the councillors that got a lot of coverage in the press, for calling a Jewish colleague Shylock, had already been flagged by fellow party members for calling people “P**i” and the n-word.

sounds like Rishi's found a magic money orchard

he's already met the father in law I think.

you see, you don't even need talent to write HIGNFY style gags of the week!

well obviously

i haven't watched that shit in forever but i assume in an average week you'll have seen 95 percent of the jokes on Twitter and threads like this before broadcast

600bn is a lot of apples, can still see clunking pacer trains running around w yorkshire for the next decade!

i know this is trenchant commentary but when Corbz and McD were talking about chucking the bunce about ... oh never mind :(

i'm sure this will totally be real money that totally goes towards improving the quality of people's lives and not just into the bank accounts of Tory party donors

"highest levels [of investment] in real terms since 1955"

whenever they use "real terms" it means it's invariably bullshit, because it's usually used to make it look like raised living standards for millionaires lessens the murderous effects of austerity or massaging figures to hand-wave away how shit everything is!

my fave "in real terms" bullshit recently was some melt/tory wonk saying the tory austerity of the last 10 years was only a 1% cut in expenditure in real terms. They just might not targeted what they were cutting wisely.

EXCLUSIVE

Nadine Dorries, a health minister, has become first MP to be diagnosed with coronavirus

She has been in Westminster for past week, met hundreds of people, and attended a No 10 reception hosted by Boris Johnson on Thursdayhttps://t.co/3seuE2NGYE

— Steven Swinford (@Steven_Swinford) March 10, 2020

ooh bloody hell

Health minister too. Better not have been in the Cobra sideroom.

could take out the whole cabinet temporarily and maybe the higher level of decision makers in the nhs, fuck

It's Nadine Dorries - don't take this from us.

bit of night nurse, she'll be reet.