love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

a lot of XR activists have the levels of class-consciousness where they'd put a sticker that says: "you deserve to die because you are a driver" on some poor af uber driver's car and then jet off for a hol in the Algarve the next day. Probably a very crude sketch there, but some kernel of truth in there I believe!

emil.y otm, and this thread has been awful since December for obvious reasons (but is still the best politics thread imo!)

― scampo italiano (gyac), Saturday, 5 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

JoeBiden.jpg

Are there any good 'I support radical action against climate change (and its deniers) but XR ain't it' pieces that can be read?

https://www.huckmag.com/perspectives/opinion-perspectives/room-for-change-the-problem-with-extinction-rebellion/

this isn't quite that but addresses real problems with XR. tbf it's nearly a year old and i'm sure there's change within groups like this all the time, but i have similar issues with the idea of an apolitical movement

cheers NV

This, by the out of woods collective, is probably it (from the bits I read)

http://libcom.org/blog/extinction-rebellion-not-struggle-we-need-pt-1-19072019

lol

Johnson attempted to turn the tables, suddenly suggesting the Labour leader had somehow been sympathetic to the IRA because he had worked under Jeremy Corbyn. “This is a leader of the opposition who supported an IRA-condoning politician,” said Johnson, to the bemusement of MPs on all sides of the house.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/05/desperate-boris-johnson-to-step-up-personal-attacks-on-keir-starmer

Tfw you can't tell Asian people apart

There’s a reason nobody reads Novara Media. It’s because it’s shit. https://t.co/Ag2d6EfzEG

— Nick Timothy (@NJ_Timothy) September 5, 2020

I keep mistaking that ugly bald twat for Clive Sinclair when he had let himself go a bit

Rory Stewart offering us a bit of comic relief

Why people have sex in graveyards | The Spectator https://t.co/m8Lb0ZYz5w

— Rory Stewart (@RoryStewartUK) September 5, 2020

Even the Tugmonster is getting in there

Do you, Rory? Do you?

— Tom Tugendhat (@TomTugendhat) September 5, 2020

The UK government has been formally warned for threatening press freedom after it blacklisted a group of investigative journalists and denied them access to information.

The Council of Europe issued the Level 2 "media freedom alert" after Ministry of Defence press officers refused to deal with Declassified UK, a website focusing on foreign and defence policy stories.

You have to admit their comic timing was perfect.

Hopefully someone has pointed out that writing for the Spectator is a bit like fucking in a graveyard

https://www.private-eye.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/andrew-neil.jpg

I would urge you to talk to families before tweeting. To this day I haven’t met one parent who hasn’t wanted or felt the responsibility to feed their children... https://t.co/J72VyRazbF

— Marcus Rashford (@MarcusRashford) September 6, 2020

NEW: 🚨🚨🚨🇬🇧🇪🇺🚨🚨🚨UK planning legislation to override key parts of #brexit withdrawal treaty and Northern Ireland protocol - a potentially HUGE move in negotiations; major ructions in Whitehall - my latest via @FT
https://t.co/UU3VT2Yeta

— Peter Foster (@pmdfoster) September 6, 2020

The UK is planning new legislation that will override key parts of the Brexit withdrawal agreement, risking the collapse of trade negotiations with Brussels.

Sections of the internal market bill — due to be published this Wednesday — are expected to “eliminate the legal force of parts of the withdrawal agreement” in areas including state aid and Northern Ireland customs, according to three people familiar with the plans.

The move would “clearly and consciously” undermine the agreement on Northern Ireland that Boris Johnson signed last October to avoid a return to a hard border in the region, one person with knowledge of the plans said.

...

“It is a very blunt instrument,” said one of those familiar with the matter. “The bill will explicitly say the government reserves the right to set its own regime, directly setting up UK law in opposition with obligations under the withdrawal agreement, and in full cognisance that this will breach international law.”

BREAKING Boris Johnson statement just out:
“Prime Minister Boris Johnson will say today (Monday):

“We are now entering the final phase of our negotiations with the EU.

— Tony Connelly (@tconnellyRTE) September 6, 2020

The narrative's already in place: when this fails it'll be entirely down to the EU

Yup. We made entirely reasonable demands ofc.

But: not really sure that helps them much? Like what is the GBP supposed to do with all that EU-focused blame when the border is chaos/shops are empty etc? They’ve already served those Eurocrats their well-deserved Brexit, so what next? A war? Trade war?

you have to assume they believe they can stabilise before a general election comes due. the alternatives - personal profits or unhinged xenophobia eclipsing a long term plan - are too bleak and cynical to be plausible. they might even believe that they can marshall the anger into another victory against the saboteurs, remoaners and woke human rights traitors.

also it's gonna be difficult to tell the difference between economic damage from a no deal Brexit and a post-rona economy that this government has taken no steps to revitalise. at this point in history i have literally no idea how that shakes down in terms of votes.

Look, as long as no-one at any point feels the need to compare the UK to any other country, they'll be fine.

Arguably it's at least three things:

- A gun to the head of the EU to try and force concessions they would otherwise have no chance of obtaining (I mean this bit is obvious but I don't see why the EU would play ball)
- A diplomatic Falklands, a gigantic distraction from the rapidly deteriorating situation at home, whipping up a jingoistic frenzy just as the furlough scheme ends, the schools situation goes badly wrong, covid cases start spiking and there's a huge recession
- An attempt to force Starmer to even mention Brexit at all, because that's ground on which they're going to be much more comfortable

So yes, they do actually believe can marshall the anger into another victory against the saboteurs, remoaners and woke human rights traitors.

Its not an unreasonable bet, its been a successful strategy and might just have one last win left in the packet.

But also don't they kind of have to, its a star player that may be coming to the end of its career but its still a star player, they don't have a lot else really going on so what choice do they have?

For all the dire warnings of the Big Dunties, in material terms 2016-19 was plain sailing for Cummings and Johnson, they weren't really on the hook for anything that went wrong. And economically it will seem like a picnic compared with what's around the corner.

A strategy that works when you're the insurgents doesn't necessarily work when you've been the incumbents for four or five years. They're also going to have to bet on a very long lease of life for "well, they're doing the best they can under the circumstances", and I wouldn't necessarily bet against that.

But we've done all this before, surviving the next 12 months is more important than trying to second guess what's going to happen in 2024.

It is getting increasingly expensive though: pre-2019 they were just burning through Tory ministers and minority partners to keep the dream alive, now (unless this is stupid sabre-rattling) it is going to cost territory and treaties just to ... keep on owning the libs.

I worry less now that there’s a grand “make-us-Singapore and short everything” plan afoot and more that they’re the dog that caught the car.

on radio this morning they appear to have rebranded 'no deal brexit' as 'australia-style deal', less than a week after tony abbott was invited to participate...

Australia can afford an 'Australian-style deal' with the EU because it doesn't really trade much with the EU. And it's in active negotiation with the EU, so even Australia won't have an 'Australian-style deal' for much longer.

Australian exports to the EU = £10 billion

UK exports to the EU = £300 billion

Getting some Varoufakis vibes/trolling from that FT report and we all know how that went down with the EU.

How is this all going down in Northern Ireland right now? I mean I can guess but it would be nice to read some informed commentary.

Hard to know which level of deception the UK government is on:

1) they really want to blow up talks and don’t want a deal

2) they want EU to think they want to blow up talks to get concessions in a deal

3) they want Brexiteers to think they think this as theatrics to do a deal https://t.co/wWClpTmpYz

— Jon Stone (@joncstone) September 6, 2020

I'm with 3 rn.

3 seems credible.

Of those options I'm with three — this isn't for EU consumption, but I still don't follow. The Brexiteer faithful's appetite for carnage is high, so how is "we threatened carnage but ... then backed down" going to help them sell it?

"This deal is complicated don't bother reading it, we promise it gives you all the cake we said you'd get" has worked much better so far.

1) and 3) aren’t mutually exclusive right? If I’m reading the garbled syntax correctly.

Stephen Bush says:


Yes, undermining the Irish border protocol means undermining any hope of a serious US-UK trade deal, but the government's own red lines, on agri-food, the National Health Service and more besides have already undermined any hope of a serious US-UK trade deal.

And the big prize of Brexit, at least as far as this Downing Street is concerned, is freedom from restrictions on state aid: an aim that, similarly, cannot be achieved while signing any EU-UK trade deal.

So the possibility of a no deal remains very high - and the government's moves in that direction should be taken seriously.

RTE says:

In essence, says one official, Dublin is concerned that it was being asked to effectively trade its influence with the commission over legal obligations under the protocol to which the UK had signed up.

According to the official: "We won’t get in a position where we’re teaming up with the British on something and then going back with it to Brussels.

"That’s just not how it was done for four years and we’re not going to start doing it now.

They've been calling it an Australian-style deal for most of the year now.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-australia-trade-deal-brexit-eu-phil-hogan-a9319591.html

Tracer, the idea with 3) is that this is fresh meat to be thrown to the Brexiteers - you can sleep soundly because your freedoms are being protected by virile British laws - but they'll make a deal anyway.

I think the plan has always been to crash the deal and blame the EU

Is that the plan? The Tories have commitments to British capitalism and the Union. How does crashing out help with either?

I think it's entirely possible that Johnson could come back with a deal that concedes more sovereignty than May had planned and a big chunk of the Brexiters would still be going "ra ra Boris he got it done in the end, great job". Farage and maybe a few ERG members will pipe up but will it make much difference?

At this stage, the vast majority of people who voted Leave almost certainly have other things on their mind than what flavour of Brexit deal we get, the page has already been turned on that particular chapter.

Entertaining if true that State Aid really is the hill Cummings is making them die on. Lexit here we come

Staff at school Boris Johnson visited days ago tests positive for Covid-19https://t.co/IktYZqBwWB pic.twitter.com/vZaxb4VXGr

— Mirror Politics (@MirrorPolitics) September 7, 2020

"Don't kill your granny by catching coronavirus and then passing it on" - Matt Hancock on Radio 1 Newsbeat https://t.co/pVJFzZazJd

— Emily Ashton (@elashton) September 7, 2020

matt hancock otm, great advice

with the caveat that if your granny is one of them Mail-reading tory-voting curtain-twitching narks, then give her a hearty hug!

Terrific work, thousands of children now going home petrified that they're going to kill their granny and/or parents just because they went to school. Perhaps that might have been a better message to give to Gavin Williamson around the Cabinet table.

I haven't seen a great deal written about how a socially distanced hall of residence is supposed to work either because piling loads of 18 year olds together for the first time has very predictable results that aren't going to change much because we're in a pandemic.

And of course the catchment area for a uni is somewhat larger than for a school.

Failure to do anything to address the imminent return to HE is probably even more irresponsible and likely lethal than the back to school push

And that's before I even think about how the tensions between students and locals are gonna play out in socially distanced pubs, residential areas etc. Legit scary.

This government's entire steez is looking at car crashes in the rear view mirror and blaming other drivers

I wonder how many of the returning students are just back from breaks in Spain, Italy, Portugal, etc.