ForenSix Opposition - Politics in the Soon To Be Former UK in Autumn 2020

after all this he'll think twice before he flies there again

i mean ever, before he flies there ever

Wish I had been executed before reading that tweet.

Rare moment for you on the wrong side of history.

Wait a second... Boris is Catholic?!?!

Yeah, there’s a lot of pennies just clanging down now, what of it. I didn’t realise he himself was raised Catholic either.

Boris Johnson, who was baptised a Roman Catholic, has baptised his own son at a Catholic church. There has *never* been an openly practising Catholic prime minister of the UK........... https://t.co/7yR2phMSET

— Hugo Gye (@HugoGye) September 21, 2020

"He could've been Pope, Ted..."

LOL at the idea the PM practices Catholicism. I mean, perhaps some aspects.

wth, I had no idea boris was catholic

if Biden wins we will rule the anglosphere

makes Blair's whole waiting until he got out of office to convert seem especially weak.

Catholicism is a lot more fun than Protestantism tbf, and also Blair was a convert and converts tend to be a lot weirder than the born-and-raised.

His Wikipedia page says he was baptised a Catholic but then later converted, but like that counts.

Brexitism

having looked into it he basically is an anglican, think the kid is being baptized catholic because of his partner

If this Perugia thing was confected then a lot of previously loyal media outlets enthusiastically ran with it.

popbitch has provided further helpful info on the perugia trip

Our company (in the city) had been letting people go back, though I don't think that all that many had. They announced today that they're closing the UK offices again, in effect from at latest Wednesday (presumably because they sent out the mail at 5 today)

(my "this changes everything" for today is finding out that Harry Cole had been in a long term relationship with Carrie Symonds)

xxp was just laughing at that, excellent content.

AF, how weird is it knowing that now?!

Popbitch stuff is where? Can’t find it n the latest daily email.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oHGe321raVs/VLvsl6l_K4I/AAAAAAAAg5E/I6TlrQ6Z7L8/s1600/Cole350.png

in the few years since this pic was taken. She looks near enough the same, he now looks like David Jason in Porterhouse Blue.

Never mind, I was posting here about Harry x Carrie around the time of the Camberwell Domestic Incident.

Harry & Carrie wasn’t a secret, AF is just behind.

he looks like mark kozelek

lol he does, only he was born in 1985 and could easily pass for someone in his early 60's these days. fuck it, much less stringent appearance shaming regs apply to wankers like Harry.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dd1xdpKV4AAOP76.jpg

tbf he's got a much better hairstyle than Starmer.

"Some context on the significance of tmrw in our national life: it will be only the third PM’s address to the nation on Coronavirus

The 1st was in March when he announced lockdown; the 2nd was in May when he set out the roadmap to recovery. And now, the second wave brings the 3rd" (Beth Rigby)

Is this really true?

He's taken a few pressers as well iirc but not many

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/21/pubs-and-restaurants-across-england-to-be-forced-to-shut-at-10pm

This seems like the weakest sauce yet from this lot. Is that really it? They've been saying for weeks that pubs aren't a source of transmission, so why is their sole substantive measure trimming their hours a bit?

Pubs round here have been shutting at ten anyway except maybe Fridays and Saturdays

As a bad but happy citizen, my first exposure to the incarnation of Harry Cole was as Lefou to JRM's Gaston:

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CeLkTWqgcu8/W-6_pNLmTJI/AAAAAAABGKM/dylDYkoPtMMKkARq8RJZwEDR9QPm0TJEACLcBGAs/s320/Cole465.png

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5f01cPS-Kso/W-6_qFFI6UI/AAAAAAABGKc/CrR9heXhXAgSY2sm3lA5QShjssOTi6i1gCLcBGAs/s320/Cole468.png

lovely to wake up to Lisa Nandy's delightfully Trumpian language, good reminder why I'm never going to vote for this shithole party again in my life.

it's amazing how fast Progressive Patriotism evolves into evoking the name of the UK's leading fascist party.

Ahhhhh pic.twitter.com/4e5dIFZSyJ

— Snark Maiden (@femsocialist) September 22, 2020

Not sure how he's going to combine singing "Marcus Rashford's Hungry Children" terrace-chant style with outflanking the Tories on capital-S Security for the edification of The Sun but excited to be along for the ride.

My cancelled direct debit should see my membership lapse out of being any day now. Stoked

Watched 3 minutes of KS's speech there. Seemed a straight lift from the early Blair playbook minus the fake dynamism and surface charisma.

Any progress in engaging the young left from Corbynism has been abandoned in favour of selling mature competence.

Not sure how he's going to combine singing "Marcus Rashford's Hungry Children" terrace-chant style with outflanking the Tories on capital-S Security for the edification of The Sun but excited to be along for the ride.

I don't think those things are remotely disassociated in the minds of a lot of voters, the dissonance will be between touchy-feely human rights Starmer and prosecute-em-all-now Starmer. I'm guessing he'll try and get over the former by just pretending it doesn't exist and hoping the Mail don't decide to rake it up.

The really pertinent question is why The Sun is playing along, why the right-wing press is giving him such an easy ride so far. It has to be more than 'well he's centrist enough to be acceptable'.

Starmer ending by stating the obvious - there was no point in putting policy in this speech if your first task is to win back trust.

“We’ve got a long road ahead of us. We’re not going to win back those we’ve lost with a single speech or a clever policy offer. Trust takes time.”

— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) September 22, 2020

The entire strategy appears to be to beam messages at people who are predominantly disengaged with politics on the assumption they won't think too hard about the contradictions, and on the assumption that any kind of vision of hope is frivolous shit that the public won't believe in any case.

Why give people hope when you can chuck some minorities under the bus for some Vichy shit

I can see Starmer getting to a point where the disengaged don't reflexively hate him and Labour, i have a harder time seeing him being able to motivate them to vote in sufficient numbers.

The right-wing press has no leverage over Johnson if he has a huge majority and their unwavering support. They need to make out they've got options.

Does Nandy not have any problems with using a slogan that was amongst the last words Jo Cox heard before she was murdered in Batley? I really hope her dad has completely disinherited her now.

Starmer isn’t just going to fail to motivate, he’s going to actively drive away chunks of the voter coalition and replace them with... what? Like modelling the party on the democrats where they seem perfectly fine to lose elections as long as their faction retains control.

xp fucking hell I didn’t even notice she said that, i want to be sick

fuck this party

Corbyn's Labour was demonised for championing internationalism and an inclusive collectivism, supporting migrant and minority rights. Now it seems Labour is going out of its way to disassociate from those values.

— rachel shabi (@rachshabi) September 22, 2020

The question of whether or not it's the right thing to do morally has been separated from whether it will work - there aren't many recent examples of politicians failing to prosper because they overestimated the stupidity of the discourse. In their minds a Labour victory IS the correct moral course and therefore the ends justify the means.

I actually get the trust argument (as in the Anvil 'he might be a cunt but at least he knows how to do it' sense), but you need to make sure you aren't incinerating the trust of the other people you need behind you in the process. It's a gigantic gamble on that front.

There's going to be a massive backlash over the Nandy thing and deservedly so.

Is the first of Keir Starmer's ten pledges – increase income tax for top 5% of earners, reverse Tory cuts to corporation tax – now gone? "I expect so," says Lisa Nandy #PoliticsLive

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) September 22, 2020

Quite something to chase this hard the 40k who voted Brexit Party at the last election.

Labour will take your vote but never offer you a fucking thing while they chase the spiteful pensioner vote already allied to the Tories. Weird how certain groups of voters get condescended to and told to shut up, isn’t it, and how it’s always their fault for not just handing their vote over unquestioningly to a party that despises and resents them.