Free as a Dodo: UK Politics Welcomes 2021

we of course had not one but two trot parties at the last scottish parliamentary election RISE (the coalition of the Radical Indepence Campaign and the Scottish Socialist Party) and the Tommy Sheridan vehicle Solidarity and they got a wopping combined vote of 1.1%

possibly more like "was Vote Leave better or worse off with Farage and Leave.EU as a separate thing to point the headbangers at?" xp

Slight difference there is that the SNP have the advantage of having been 20-odd percent ahead in the polls for yonks.

(xps)

i feel like there is an undercurrent in the snp that wants a more left-wing vision, especially among younger post indyref members. but they are allowing their energies to be subsumed into the move for indepenence. there's almost an attitude of "no politics until after independence" from a lot of nationalists. it seems salient that the elements of the party that actually are more restive are the "salmond was fitted up", "we hate trans people" and "lets just do a UDI" types (a fairly circular Venn diagram one would imagine, though not totally)

yeah, that.

there's been one candidate defection so far, Eva Comrie, who was top of the list for the snp in mid-scotland and fife (and so effectively guaranteed a seat) will stand for alba instead.

her twitter account appears to be locked so i can't confirm my suspicions regarding her views haha

I can confirm your suspicions.

This transphobic diatribe from Eva Comrie, Number 1 on the Mid Scotland & Fife list is disgusting. #TransWomenareWomen #TransLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/dWGqPrI9K2

— Leeze 😷 (@Ms_Leeze) March 11, 2021

I hate Scottish politicians who pepper their stuff with 'couthy' Scots words.

"am gey feart o trans wummin so a um"

the Scottish version of Jess's bab-isms

just read a good moniker for fans of Wings over Scotland on a Celtic forum i'm on "Stu Anon"

lol nice

judging by the clip i just saw on TV the alba party doesn't have any sound engineers amongst their supporters

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExaVb3nXAAIDAzj?format=jpg&name=medium

no shortage of "sound blokes" though!

xp poor sound quality from something called Alba not a first in these isles, just go to your nearest Argos store.

AFI has stood down all 42 candidates including Sheridan as a result of Alba

Police officer punches woman square in the face in Bristol pic.twitter.com/uiglUlBNQH

— Michael East (@MichaelEast1983) March 27, 2021

yeah but 3 cops are recovering from insect bites etc...

Just saw some copper on breakfast TV literally say that people were throwing themselves at the their shields. Chin first I assume.

Anneliese Dodds told BBC Breakfast that protesters should be using "other ways of expressing whatever dissatisfaction they have"

I'll you remember this on the next polling day, after all no point voting just for the sake of voting.

That police video looks dire.

To echo a point sometimes made: if this were footage from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, or even the USA, then British people would be condemning it as the kind of thing that doesn't happen here.

Weren't UK liberals appalled by footage of US police controlling protests in 2020? I hope they say the same things now.

A case for AC-12.

there is a quite a remarkable contrast how the BBC reports on Putin's thug cops beating up peaceful protesters and the "oh it's the rent-a-mob getting a clip round the lug hole" sort of tone on domestic protests. I mean of course they'd do that, but it would be nice to be surprised by them doing some serious reportage maybe the odd time.

Not likely while a Tory government is threatening to reduce or remove the license fee and one of Boris's mates is Director General.

Not just the BBC, the coverage on Sky is exactly the same.

It's all outrage that our brave boys in blue are being attacked.

the 6 music news this morning only had comments from the police, nothing from the protestors. cf the Hong Kong democracy riots.

The Hong Kong protesters maybe earned a lot of respect from UK libs for flying the British colonial flag at early protests. I appreciate there will have been Hong Kong protesters who cringed at that as well, their equivalent of the FBPE's perhaps? I see the hypocrisy of a lot of people who were shagging the flag of a trading bloc 18 months ago now talking about flag shaggers!

Tim Davie isn’t one of Boris’ mates fwiw. Not that that’s any sort of accomplishment.

Looking for updates from the Manchester #KillTheBill protest, as we are hearing of numbers of Tactical Aid Unit officers making around 18 arrests and an assault on a legal observer pic.twitter.com/gsyh6uvKmt

— Netpol (@netpol) March 27, 2021

they seem nice

on that thread

Watch this police officer arrest an independent reporter for “violent disorder”. pic.twitter.com/xbRRvlwbbs

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) March 27, 2021

dunno which scares me more, the arrest or the people jumping in on Twitter who've already convicted him on based on the video

What pic.twitter.com/PtoScG4XCR

— Surreal Madrid (@SocietyJerry) March 28, 2021

things can only get better

It looks like Dodds is toast and possibly Reeves is lined up to replace her. Not that I feel any pity for her, the difference between an unprincipled resolutely useless soft-left placeholder and a horrible right-wing arsehole doesn't seem to count for much at this point of the game. It was always going to happen from the start.

Starmer ‘to axe shadow chancellor’ Anneliese Dodds after Labour poll slump

Haha, Dodds is my MP! She's continuing the Oxford East tradition of being better in the constituency than in her govt post (predecessor was Andrew Smith).

She couldn't be any worse

Because I am evidently a masochist I was reading the Observer and...

Some called for more experience to be brought into Starmer’s team. A shadow minister said: “The problem is that Keir’s team is very inexperienced. We are in a bit of a state. They have spent too much time over the last year trying to appease the hard left on one hand and being too cautious trying to look like a government in waiting. There is lots of concern in the PLP about Keir’s office in general.”

Ah, Hilary Benn, responsible for the most ludicrous speech ever given in the Commons when he invoked the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War to press the chamber to drop bombs on Syria. https://t.co/YYmkBtc1Zm

— Mr Demos of Pnyx (@gem_ste) March 28, 2021

Good idea to get some proven winners into the cabinet, er, hold on...

like mark posted previously "maybe if we give him a woman's name it might prevent the Freudian complex from occurring..."

of course Starmer's negative approval rating and Labour's dire polling should all be blamed on barely visible members of the shadow cabinet that haven't dared to say to boo to mouse in the last year lest they upset the rabid right of the PLP. But it shows that the so called soft left is not a meaningful faction within the party, because that would mean that they are willing to get into unseemly arguments and actually stand for something. Rather than getting sacked for doing nothing!

Josie Long
16h
Replying to
@GavinBarwell and @Keir_Starmer
It was lovely to campaign against you in 2017, and to help labour win your seat. A beautiful and uplifting day.

Gavin Barwell
13h
I suppose I should thank you. Thanks to your efforts I ended up with an even more amazing job.

Just checking in.

6 months ago the Labour Party launched a campaign to get front line key workers to put themselves forward as local candidates.

Yesterday they removed a BAME London bus driver who had been selected by members across the whole city https://t.co/P4dD1iTNYf

— Unite Politics (@UnitePolitics) March 27, 2021

Not sure about this one, he does seem to have made an antisemitic Facebook comment, please correct me if I am wrong on this, I would like to be wrong here.

The ace-with-the-mase reminding everybody why the soft left are not just friendless within the PLP tonight by saying: hey these cops are not behaving well but have a thankless task and any collateral damage to commercial property is just not on lads.

re 'appease the hard left' BS:

Presumably it is rationally self-interested for the bad MP to say that - lying to achieve political effects.

But the Observer writers are meant to be journalists, interested in presenting truth. They shouldn't present a statement like that without noting that it is demonstrably the reverse of the truth.

It's literally equivalent to quoting a Con MP saying 'We know that the UK government has handled this pandemic well - there's widespread acceptance of that' - and not querying it.

The fact that the UK's mainstream media is incapable of this is a big reason why we are where we are now.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/29/keir-starmer-year-labour-poll-ratings

for some rare balance the Graun have published another opinion piece by Moya Lothian-McLean (who previously wrote the Starmer is a wet wipe piece) today.

even the extremely foolish P🤡🤡l M🤡🤡🤡n has finally realised he might not have understood social democracy correctly from a Marxist viewpoint by enthusiastically backing this fraud last year.