"we'll change the things that need changing and that's all we'll change": the paSUKification of post-brexit politics 2021

the Spen isn't much of river really, it's a tributary of the Calder and unless there are flood conditions it's more like a big stream I think.

"Labour are going to parachute in the Hartlepool guy again"

If you can't win seriously at least lose with good humour

I some a couple of Paula Sherriff rumours on twitter, not one of the worst melts but sending a remain ultra to a 60% Leave constituency wouldn't work imo

pic.twitter.com/xPCPsmPrFj

— Andrew R (@ExcelPope) May 11, 2021

lol! from the Kieth really is 6'2 ..honestly... serious of photos with his maverick cop partner.

There have been lots of average quality memes about those photos but that one is genuinely excellent.

It brings so much together -- the odd extensiveness of that photoshoot, their carefully selected outfits (with AR's terrific coat), the weird over-dramatised quality of it, the height deception issue that Calzino has pointed out, the cop partners image, the strange fact that one of these two just tried to fire the other, the names (highlighting the fact that most people not near the area have never thought about Batley or Spen), the ITV factor.

Class has nothing to do with:
-your accent
-where you live
-where you grew up
-what your parents do
-where you went to school

These things remain important in supporting certain individuals to change their class position, but they don’t come into the definition of class.

— Grace Blakeley (@graceblakeley) May 11, 2021

this is a very bad pseud gone on a class trolling mission response to that middle income plus homeowning bigots with regional accents identifying as w/c thing. If you grew up in a poor area in social housing, and went to a sink comprehensive, with parents in low income jobs then your not w/c cos class is thotial constwuct. Yeah just about every formative experience that moulds your perception of yourself from the day you are born, just erase all of that says person who attended a private school and grew up in Hampshire.

EXCL: Carolyn Harris, Keir Starmer's parliamentary private secretary, has resigned amid claims she spread baseless rumours about Angela Rayner's private life

With @patrickkmaguire and @EleniCourea https://t.co/5uww6rzzbz

— Henry Zeffman (@hzeffman) May 11, 2021

I must admit I find Blakeley's position, about 'production' etc, hard to understand. Probably my own intellectual deficiency.

she'd probably need to write a very long Perry Anderson length piece on her class theory to wring out all the nuance. Because in the twitter thread format she just sounds like an infuriatingly wrong posh 'un and she's going to get shellacked for it!

Half of the most prominent left-wing ppl in the media just want ppl to have nice things, as a treat.

No doubt class in a Marxian sense is different to class in a UK-ish self identification sense, in the same way that a huge number of the self-perceived middle class are basically proletarian

Not sure Grace is the one to pick at these threads tho, just reminds me of being told I couldn't be working class cos I was at uni

Grace has been tweeting a lot of shit the last few days. It's a grift for attention and more work.

GB is daft alright but I can’t bring myself to dislike her because 1) her detractors include some of the most deranged people on twitter and 2) she’s very pretty

gyac please

summer is truly a-comin'

Another measure will repeal the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, allowing the prime minister to call an election when he chooses.

Yay fewer elections...

this is a very bad pseud gone on a class trolling mission response to that middle income plus homeowning bigots with regional accents identifying as w/c thing.

I don't know how much mileage there really is in challenging definitions of what working class is. The fact that the label has become untethered from the labelled (if it were every properly afixed) isn't something easily undone. Using words to mean something that other people perceive to mean something entirely different seems a losing proposition

The terms gone

I reckon Novara Media could do a lot worse than bringing in Moyesy to get this lot sorted

Electoral Integrity Bill, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, Judicial Review Bill, Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill to ensure the integrity of elections

_Another measure will repeal the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, allowing the prime minister to call an election when he chooses._

Yay fewer elections...

That's right

But beyond that the Queen's Speech showed a big contrast between the Government's impressively clear political strategy (again evidenced today with bills on elections nature/timing + culture war nudges) and far less clear governing agenda

— Torsten Bell (@TorstenBell) May 11, 2021

Your daily reminder that the grown ups are back in charge. https://t.co/Fmd8XVhm5H

— Alex Nunns (@alexnunns) May 11, 2021

good grief!

lol, clarification forthcoming from kieth that angela rayner does not, in fact, suck of tramps 4 cigs

with the caveat that she will in fact do it for a bottle of blue wkd though!

IDST

Take the morning off Twitter and posh people try and talk about class again pic.twitter.com/EIF71hizkB

— Dawn Foster (@DawnHFoster) May 11, 2021

I can't see past Grace either lacking way too much self-awareness or just conducting some lazer guided trolling to up her profile, neither is very good.

The latter goes with the territory when it comes to Twitter surely?

I haven't moaned about Twitter in ages so I'm due a go, but slightly disheartened to see this latest Thread About UK Politics so quickly become a new Thread About Tweets About UK Politics.

More TikToks about UK Politics please.

you've got to go looking for the discourse somewhere, it won't come wafting through your kitchen window like smog!

Agreed with Tom, every time this thread gets updated I get excited that Keith's tripped over himself again to some comedic effect so this new line of discussion is disappointing :(

https://t.co/7kLL6p7t1R pic.twitter.com/l5Ftp7MOtH

— Mr Demos of Pnyx (@gem_ste) May 11, 2021

🤡🤡🤡

abolish work and class imho

— Dave (@MediocreDave) May 11, 2021

I haven't moaned about Twitter in ages so I'm due a go, but slightly disheartened to see this latest Thread About UK Politics so quickly become a new Thread About Tweets About UK Politics.

― Are Animated Dads Getting Hotter? (Tom D.), Tuesday, 11 May 2021 bookmarkflaglink

That's right

Tom you know I love you but your dn is a twitter reference, come off it

please sadiq https://t.co/PmTYvtGAvW pic.twitter.com/2nxOQA5Rrs

— bick #TeamJess&Wes (@bicknaker) May 11, 2021

FWIW it strikes me that Blakeley's statement is hoist by a very old familiar petard, namely the relations between correlation & causality.

"Education deserves your class position" -- might be untrue.

"Class position determines your education" -- appears quite true.

"There is correlation between education and class position" -- appears true.

I think that she has used "nothing to do with" to indicate a denial of the first statement, but not noticed that it also logically denies the second and third statements, which appear true.

In short, looser talk than I might expect, but maybe that reflects her education.

have to admit i just love grace blakeley so will prob agree with anything she says.

I feel all the ire she has got boils down to a private school educated Oxford alumni from a very priviliged background not really being a good enough writer to condense her class discourse thinking to twitter sized chunks that doesn't boil the piss of lots of people who grew up in poor versions of most of the things she bullets points, especially the housing and education and reduced odds of progressing to higher education with parents that never had a higher education etc. All the formative stuff that made some of us into complete fuckups. Never mind some of us council estate scratters that think Bourdieu is a variety of red wine and cultural capital is a loan company!

Anyway I'm always looking for an excuse to slag off Novara Media. This "cultural working class" thing is problematic, but you need a better writer than Grace to do a critique of it any justice, she just ends up sounding like another variant of the middle-income plus property earning working classes - which I'm sure wasn't her intention.

She's right about the accent thing, but that's hardly a startling insight.

People do need to transcend class and social mobility is in such a rapid decline that 20th century definitions are not particularly helpful or enlightening anymore. But still...

i saw her do a Q&A when her book stolen was being published. could be the questions and the fact the chair was her apparent mate ash sarkar but she seemed to be good at circling round the points she wanted to make, but it was all a bit baggy and not pointed enough. tried reading the book (should prob give it another go to be fair) but felt it had the same sort of issue.

seems to be a tendency on the UK left to downplay the specificities of people's experience in the name of some ideal working class coalition (actually cross-class but never mind). you can define precarious or downwardly mobile middle class people (a significant chunk of the corbyn coalition) as working class if you want but they don't have all the same interests & struggles as people who were raised poor despite some overlap, it seems dishonest to pretend otherwise & any necessary solidarity shouldn't be conditional on doing so

Under her "relation to the the means of production" definition wouldn't that put people who are fairly comfortable in the same category as people depending on foodbanks? A big element of class solidarity is about knowing other people are experiencing/have experienced the same struggles and hardship etc

If Marina Hyde was reduced to working at a call centre she'd be common as muck!

I say this as a bourgeois benefit bludging layabout who hasn't worked in nearly 10 years. I think even Marx would have said I was a wanker!

Like whaaaaaaat?

Peter Mandelson: “I’m afraid Keir Starmer has come badly unstuck”.

Damning interview by @Anoosh_C with Starmer's supposed ally. https://t.co/eKW4d7Ja2J

— George Eaton (@georgeeaton) May 11, 2021

There’s no point in getting rid of the incubus of Jeremy Corbyn and continuing to uphold his policies and manifesto on which we went down to such a terrible defeat in 2019.”

Yet Mandelson told me he hadn’t spoken with Starmer since 2018, when they talked “briefly about Brexit”. “I wish I had given more,” he responded, when asked about his relationship with the leader’s office. “All I can do is write articles and give interviews. What else can I do?”

Keir Starmer’s leadership ratings now worse than Jeremy Corbyn’s, polls show https://t.co/Hoh5FiuGOS

— Jon Stone (@joncstone) May 11, 2021