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

Labour frontbencher Thangam Debbonaire’s obvious irritation & embarrassment at @zarahsultana upsetting Tories for refusing to retract calling endemic Tory corruption “dodgy” - most ordinary people would use far worse language! - summarises Labour’s weak leadership in a nutshell https://t.co/GZ6x8TklYc

— Marcus Barnett (@marcusbarnett_) November 18, 2021

All you need to know about Tzipi Hovotely is that her appointment as Israeli Ambassador to the UK was opposed by Melanie Phillips.

dacre has pulled out of the ofcom recruitment re-run

lol

an “infelicitous dalliance with the Blob" is how I describe looking into the bathroom mirror these days!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FElAXoZXIAoOTfI?format=jpg&name=small

"buyer's remorse"

dacre was transparently unqualified for a job that is mainly about frequency bands and technical regulation. they do also now have responsibility for the annual BBC report.

it is *somewhat* reassuring that some governance is still in place for this sort of appointment.

What happens here with almost any charitable efforts in Gaza? Hard to see how that happens while maintaining total distance from Hamas. https://t.co/fWLQmeRJqO

— Tom Gann (@Tom_Gann) November 19, 2021

When you are led by public opinion rather than leading public opinion.
The focus group will never trust Labour on this. Another Tory gov it is! https://t.co/4tjymxDdPe

— Chardine Taylor Stone (@ChardineTaylor) November 19, 2021

this human rights lawyer won't be losing any sleep over the legal status of Gaza charity organisations.

fizzles otm and i reckon dacre must have realised he would have hated doing the job, or even to do the things that would have made it appear that he was doing the job

What a pathetic manbaby.

Writing in a letter in the Times, Dacre said: “To anyone from the private sector, who, God forbid, has convictions, and is thinking of applying for a public appointment, I say the following: the civil service will control (and leak) everything; the process could take a year in which your life will be put on hold; and if you are possessed of an independent mind and are unassociated with the liberal/left, you will have more chance of winning the lottery than getting the job.”

Dacre said he wished Ofcom “all the luck in the world” as it prepared to grapple with “trying to regulate the omnipotent, ruthless and, as we’ve learnt, amoral tech giants without damaging freedom of expression”.

In a final attack on the civil service, Dacre said he was taking up “an exciting new job” in the private sector that “struggles to create the wealth to pay for all those senior civil servants working from home so they can spend more time exercising on their Peloton bikes and polishing their political correctness”.

lol he actually sounds hurt. maybe i’m wrong! as difficult as that would be to believe.

the blob strikes back

Aw diddums.

Maybe Dacre had a 'H!tler rejected by Vienna art school' type trauma in his youth. Couldn't start a World war so did it by other means.

never mind the civil service thwarting his ambitions, it was Corbz who inflicted his biggest defeat - the failed beerhall putsch of '17.

From 1967 he read English at the University of Leeds,[14] while Jack Straw was President of the Students' Union.[13] While at university, he became involved with the Union News newspaper (the Leeds Student from 1970), rising to the position of editor.[15] At this time he identified with the liberal end of the political spectrum on issues including gay rights and drug use,[16] and wrote editorials in support of a student sit-in at Leeds organised by Straw.[17] He introduced a pin-up feature in the newspaper called "Leeds Lovelies".[17][18] He told the British Journalism Review in 2002: "If you don't have a left-wing period when you go to university, you should be shot"[8][17]

jack straw venn diagram klaxon

He should be shot regardless tbf.

As Andrew Marr steps down from the impartial state broadcaster it seems only gracious to remember his finest impartial moment pic.twitter.com/8i7nzrfctx

— Edmund Griffiths (@EdmundGriffiths) November 20, 2021

yeesh

vintage milk

https://thewire.in/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/North-Korean-tv-presenter.jpg

P sure they drag the pink lady in dprk by comparing her to Andrew marr

not a huge grace blakeley stan tbh but i think this is interesting if true (= the UK seen as a strong culturing ground for left thinking perhaps precisely bcz it is now so arid for practical left politics)

Everywhere I’ve been recently - Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium - socialists have told me a version of the same message: they see so many popular socialist thinkers coming out of the UK, and they wish there were more of those voices in their country.

— Grace Blakeley (@graceblakeley) November 20, 2021

"The next Labour government will not be reintroducing free movement," says Labour's Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds.

Here's what Keir Starmer promised during his leadership campaign. #marr pic.twitter.com/deHa3gMdYa

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) November 21, 2021

Just basically laughing at the idea they can outdo Priti Patel on this. Bunch of pricks.

I'm putting people who vote for Starmer Labour in the same bracket as evil Tory Voters now. Fuck anyone who votes this knave!

losing the all the top-tier shitposters with European wide acclaim for the mildest of centre-left concessions seems like a big price to pay.

i enjoy the Twitter normals still going about how Crombone was a racist and the LP was unspeakably racist under his leadership

Yeah where’s that anti racism they assured us was so important to them then? Cunts.

Imagine standing up in front of an audience and saying that reading a fucking David Baddiel book helped you become a better anti-racist.

can't have racism if you keep the country ethnically pure *taps forehead*

"not a huge grace blakeley stan tbh but i think this is interesting if true"

More of a reflection on who she talks to.

of course but still

lol grace blakely just feels like the most typical illustration of declining opportunities for millenials + z, shouldn't she be the guardian's 'young leftist!' columnist? she's kept her stationary very neat since doing her undergrad and managed a book deal but so far her main gig is a podcast afaiui. anyway one of the most bizarre products of the corbyn era commentary demi-boom, literally who needs her history of chicago school economics? good for her that shes getting smoke blown up her arse all over the continental landmass.

hmm i didn't mean to be quite that rude

maybe not

It’s easy to be pessimistic (not least because we treat cynicism as somehow more intellectually rigorous than hope), but looking over the last 40 years it would be stupid to ignore the progress we’ve made over the last 5 in building platforms for communicating and debating ideas.

— Grace Blakeley (@graceblakeley) November 20, 2021

privately educated posh as fuck Oxford grad says pessimism is the easy option, look at what *we've* got .. lol

well its just a really stupid thing to say on its face. like surely a more idk inquisitive thinker might immediately ponder how it is possible to grow a small selection of media friendly 'left' commenters from russel group universities to feed a healthy ecosystem of takes at the exact same time that peaceful protests are being outlawed and anything that even gestures toward basic egalitarianism is easily monstered in the lunatic press. Are these two things in any way connected? and is that anything to be especially optimistic about as ever more depressing standards of misery become normalised for almost anyone not in the #5 amazon non-fiction, uk politics charts but especially the growing numbers of people in poverty. food banks, benefits sanctions, just absolutely normal cruelty but hey its a boom time for socialist content production with growing overseas markets. yes this is the intellectual rigor of this kind of optimism thank you very much

"but hey its a boom time for socialist content production with growing overseas markets."

lool nail on head!

dialectics baby

I get that she doesn't really understand how precarious some people's lives are and the way in which it shapes their outlook on politics. And how a broken washing machine or a conked out fridge probably isn't the start of an existential crisis to her. But the amount of smug class trolling she does is unacceptable to me and completely detracts from whatever message she's putting out there.

its also a truly bizarre understanding of the materialist tradition of marxist etc thought to be like 'well, we're doing really well in the ideas game..."

like: "she doesn't really understand how precarious some people's lives are and the way in which it shapes their outlook on politics. And how a broken washing machine or a conked out fridge probably isn't the start of an existential crisis to her."

back in spring she was doing this awful "if your mam was a cleaner and yer da shovelled shite it has no bearing on yr class status - you plebs don't understand class theory from a Marxist perspective and I'm here to put you straight, ya" and I don't think she lacks the intelligence/self-awareness to know how it sounded coming from someone as posh as her, so it was just str8 fucking trolling clickbait bullshit on a level par with Spiked!

There are some good reporters on the labour strikes front in the states that I follow (some Jacobin affiliated, others not) and they'll do ideas at times but because they are reporting from the front lines I think it really grounds them in the way that I almost never see it from the Novara/podcast lot. One struggle at a time.

Saying that you are winning the ideas battle when the Tories are making moves to crush protest and dissent is a delusion the Corbyn-affiliated crowd really get into.

Yeah this is v otm as most of the very prominent ones are doing at best Westminster stuff, not often particularly interested in more prosaic stuff of people's lives outside of 'theoretical' framings of such

James butler is another one that really grinds my gears in this way

Real Rachel maddow stuff

anyway yes, incurious and annoyingly tone deaf are precisely why i'm not a GB stan -- and in retrospect me calling this "interesting" rather than "surprising" probably made me sound a bit incurious and distanced myself BUT i still think it is surprising (if true) (and whether or not it begs only a despairing interpretation), simply bcz i just don't know the last time the UK was considered some kind of a hub of useful vanguard thought? i mean since 1848 or whenever

nor am i especially expecting blakeley and dr bastano to make good use of this situation lol, if good use can even be made of it -- tho i did grin briefly at the locked-account twitter that responded "send paul mason in a sealed train to norway"

"send paul mason in a sealed train to norway"

lol that's a good one!

lol mark i dont think anyone was suspecting you of being a blakely dupe