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

Gary Neville was on the radio and saying he's joined the Labour Party recently and how it needs to be a party of the centre and "not just about left-wing politics". Obviously he has been paying close attention to everything and isn't a fucking clueless melt at all. God save us from professional Mancunian property developers having their political awakening when they knocking on 50.

Doesn't seem to have worked. Basically everyone thinks Andrew is a nonce anyway, so cue much shrugging of shoulders in the wider world.

It's not that, more shifting the blame to advisers and civil servants. I don't know why else Johnson's Bosses would acknowledge it this much.

Yes, that would probably work in normal circumstances but...

"Staff partied in the basement of No10, to music DJd by a special adviser." pic.twitter.com/ZKII6pp5VF

— Will Davies (@davies_will) January 14, 2022

I bet Dom would just be playing fucking Zappa records

Nah that jacket is straight out of an Autechre press photo

Although the right hand poised for crabbing a cross fader and left sleeve rolled up makes me think it could have been a scratch set

maybe DJ Dom would have some kind of SySteMs ThInKiNg approach to spinning some fookin' tunes at a party!

PLANK JOHNSON MUST GO

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FJGCFMHWYAglX8o?format=jpg&name=large

lol this came out weeks ago, wouldn't be surprised if they've got plenty more in the vault on this wanker and will be waiting for the right strategic moment of maximum damage to release it. Like how they've waited for him to attack Johnson on the parties for a few days until this made the cover to show him up as the hypocritical and mealy-mouthed dickhead that he is.

the "it was a work event" thing, isn't that unimportant? i don't remember there being caveats at the time that said 30 people at a time was ok if it was work related, or if they were bubbled or anything.

"hosting boozy parties" is a strange thing to call it too, like he's 14 and telling on his slightly older brother to their parents.

Wholly righteous indignation over the gatherings in and of themselves is fine, but careless emoting over the ‘boozy’ aspect risks tripping things over into a moral crusade which will help nobody in the end and is also a bit dishonest. Britain has long floated on a river of piss.

— barney farmer (@barneyfarmer) January 14, 2022

Barney Farmer otm

Koogs' point is good. I don't remember work being exempt either!

The thought came to me that a Zizek would say something like:

"We wouldn't actually have wanted these stories and outrages to come out at the time - we wanted to believe that the powerful were responsible - and we needed to stay responsible, to stay safe -- but now that things have changed (vaccines etc), we do want these stories to emerge, as a kind of retribution for the frustration and despair we experienced at that time."

Thus that there is something ritual / psychological / convenient about the scandals, that they serve a function.

OTOH, the Cumming was scandal was all the way back in Spring 2020, wasn't it, and did come out, so maybe that doesn't add up even on its own terms.

(Also, I know that the UK government are not responsible but are corrupt and disgusting. Many people don't seem to share this view, though.)

BBC RIP?

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jan/16/bbc-licence-fee-to-be-abolished-in-2027-and-funding-frozen?

the key is: “Dorries’ allies said there would be no further licence fee deal under a Johnson government”

there will not be much further anything under a “Johnson government”

this is pantomime to shore up the party’s hardcore imo

Yes, it does sound like a lot of noise. But I wonder if (as I feel it very likely) the Conservatives win the next election they will attempt to end the license fee.

"The days of the elderly being threatened with prison sentences and bailiffs knocking on doors, are over."

remind me who it was that removed the government-funded free licenses for pensioners

This is the usual Tory tactic of threatening to reduce/abolish the license fee to get the BBC to be even less critical of the Tories.

i’m not sure toying with people’s livelihoods when you’re at your weakest point is going to bring them onside but they’re welcome to try it

sorry a bit of pronoun confusion there

by my lights this is desperate stuff from a weak government and while still dangerous, in terms of saying it out loud, and adding that extra little bit of oomph to the overton window, it’s transparently bullshit. it goes so far that it kind of breaks the “deal” with the BBC that would normally have editors backpedalling to soften the blow. there’s no blow promised here, just pure hostility. the quote about “state-run broadcasting” is ignorant and shows the level of seriousness on offer here i.e. none

Yeah, they were going to abolish the House of Lords a couple years ago.

i mean i could be whistling past the graveyard here - johnson’s successor will likely be more of a headbanger than he is

but it’s easy to make promises about 2027 right now

"whistling past the graveyard"

such a great phrase - and used in the last line of Lloyd Cole's magnificent debut solo LP (1990).

i think this has a double function:
i: it's a straight-up promise being made to those media plutocrats who have long had this as their goal (primarily murdoch but not just murdoch)
ii: it calls starmer's labour out to defend it -- which given the constitunecy most obviously wounded and angered i think they will…
iii: … which therefore gives said media plutocrats added incentive to double down against starmer's labour when the time comes (which is not necessarily yet)

— does this call come from boris? maybe, i have no idea (i assume dorries is his catspaw but i don't assume she's a loyal catspaw lol)
— does it help boris in particular? i don't think so (tracer is right about this)
— mivght it help his successor? i think it might well (plus i'm not sure his successor is going to be a "weak government")
— do said plutocrats even need said incentive? well, i don't think blair mark 2 is a workable project but i can also see why tories might want to hedge against it

Dorries is probably off message here, which wouldn’t be the first time.

BBC is pretty popular with the country, and also with Tory voters. Licence fee less popular, so the fairly clear strategy is to sever the two: claim (like Brexit) to take away the bad stuff without losing any of the benefits.

Problem is Dorries blundering in and saying the quiet bit out loud and making out that it’s about attacking the BBC rather than “protecting” or “modernising” it. They’ll walk it back tomorrow.

(They will get there in the end if they keep power, though. Subscription can’t really be a thing while Freeview exists, so they’ll bodge it with a glide path until Freeview really starts dying in the 2020s. Meanwhile the org will be being prepared for commercialisation and leadership will go along in order to uncap their miserly salaries at long last)

The news and political programs unit is such a small part of the whole organisation and yet it has done the greatest damage to their brand, even though most of what is good about their brand is mostly mythical I think. What get's me is even if they survive this onslaught beyond 2027 they'd still become a de facto CCHQ broadcasting channel if there was a (lol) centre-left Labour candidate running in a future GE. Despite all the ERG/loony right of the party being hellbent on gutting them.

I Still don't want anything like this to actually happen, not for the artistic integrity of season 10 of Bosom Manor, but y'know it's not all bad. And I don't want R3 to turn into Classical FM for starters.

english ruler in domestic trouble promises to rid the land of enemies within has been happening and working since at least Edward I expelled all the Jews in the 1290 🙃 pic.twitter.com/otejXYdKA8

— michael (@Sisyphusa) January 17, 2022

'Plans' are 'being drawn up' to offshore people seeking asylum are they? These wouldn't be similar to the 'plans' in this thread would they? https://t.co/nfOZeEuTPf

— Refugee Action 🧡 (@RefugeeAction) January 17, 2022

Madagascar would be a bit too on the nose even for these cunts

It's feeling a bit Trumpian now. Do so many objectively villainous things at once that nobody can focus on anything.

None of it's coherent, it's just an effort to be as all-out cuntish as possible. The BBC should both be 1) abolished 2) forced to play "God Save The Queen" every day on telly.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jan/07/bbc-god-save-the-queen-every-day-ministers

'flood the zone with shit'

I was going to ask if the Tories were actually trying to break up the Union but, in reality, they're just flailing about without having a fucking Scooby what they're doing.

no need for a bbc if there's no britain

Green Ken.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/17/former-london-mayor-ken-livingstone-will-apply-to-join-greens

While maintaining that Keir Starmer “will be the best prime minister since Clement Attlee”

still talking shite I see.

Rishi Sunak has written off £4.3 billion in fraudulent covid loans. You can bet this government wouldn’t be so casual if it was benefit claims.

— Bill Esterson (@Bill_Esterson) January 17, 2022

Why look! A forest of magic money trees! It's beyond this moat marked 'Let The Big Dogs Eat'

https://t.co/HyHz3fUWg3 pic.twitter.com/BU9Zmm4jq4

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) January 17, 2022

meanwhile it's totally normal that R4 still play it every 1am!

great typo pic.twitter.com/ERZwBCsxkN

— 𝔐𝔞𝔤𝔫𝔢𝔱𝔰 🧲 (@PerthshireMags) January 17, 2022

the final reboot

not just saying this but it really feels like this lead is built on sand. what are ppl positively associating with labour that this would stick? vat off energy bills? i'd love to know

I gather that some terrible Con policy (police bill, criminalising protest) has been defeated in the House of Lords, for now.

Significant, I believe, though the unbelievably bad people will keep coming back and trying to make these unbelievably bad things happen.

It's incredible how evil the people at the head of this country are.

"Quick! Let's get all those things we want, done. Before we lose!"

It’s paywalled but the Telegraph opinion piece on Sunday titled “ To save his leadership, Boris Johnson must scrap the National Insurance increase” feels like it’s saying the quiet part out loud. The press and the Party will continue to turn the screws until it happens, at which point it’s going to be back to Britain Booms Under Big Dog Boris. There is a narrow path of acceptable politics, which is low taxes and permanent austerity, and any deviation will be punished, whether it’s from the left or the right.

Labour’s poll lead needs to be seen in that context. If they continue to attack Johnson’s spending plans from the right, it may continue.

At the moment there is no difference between the Tories and Lab. Their gamble is that despite votes lost in cities they hold up while conservative voters in former Lab seats go back. Or that Tories stay home as nothing would change under Starmer.

Also Brexit is no longer the issue it was.

Their gamble is that Starmer has been to less parties than Boris.

sorry for Monbiot but this is welcome news and yet another farago for the government

The government's attempt to bypass parliamentary scrutiny has backfired massively. It introduced its brutal amendments to the Police Bill AFTER it had been debated in the House of Commons. So now that the House of Lords has quashed them, they can't be reintroduced in the Commons. https://t.co/peri9CjpXA

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) January 18, 2022

Why are u sorry for monbiot it doesn't sound like he's in favour of the bill lol