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

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

I just heard a snippet about this with some HoL audio on the radio this morning with some of Claire Fox's voice in it. Didn't catch what was going on but just chuckled at the idea of Baroness Fox of Buckley!

(xp) I would guess the apology is for posting a tweet by George Monbiot!

(xp) I heard Ruth Davidson described as Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links yesterday and my first thought was I had no idea you could be made Baroness of a golf course.

xp yeah that was what I meant, I know George is a bit of a divisive figure, but when he's right he's right!

Gurinder Singh Josan elected as new chair of Labour NEC's complaints and disciplinary sub-committee by 18 votes to 9

apparently quite a few unresolved complaints against this wanker himself including him publicly bullying a blind person at a UNITE branch meeting. But most importantly he's a Starmer man.

"Nobody warned me drinks event was against rules - Boris Johnson"

you were on the tv almost daily reading the fucking rules out to everybody

up to almost 2000 deaths a week now, double what it was last month, but hey...

they'll be shooting the Pope next. https://t.co/ZuMdQe3301

— jamie k (@jkbloodtreasure) January 18, 2022

they are “called the grey wolves because they were not socialised in parliament during the pandemic”

good explanation

Shooting the Pope would definitely be a vote winner for the Tories in certain areas of Scotland.

Plus it would surely get Douglas Ross back on Team Boris.

does "socialised in parliament" really just mean snorting coke with more senior tories in one of the subsidised bars?

i mean in the old days it meant seeking to unite the turkic peoples in one state stretching from the balkans to central asia

grey wolves? you mean this lot?

https://unherd.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/GettyImages-1194337584-e1578312055757.jpg

i mean in the old days it meant seeking to unite the turkic peoples in one state stretching from the balkans to central asia

Talking of Turkic peoples, I'm sure Boris is familiar with this meaning.

semiotic drift:

Tory civil war currently exploding…

Ministers have been quoted calling backbench no-confidencers as “fucking nobodies” and “arrogant twats”.

And a “Red Wall” Johnson loyalist has labelled the Tory MPs submitting letters of no confidence “woke”.

— WILL LLOYD (@willgeorgelloyd) January 18, 2022

Woke Andrew Bridgen, that's something to contemplate.

Strong, unstable government

when they start using culture war slurs on each other in the heat of blue on blue intra-party leadership squabbles then maybe they really are in trouble. Apparently Penny Mordaunt is slightly woke, well y'know by Grey Wolves' standards and isn't a transphobe. If they were to do a Brit remake of Yellowjackets she'd be perfect to fill the Melanie Lynskey slot!

The Turkic Grey Wolves have an impressive column of every nationality/race that they are against, they make Western neo-nazis look quite pathetic.

Until these grey wolves release a collaborative tape with Macronympha and Sudden Infant I for one am not taking them seriously.

https://i.discogs.com/9JnEiJK6sxaRSHst4OoqVHmpRH74gwBNWUf95Uu7Ob0/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:365/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWltYWdlcy9SLTY5/MTA5OC0xMjMzODYw/MTg0LmpwZWc.jpeg

no longer venturing a bet on his survival or his fall -- once bitten twice shy! tom D was right and i was wrong! -- but the speed and intensity of the turnabout is making me feel a bit better abt my inaccurate instincts tbh, they weren't all that inaccurate

The reason the press have effortlessly destroyed Johnson overnight is that he had absolutely nothing - no skills, no ideas, not even proper friends - except the overwhelming backing of the British press. When they withdrew that he was immediately naked, cupping his ballsack.

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) January 19, 2022