brexit negging when yr mandate is is trash: or further chronicles of a garbage-fire

DD with that 'actively against a deal' approach once again.

Michel Barnier sits down with David Davis with huge wodge of notes. Davis - with nothing - https://t.co/1eLT5nXRfU pic.twitter.com/3AVIrXSkyX

— AndrewSparrow (@AndrewSparrow) July 17, 2017

lol

Picture sums it up: tables groaning with weight of pointless EU paperwork when just basic facts are needed. Symbolises what we won't miss. pic.twitter.com/XkJdJuhyKP

— Fraser Nelson (@FraserNelson) July 17, 2017

The face on your man at the back.

the face on your woman at the front

So David Davies held less than hour of talks before having to return to Westminster to vote on a Labour amendment about the amount of time allotted to backbenchers' legislation.

I can see the relevance of that but I doubt there is a single person in Parliament who genuinely believes that is more important, but it suggests that substantive Brexit negotiations are going to be severely hampered by having to prevent an embarrassing defeat on every piddling issue.

I can't think of many things more likely to enrage absolutely every point on the political spectrum.

Picture sums it up: taaaaybles grooning with pointlezz EU paperwoork when just bezzic vacts are need. Symbolises what we woon't mizz. pic.twitter.com/XkJdJuhyKP
— Fraser Nelson (@FraserNelson) July 17, 2017

... fixed

Fraser Nelson's claim (in the tweet that presumably replaces the one above that's gone now) is that this was only supposed to be an opening half-hour, shake hands for the photo-op. So the EU side bringing bulging folders is not cricket. Which just means that they're prepared and they know how to play an image - this'll go well.

These dickholes seem to think incompetence is somehow charming.

competence is for those dastardly pointy-heads in brussels, good old fashioned british pluck is all we need to get what we want #twoworldwarsandoneworldcup

little off-topic but the telegraph's dunkirk review has some stirring stuff along these lines

heart-hammering and heroically British, this is Christopher Nolan at the peak of his powers

But the questions it poses, about the actual substance and significance of the British ‘Dunkirk spirit’, both then and now, are asked in a spirit of total seriousness.

And Dunkirk is every inch a British film, with no detectable concessions to the international market.

Post brexit we need a cultural boycott of all world cinema apart from Nolan, Danny Boyle, Winterbottom, Britto Goebbels, Goebell McBritterson etc..

The fuck is a British film......snatch?

https://resizing.flixster.com/vQbMdxNZAs_K2iVZFFYMpRtAkpw=/206x305/v1.bTsxMjM1ODM2NztqOzE3NDIzOzEyMDA7NjM5Ozk0Ng
this is what I'm talking about!

Irony being that Brexit will leave us all stranded with no hope of rescue. Perhaps that's how Dunkirk should be read?

The fuck is a British film......snatch?

sex lives of the potato men obv

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9AYSv5jo-y4/VOX3847Jo0I/AAAAAAAAAH0/1M-zz1hrtmw/s1600/This%2Bis%2BEngland%2B.jpg

the comments section of that telegraph article is beyond parody

Graham Watson 18 Jul 2017 3:10AM

I think that if this event happened in 2017, there would be a lot of white flags to be seen on the beach.

Britain is now occupied by people who couldn't care less.

A different breed of people in perhaps less than 2 generations.

Charles Lee 18 Jul 2017 7:13AM

@Graham Watson

Not at all true.

The Referendum result of June 23rd 2016 was Britain's finest peacetime hour.

In the face of the relentlessly dire propaganda of Project Fear, Britain voted for Democracy and Freedom.

Now, of course, the cowardly creatures of Remain are trying to nullify that moment of national courage.

Britain is now occupied by Telegraph readers who would be all for a Nazi government

why should we send our boats to Dunkirk? if these people love Europe so much they can stay there

Of course current day equivalents of the rescue fleet are all Brexit voting fishermen with a sideline in smuggling illegal immigrants.

Christopher Nogood at the peak of his powers is a pretty low peak

Nogood terrible rotten writer

again with this nonsense

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/18/labour-mps-urge-party-to-do-more-to-appeal-to-the-english

“They are strongly patriotic, believe in community and contribution and, like it or not, were much more likely to vote leave,” Denham added. “We won’t win their support by simply waving St George crosses but by respecting who they are and showing we understand their fears and concerns.”

He claimed that some party activists worried that engaging with Englishness meant making concessions to racism and xenophobia, adding: “It doesn’t, and we’ll help show how.”

most depressing thing is that some people on the left of the party apparently buy into this stuff:

The group crosses Labour’s political spectrum and its structures with the founding members including Sam Tarry – who was co-director of Jeremy Corbyn’s re-election campaign

Sam Tarry of the TSSA is involved as well

Those who have resisted England’s voice often claim they are defending the union. But resentment at the perceived unfairness of the UK’s financial and political settlement is adding to the pressures that may lead to the union’s break up. Labour is committed to a constitutional convention in which federal options for the UK will be considered. The third challenge will be to make sure that England has a clear voice in those discussions.

the idea that encouraging English nationalism as a political force will help preserve the union seems crazy, like, this seems designed to encourage resentment and hostility to Westminster in Scotland? the SNP would love this, surely?

Ruth Davidson certainly won't like it.

With the dust settled are there any particularly good pieces on the relative Tory surge in Scotland? Still can't quite get my head around it.

Denham frames this as an English equivalent to patriotism as a political force in Scotland and Wales, but never acknowledges that in Scotland and Wales this works because there is something to push against, i.e. Westminster and the idea that Scots and Welsh are getting a poor deal at the the expense of England. Who would his progressive English patriotism be pushing against? presumably -

1. Scotland + Wales (so all this stuff about 'defending the union' is hogwash)
2. the EU (this seems perfectly designed to enable some stab-in-the back myth, so that when brexit inevitably turns out to be a disaster the blame is placed on the perfidious EU and traitorous, unpatriotic europhiles in this country, rather than with the tories where it belongs)
3. immigrants, and people who are seen as insufficiently "English" regardless of where they were born due to their race/religion etc

By the way, have none of these people noticed that the Labour Party now behind the Tories in Scotland?

(xxp) Have you seen the constituencies the Tories won? If they were in England they'd be true blue 30,000 majority Tory strongholds.

By the way, have none of these people noticed that the Labour Party now behind the Tories in Scotland?

I guess their argument would be that this happened because Scottish Labour allowed itself to be outflanked by the SNP as the party of Scottish patriotism, and they risk the equivalent thing happening to them in England? still a terrible idea, though.

So now they don't care about losing 40 seats in Scotland, we can make that up in England?

Where UKIP did so well in the last election.

He claimed that some party activists worried that engaging with Englishness meant making concessions to racism and xenophobia, adding: “It doesn’t, and we’ll help show how.”

These twats never actually define what they mean by this non-racist non-xenophobic English patriotism, it's just vague guff that's designed to undermine rather than actually help anyone.

lmao, same shit from these muppets whether labour's polling in the mid twenties or mid forties. Labour outperformed expectations in June by aggressively wrenching the agenda away from this sort of cab driver bollocks.

was just about to say, show me an English patriotism that isn't based on chauvinism and xenophobia. the fuckers who say this stuff are dog-whistling and they know it.

there's no point "reaching out" to the people who get worked up about England because they've never been natural socialists in the first place

New Labour was in retrospect very lucky to have been coming up at the same time as Britpop/Euro 96 hysteria when half the country seemed to be waving a flag about and they just had to fall in line without thinking about it.

http://www.newstatesman.com/1997/2017/05/cool-britannia-where-did-it-all-go-wrong

But the Conservative Party had never been much good at allying itself with cutting-edge pop culture and the Major government was close to being a national joke – and besides, Blair had got there first. In the summer of 1995, he had sipped gin and tonic with Damon Albarn of Blur at the House of Commons, and turned up – for the second consecutive year – to the annual awards ceremony organised by Q magazine. A few months later, he made an appearance at the 1996 Brit Awards, to pay tribute to Oasis, the Stone Roses and the Clash and present a lifetime award to David Bowie.

Seven months on, his speech at the Labour party conference drew on the optimism kicked up by that year’s Euro football championships – which, with perfect synchronicity, had been staged in England – and the summer’s chart-topping anthem “Three Lions”. “Seventeen years of hurt ­never stopped us dreaming,” he said. “Labour’s coming home.” After the party won its landslide the following year, there was even
a brief spurt of enthusiasm for something called “The Rebranding of Britain”, which entailed the Foreign Office convening a task force chosen, according to the BBC, “to help give Britain a ‘cool’ image abroad”.

non-uk ilxors, pls feel free to offer your fond reminiscences of how the foreign office gave britain a 'cool' image in your part of the world

"what's that George, illegal invasion of Iraq? sure, that's cool"

the phrase 'a brief spurt of enthusiasm' keeps rattling around my head and i'm not pleased about it tbh

the thing that will save the union is investment, rebalancing the economy from london £ the SE, and improved material conditions. not this nonsense. sam tarry normally so sensible too

non-uk ilxors, pls feel free to offer your fond reminiscences of how the foreign office gave britain a 'cool' image in your part of the world

It was mostly about the Spice Girls iirc

and the glut of 'keep calm and ...' teatowels, mugs, posters etc etc

Some of the work was probably fairly successful tbh though i dread to think how much money was wasted buying Banksy prints for British Council offices around the world.

I should probably start collecting material for a thread on the international branding of Britain / adoption of signifiers of 'British cool' around the world.

xp that was later, post-2000

Yeah Keep Calm etc is was a post-financial crisis thing really.

Whole Keep Calm and Drink Tea aesthetic seems to have 'sold' both figuratively and literally much better to rest of world than cool Britain type stuff.

https://versobooks-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/000009/888/9781784780760-a5563c0e68445ac280534d2d538aed6f.jpg

KC&CO seems much more organic than the push to export 'cool', though is arguably appropriate messaging for a country that wants to be seen as stable, on one hand, and too unattractive for people to want to come here, on the other.