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

i'll give it six weeks, tops

henry bolton once stood as a lib dem against philip hammond. quite the political journey.

anne marie waters the west brit nazi stood for election for labour for lambeth council in 2010. which seems a bit of an indictment of the labour party of those times

his partner has a very European sounding name (Tatiana Smurova-Bolton), but that was no problem for Trump either. Like his football namesake - relegated by February.

farage married to a european too

I meant to say Eastern-European!

anne marie waters the west brit nazi

<3 jim

I didn't realise that Mike Hookem had quit over Waters being allowed to stand for leadership. When someone is considered too Nazi for UKIP by that troglodyte, then possibly they are Adolf Goebbels 4 real.

Nick Cohen used to be a big defender of hers until a few years ago, and then wrote this piece arguing that the fact that she's now proved beyond all doubt that she's a racist is evidence that the left were wrong to call her racist

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/29/bigot-who-would-lead-ukip-is-a-product-of-our-times?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I once knew and admired her as a principled Labour activist. She worked with Asian feminists in their hard and essential struggle against theocratic constraints, most notably on British Muslim women...I know from experience that all who have offered what help they can to the secular cause can become infuriated by the self-negating vacuities of the modern liberal left. It is my firm view that historians will look back on our willingness to bend the knee before self-appointed clerical leaders with amazement and more than a little contempt. But Waters was not content with fighting liberal hypocrisy. She flipped. She cut all links with her sisters and comrades and chose the worst possible course.

i thought i couldn't hate that twat anymore

The Universal Credit Full Service 'bumper month = new claim' thing is one of the quieter horrors of the system - I say 'quieter' because 6-week-wait/housing are such screaming horrors of the system right now. It's particularly brutal because it's not even like you're coining it in a given month - it's just triggered by the way 'assessment periods' and 'how real people get paid' intersect. Umm… something on 77 or webmail if anyone wants to talk UC.

Does it have to be discussed in shadows though? It is affecting a lot of people and is indisputably a very fucking bad thing. No need to hide?

his partner has a very European sounding name (Tatiana Smurova-Bolton)

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/woman-gives-birth-on-train-arriving-at-st-pancras-a3249206.html

comin' over 'ere, giving birth on our trains

xp
wrote a long reply but then dumb refreshed. Short version - me chatting away here about Universal Credit would do more harm than good. Lower chance of fixing things. Seriously send a mail if you want to talk about this shit.

Excellent image choice from Politico.EU:

http://www.politico.eu/article/ukip-henry-bolton-new-leader/

he looks like he might be interested in legalising Ketamine in that pic.

The final change was the introduction of a “registered supporters” system in which individuals paid £3 to vote in any leadership contest, potentially opening the party up to entryism or outside manipulation. Blairites had long argued for such a move in the hope that it would attract “centrist” members of the public who would counterbalance left-leaning members. But the new rules energised Corbyn’s campaign. It was an instance of what Hegel called “the cunning of history”: individuals’ actions serving epochal forces of which they are only dimly aware.

That last sentence will weigh heavily on people like Frank Field and Margaret Beckett, who later cried tears of regret for nominating Corbyn.

I know the world has way moved on but I liked this short piece of a mother and baby at the Lab conference

Going back, but isn't Nick Cohen a real bunch of shit

Hah:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/outrage-over-hang-the-tories-banner-on-manchester-bridge-ahead-of-conservative-conference-a3647676.html

It's awful making these threats against politicians who have never harmed anybody in their lives

Theresa May on Andrew Marr, still terrible. This talking up of free market capitalism, as if shoring it up against Corbyn, is such a lame idea I'm almost convinced Nick Timothy is behind it.

radio broadcasting from the conference this morning, i'm too ill for this shit

very decent of the Tory who was sat with Toynbee to point out that the in work benefit cuts that are sewn into the UC rollout, are going hurt "hard working people" as well, and not just "scroungers". Oh and Marr was so weak as piss as May was floundering on UC, that's what I pay my license fee for you worthless toady.

They've got a new Strong and Stable Leadership, and it's A Country That Works For Everyone. They are so clueless and inept.

Eric Pickles' official 2017 General Election Review recommends that the Tories not stand any candidates at the next general election. pic.twitter.com/t5DR56x9Hd

— Chris Brooke (@chrisbrooke) October 1, 2017

Watched Marr interview (for the first time in what must be years):

- The pause after Marr asking her 'what has happened to the pound on your watch?' and May having to resort to an apocalyptic scenario should Labour win.
- The time spent NOT talking about Labour or Corbyn, otherwise. Just poring over dead on arrival policy announcements/never-started Brexit negotiations/Tory in-fighting/Boris.
- she is an automaton -- and politicians have to hammer phrases anyway -- but the conitnuous refrains, one after the other, do provide a shock (this is more me not seeing politicians on TV much anymore and reading their words instead, via quotes in the press): 'we are looking at this', 'we recognize', etc. The most shocking bits were around her answers in these terms to the question on Universal Credit, changes as discussed that mean people aren't going to eat for weeks. Trump is May (and every fucking technocrat over the last 25 years) divested of that kind of language, utter absence of empathy and inability to see the issue and poeple's immediate needs. The language that enables work place bureaucracy to function at all used here to shut the door.

Calling May a technocrat would be stretching the term to the point of meaninglessness because there's absolutely nothing technocratic about the course her government is currently following. Evidence-based policy, expert advice (even when flawed), preparation, contingency planning, virtually the lot has gone out of the window.

Did you hear about Boris deciding to recite a colonial-era Kipling poem in a Myanmar temple the other day? The British envoy standing next to him was so acutely embarrassed he had to literally stop him talking half way through.

Boris is Head Boy for mark's "the children are running the school" theory

i'm sort of interested that all the alleged one nation Tories, all those level-headed centre Labour pragmatists, none of them seem capable of working together to reassert their notions of a sane responsible third way economy because they'd rather burn the place to the ground than concede any ground on their football fan idea of politics

I would say the changes around universal credit (the stuff she was vigorously defending) are part of that kind of project. Accept its not entirely her bag. However its process over effect on the ground. Xp

https://lindenwrites.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/my-night-with-the-hard-left-and-why-i-could-have-done-with-a-bodyguard/

Some very neat editorialising going on here, a few concerns but also a few lols

ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahaaaaaaa pic.twitter.com/r6SFEnFpyo

— Clon (@clonmacart) September 30, 2017

I can't completely understand the logic whereby someone in govt. is unsackable. Can someone explain it to me?

when their latest idiotic/racist/offensive gaffes or plotting keep being useful distractions from more awkward questions, when the pm is floundering through another interview. Oh lol, that's just the Head boy, he is always showing off.

I assume it's a combination of:

Without Boris's legendary and tumescent popularity, the government must surely fall.

Boris hasn't actually stopped being Boris since his elevation, so if it's a bad idea for him to be in the job now, why wasn't it a bad idea last year?

it's usually explained by t.may's "weakness" which i've never really understood either but take to mean that any bojo allies could scupper her razor-thin majority out of pique?

(i don't buy that that would actually happen tho)

the general logic is -- whatever the very good/not-so-good reason for the sacking -- the act would likely topple the sacker even when it doesn't strengthen and embolden the sackee

the argument here almost entirely is about forces and strains internal* to the party, not (IMO) to do with a trust or lack of it any given MP's wider public popularity (one of the excellent consequences of 8/9 june is that the tories are EXTREMELY SHOOK as regards their judgment of what the public wants)

*this is why there's such a blizzard of proxy briefing

Or mount a leadership challenge. She's too weak to do pretty much anything without pissing off someone on her benches so she's trapped trying to appease everyone. Which would be funny if it wasn't leading to complete paralysis on Brexit.

to return to and this time misuse a word i overused last year, everyone with leadership ambitions in the tory party (inc TMay's to be leader for any length of time) has zugzwanged themselves and everyone is waiting for someone else to make the first move, bcz the situation is so degraded and brittle (*much* more than it was a year ago)

Xp mark s has just said most of this, anyway...

As far as I understand it, the only point now is trying to avoid a leadership challenge as it would look terrible in context of brexit negotiations and because of the chance that somebody stronger that you don't like would win. May is at least malleable. Also the initial challenger never seems to win these things, they get branded as disloyal, so there is a disincentive to be the first out of the gate. But all it takes is one small faction deciding to give it a go.

Last night's doc on Boris (really should stop watching politics TV) surely underplayed the strength of his popularity among the Tory base and round the country due to his antics around the Brexit vote.

Only popular in comparison to other Tories, which is why J R-M talk lasted longer than 5 mins.

Yes I could have been clearer, I meant popularity or at least “respect” within the party, based on (possibly the myth or ghost of) popularity with the public - the idea (which I don’t necessarily subscribe to) that if he was fired he could expect support for any ructions he gets up to, because he’s not just a candidate for the next leader but the candidate, and so picking the wrong side would be more dangerous for others than it would be with a wider field.

Footnote to myself: a) I’m not sure how popular he still is, and b) remember the fate of the most popular politician in the US in 2013, outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

shook (cont.):

Repeatedly told at #cpc17 Tories are fighting "not just for the party but the survival of capitalism".

— Dawn Foster (@DawnHFoster) October 2, 2017

damn straight

Momentum must be more tooled up than I realized

Tories being warned of saying Venezuela more than twice in any one speech for fear of it suddenly materialising around them.

super-psyched for the collapse of capitalism tbh, can't wait to look back at theresa may with gratitude for ushering in our fully-automated gay space communist society

you missed 'luxury', learn 2 meme properly m8