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

aiui

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DN0fT_oWsAAVtq6.jpg

"it is understood Quick intended to report the discovery of pornographic material to parliamentary authorities, but was forced to quit his job before the leaks inquiry was completed.." Definitely no love lost between these two. I'm not even sure how serious this is, as in porn described as "extreme" and "legal" in the same paragraph. But if it brings down this odious tosser it'll do for me.

there’s a thread on problematic use of extreme (from a legal pov) here:

The use of the term "extreme" by the police here is problematic and a bit confusing (brief thread). https://t.co/GHwQQzt1wQ

— James Chalmers (@ProfChalmers) November 4, 2017

"Extreme pornography" has a narrow legal meaning which you can find set out in this legislation: https://t.co/GYtLEHIdNH

— James Chalmers (@ProfChalmers) November 4, 2017

But that legislation did not come into force until early 2009, and could not apply here.

— James Chalmers (@ProfChalmers) November 4, 2017

The suggestion is apparently that it was legal then and now but specialist police officers had to be drafted in to verify that as it wasn’t immediately obvious.

Green is right that these rumours have been circulating for nine years and no newspapers have printed them for lack of evidence. This obviously raises the question of why they are being printed now. The options are probably that they have been corroborated by other police officers and the ST has been sitting on the story for maximum impact or that there isn’t anything to substantiate the story but there is a pretty good chance that Green won’t sue given the other allegations against him. It could be open season on a number of MPs either way.

Rachel Johnson is sticking the knife into Andrea Leadsom atm:

This intra-Tory warfare on men’s right to be lechers is genuinely mind-boggling. pic.twitter.com/6goOBOqBon

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) November 5, 2017

The war within the party isn’t going to blow over any time soon.

imagine being on that rota. you'd need a thick skin and a wicked sense of humour. xpost

They might have thought they'd discovered a cache of extreme cannibalism porn when they saw his Half Man Half Biscuit folder.

if there's a counterforce within the tory party that is keen enough to respond to public disgust on this topic that it defies the tory whips and mobilises to demonise them (risking all the dangers of the party being out of power for a long time as actual real socialism is being brought back) then i would maybe start to bet against the whips, as the crew that rides this out

i still think this is a pretty big if -- but there are now two quite distinct lines of fracture opening up (brexit being the other), and that's lot for a party without a proper majority

actually i was slow-witted on this: of course the counterforce within toryism that has emerged (fingers x-ed to pull it apart) is a viciously reactionary counterstrike against the widened role of women as independent judges of morality and political value (in the world but more immediately in the tory movement, the tory party being the oldest extant political party in the world*, with an unmatched fvckton of experience of devious manoeuvre, adaptive rebadging and etc) (hence of course unleashing women against women) -- and some of it is kraken-wakes ideology in its perceived moment of high danger (which can make it dangerous bcz desperate, but can also make it unpredictably self-destructive)

but yes: two distinct lines of fracture is too many easily to manage -- panicked and "well they would say that" is an intensely nagl combo, leaving the usual-suspect newspapers right on the lip of being an actual media and cultural irrelevance look like drunks pulling on a lever that stopped working the way it used to a significant time ago

*1678: there was still a stuart on the throne

"drunks pulling on a lever that stopped working the way it used to a significant time ago"

We've all been there before!

Also a good summary of the UK productivity crisis.

good chris dillow piece making the same point (calzino's productivity point) at greater length

the photo of Ken Branagh and Michele Pfieffer on this page o_O

This intra-Tory warfare on men’s right to be lechers is genuinely mind-boggling. pic.twitter.com/6goOBOqBon

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) November 5, 2017

... aaaaand another one...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-whip-chris-pincher-quits-11473554

The Queen’s private estate has invested about £10m offshore, #ParadisePapers reveal https://t.co/mJlCewkM8b pic.twitter.com/o84by0LJhh

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) November 5, 2017

It's just so unexpected

"Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge says she is furious with those who advise the Queen"

lol

^ that's delightfully old school; the monarch can never be wrong, but their advisors may be

I'm sure when Brenda is swilling brandy and cackling like a Bond villain in her secret antechamber, where she is surrounded by nazi memorabilia and skulls and the impending spector of her own death. She will be crying real tears about who to leave the Brighthouse/Soylent Green shares to rather than WTF!

Great clip on BBC of Lord Ashcroft walking around dodging a reporter's questions for over two minutes just muttering "dear dear dear..." before finally ducking into the gents.

before finally ducking into the gents.

aka the Livingstone Manoeuvre

Queen must apologise or else amirite etc.

http://www.trust.org/contentAsset/raw-data/a0a48cc4-60d3-4c02-886b-6414a03594a3/document

Shit like this is not fucking funny and if Johnson still hasn't corrected his remark and apologised then he should be fired immediately. There's shooting your mouth off and then there's actively endangering people.

Imagine getting into trouble abroad and depending on that arrogant prick to work the diplomatic channels, you'd be terrified.

One of the things that people who know him have always criticised is his lack of attention to detail and then sort of laughed it off, presumably in the belief that no one would give him a job that actually mattered, and even then there'd probably be someone around to do all the heavy lifting. That quote is an obvious example of why that matters, he didn't even bother to understand the basics of what he was talking about and thought he could wing it in what is clearly a highly perilous and delicate situation.

Priti Patel having to eat humble pie, will no doubt survive, but the knives seem to be out for her.

she had 12 meetings under the radar of the foreign office with her lobbyist pal during the trip, including with Netanyahu. Even Hilary Clinton is wondering why she isn't toast already!

had been blithely assuming that the gov surely cannot blunder itself into a (catastrophically bad) no deal situation.... however have been reading “the blunders of our governments” and it is doing nothing for my confidence on this

the poll tax, the CSA, the ERM, pensions misselling.... these were all eminently avoidable foot shootings

Back from meetings in Brussels. There's good news and bad news. First, the bad news. Because it's... extremely bad. 1/

— Jonathan Lis (@jonlis1) November 6, 2017

This thread will cheer you up then.

Patel has to resign over this.

As for Johnson:

Boris Johnson's statement on his comments about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. No retraction. No apology. pic.twitter.com/wF2GSSv5WU

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) November 6, 2017

“I haven’t had to have a wank for 20 years,” Johnson is quoted as saying in Gimson’s biography.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/11/joke-s-over-how-boris-johnson-damaging-britain-s-global-stature

This is absolutely extraordinary: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-from-international-development-secretary-priti-patel

If both this pair stay we are hurtling towards the Trump situation. Except with a craven and cringing figurehead.

an activity-packed holiday. the fam must have been delighted.

two naive questions:

while I'm, obviously, embarrassed by how the govt. has gone about backing away from anything approaching a solid statement on the EU divorce bill, I'm not entirely sure why it isn't the EU's hand to play first? i.e. why don't they just tell us what the bill is since they obviously know what they think it should be.

another point I'm not entirely clear about it the UK opposition's hand-wringing about whether there should be a second referendum on the deal when it is finalised. Do they seriously expect the EU to arrive at a deal after two or more years of negotiation costing hundreds of millions, if not billions of euros, having wasted many thousands of hours of EU time and manpower and thrown the EU into disarray for two+ years for them to then had it either to the UK people or the UK parliament for a vote in order for us to reject it? and then what? they go, okay let's just forget about it and pretend the last two years didn't happen? / or they say well you voted against the deal so there's no deal, goodbye (the UK collapses) / or they spend hundreds of millions more and valuable time renegotiating because we declined to accept it?

I honestly don't have a clue.

because or they say well you voted against the deal so there's no deal, goodbye (the UK collapses) seems the most likely and the most pointless route for those opposing brexit to pursue.

calzino - the tweet you posted last. the guy forgot to detail the good news....

the good news was hidden, my mistake.

Patel circa 2015: - we should pretty much kill off the entire international aid budget

Patel circa 2017:

The BBC understands Ms Patel suggested some of Britain's aid budget go to the Israeli army, after the visit.

Malcolm Rifkind on Today just said it was no big deal cos at least she wasn't talking to the Russian government

also Boris is fine, he just might need to concentrate a bit harder

and then what? they go, okay let's just forget about it and pretend the last two years didn't happen?

Schauble said the UK would be welcomed back in if it changed its mind as recently as September; Macron said the same around June.

I'm guessing there would be costs attached for wasting everyone's time but ultimately the EU's not keen on losing the UK.

If you ever needed a clearer signal that the government is no longer functioning, this morning's Cabinet meeting was cancelled. No official reason given but probably something to do with the fact that two ministers are facing calls to resign and a third is under investigation for sexual harrassment.

Are there any constitutional precedents for governments being put out of their misery? Short of the backbench MPs (no) or the Remainers (also no) supporting a no-confidence, this shambles can roll for as long as they can swallow their embarrassment and shame, afaict.

The core Tory dynamics (Leavers desperate for Brexit to happen ~somehow~, righties terrified of Corbz, May terrified) rn suggest they'll stick together for as long as those three factors hold.

There must be something in Erskine May about humane killing of governments too sick for the country to endure much longer, surely.

Cromwell non?

votes of confidence tend to be the mechanism by which lame duck governments get put out of their misery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motions_of_no_confidence_in_the_United_Kingdom though as the Major years attest, governments can limp along for a very long time while surviving such votes

Yeah, but post-FTPA the bar for pulling that off is quite high -- you'll need a chunk of Tories onside, and I don't see the dynamics working out. If Major could survive it I think May certainly can.

It's been said before, but May's style has long been to just hide until trouble blows over. Cancelling cabinet is an amazing attempt to try that trick while actually leading a government.

you'd have thought more MPs would be angrily calling the government out on their shit and trying to provoke some sort of rebellion. atm it seems anna soubry is leading the charge, and she's not exactly ideal as a voice of reason

Apparently even The Spectator is referring to Johnson's fuck up as "one of the worst messes created by a Cabinet Minister" - maybe they just want him back.

Even the Soubry's of the "moderate" wing (not worth 198 Bevan Attlees btw) are too scared of the idea of commissar Corbyn as pm to make up enough dissenters for a vote of no confidence, probably.

I imagine some Tories, old and new, are enjoying all this.

http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/cameron-osborne.jpg