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

as we learned today, the things laura k hears are not necessarily particularly accurate or reliable, but

Hear opposition had been told to expect a 'major statement' from the PM in Commons tomorrow that could last several hours - now cancelled

— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) December 4, 2017

Faisal Islam reporting the same thing. Not seeing it on tomorrow's calendar either (but didn't see the schedule before, so...)
https://calendar.parliament.uk/calendar/Commons/All/2017/12/5/Daily

certainly looks emptier than the rest of the week though.

May is in Cube and every doorway leads to more fiery torments, might as well enjoy this!

So, as per Simon's tweet basically she'll get the Tory backbenchers to lump what is effectively a soft-brexit deal? There is no strategy for forcing May out - and no replacement leader (Johnson could well lose his seat in the next GE), and Labour would win the next GE (with the help of Scotland) so I don't know where the hard Brexit Tories would go beyond huffing and puffing about the deal.

to be honest as noted i was mainly posting that bcz it sets out what the situation is that now kicks in, courtesy the EU and stage 2: i'm not prepared to bet on a may plan vs the brexit intransigents being carried through, or them in any way adequately tamped down or frozen out or "threatened" into shutting up

(bcz the "threat" is basically may holding the poison bottle up to her lips and saying "if you don't do as i say, i will drink it here and now" -- and i don't think this is actually a very effective threat at all, it certainly didn't work on the DUP)

her throughline to a workable soft bexit is continuing to play DUP intransigence off against ultra-brexit intransigence, esp.as the former will outlast the latter, but it could hardly be a more peril-strewn and unclear throughline, assuming that's even where she's aiming (or that she has any idea where she's aiming) (11D chess is never what's going on anywhere: but surely least of all here)

(bcz the "threat" is basically may holding the poison bottle up to her lips and saying "if you don't do as i say, i will drink it here and now" -- and i don't think this is actually a very effective threat at all, it certainly didn't work on the DUP)

https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/nintchdbpict000369877680.jpg?strip=all&w=960

Poor taste

So I believe, I wouldn't touch the stuff myself either tbf.

Dim view being taken this side of your lot I'm afraid chaps

The BBC News website has a video guide for folks confused by Brexit which they have chosen to call 'Bamboozled by Brexit'. It just seems like an odd choice given the two meanings of 'bamboozle' as 'confuse' or as 'swindle'.

"theresa lives in central london. she says she does not know what brexit means, even though politicians keep talking about it."

The frustrating and dumb thing about this is that there's no clear democratic mandate for any one kind of Brexit, but a fairly clear Parliamentary majority for one that stays in the Single Market and the Customs Union. The only thing preventing it is May's weakness and stubborn determination to hang onto a job she manifestly does not deserve, plus a side order of Corbyn terror. Her own most fanatical backbenchers would be less of a problemn without those factors.

Ultimately something has to break soon otherwise we're going to be stuck at this point until the exact point at which we tip over the cliff, but there doesn't seem to be any way out that doesn't also break May's Premiership. She has to go.

there's no democratic mandate because the referendum question was so stupidly simple but really, i don't know a single Leave voter who doesn't want to be out of the Single Market. i'm not defending that opinion but "Brexit means Brexit" seems clear enough to me - i don't believe any Leave voters want to belong to some softcore version of the EU, they think sovereignty means never having to say you're sorry.

I suspect there are regional variations there even among Leave voters though, there'll be Brexit 'wets' like there are with everything. Thing is, even if there was a democratic mandate for the move there won't be for the consequences. That's the thing that doesn't make sense to me about the Hard Brexiters - if leaving the EU turns out to completely economically ruinous in a way that everyone can see, then the democratic consensus for remaining outside the EU collapses. They're taking a big gamble that hatred of the EU will outweigh all other concerns and I don't think there are enough people in the country who will agree with them on that.

How much of that is sticking to guns. I don't know but if there were a situation where both Northern Ireland and Scotland were in the single market and London and Wales were trying to be, it feels like everywhere else wouldn't see any contradiction between wanting the UK out of single market but their own region in it, until it was all the regions

Except Non-Grimsby Lincolnshire

There’s Leave Voters and there’s “Yes I voted Leave and I’d do it again, let me explain why”, though.

the smarter Brexiters i know are already on a "the economic consequences aren't the issue" tip, but they also don't really believe it'll be economically ruinous long term. i'd guess that most people (on both sides) didn't have a long term view anyway, the nature of the referendum was basically "do you hate the EU y/n?" and our democracy as a whole doesn't really seem to be built on long termism or considered, complex options.

s/explain/tell you/

"the economy" is pretty much an abstract, whether you're on the winning end or not. people who feel comfortably off tend to assume it'll never end, and people who are struggling don't really give one fuck if the news is telling them that the country's doing great.

they also don't really believe it'll be economically ruinous long term.

Quite a few think the opposite.

there was a good james meek long read in the LRB the week before the brexit vote, abt farmers and farming, and how they viewed the EU: what was fascinating was how evidently torn individual farmers were, between the practicalities and the cultural element: they had an ideal of british farming they wanted to cling to (which helped them distance themselves from "thinking about europe") but they were also very extremely aware -- as you'd except -- of the day-to-day realities of taking farm product (whatever this was) to market (wherever this is); plus they were grumpy about and felt threatened by big agribusiness, which is probably a darker cloud over the ideals of british farming than EU regs (plus handy stipends) has ever been… thiiiink the farmers union was anti-brexit, will have to look this up; the takeaway was roughly that the lure of the diminishment of form-filling at the very least matches the nightmare of tarriffs and losing swathes of ppl to sell to, and that "rational choice theory" (at best a neoliberal nostrum) was a mask for huge anxiety, ambivalence and anger that all the above was present in their life as a consequence of this sequence of events (like a decision that had to be made and one of the most present options was just cutting all ties bcz maybe somehow it will remove the local economy from all the anxieties)*

it's here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n12/james-meek/how-to-grow-a-weetabix

my interpretatative tl;dr : for many (wealthy or otherwiuse) (both exist in farming) europe has become a figure for capitalism at large, as if its removal will return us to an imagined age when growing buying and selling is the cheerful happy world it once was, before capitalism came over the hill :|

I think we've seen over the last few years that even if you're struggling things can always get worse. A lot hinges who gets the blame when they do.

By 2049 Britain will grow its own bananas, picked by robots and yours for just £38 a bunch.

Yeah, NFU was pro-remain, but most farmers for leave. Read that Meek piece at the time- this exchange sticks in the mind:

As I was leaving he told me I’d forgotten to ask a question.

‘What?’

‘Which way I’m going to vote in the referendum.’

‘Which way are you going to vote?’ He’d already told me that post-Brexit the fight to control the countryside would intensify.

‘Out.’

‘Why?’

‘It’d be bad for farming, but there are some things more important than farming.’

‘What things?’ He wouldn’t say.

not to get too mark fisher abt this (since apparently actual real ilxors readily confuse me with him as it is) but modern capitalism has been tremendously effective at persuading people to internalise the blame for the bad life situations they find themselves in (which emerges ether as depression or or other mental health issues, or else as barely controllable displaced rage)

been re-reading Capitalist Realism lately because v true but horrible when you know how it ends

also telling other people that depression is systemic gets you a lot of blank looks

yes that's a colossal hill for people to climb -- our individual responsibility for health and for success in life is the lesson we've had hammered home all our lives

i mean, any systemic explanation is a colossal hill: i've been thinking all morning how a wide programme of education could -- over many years -- have given people a better sense of the interconnectedness of the global economy, and how small britain is and how dependent on the good will of others, its neighbours especially… and that if this had been attempted, then the often understandable impulse behind "we voted for brexit and brexit means brexit" would (could) have been channeled elsewhere

but imagine the political will and focus required to establish such a programme, and all the things working against it (including rival and well funded economic worldviews that would also demand equal time in the class room)

my dad grew up in the era of pink maps and whatever socialist impulses he had where always at odds with his sense of the English as a chosen people. the educational system worked in the exact opposite direction to what you're describing for a lot of the twentieth century and any hope of a realignment got squished by Gove when he was trolling the NUT for fun

someone -- i think one actually of the novara mob -- said that if the #resistance #remainers actually want to win the second referendum they are so busily calling for, they very much need to get boots on the ground the way momentum has, except many of them despise momentum and want to win the argument by media shortcuts (bcz they are media ppl) or just a kind of trust in the vagaries of polls ("50.001% are now anti-brexit! hold the second referendum right now and all will be normal again!")

(reversion-to-the-mean yes, things do tend to swing back from extreme -- except but are you sure you know where the mean actually is now? it may actually be somewhere really dislikeable, in which case we have a LOT of political work on our hands and our models shd be those who undertook such kong-haul work in very dismal circs)

brb setting up a small company that offers "kong-haul work in dismal circs"

We can see that "May has to go". What replaces her?

I reckon (I know centrist me) that May can threaten the backbenchers with her resignation and a call for a general election. The only option is to hang on and hope things will change.

The only real option is to let the whole balance of the government shatter and the pieces fall where they will. Something needs to happen to break all this Tory false unity.

want to win the argument by media shortcuts (bcz they are media ppl) or just a kind of trust in the vagaries of polls ("50.001% are now anti-brexit! hold the second referendum right now and all will be normal again!")

This shit drives me mad, also the Clegg interview in the Guardian last weekened where he was calling for Tory rebels to rise up. There's a real sense of 'stop Brexit, job done' about it all that is completely at odds with reality. I'd guess that actual Momentum is Remain by a comfortable majority in any case.

slugger o'toole on the problems the DUP are creating for themselves:
https://sluggerotoole.com/2017/12/04/can-the-dup-square-all-its-circles-before-time-runs-out/

ps my own rushed-to-the-presses book on this entire story is going to be called the time of the fractal zugzwang, kickstarter to follow

what seems to have eluded all the Remoanist Dads is the sheer political difficulty of getting a second referendum - if they seriously think that Article 50 can be averted they'd be much better off trying to create a groundswell demand for that rather than relying on technicalities and a naive belief that the numbers will pan out differently - nobody's selling much of a case to the non-believers

can't sell much of a case to the turkey that votes for christmas

Had enough of Centrist Dads and similar insisting Corbyn secretly voted Leave when he’s said why he chose Remain, especially when GFA hinges on borderless travel and trade between NI and RoI.

may going and the tories shattering are the same, i think: this is what she holds over them and it works until it stops working (i've been using the word "brittle" to describe her position for over a year -- at some point you have to acknowledge that she's also located an implausible seam of resilience, but i do think that *any* decision publicly made that can't be cloaked in absolute ambiguity of interpretation is a step away from this seam)

can't sell much of a case to the turkey that votes for christmas

ok, but this is nonetheless the selling that is necessary, there isn't a magic route round the xmas-bloc turkey

gradually i am working towards the most mixed metaphor in history, maybe that will be our salvation

if they seriously think that Article 50 can be averted they'd be much better off trying to create a groundswell demand for that rather than relying on technicalities and a naive belief that the numbers will pan out differently

This is true, although I suspect the main point of difference the second time would be a higher turnout among the young, which could make a non-negligible difference. But nothing lasting can be done without an intensive and co-ordinated attempt to change public opinion at ground level. The last election showed that can be done, and that it's dangerous to rely on what you *think* people thought last time round.

It certainly won't be done by waving a copy of the New European and banging on about how stupid people are on Twitter.

yeah i think they probably could win it on a second referendum but without turning some hearts and minds a 52-48 in the other direction would be a trainwreck

Just talked to a load of 17yos about media/politics. The future is: None of them ever bought a paper, only half on Facebook which is "for parents", Twitter is "boring", all love Snapchat (especially the Economist's page!), largely care about tuition fees & Tories hating animals.

— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) December 5, 2017

ok, but this is nonetheless the selling that is necessary, there isn't a magic route round the xmas-bloc turkey

agree, but it doesn't seem like something that can be done briefly or for the purpose of a referendum, even if you carried a new referendum. when people start talking about how to address this issue it reminds me of the post-mortems when england get knocked out of the world cup.

(especially the Economist's page!)

This is a trap street, yes?

agree to this yes (except i have no idea what the world cup is obv) -- i think we're in for the long hard haul either way

xp jim w = political editor at buzzfeed, in itself a "jetpack made of alien cheese" kind of a concept

Agree with that xps. It's everything and nothing in terms of reasons why.

There are too many different camps (all increasingly at odds with each other) within Leave to have to tailor an argument just for the purposes of winning a second referendum by a larger margin than 52%.

xps probably underrated how much of a driver for anti-tory votes animal rights stuff is.

it does seem like electoral reform could go a long way to provoking some meaningful change - the two parties contain multitudes of views that go too far along the political spectrum - a system which reduced their power and increased the chances of coalition, and led to more parties cropping up, would probably be good. but we've prob seen in recent years the strange suspicion of coalitions that exists in the uk and the perception that they are weak or a sign of a decadent state or whatever.

True, but also closet Tories/blueish-greens are big fans of OMG look what they’ve done to the elephants shares on social media (most of the women I know like this post little else).

I can handle the idea of a Buzzfeed political editor, it's Jim W who's the alien cheese