Seizing back control: The ILX lol brexit is how we're all gonna die thread.

belated cosine to matt's point upthread abt the new tory leader walking straight into a legitimacy crisis:there's an under-examined element to the last two years or so which i've been trying to find a convincing way to describe -- that may's stubborn refusal to move or adapt isn't just a negative non-movement zugzwang-dodging thing but actually (if somewhat) invisibly an active and a corrosively destructive thing. corrosively destructive to the various institutions she's embedded in and in effect empowered by: party and cabinet and parliament and establishment (if we use to this mean the wider set of ppl who comment on and describe and approve and gatekeep what politics is and can be). all of these are institutions set up to encourage certain kinds of moves and adjustments and to discourage others: they do this by the quiet pressure of norms and conventions as much as anything. all of these institutions are also adaptive, to a degree -- their adjustments allow pressures to ease and release. (this is probably a weird way of describing a very ordinary fact about governance in any polity at all… )

anyway the effect of the seemingly induced gridlock has been a kind of widespread disenchantment at the uselessness of parliament etc as a device to solve such gridlocks -- even tho parliament saying no to may's solutions was basically parliament working as it is meant to work, even in a fairly extraordinary situation (which brexit very plainly is).

i don't think this is a gridlock though: or at leasat, i think that's the wrong dynamic metaphor for what's been going on. gridlock is a system just come to a stop: what may's been doing is overdriving the machniery at her end -- to ensure she doesn't have to move -- in such a way that (a) a LOT of pressure is building up and (b) the internal mechanisms are breaking down. i mean, the "machine" is more to do with people's trust in a nested sequence of processes than anything, like, made of metal grinding away at itself, so "breaking down' is not necessarily a helpful metaphor either. the solution is not just replacing a blown gasket…

this is all unexamined bcz the point of pressure -- and of corrosive distortion and failure -- is happening within the (at best) semi-transparent worlds of toryism: which is of course that wing of society which argues for the maintenance of ancient institutions the better to keep serene what's good abt the world. which is obviously a big fat joke but is very much the story they generally tell themselves: all the nested instititutions listed above are -- in ordinary times -- assumed by tories either to work fine (when managed by tories) or to be comfortably restorable from the times when they've been managed badly (by non-tories or apostate tories). the "establishment" (as defined above) largely concurs in this ("natural party of government" etc, lab only embraced when semi-disguised as tory etc) -- and is as a consequence almost totally blindsided by quite how rogue this wing of society is internally (still semi-invisibly) going.

and i think the fact of stasis -- as in "at least in a gridlock everything is standing still" -- plus the fact of may's own very midsomer-murdersish toryism have further masked this as much more comfortably restorable and less extremely ruined than it all actually currently is.

is this good not bad or bad not good? IT DEPENDS WHAT COMES NEXT! which none of us have much practice thinking about, let alone building from scratch :|

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/190604012348-jared-harris-large-169.jpg

"what may's been doing is overdriving the machniery at her end -- to ensure she doesn't have to move -- in such a way that (a) a LOT of pressure is building up and (b) the internal mechanisms are breaking down"

this bit of your very fine post reminding me of this scene I watched t'other night!

ugh i forgot to include my chief bit of recent evidence = various tories blithely saying "oh the crown should prorogue parliament to jam a deal through"

tho now i do so it feels like it merely reads as "tory crank weirdo says exorbitantly extreme thing, system in fact just working normally"

But the head of pressure is building up to force people towards saying that thing - the people like Matt Hancock saying "this should be disqualifying!" sound more like they're heading back into the reactor to try to hold the rods apart - not a good short-term prognosis even if you've got a shiny suit.

great post, mark. i feel like i notice that sort of paternalistic disdain for transparency in certain dealings with civil service at work, but it's more complex than disdain really, as you get at.

the maintenance of ancient institutions the better to keep serene what's good abt the world - the belief in this ime is really strong and a sort of part of culture in administration and civil service, and there can be a sort of mannered propriety that allows people to think doing silly or bad things is fine in a pangloss with a cup of tea and a keep calm and carry on poster kind of way. not to tar all with the same brush but there's a kind of self-regard there sometimes. i would imagine all government bureaucracies are a bit like this, it's hard to be sure what's specifically british apart from the tone.

it's a bit like that field manual the cia issued to agents that came to light and got a lot of media attention, the one about how to sabotage productivity if you're undercover in an enemy office: Be unreasonable and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.

this is a lot more micro than your post obv.

andrew: i am unconvinced chernobyl is a clarifying -- as opposed to a darkly amusing and satirical -- metaphor either!

i mean obviously matt hancock is going to be mangled by *any* machinery he passes near, he's a minor numpty of no consequence. the thing that's imo currently radioactively elephant-footing is a lot older and more pervasive (and hence invisible) than the communist party was in 1986 (and its end may be unprettier).

FH: i mean, yes, the internal culture of any administrative bureaucracy is going to be -- in fact as well as its own conserving mythology -- a cluster of quite complacent attitudes based on "we did ok so far". and pushback against this goes at least as far as the casting of sir humphrey as the villain in yes minister (when in fact he is the hero and in a revolutionary sense always correct)*. another aspect of the may meltdown has been the stripping out of knowledgeable civil servants from the process, bcz "not onside with the project" etc. and "the establishment" quietly tolerating this, even tho it's like step whatever of a dismantling of the machinery of the self-establishment of the establishment itself.

*this is a joke but only just

Also some of your civil servants - not British, or willing to shapeshift to not British to get the fuck away from the UK and stay in Europe.

CF my (completely anecdotal!) understanding that the number of Scots working in Whitehall has risen sharply in the last five years.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/change-uk-resignations-centrism-umunna-soubry-allen-wollaston-leslie-a8946716.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1559815350

good little CuK/Centrism autopsy here by Lea Ypi.

The idea that centrist politics may help counter the growing polarisation of the political world is not only a false hope, it is a dangerous illusion. Centrism embodies the opposition to radicalism. Yet radicalism as Marx once said, is grasping the matter at the root. When centrism opposes radicalism, it also renounces, by definition, grasping at the root of the problems it tries to solve.

"I won't have you talking like that," cried the girl, who was in a curious glow. "You've only talked like that since you became a horrid what's-his-name. You know what I mean. What do you call a man who wants to embrace the chimney-sweep?"

"A saint," said Father Brown.

"I think," said Sir Leopold, with a supercilious smile, "that Ruby means a Socialist."

"A radical does not mean a man who lives on radishes," remarked Crook, with some impatience; "and a Conservative does not mean a man who preserves jam. Neither, I assure you, does a Socialist mean a man who desires a social evening with the chimney-sweep. A Socialist means a man who wants all the chimneys swept and all the chimney-sweeps paid for it."

"But who won't allow you," put in the priest in a low voice, "to own your own soot."

(sorry, that passage always jumps into my head when ppl use start using etymology to ground their politics -- i actually agree with the point being made just not the CLUE IS IN THE METAPHOR stuff)

great posts, thanks

I was feeling a bit irked by the Private Eye cover re May's legacy; a time-honoured gag, but... if only it were that good a legacy!

but this breakdown mark s points to is much more eloquent and perhaps a more serious long-term shift than any of the mental bullet points I had filled into the gap - though it ties into one I'd had on my list, normalising talk of "no deal", traitors, judges & parliament = inconvenient obstructions far removed from The People including our down-to-earth just-about-managing PM

irrelevant side note, as if this post wasn't already: I remember my dad getting cross that some quiz show contestant that 8y/o-me liked was a civil servant, to my bafflement (I didn't really understand his explanation of what they did, never mind why it was so bad and hated) - been wondering lately how much of that ire was down to Yes Minister

xp
the author is an Albanian by birth with English as a 2nd language LSE tutor, and it probably isn't her most thoughtful work and just mainly for getting a few penneth for harvesting clicks from non-nitpicking numpts like me who like seeing some CuKs getting spoiled!

what

May will only resign when she is sure her successor has confidence of Commons, No 10 says - live news https://t.co/iGbsGMsLIu

— The Guardian (@guardian) June 6, 2019

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME lol

the impact of individual politicians, even PMs, on popular opinion and political & institutional culture is normally overstated, but it is interesting that by defining herself as a humble servant of political stability May has crystallised that actually what ppl want is less political stability

xxp I think that's in the context of the idea that whips could send everyone off on their holidays earlier (Jul 19th) before the leadership result is announced (on the 22nd), so the new PM several months to work behind the scenes to get the DUP on board before confirming they could win a VONC.

But May reckons that would be a bad idea, which she would know, as someone who formed the last government before actually getting the DUP on board.

we_have_all_the_time_in_the_world.mp4

Apparently two candidates have said that if they get to the last two against Boris, they'll withdraw so he becomes PM earlier and it doesn't have to go to the membership - I'd say it's quite likely that these candidates aren't going to be the ABB candidate in the first place, and are just trying to loudly leak this so that a cabinet place might drop off the table in their direction if Boris wins.

May is on Mugabe levels. Respect.

Booming post from mark s there (and happy actual birthday!)

The home of conservatism is having a thoroughly normal one above the line:

And today, in 2019, we have seen the impact of our failure to do so: the loss of many outstanding local councillors across the country in the recent elections, and the very real threat of the Brexit Party splitting the vote and allowing a Marxist-Corbyn government in through the back door.

One of Gove’s friends observes with admiration his fondness for dispute:

“It is true that Michael would cross the street to have an argument. Verbally he is extremely aggressive – he will start an argument for fun – he doesn’t shy away from a good punch-up. That’s one thing that could make him quite a good PM – winding up civil servants and interest groups.”

Kenneth Clarke cast a less benign eye on this adversarial quality during the last leadership election:

“I don’t think the membership will vote for Gove. I remember being in a discussion about something to do with somewhere like Syria or Iraq and he was so wild that I remember exchanging looks with Liam Fox, who is much more rightwing than me.
“We were exchanging views and Liam was raising eyebrows. I think with Michael as prime minister we’d go to war with at least three countries at once.”

Yet Gove also has an eloquent and conciliatory “politesse” (as one observer calls it), and is wonderfully entertaining company.

A wiser strategy is one of incrementalism. I wrote that Michael Gove, like David Ben-Gurion and Michael Collins in their independence campaigns, had begun to see it as the only way out of May’s quagmire.

None of the hopefuls have attracted such ire as Rory Stewart, however. Despite trying to position himself as the unionist candidate – and having some good credentials on that score, such as his ‘Auld Acquaintance Cairn’ – he has sparked a fierce backlash over his position on the Border.

It started when Christopher Montgomery took to Twitter in the wake of one of Stewart’s campaign videos, filmed walking along (and indeed across) the aforementioned frontier, and took apart the candidate’s historical reading of the Border question, especially with regards to the order of (and causal relationship between) the end of the IRA’s terror campaign and the dismantling of British security infrastructure.

This was then expanded upon by Owen Polley, a well-known unionist writer from Northern Ireland, in a blistering attack in The Article. Stewart’s ‘facile’ comments, he said, “endorsed the Irish republican justification for violence in Northern Ireland, in all its brazen dishonesty, without criticism or qualification.”

He went on to attack the candidate’s adoption of Theresa May’s habit of taking up the language of Irish nationalism in order to try to build support for an Irish Sea border which would allow the Government to pass the Withdrawal Agreement as-is (and that is indeed the basis of Stewart’s Brexit strategy).

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/05/30/the-brexit-referendum-and-the-british-constitution

This article from this week's Economist is a pretty good primer on why things are such a mess structurally. It's paywalled so the TLDR version is that we've currently got three or four contradictory systems of democracy - national Parliamentary democracy, devolved Parliamentary democracy, party democracy and the most controversial referendum in history and they're all competing for primacy and legitimacy with none of them entirely succeeding. eg most of Parliament doesn't want to enact the referendum result, MPs don't respect the membership's leadership vote, two of the nations with devolved Parliaments voted against the grain of the referendum result - it would be a hugely complex problem even without Brexit, but Brexit has exposed all the flaws and put them under gigantic levels of pressure.

my birthday can only now take place when may does resign (if she does resign lol)

(technically it's tomorrow but now who knows?)

i vote confidence in mark's birthday

meanwhile in the coming banter-timeline the roundhead john bercow is going to be LORD PROTECTOR no.3

https://i0.wp.com/classicfilmfreak.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/cromwell-1970-richard-harris.jpg

ORD-Ahhhhhhhhhhh

New Old Ironsides

Brexit Party activists conceding defeat, telling us Labour's probably just pipped it.

— Britain Elects (@britainelects) June 6, 2019

yeah sure.

but it sounds like their lack of troops on the ground and lack of protest voters is causing them some last minute consternation.

Remember Farrage conceding defeat at like eleven in the evening on Brexit Eve so this only makes me more pessimistic.

same.

he really is a fucking goblin

Don't worry led by donkeys will save the night

Commiserations xyz :)

Lol Corbyn Out

Lol just woke up and saw this, hilarious.

The former member for Rochdale has some thoughts:

Whatever this #PeterboroughByElection result, it helps #Boris to win the leadership.

— Simon Danczuk (@SimonDanczuk) June 7, 2019

Farage left the count through a back door minutes before the result was announced.

you love to see it

He has no time for losers cause he is the champion.. Of himself..

Oh, there he is now..

Ah it's never mind the bielection, they're winning in the latest poll.

“Labour’s victory in this by-election is a lesson for Jeremy Corbyn” - some cunt in the Guardian

Hahaha, wow did I underestimate how awful the Guardian was going to be.

I keep looking at this and wondering whether the Guardian should really have allowed this to be said anonymously. If people are going to say this stuff they should put their fucking name on it, no? https://t.co/C4e83zLM9i

— The Justin Horton Show (@ejhchess) June 7, 2019

Pakistanis done Brexit

😍

Commiserations xyz :)

― glumdalclitch, Friday, 7 June 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

For what? :)

Drinking in Tory newsrooms has started early:

And.. that is not a collapse of Tory vote https://t.co/LczGqsZfFj

— Beth Rigby (@BethRigby) June 7, 2019

It’s better than expected but considering they held the seat from 2005-2017...

Speaking of, the MP for those years has some thoughts.

Labour polled 31% of the vote in their 13th most marginal seat after 9 years of a Conservative Government. Terrible result for @UKLabour and Corbyn.

— Stewart Jackson (@BrexitStewart) June 7, 2019

46.8% of the vote at the 2017 GE, how are we defining "collapse"?