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

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"?

lot of focus on labour recently masking fact that the tory party’s electoral coalition has been liquified by brexit. you just love to see it

this result probably makes chances of a GE very low this year - though as matt says the clamour for one may become unbearable as a new tory leader struggles for legitimacy. tories not in a good way

let's pretend a hold going from a majority of 603 in a marginal, where the bookies predicted a BP rout to a majority of 683 is a shit result eh lads?

Tbh the labour share of the vote did drop a lot but that’s not hugely surprising considering their polling and the fact the incumbent had been jailed!

Yeah in the circs Labour could have been pummelled

Turnout was 20% lower. By-election factors come into play.

Yet again, Labour's membership should get all the credit.

Wonder if there could still be a general election. A new Tory leader who goes no deal may get a lot of Brexit Party votes (be interesting whether Johnson could be trusted to deliver by that somewhat volatile section of the voters). xp

I stayed up for the result last night and BXP trolls were Tweeting about the ‘Pakistani’ vote from the moment it looked like they’d lost. Fuck them. Those are British people and they include the parents of a few of my friends.

With this kind of electoral maths, there is no way the Tories can risk an election before Brexit happens in some form or another. Despite the national percentage polls and the constant Corbyn narratives in the media, under FPTP the Tory vote split with the Brexit Party is much more significant than Labour’s with the Lib Dem’s / Greens. An election before Brexit is likely to end up with a Labour plus SNP government.

Lol run it past me again how this surprise win in a marginal constituency where their previous mp had gone to prison, is a bad result for labour

Worth saying that with just about any voting system in use today that is not first-past-the-post, this would have been an easy win for the Brexit Party

j Phillips saying this result "shows that antisemitism is becoming normal in the party"??

Remember the time she spoke out about Pakistani men “importing” brides and she still has the whip?

good job the previous Peterborough mp was a "good criminal" and not a nonce tho, that would have been a peado-bridge too far!

Compare and contrast (20 marks)

The Birmingham Yardley MP said: “Lisa ignored and endorsed anti-Semitic things, I’ll take her explanation and apology at face value and look forward to her proving, as others have, that actions not excuses alone can heal.

“But with every case the parties values chip away and our ability to stand up against hate erodes.”

she laments that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn did not broker a deal so that Champion could stay because "it makes it look like we sweep this stuff under the carpet and it gives more power to people who go, 'It's political correctness gone mad' and that people like me are trying to protect the perpetrators".

What an egomaniac.

the only way forward for her is for her to get her own weekly tv show where she is her own guest every week.