love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

Economy shrank by 20.4% in April. Fucking hell.

OBR forecast was 35%, so the question is by how much will they get their wildly optimistic recovery wrong by in the next quarter?

At least that racist show is cancelled

Fast-track prosecutions lead to grave miscarriages of justice which can ruin lives forever. Under the Bail Act 1976 those charged with an offence are entitled to be granted bail at the first hearing. This is effectively being suspended so that racist showmanship can take place. https://t.co/3ds83wV0fC

— Jase (@jasebyjason) June 12, 2020

If we had got to grips with the virus properly then that 20.4% (or bigger) drop would have been worth it and we probably would be looking at a swift rebound right now. As it is we aren't anywhere close.

Thank God we have a Labour leader who led the charge against fast track prosecutions during the London riots to oppose thi...oh.

Nice pic of two men in brown shirts from a paramilitary organisation not looking fascist at all.

Love to show up to defend someone who *checks notes* oh Christ

Starmzy swore a solemn oath to the night courts watch that can't be broken, I saw it in game of melts!

Poole harbour is very shallow, chucking the bust in will only encourage them to come up with a statue rescuing badge.

Just realised it was Thursday yesterday, has the Clap for the NHS thing wound down now? Apologies if this was discussed already.

I didn't hear anything but it was pissing it down.

Lol nothing will happen

The Home Office is being investigated over whether it breached equality law when it introduced the “hostile environment” immigration measures that caused catastrophic consequences for thousands of Windrush generation residents living legally in the UK.

As part of a drive to end the “systemic and entrenched race inequalities that exist in our country”, the Equality and Human Rights Commission will use its legal powers to examine whether, and how the Home Office complied with the public sector equality duty, when it implemented tough new immigration legislation aimed at making life extremely difficult for undocumented illegal immigrants.

I was getting funny looks when I was out on my doorstep with the massed pipes of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards at my back, must be why

xpost

We can't just discard our history, this Baden-Powell statue has stood since, er, 2008.

They took all the statues
Put 'em in a statue museum
And they charged the gammon
£14.99 (inc. VAT) just to see 'em

The collapse in the economy (whether because covid or no deal Brexit) will fuel discontent. Tomorrow might not be the day but confrontations are coming.

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/11/blm-organisers-call-off-london-event-to-prevent-clashes-with-far-right?

A lot of funny posts just now.

Question.

People on this thread now seem to assume that BJ will stop being PM, eg next year or before the next election.

Why? What circumstances could be contrived to make this happen?

if he doesn't want to stop, I don't see how he can be stopped. And even if he did want to, it would be an odd event.

some kind of speech regarding batsmen at the crease is required, aiui

I think the most likely scenario is that his fundamental laziness will kick in and he'll decide he can't be bothered going through an election campaign that is showing every sign of being much more difficult than the last one. On the other hand Tories love a bit of regicide so it depends what happens to the polls, in local elections etc.

no obvious reason he can't remain PM and do fuck all, he's done it throughout this

check out them operation ore vets on the times front page guarding the baden-powell statue, lol don't mess with the adult scouts they are tough as teak!

just imagining the humiliation of being citizen's arrested by two adult venture scouts!

it's like paedo SA

But BJ needs a rationale for quitting as PM. Having been elected, quitting doesn't look logical.

Maybe the rationale would be: 'We have delivered Brexit'.

Or maybe it would be: 'I am ill'.

But I'm not sure I see any of this actually happening.

NEW @IpsosMORI / Evening Standard

- Starmer holds best net satisfaction scores for a leader of the opposition since Blair

- But Johnson still holds narrow lead over Starmer on 'most capable PM'

Context important - read on for more... pic.twitter.com/eNZ7VPrqm3

— Keiran Pedley (@keiranpedley) June 12, 2020

imo bj's rationale is "i died of covid in march 2020, rip me, nigerian_funeral.gif"

I think the party will want to keep him in place until the chalice looks less poisoned

how wld starmzy aim to beat sunak or even gove

forensically

Johnson has attained a level of personal adulation amongst a section of the public - xenophobe Brexiters mostly i guess - that seems unlikely to completely evaporate no matter how bad things get

I don't think Sunak or Gove will come out of the economic / social fallout unscathed, even if Johnson takes the brunt of the blame.

It's also worth remembering that Starmer's apparent lack of a firm set of policy positions comes in a context where he hasn't particularly needed to have one to draw level with Johnson.

He's actually following the Cameron playbook rather than the Blair one, the idea that you don't need to have an explicitly stated set of policy positions this far off an election, you just need to set the idea "this guy seems to know what he's doing" in the minds of enough voters. You can afford for people to project onto you a bit as long as they have a firm and positive enough idea what they're going to get from you a year or so before an election. Cameron barely had any policies for years beyond some vague green/hug a hoodie stuff.

FWIW I think Gove is personally repellent to a lot of voters in a way Sunak might not be (beyond the obvious). There's a lot of completely irrational and sometimes regressive psychological stuff that goes into people's voting choices that is distinct from policy positions, so things like mood music do matter more than we would perhaps like them to. In terms of political brand-builders Boris is probably the most successful since Blair and maybe more so than even him. A lot of people who could identify with themselves as Boris voters wouldn't necessarily feel the same way about Gove or Sunak - and the same is true of the reverse to some extent.

Although arguably the Cameron project was about concealing as much of what he intended to do as possible for as long as possible.

Has been stated already but Sunak's 'popularity' is set to nosedive along with the economy. Not that he's actually popular outside of the media.

I think he is popular among people who don't pay that much attention, because he appeared to be taking fast, direct and decisive action in a crisis that also happened to save a lot of people's livelihoods (at least temporarily). It's easy to be popular when you're basically spraying a firehose of cash around.

The truth is they originally weren't going to do furlough at all, it was pressure from business groups, unions and the general public that convinced them. Also probably a realisation of how big a disaster it would have been without it.

jesus can you imagine? either the death toll would be geometrically higher or the DWP would have collapsed by now

The conservative estimate was 20% unemployment and it would probably have been impossible for them to come back from that even if Ian Huntley had won the Labour leadership contest.

visions of Huntley getting a warm welcome from melt Twitter as a huge step up

#Breaking Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove has said he has “formally confirmed” to the EU the UK will not extend the Brexit transition period, adding: “The moment for extension has now passed” pic.twitter.com/YY6FbgdLyv

— PA Media (@PA) June 12, 2020

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee e e e e e e e e e

splat

Time for our regular scheduled “thanks a bunch cuks and dems” I guess

lol we’re all gonna die

Still wonder what would have happened if they'd been intelligent or flexible or strategic enough to vote through Kenneth Clarke's customs union motion last year.

Do they actually think the country will be back to normality by next February? It's almost as if they're clueless fools, yoked to their pet project as it rolls over the Cliffs of Dover and twirls downward in stately billows of idiocy to the cruel waters of the English Channel.

it's almost as if any consequences for them and their backers will be positive

It's a good job nothing's going to happen in the next few months that might take the EU's attention off negotiations.

Boris on TV at the moment looking like an extra from a George Romero movie.

back to himself then

LOL director obv. got bored with his crap and cut to the adverts in the middle of one of his perorations.

This Brexit-or-death thing today is probably the answer to PF's question. They're laying turf for a constitutional crisis here – the deal as planned is going to do hard-to-guess but likely extreme things to N. Ireland politics, and the Scottish elections are coming up next year post-actual-Brexit too. It's going to make the poll tax look like accounting regulation changes.