Free as a Dodo: UK Politics Welcomes 2021

Still is.

In london shaun bailey loses, lib dems lose their deposit, and tha youtuber i voted for out of sheer spite beats laurence fox- pretty pleased w all that

hey is this the first election result its been possible to enjoy in like forever?

(with the usual caveats)

anyway please make jess phillips shadow home secretary i dont fucking care any more

calling for sanctions against Belize because her deliveroo was 17 minutes late, that's the kind of opposition we need!

just saying gibberish in a slight but at times exaggerated birmingham accent. random stuff, mostly about politics as a customer complaints process but dont complain to me alright because im just keeping it real and authentic.

hey is this the first election result its been possible to enjoy in like forever?

I don't know, Alex Salmond and George Galloway and their respective vanity projects/parties falling flat on their arses is pretty enjoyable too.

I can’t support this.https://t.co/mbmGHaROdL

— Andy Burnham (@AndyBurnhamGM) May 8, 2021

oh dear the popular mayor has turned on kieth

*against* Freudian slip!

hey is this the first election result its been possible to enjoy in like forever?

I don't know, Alex Salmond and George Galloway and their respective vanity projects/parties falling flat on their arses is pretty enjoyable too.

― Are Animated Dads Getting Hotter? (Tom D.), Sunday, 9 May 2021 00:30 (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh i meant the results of the polling day in gen. many little joys if you can lose sight for a moment of how its part of a larger deeply depressing picture

What I feel has changed overall for KS is -- almost everyone is laughing at him.

Some people (Toynbee) used to respect him, some (Tribune) to resent him, maybe for a while some Cons even feared him. But now think his official opponents, the people he spends his time purging, and even his own supporters, think he has become a joke. Something about this is peculiarly damaging.

Hard to come back from it.

'turned on keith' was fine and non-freudian, but large image of rayner throwing our calz off obv

you have to wonder when you look at the approach they've taken to this election if they even saw winning as an aim. if the goal was to purge the left, to undermine any residual support or goodwill the left have for labour then they've done very well. I wonder if 'the preston model' will be in the LOTO's sights next, not as something to be emulated across the country but as a sign of successful tenacity for regional independence and leftwing autonomous innovation and consequently the next thing to be crushed.

Labour (or at least parts of it) have seemed curiously disinterested in winning as an aim for years (maybe for different reasons at different times). This feels more deep seated than just wanting to purge the left. Strong Department of the Opposition vibes for sure, but I don't know how much of that is actually 4D chess though (unless making himself a laughing stock and leaving himself vulnerable to leadership challenges is all part of the plan)

Feels a larger part of the disarray is just smoothbrains in action (at least the frontpeople that we see anyway)

The line is that "Angela Rayner has not been sacked". Right.

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) May 9, 2021

the clot thickens

Labour's new line this morning is that Angela Rayner is actually being given a big promotion

Shadow Cabinet minister Ian Murray tells @SophyRidgeSky she will be going from a backroom role as party chairman to a new public facing role

— John Stevens (@johnestevens) May 9, 2021

make up this shit ... couldn't

pic.twitter.com/bVhXIeMMBo

— bread and poses (@breadandposes) May 8, 2021

(no apologies if that was already posted, this thread is now WAY too long and my NEW laptop can't handle it when the hidden replies are unhidden)

proposed new thread: "we'll change the things that need changing and that's all we'll change": the paSUKification of post-brexit politics 2021

my sense is that politics and labour in particular is so populated by a huge array of think tank people PR hype men and career politicians shuttling back and forth between lobbying westminster and charity, desperately clinging on to the narrow idea world that supports their careers. anything that really challenges this status quo is the real enemy. The ideals of centrism and neoliberalism were supposed to craft a fairly comfortable niche in the end of history for all these people, the overarching hostility to 'populism' etc I think is borne of this. Anything transformative of this status quo is much more challenging to their position than labour becoming even more defanged than they currently are. I think the vaccillating anxiety around what the current tory government are doing from this point of view comes from the way in which they are obvioulsy both in the business of shredding norms (human rights, 'standards') and fortifying others (corporate hegemony, cultural conservatism).

But yeah I agree that they are deeply uninterested in winning power, they already have the kind of power they are interested in. and I agree that its not some 4d chess they're up to just knee-jerk aversion and hostility to anything that upsets basic tenets of what they consider modern approaches (c. 1996) and can thus bizarrely construct the notion of 'free broadband' as something dessicated and backward. They're sincere whey they say this isn't 'grown up' 'sensible' politics but what they mean is really because it upsets their idea of what it is to be a grown up, to move smoothly through a professionalised world where they wear a suit and say things with confidence. I think the career of chuka umunna is pretty instructive. anyway, i'm pretty sure this is the end of the line for the nhs so there's going to be a hell of a lot of consultancy roles for them to fight over once they've completely collapsed the labour party.

Did I see correctly Sadiq Khan was advising people not to vote Labour as far back as 2010? (framed in a "we dont currently deserve power" kind of way)? And we've had other Labour figures advising the public not to vote Labour (and not just in the Corbyn years). So there's definitely at least a section that is actively opposed to being in power.

With much of the rest seem like winning or losing is tangential, unrelated to the real aims - the Arsenal of political parties

(apologies if I've been the victim of misinformation and got Sadiq wrong, saw it in last day or so and didn't verity its veracity)

no he has previous for that, and when he won his first Mayoral election he snubbed Corbyn and then taunted him in a speech where he used the word "power" about 63 times to illustrate that getting into power is something Corbz was incapable of.

there's a new and very good thread lads

Starmer has that weirdo obsession with 'power' (the word, he has no idea what to do to get it)

Lock thread

let's hear everyone's best impressions of keir starmer having sex

— Ed (@ted_pen) May 8, 2021

Labour's new strategy director... https://t.co/eakW0JIbvo

— Alex Nunns (@alexnunns) May 9, 2021

lol