Corb Blimey!

[George C.]

I trust them not to break a pledge that would lead to widespread civil unrest.

The belief that there is absolutely no limit to the things that Johnson or Cummings would do to circumvent democratic norms and procedures is paranoid drivel.

Ha ha. 'widespread civil unrest', somewhat Ironic comment.

And expecting these clowns to ever follow convention isn't...

If I was Labour, would tell them to GTF and hang on until May 2022.

[Snake Plissken]

That's nothing like pledging to the nation and Parliament to hold an election on a given date and then reneging on it after having used the Fixed-term Parliaments Act to trigger one.

He's just spent £100 million quid telling the nation that we are leaving on October 31st despite knowing that it was never going to happen.

[ursus arctos]

My eyes are still rolling, but its your country.

[Nocturnal Submission]

That's nothing like pledging to the nation and Parliament to hold an election on a given date and then reneging on it after having used the Fixed-term Parliaments Act to trigger one.

[Lang Spoon]

I refer you to his trashing of the Sewell convention re Devolved Parliaments consent just yesterday, the prorogue stramash....

[Lang Spoon]

Maybe not absolutely no limit but as near as dammit...

[Nocturnal Submission]

You trust Johnson and Cummings?

Can I interest you in a bridge or two?

I trust them not to break a pledge that would lead to widespread civil unrest.

The belief that there is absolutely no limit to the things that Johnson or Cummings would do to circumvent democratic norms and procedures is paranoid drivel.

[Satchmo Distel]

Corbyn would be foolish to demand that a no deal on Jan 31st has to be taken off the table before he supports the election. Firstly it moves the goalposts because the original one was to rule out no deal on Oct 31st, which now seems to be a formality. Secondly the Jan 31st no deal threat can be contested in the election, with Corbyn's promise to rule out no deal being a big potential vote-winner.

The risk of Johnson moving the election past Jan 31st could be avoided by making Labour's support of a GE contingent on the date being fixed as part of the bill, i.e removing the PM's discretion to change it.

[ursus arctos]

You trust Johnson and Cummings?

Can I interest you in a bridge or two?

[Nocturnal Submission]

Except that as Ton Ton has observed more than once, the only ways one can guarantee No No Deal are to pass a Withdrawal Agreement or Revoke.

As a cast iron guarantee, yes, but if an extension to 31st January 2020 is granted and Johnson makes a commitment to hold the GE in December if Parliament votes for one, I think it beggars belief that he'd laugh a maniacal laugh and then set an election date after the extension expires.

[Nefertiti2]

the thing is all the centrists are capable of doing is pointing.

they want a referendum

they want a referendum and not a general election.

they want to revoke article 50

they wanted owen Smith,

They want anything except a Labour government

[ursus arctos]

Except that as Ton Ton has observed more than once, the only ways one can guarantee No No Deal are to pass a Withdrawal Agreement or Revoke.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Corbyn's comments a few hours ago seemed to be fairly clear - if there's no chance of a ND Brexit he'd support calls for a GE. The suggestion is that the EU will offer a three-month flextension so...

[Satchmo Distel]

I can imagine that some MPs have to weigh the risk of losing their own seats in the election against the risk of Corbyn doing well enough to stay leader. OTOH if they are stepping down or likely to be deselected they can be loose cannons. Equally some of the hard-line Brexiteers like Hooey or Centrist anti-Corbyn Remainers are really single-issue MPs rather than party MPs at this point.

[Nefertiti2]

[URL]https://twitter.com/lafargue/status/1187495491098955776?s=21[/URL]

[Lucy Waterman]

Oh, I agree with all that. The problem would be if MPs start making a habit of going "I don't have to vote for this legislation, my accountability is to members in XX in five years time." Particularly if said legislation is unpopular but necessary, as legislation does sometimes have to be.

Or if you can make out your opposition to a government bill as being based on a particular popular issue, like failure to make a specific spending commitment.

[Snake Plissken]

I don't have a problem with it as long as they actually go back and consult with their CLP on issues. It is never a blanket mandate and too many MPs (of all stripes) see their constituency as somewhere where they go to open school fairs.

[Lucy Waterman]

That is the problem I alluded to, yep.

[Snake Plissken]

Corbyn's ability to command loyalty might (might - this is my own speculation, not a reheated talking point or anything else) have been further eroded by the law of unintended consequences relating to reselection. Any of his critics who are successfully reselected can defend their actions by claiming a mandate from their CLPs, and that they owe their loyalty to that body, not the leadership or manifesto.

Genuine question - who is actually up for reselection? Far from it being a widespread purge of Corbyn critics, I believe most have sailed through. I known Roger Godsiff was triggered, but he's a horrible person and fully deserves it. Hodge was triggered by her own CLP (despite trying to blame it on Momentum). I have a couple of others whose names I can't recall off the top of my head. Watson was fine, Phillips fine.

Is there a total? I'm sure that it is in single figures.

[Lucy Waterman]

It's a subjective difference. You can frame loads of things that way. "Maintaining Tory welfare plans" can be presented as an issue that results in unneccessary deaths and impoverishment for millions. It still comes down to "loyalty when its something we believe in, disloyalty otherwise".

Anyways, it can't have been that big a deal or Corbyn would have resigned his seat, like people keep telling his critics to do.

[Snake Plissken]

That's some serious false equivalence going on there. There is a massive difference between voting against the leader because he made the decision to help kill thousands of Iraqis and voting against the leader because he thinks that kicking immigrants for votes is a bad thing.

Some of us haven't forgotten that Peter Mandelsons reaction to the news that Corbyn was leading the race to become the new Leader in 2015 was to suggest shutting down the contest entirely. Corbyn, for all his many faults, is more than a little more dedicated to democracy than that.

Anyway, I note that Labour voted against allowing more privatisation of the NHS and the Lib Dems abstained. Tim Farron says that the reasoning was that after the coalition "reorganised" the NHS, the last thing it needed was another reorganisation. Yeah right Tim, just because someone drove the car onto the train tracks is no reason to decide to drive it off them.

[Lucy Waterman]

Corbyn's ability to command loyalty might (might - this is my own speculation, not a reheated talking point or anything else) have been further eroded by the law of unintended consequences relating to reselection. Any of his critics who are successfully reselected can defend their actions by claiming a mandate from their CLPs, and that they owe their loyalty to that body, not the leadership or manifesto.

[Lucy Waterman]

That would make sense, yes.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The correct way to respond to a General Election victory - for those like Stephen Kinnock who have never known one - is to go on TV with Piers Morgan and speculate about when your party's leader will be forced out.

Double standards and corduroy trousers, model's own.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politi...ge/4526435.stm

Look, there's one way to stop about half of these circular arguments, and that is, If you support Jeremy corbyn, you don't get to criticize other party members for a lack of loyalty to the leadership or voting against the party line. You just fucking don't. It may feel good at the time, There might be actual perfidy afoot, but you don't get to criticize it on those grounds. Ultimately you're insulting everyone's intelligence, but particularly your own. There's loads of other things to discuss, or other avenues to approach the same issues, but this just drives me up the fucking wall.

[Flynnie]

Speaking of Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the bit where she eviscerates her husband's judgment for going on all the networks to wibble about a result he clearly wasn't expecting and wasn't entirely happy about is priceless.

You could show that to aliens and they'd figure out who the Prime Minister was in five seconds.