The Brexit Thread

[Nefertiti2]

It didn’t matter what they did. Article 50 would still have passed.

[anton pulisov]

It didn’t matter what they did. Article 50 would still have passed.

well, why have an opposition at all then

[Lang Spoon]

This. Whipping MPs to vote for Article 50 seems utterly inexplicable by Corbyn. It’s like they just wanted to piss off the Chukkas and fuck the long term.

[Gerontophile]

Oh, fucking bless!

[Tubby Isaacs]

They had a reasonable plan to stick amendments on that nobody could disagree with (except the Tory right), and vote against if the amendments weren't agreed. The Brexit would then be unambiguously Tory Right. I don't know why they lost their nerve on that. I think it would have been a good counter attack even in the snap general election.

But they may have seen some polling that suggested it was a bad idea.

[Nefertiti2]

There are a group of MP's who will do anything to bring Corbyn down.

They will back a "People's Vote" and simultaneously vote with the Tories. So I don't think it was simply a question of Corbyn taking a position. He put Starmer in the job and he has stayed there although he's probably to the right of the Labour Party on a lot of issues.

https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/1055069416952655872

[Lang Spoon]

The tests are incredible bullshit but.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

She's right about one thing. Voting down the Brexit withdrawal deal won't force a general election. The current shower of shit that are in power, are more likely to do away with elections altogether (thanks to your unwritten constitution) than hold an election where they might lose power. That's the enormous weakness in the whole Election-first thing.

[Gerontophile]

.

[Lang Spoon]

Along with voting reform, having a proper constitution was another thing Blair spunked away in that first term. But then that shower of shite were Democratic Centralists as much as any unreformed Tankie. The Sovereignty of Westminster suited the bastards.

[Nefertiti2]

Blair's failure to deliver Consititutional reform best expressed in the decision to have elected hereditary peers. The Uk still like the Iranians have religion leaders in parliament as of right

But the Tories aren't prepared to agree anything. May veered hard right,(partly because of the split in the PLP which meant Labour was out of Commission. She will now get the deal across the line because everyone knows the alternative would be a disaster and the Flints will vote with the Tories. As soon s she does the Right will move against her.

The quality of Labour MP's is another problem. the layer of charmless unimaginative bullies and toadies that joined Labour in the Blair years, Gisela Stewart to Caroline Flint ...

[Diable Rouge]

Surprisingly, UK-US flights could be grounded after Brexit.

[ursus arctos]

Not at all surprising to anyone in aviation

[Diable Rouge]

Liz Saville Roberts becomes the first MP to speak Irish since the Kerryman, Thomas O'Donnell, in 1901:

http://twitter.com/LSRPlaid/status/1055079824652410880

[Duncan Gardner]

Liz Saville Roberts becomes the first MP to speak Irish since the Kerryman, Thomas O'Donnell, in 1901:

http://twitter.com/LSRPlaid/status/1055079824652410880

Ha ha. What did Bradley or whoever say in reply? Good to see the member for Menairwvrstycrwss taking such a keen interest in An Loiste Nua

[Pérou Flaquettes]

The difference is that the golf club bores are well enough off to trade some of their wealth for "sovereignty". Plus their politicians are driving the way Brexit is done.

Obviously an area being deprived is part of it, but I expect when you look at it more closely, the pattern is like other places- Brexit pensioners. South Wales, for one, has a lot of pensioners. Nick Clegg, of all people, did a decent feature on Ebbw Vale and found the young people there were pro-EU.

I know that but that’s not the point I’m making in my post #9009 about Harris’s Anywhere From Westminster Brexit clips on Leavers. Without going into the minutiae of it, his clips are far too one-dimensional (and generally so in the media, he's not the only culprit far from it), it’s almost always the poor and the "uneducated" who get the finger-pointing treatment whereas millions of middle-class and wealthy people (of all levels of education) voted Leave but he, and others, hardly go and seek out their views on that the way he does it (spontaneously, on the street, in shops, in their homes etc.). I hate this unfair demonisation of the working class, the poor and the left-behinds, especially when it’s done by a Guardian journalist, as it just doesn’t reflect reality and it exonerates the wealthy side of the Leave vote which we know was huge. Yes, it was more evenly spread out maybe so less obvious and but it was still huge.

The most disturbing aspect of Harris’s skewed footage has to do with permanence. The Brexit narrative is largely being written and set as we speak and I fear that history will remember that it was Harris’s favourite target (the poor and uneducated) who caused Brexit with little mention of the large second category when IMO they should be given equal footing or responsibility as far as the Brexit vote is concerned.

Yes, I’m sure that there will be more than one mainstream narrative and maybe even the dominant one will be nuanced enough for whoever wants to parse it, but by establishing the matrix narrative on those Wiganers and Bostoners and Potters, you’re imprinting this imago in people’s minds with the risk of having future generations not learning from past events/mistakes. What such a one-sided narrative breeds too, apart from ignorance, is complacency. So many key facts and people/groups of people have been airbrushed out of history out of complacency (and propaganda of course).

What people like Harris and the objective Brexit social historians need to is to say, show and repeat unequivocally through their work is that a wide range of people are responsible for Brexit so if something similar develops in future, you increase the chances of avoiding a repeat of the Brexit voting scenario where nearly 30% of people didn’t vote, many of them probably wrongly believing that Brexit couldn’t possibly happen because those likely to vote for it are in a minority. It think it really is vital to drum up this message (yes, I know, in theory there is Education too that could save us, schools and all that but forget it, not until we teach history as it should be tackled – warts and all – and make kids acquire thinking & critical skills, so not anytime soon then, agnoiology has a rosy future).

[ursus arctos]

This exact same dynamic has characterised virtually all of the US coverage of Trump supporters.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I don't think Harris regards his stuff as definitive social history. He talks about places he's interested in, Brexit or not.

[San Bernardhinault]

This exact same dynamic has characterised virtually all of the US coverage of Trump supporters.

This is very true, and I've been thinking about it with regards both projects. The fact that the people you expect to vote Tory voted for Brexit, and the people you expect to vote Republican voted for Trump is just ignored. Both projects were pushed over the top by a relatively small proportion of white working class people, and that's why they're focused on.

But it basically gives a free pass to the golf club bores and tiresome accountants of the home counties, and it gives a free pass to the Harvard lawyers (in the federalist society - I know there are one or two good ones elsewhere) and the Ole Miss graduates who now own car showrooms in Vicksburg who wouldn't ever consider not voting Republican. When history comes to write the accounts of both of these fucking nightmares, it's those few working class people who'll be vilified, not the other 90% of the Trump and Brexit voters.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

I don't think Harris regards his stuff as definitive social history. He talks about places he's interested in, Brexit or not.

Yes, but by his one-dimensional account, he skews things and like SB says this gives a free pass to the wealthy etc. who voted Brexit. Anyway, it's all in my last 2 posts.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Lots of working class voters have moved over to the Tories over time, and particularly after Brexit. Middle class voters were spunked away by May. So the Tories now barely get within 6,000 votes in Bath but can win Mansfield. Some measures even give the Tories the lead amond C2DE voters IIRC. So it's a key part of their coalition and of the Brexit coalition. Though I agree that golf club bores get overlooked.

What I've found particularly annoying has been the framing of Brexit as Labour being wildly out of step with its supporters. In all areas they voted Remain, albeit more in cities than towns. It's not seen as a problem that lots of Tories voted Remain.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

[i]I don't get this. The Deplorables comment was a comment made by hilary clinton at a private event about the half of Donald Trumps supporters who couldn't be won over by the Democratic party because they were basically people who hated other people for who they were, in one of many different ways. The only thing that was inaccurate about that statement was that it was considerably more than half. If you voted for Donald Trump, having known everything there was publicly known about him, in the run up to the election, either you're Scum, or too fucking stupid to vote. There is no third option. And that includes a lot of my relatives, who have either lived too long, or are thick as pigshit. The Problem for the democrats wasn't that Trump got too many votes, it's that the Democrats didn't try hard enough to get people out to vote in a couple of states that they complacently expected to win.

Yes, but that’s beside the point. Whether it was said at a private event or in front of 1 million people, it’s irrelevant in the context of a contemporary political campaign of that nature, especially one involving an evil bastard like Trump who will exploit any crumb of controversy and milk it to the nth degree and then some. These comments will be blown out of all proportion by your opponent and massively weaponised against you, especially by the likes of Trump or the Leave campaigners who will use everything under the sun to torpedo you.

Saying that a few dozen millions of Americans are racist, sexist etc. (Speaking at a fundraiser, she said they were "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic - you name it".) is probably true but certainly not something she should have said as it could obviously used against her in a powerful way, and it was. Maybe you could get away with that sort of comments 20 yrs ago but not this day and age full of fake news, 24/7 coverage and hundreds of media outlets acting like vultures gagging to create controversy and blow out of all proportion anything.

Clinton should have said that she would fight racism, sexism etc. but not go down the route of disparaging Trump’s electorate, as I explained in my post #9009 it only makes things far worse as your opponent (especially Trump!) will gleefully use, abuse and and overuse this sort of attack, skew it to his advantage (as Trump duly did: Clinton’s orginal "half of Trump supporters are deplorables" instantly became "all Trump’s supporters are deplorables"), repeat it on a loop on TV/radio and show in on giant screens in rallies to unite more people behind him and circle the wagons. She should really have known better and she must have realised that as she apologised ("Mrs Clinton later apologised for her criticism of Mr Trump's supporters") but it was too late, she’d said it and provided him with more grist to his evil mill and enable him to attract more supporters.

I’ve known ultra-rightists and borderline neo-Nazis since the 1980s, I personally know 2 EDL-type people, I have far right people in both my British and French families, I know very well what these people are like. It’s not that I don’t agree with the Remainers I was criticising in my post or Hilary Clinton in what they say, essentially they’re right but as I explained in my post, adopting that strategy of vilification during a political or Brexit campaign is counter-productive.

[anton pulisov]

Welsh MP asks Tory minister if UK government will be implementing Irish Language Act as required by the GFA, seeing as Stormont government has collapsed.

Tory minister response is that is a matter for devolved government and Westminster shouldn't be meddling in NI politics.

hahahahahaha

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Deputy political editor of the Sun and former Guido Fawkes Freak Harry Cole has his say.

https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1055502615813992448

[Lang Spoon]

This Leo is scared of the shinners thing is really fucking perplexing. The total ignorance involved in typing such a sentence. His use of Shinners suggests he gets his skinny in the 26 from the DUP madmen, or the Davis type frothers.

The least Republican Party outside the Coppinger/Murphy fringe. Barely a single FG vote under threat from SF. Imagine these cunts were dealing with a FF govt rather than Big House Tory lite led by a Thatcherite.