UK General Discussion: 2017 and onwards, Mayhem

[King of Kensington]

The free speech activist and citizen journalist Tommy Robinson has been sentenced to a 13 month prison term in the UK. His crime? Providing coverage of a grooming gang trial. He was filming a live video outside the court house when he was arrested. Robinson's trial and sentencing took place on the same day and took about 30 minutes.

And in an Orwellian twist the judge has prohibited all media organisations from reporting on his sentence. They've managed to take down the reporting of some non-UK websites as well but this article is still up and they can't silence Twitter.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/05/orwells-nightmare-articles-about-tommy-robinsons-arrest-rapidly-scrubbed-from-the-internet/

UK (and the rest of Europe) is truly in need of a 1st Amendment.

Every far right lunatic is a "free speech activist" according to their fans.

[King of Kensington]

How long can Labour keep triangulating on the Brexit issue?

[Angel of Death]

That's easy: As long as they're not in government.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

General election soon, friends!

May had about 15 chances to sack him; will easily go down in History as the worst foreign secretary in British History (which is an achievement in a sense)

Impossible to be worse than Edward Grey, but possibly the worst since him which is quite an achievement given some of the other holders of the post...

Samuel Hoare was the brains behind a secret pact with Fascist Italy to carve up Abyssinia, but I'd agree that Boris is the worst foreign sec since the war.

Ah yes. And there's also Halifax of course. What wonderful company to be numbered in!

[Hash]

The Attorney General of Anguilla is amazing

https://twitter.com/JohnMQC/status/1016339437184266240

[136or142]

I like the sound of Prime Minister Vincent Cable, but it won't happen.

[Sestak]

lmay

[Blair]

Day after day
Im absolutely convinced, PM Jeremy Corbyn is inevitable,
Which I like and loathe at the same time,
Tories tearing each other  over Europe, social care and NHS crises, transport crises, and austerity cuts bitting hard on local services all making Tories more hated day after day.

I disagree with farage on everything but he's correct "the so called new  Brexit deal is Norway minus the fish", the Brexit deal works in favour of the city of London, nothing for the fishing communities who have been sold out again, no immigration controls, we can't ban the transport of living sheep's and livestocks abroad going under horrible conditions, we won't be allowed to renationalise the railways and water, and we will still be paying to the EU without having any say, all the people that voted leave were sold out.

labour might not be winning new voters, but I  can see a lot people that voted for Brexit and voted Tory in last election staying home come next election and labour getting elected automatically and as a consequence the long horrible Tory rule comes to an end.
People might not like Corbyn, but forces and desires for change are too strong, next general election, is for labour to lose.

1.) isn’t fishing just about as relevant to the U.K. economy as coal mining was in the mid 200s? Besides isn’t it an industry that was in decline before we even joined the EU? There’s only 11,000 fisherman in the UK, but more people working in the fish processing industry (which relies on trade)

2.) we’re ending freedom of movement, so I don’t get the line about not having immigration controls.

3.) I don’t see what stops us from nationalisating trains and water, as said here the EU allows it, as long as it’s not Mugabe style

[OSR stands with Israel]

If you think Brexit is being handled badly now , wait till you see it handled by Corbyn.

[YL]

Worth noting it's extremely difficult to get an early election unless the Prime Minister wants it. The Tories could switch leaders, change Brexit plans, or even slowly head towards no-deal all without anyone pulling the pin on the Election.

You not only need a vote of no-confidence in the Government, but you then have to wait 14 days for no new government to emerge. Basically either the Pro-Remain Tories (about 5-10 MP) or the Hard Brexiters (40 odd MPs) have to decide that Prime Minister Corbyn is worth the risk

seems possible:

https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/1016350766288789504

What is being talked about is not a motion in the Commons of no confidence in the Government, but a vote in the Tory parliamentary party about confidence in May as leader.  This needs 15% of the MPs (currently that means 48) to write letters to the chair of the 1922 Committee, who would then call a vote.  If May were to lose such a vote, there'd be a leadership election, from which May would be barred; this is how the Tories deposed Iain Duncan Smith in 2003.

I get the impression that they think they have the 48 who would be prepared to write letters, but that they're holding off for now because they think May would then win the confidence vote reasonably comfortably.  She'd probably need to win reasonably comfortably, not just win; John Major, when he forced what was effectively a confidence vote in his own leadership in 1995, supposedly had a private target, which he only just made.

There's no sign of any remotely sensible (by the low standards of the modern Tory party) alternative who actually wants the job right now.  And letting the Tory party membership loose with a ballot paper on which one of the options is Jacob Rees-Mogg is a scary thought, probably even to a lot of Tory MPs.

[parochial boy]

If you think Brexit is being handled badly now , wait till you see it handled by Corbyn.

Not really, the Labour party is far less internally divided, and obsessed, over the EU issue. The radical Eurosceptics like Hoey as basically irrelevant, and the division between the likes of Corbyn one one end and Umunna on the other is far less than between Tory Remainers and hard Brexiters..

Seeing as it is the Tories who have created this by themselves, it is pretty reasonable to assume Labour would do better simply by the fact of being less divided.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

If you think Brexit is being handled badly now , wait till you see it handled by Corbyn.

Not really, the Labour party is far less internally divided, and obsessed, over the EU issue. The radical Eurosceptics like Hoey as basically irrelevant, and the division between the likes of Corbyn one one end and Umunna on the other is far less than between Tory Remainers and hard Brexiters..

Seeing as it is the Tories who have created this by themselves, it is pretty reasonable to assume Labour would do better simply by the fact of being less divided.

True,  I would assume the Labour party would negotiate a soft Brexit, and perhaps put it up for a referendum, and stay in if it fails.

[cp]

If you think Brexit is being handled badly now , wait till you see it handled by Corbyn.

Not really, the Labour party is far less internally divided, and obsessed, over the EU issue. The radical Eurosceptics like Hoey as basically irrelevant, and the division between the likes of Corbyn one one end and Umunna on the other is far less than between Tory Remainers and hard Brexiters..

Seeing as it is the Tories who have created this by themselves, it is pretty reasonable to assume Labour would do better simply by the fact of being less divided.

True,  I would assume the Labour party would negotiate a soft Brexit, and perhaps put it up for a referendum, and stay in if it fails.

Correct, and the real division in the Labour Party would be over whether or not to hold the referendum, rather than on what the relationship of the UK to the EU should be. The vast majority of Labour MPs and voters are fine with EU membership as it is. Would be interesting to see how this would change in a new referendum; presumably the Labour Party would support the deal they had negotiated?

As for Corbyn himself, if nothing else, his political acumen (as well as his popularity) has been consistently underestimated. He's slowly shifted his position just enough to be one step less Brexity than the Tories, thus denying them any political room to soften their approach, but not so much that he looked like a crypto-Remainer, thus alienating a good chunk of the non-completely-anti-Brexit electorate.

I suspect he's largely ambivalent about the EU and Brexit in general. He is inclined to pursue whichever option would clear Brexit from the field of debate in the quickest and easiest way so that he can focus on his real priorities (nationalizing rail and utilities, housing construction, enhanced funding for the NHS, etc.). If May's government falls this summer or autumn he will be very well placed to do just that.

[Antonio the Sixth]

oh boy, the bottom is really falling out for May, isn't it?

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Well, May seems to have weathered the current storm. With Gove and Fox not having resigned it seems like the Brexiteers are in a half-in-half out situation, awaiting further developments. Obviously what a lot of people in Westminster don't realise is that this is just the prelude to negotiations actually beginning: the real stress test of May's premiership will be how her ministers and MPs react to the further concessions to a soft Brexit that are coming down the line now that the direction of travel is clear.

I suspect(/hope) May is trying the 'salami tactics' approach of piecemeal moves towards the Norway option, inch by inch, until all of a sudden we're in March and she can jam it through the Brexiteers and opposition in Parliament with the threat of "if you don't support this we'll get no deal and Armageddon"

[Mike88]

Well, May seems to have weathered the current storm. With Gove and Fox not having resigned it seems like the Brexiteers are in a half-in-half out situation, awaiting further developments. Obviously what a lot of people in Westminster don't realise is that this is just the prelude to negotiations actually beginning: the real stress test of May's premiership will be how her ministers and MPs react to the further concessions to a soft Brexit that are coming down the line now that the direction of travel is clear.

I suspect(/hope) May is trying the 'salami tactics' approach of piecemeal moves towards the Norway option, inch by inch, until all of a sudden we're in March and she can jam it through the Brexiteers and opposition in Parliament with the threat of "if you don't support this we'll get no deal and Armageddon"

I honestly cannot understand those, like Boris or Davis, that want a hard Brexit. It's just suicidal. The UK is very important for Europe overall and any kind of "proudly alone" policy towards the Europe, or the EU, is pathetic. If May, like Thersites said, is moving towards a Norway option, ok, i think it can work and the EU could be open to it. But, no deal/Hard Brexit or a second referendum, with a reverse result, would be a disaster. I'm not a fan of May, as she has been a huge disappointment, but if she is able to fight against the "loony right" in the Conservative Party, well done.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The problems in the fishing industry aren't caused by the CFP (as flawed as that undeniably is). The main reason for the collapse of the East Coast fleet (Grimsby, Hull etc), for instance, was the Cod Wars.

[parochial boy]

And EU regional funding, funnilly enough, was one of the few things making up for the government's London-centrism.

And like Blair said, it wasn't the EU who made the Major government privatise British rail (ie SNCF, DeutcheBahn and the like still exist), and it didn't stop Blair from renationalising Network Rail. The rules about tendering for government contracts are, you know, not the same thing.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I'm left wing enough to believe that we should step on big business's toes if the rest of the population gets some benefit as a consequence, but I don't really see how Hard Brexitting would actually help anybody else? If anything, the consequence would be that the Tories would sweeten the deal for business by slashing workers rights and corporate taxation to a bare minimum, not to mention allowing American predator companies and Chinese state interests to seize our healthcare system, land and infrastructure wholesale.

How can anybody be Lexit in this day and age, I'll never know.

[parochial boy]

But it was always obvious that a Brexit driven by the likes of Farage, Gove, Banks and Dominic Raab never going to be one driven by the genuine concern for the lives of working class people? I mean, many of us believe that the only hope you have of defending people against the global business elite is through supranational entities that have the clout to enforce rules at the international level.

But that is almost beside the point, even if you think that the nation state is still able to protect people's rights, it was clear that the ideological motivation behind Brexit absolutely wasn't to do this. I mean, what Lexiters wanted was very evidently never going to be on offer

As for the Norwegian or Swiss deal, both were already patently not acceptable to the extremists; and the Swiss one is one that has been painstakingly pieced together over 25 years, and essentially ensures that angst over EU relations are never off the table as a political issue (and ensure that Switzerland has no actual voice at the table, which surely would have been the best option as concerns reforming the CFP)

And in any case, both the farming and fishing (yes it does exist...) industries are undergoing near existential crises in Switzerland despite not being subject to EU rules.

And as for the source or effectiveness of EU funding,it doesn't change the fact that the EU actually cared about what was going on in the regions - unlike the Conservative party

[cp]

I'd add to that, the idea that a hard Brexit is not being 'allowed' because of civil servants is complete bunkum. The civil service is like a computer: it does what it's instructed, no more no less. It may complete its instructions more slowly than some would like, perhaps, but it does not have any real agency to stop a policy its employees may disagree with. It was the largely Labour supporting/sympathetic civil service, remember, who carried out Thatcher's right-to-buy schemes, financial deregulation, union busting, and contingency planning during the miners' strikes.

To the extent the civil service can be blamed for stymieing Brexit it is that no one in government bothered to instruct it to make the necessary preparations for contingencies like a kamikaze no-deal crash out or a hard brexit customs checking system, so none have been made. That, in turn, is a function of May and the Cabinet refusing to agree on what kind of post-Brexit relationship they wanted with the EU.

Meanwhile, Two more Tories (vice-chairs this time) resign over the Chequers plan

It's taken as an open secret that the Tory Brexit fanatics in government will keep resigning one or two at a time all week in order to embarrass May into rescinding her plan. It won't work.

[Blair]

1,) The CBI would want us to stay in the single market and keep FOM. There’s lots of critiques of the Tories, but its very clear that the Tories are actually more influenced  by parliamentary artimetic, a lack of support for Hard Brexit in the HOC, and the NI issue. This isn’t about appeasing Big Business.

2.) 66% of Labour voters supported Remin, including in cities like Liverpool, Manchester, and rather less affluent areas of London. The media loves the whole ‘left behind Working class’ stories, but don’t forget Brexit was also supported by Tories in Beaconfield, Tonbridge Wells and other rather plush places.

3.) we cant have a Norway style deal because that involves keeping free movement.

I feel we’re going round in circles here though; as Crabcake says it’s always baffles me how people on the left can support Brexit, when the ideological aim of the Tory right sine 1988 has been to destroy everything good the EU has done

[parochial boy]

It may shock you to discover that London does, in fact, extend beyond Canary Wharf and Hampstead. London actually has many of the worst extremes of poverty in the UK, a huge structural crisis over housring etc, etc... In that context, the remain vote in places like Lewisham or Waltham Forest was really not what you seem to be claiming it was.

In any case, where people did vote to leave, there were a multitude of reasons why - and a feeling of resentment towards the financial elite/London, which is probably fair enough, was just one of those. But fundamentally, what you can't do is deny that 1) Brexit as an ideological project was one driven by the right 2) The outcome of Brexit was always going to, regardless of what exact Brexit you got, hurt working class people the most

[cp]

Yeah, this idea that the Remain campaign or the EU generally is nothing more than a Davos-Bildeberg-neoliberal stitch up (and, conversely, that Leave/Euroskepticism is a spontaneous grassroots rebellion of the righteous salt of the Earth types) just doesn't hold water.

In the first case, the EEC/EU has always been an amalgam of liberal capitalist managerialism and utopian humanist universalism. The former element took on a more neoliberal flavour after the 1990s, which most lefties rightly criticized then and now, but the former never disappeared - quite the opposite. It was that vaguely socialistic humanism that sparked the initial Tory distaste for the EU and what has animated its authoritarian-minded opponents ever since.

Secondly, the Leave campaign leadership was overwhelmingly rich, well-connected, right-wingers. They were just as much an elite as the Remain leadership and their ostensible goal was just as 'globalist' as that of the Remainers. The main difference was that the Leave leadership/campaign was pushing for a brand of internationalism that was less inhibited by supranational institutions (thus giving the rich more latitude to do as they please, while robbing the not-super-rich of the opportunities and protections that come from multilateral agreements like the Common Market, Freedom of Movement, ECHR, and ECJ). Their great trick was to fuse their cause with the legitimate grievances of the post-crash electorate and cloak it in a (troublingly xenophobic) brand of British nationalism.

[Blair]

There’s a reason why Labour became much more pro European in the 1980s and it was because of stuff like the social chapter, working time directive etc etc.