Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

This blog will pay for itself.

I really should read my own blog.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Republicans in disarray!

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

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Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Crisis in The Commons: Johnson Loses His Majority As Brexit Consumes the United Kingdom

Crisis in The Commons: Johnson Loses His Majority As Brexit Consumes the United Kingdom

by | 264 Comments

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Boris Johnson has lost his majority in The House of Commons.

And this won’t be the last defection today.

Here’s the live feed from the House of Commons. Michael Gove is at the microphone now spewing his usual bullshit.

Here’s live coverage from Sky News:

Neither the BBC, nor ITV are running live feeds and coverage of what is going on. Or, rather, that can be embedded here.

As always, Carol Cadwaller is on top of this story!

Peter Jukes gets right to the core of the problem.

Of course Brexit isn’t the crime, it is the cover up!

And here’s some solid analysis from Lewis Goodall of SkyNews.

Here’s a link to my analysis the day after the Brexit vote. An excerpt:

The short course for strategy and policy is really quite quick and simple. To make policy one determines what your ideal objectives are, establish how much risk you are willing to assume to achieve them, and then either decide to attempt to achieve those objectives or a less than ideal, but still perfectly acceptable, but less risky alternative. Once this is done, in order to further minimize that risk and to ensure the maximum likelihood of success, you determine what ways and means you have, what additional ways and means you may need, how to bridge the gap between the two, and then you execute: applying your ways and means to achieve your ends. Finally, personalities matter and relationships matter. Congratulations! You now know more about strategy and policy than any elected or appointed official pushing for the Leave position that I saw on the BBC News coverage of the Brexit vote from 8 PM EDT last night to 3 AM EDT this morning.

It didn’t matter if the official was from the Conservative Party or from the Labor Party or from the UK Independence Party. They knew what the ends they wanted to achieve – leave the EU on terms negotiated to be the most favorable to Britain, but that was it. None of them expressed any real idea of how to achieve this beyond Vote for Leave, Article 50 now or later, return of sovereignty, and a better future for Britain. I don’t mean to make light of what happened or what anyone tuning in witnessed. A number of these ladies and gentlemen were quite articulate, had a clear grasp of how the Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty process worked, and in some cases actually were quite aware that the real issues were poor outcomes for average, and often rural/small town/village British people that resulted from the failures of British government and governance, not because of anything specifically involving the EU.

The pro Brexit vote demonstrates the failure of elected and appointed officials who do not have a firm grasp of policy, strategy, and their potential effects – positive and negative. It is quite ironic that a successful referendum campaign partially based on anger at elites, notables, and experts to run things effectively has shown that the elites, notables, and experts running the Vote Leave movement and campaign do indeed not have the foggiest idea of how to run things effectively. Nothing says “I understand and empathize” like a Vote Leave Tory Member of Parliament, who graduated from public school and the Oxbridge system and has been an MP for his entire professional career, explaining to BBC anchors that the average British person is fed up with the failures of the elites and the experts running Britain and that is why the country must leave the EU.

The chaos seen today clearly demonstrates the failure of strategy and policy among the Vote Leave campaign leadership. We can clearly see that they don’t really have any ways and means to achieve their stated end: a negotiated departure from the EU that provides Britain with the best possible terms. Nor do they have any idea what they should be. They have destroyed their relationships with the EU leadership who want the separation done immediately and are in no mood to bargain, let alone allow Britain off the hook easy. And they have no leverage with the EU as a result. Johnson, Gove, Stuart, Farage, and others are now the dog that caught the Vauxhall. Unfortunately they clearly have no idea what to do with it.

And here’s a live shot of Brexit in action:

https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/1168791087873441793

Rule Britannia, Britannia rule a bunch of small towns in the middle of England where the population is old, on government assistance, white, and angry.

Open thread!

 

Reader Interactions

264Comments

  1. 1.

    Yarrow

    Posted this below, but better fit here. Reminder of why leaving the EU is so important to these rich guys.

    If the UK is still in the EU come January

    New anti tax evasion laws will start exposing offshore accounts of the mega rich tax avoiding UK elite, people like Rees-mogg, Johnson & Farage

    Will also expose where Arron Banks unexplained £8m Brexit funding came from
    #StopTheCoup
    — Cirian75 / Simon #RevokeA50 #FBPE ?#UniteToRemain (@cirian75) September 3, 2019

    Edit: Sorry – didn’t realize it was in the original post.

  2. 2.

    RaflW

    Cadwalladr: “The tech is out of control. And there’s been no justice. Only cover-ups, denials, delays.”

    Sounds like the US as well. Probably every westernized nation in the months and years ahead. Not to be grossly pessimistic, but the power of social media, and its utter lack of accountability is quite possibly going to ruin us.

  8. 8.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yarrow: I’ll never tell…

    I added it after I saw you’d posted it in the previous thread. I’d seen a similar tweet yesterday, but couldn’t find it.

  9. 9.

    Yarrow

    Carole is wrong that Johnson can independently call an election. It requires a vote in Commons. BBC keeps getting it wrong.

  13. 13.

    Yarrow

    @Sab: Speaking of Churchill…

    Sir Nicholas Soames says he will vote against the government this evening.

    It will be w great look for Boris Johnson to expel the grandson of Sir Winston Churchill from the Conservative Party on what is the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II. pic.twitter.com/12hinUf9z9
    — Charlie Proctor (@MonarchyUK) September 3, 2019

    Good look, Tories.

  14. 14.

    ruemara

    I am so tickled at his loss of majority. Now, if we could just get a good libdem group going forward.

  16. 16.

    Yarrow

    Also, if you haven’t read this thread by Peter Foster, it’s really good. He’s done incredible reporting and has multiple sources saying Boris and Cummings are lying that they’re trying to get a deal. You have to click through to read the whole thing but it’s worth it. Generated a lot of discussion last night and may have pushed a few people to vote against the government.

    EXC: Inside Brexit War Cabinet: – Dominic Cummings described EU negotiation as "a sham" in internal strategy meetings, per two highly placed sources.

    – AG Cox warned Johnson it was "complete fantasy" to think EU would bin backstop 1/threadhttps://t.co/jU8TkvAtow1/thread
    — Peter Foster (@pmdfoster) September 2, 2019

  17. 17.

    PeakVT

    Don’t worry, folks. The UK has clearly written constitutional rules that will prevent anything abnormal from happening.

  18. 18.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Yarrow:

    If the UK is still in the EU come January

    New anti tax evasion laws will start exposing offshore accounts of the mega rich tax avoiding UK elite, people like Rees-mogg, Johnson & Farage

    I’d support celebrating the new year by firing these assholes into the North Sea with a circus cannon.

  19. 19.

    Marcopolo

    The twitter feed I am enjoying the most is from Ian Dunt: https://mobile.twitter.com/

    He includes stuff like: “There is now a large crowd outside parliament chanting: ‘Fuck the government. Fuck Boris.’”

    Wish I could make my post prettier but that’s the limitation of my cell.

  20. 20.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Yarrow: If the English don’t understand their own rules, what hope is there for us on this side of the Atlantic?

    Speaking of rules, does Boris losing his majority mean that he is now tarred and feathered, or at least put in the stocks for a few hours with a basket of rotten fruit and vegetables nearby? I’m sure I read that somewhere and didn’t just make it up.

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    @mrmoshpotato: Didn’t the Sepoy’s actually do that to a British colonial governor? Strapped him to the business end of a piece of artillery and yelled pull.

  31. 31.

    Tony Jay

    I dropped this in an open thread below before leaving work so I missed Johnson getting hand-bagged by the MP for Bracknell, but most of it is still relevant two whole hours later.

    BREXIT ALERT

    “When we said yes, you never mentioned anything about bringing a bear”

    Well here we are then, three years into this extended audition for last place in the ‘Best Country to Retire To – All Nations Tournament’ (tied with Mordor and Latveria) and maybe today we’ll finally start to get some sense of how hard this little old country of ours is going to hit the bumpers. Too hard and we go smashing through the last, flimsy barrier and down, down, down into the uncharted abyss where dwelleth nightmares and the fell beasts of dystopia. Too softly and we bounce back a little, doomed to repeat this again and again until the adults say “Non. C’est fini” and send us to our room with no cake and nothing on TV but endless Piers Morgan interviews with… oh, anyone, they’re all awful.

    Hit them just right, though, and this shit could start getting mopped up.

    Because today is the day Parliament re-opens for business after the long summer recess, during which Clown Prince Flobalob’s unelected cabal of lab-grown slime-moulds and undigested prairie-oysters took advantage of the lack of (technically) adult supervision to get really, really blotto on cheap Harrods champers and stumble around Biarritz, Helsinki and other godless Euro-Bloc locations cosplaying as Earth-3’s Imperial Britannic Government for the entertainment of their deluded supporters back in Blighty. They’ve made portentous pronouncements aplenty about leaving the EU “Deal or No-Deal”, all breathlessly regurgitated by the pinch-cheeked fanbois that make up our ‘independent media’ but ultimately proven to be about as meaningful as the last, heartfelt call-to-arms made by Fritz Hoffelhoof, goat-mascot of the 13th Brandenburger Light Infantry Regiment, as the Russian noose tightened around a frozen Stalingrad and Hans the Regimental Quartermaster advanced on him with a sharpened bayonet and some scavenged onions. Bleat all you like, mein kamerad, no one understands your language and despite your surprisingly intense personal loyalty to Der Fuhrer, you’re nothing to us but meat that we need to eat.

    Yeah. Metaphor.

    Anyway, here’s the situation going into today’s abattoir of hopes and dreams.

    Johnson gave an ‘emergency speech’ in front of Number 10 last night in which he basically lied through his teeth about his intentions, claiming that he (and the country, for they are One Swollen Being Entire, dontchaknow) intended to concentrate on getting a ‘better deal’ from Europe and really, really, really didn’t want an early General Election, honest, while at exactly the same time his gofers were eeling their way through the journalistic crush to brief the big guns of political reporting that, should Parliament get its act together and pass legislation strictly forbidding a 31st October exit from the EU without a withdrawal agreement, Johnson would consider that akin to a confidence vote and immediately table a motion asking Parliament to vote for a General Election to take place no later than October 14th.

    A few of things to unpick about this. Back in the day General Elections could be called at any time in a Government’s 5-year term and were often called a bit early if the Government of the day thought the timing improved its chances. That all went out of the window a few years ago when the Tory/Lib-Dem Coalition Government, presided over by David “Big-Pig in Little-Pig” Cameron, passed the Fixed-Term Government Act, which basically forbids calling snap General Elections during a fixed 5 year term unless, a) the Government asks for it, and b) 2/3 of MPs vote for it. Theresa May’s Government used this part of the Act to bring about the 2017 General Election (in which she lost her Tory majority and all chances for an early Brexit – I blame Corbyn!) and it’s the main thing that later prevented the fall of her Tory/DUP alliance following the historically humiliating Parliamentary defeats of her shitty Withdrawal Deal back in 2018 and early 2019.

    Now, Labour have been calling for a General Election pretty constantly ever since the last one, because of course they have, they’re the Opposition and would love a chance to unseat the Tories and start fixing the damage caused by decades of right-wing orthodoxy, but there’s genuine trepidation about the timing of this one that will almost certainly lead to Labour saying no.

    It works like this. The first thing the cross-party alliance opposed to a No-Deal Brexit will do on returning to Parliament is wait for a gap in proceedings (which will be early this evening) to call for a debate and a vote on what’s being called the Benn Bill, which would instruct Johnson to ask the EU for an extension until 31 January 2020, with an additional clause ordering him to accept any alternate extension date the EU proposes unless Parliament says no, so effectively taking back the power to decide when the UK is supposed to exit the EU from the executive to the legislature and removing the threat of a No-Deal crash out from Number 10’s armoury. It would also keep control of the vote’s progression through its Commons and Lords stages under Parliament’s purview so that the current Government couldn’t proceed with their threat to prorogue (shut down) Parliament early next week. No funny business, you fuckers.

    (Would the EU give another extension? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what the extension would be for and how well EU heads of government could sell that to their own electorates. It’s been out there for a while that the EU would happily give an extension in the case of a new election or a referendum, though, anything to get the whole rancid carcass of Brexit in the back of the van and moving ‘somewhere’. If they don’t, well, cross that bridge when we come to it)

    Now, Johnson’s threat to respond to this vote by tabling an immediate motion for a snap General Election looks like a no brainer. Labour want one, and with their votes he gets to 2/3 easily enough, but wait one shiny, pink minute! The process to turn the Benn Bill into law takes time, at least a couple of days at maximum warp and even longer if the Government’s minions throw their bodies on the tracks to slow it down. Without its passage then voting for a General Election to take place on the 14th of October would allow Johnson to dissolve Parliament 25 days prior to the Election, at which point he could then use his Prime Ministerial authority to unilaterally change the date of the Election to early November, bringing the threat of a No-Deal Brexit back to life regardless of what the now dissolved Parliament voted for. It would be an insanely dangerous and destructive thing to do, but in case no one has noticed this is the right wing of the Conservative Party we’ve talking about, the fiendishly sexy ‘Draco in Leather Pants’ bad-boy Britain’s woefully biased political correspondents fall asleep every night dreaming sweaty dreams about. So many of them would be flinging themselves open-mouthed and glistening with Vaseline in the direction of his junk for doing something so maliciously cunning that the ensuing mass concussion incident as their heads collided would clog up London’s Accident & Emergency wards for weeks.

    No, much more likely Labour and the other anti-No Deal parties reject Johnson’s motion and deal with the inevitable bullshit aftermath as best they can. “Waaaah! What are you scared of?” and “Why won’t you just GET ON with it!?!” will be the sum total of coverage from the Daily Heil, the Sexpress and the Murdoch stable of rags, with the BBC echoing the same narrative in slightly less punchable terms. We might then get the Government pushing the little known (as in, it’s only been mentioned today) clause of the Fixed-Term Parliament Act which lets the PM basically stick two fingers up to Parliament and call an Election by simply writing “notwithstanding the FTPA we will be having a General Election on such and such a date” in biro on the toilet wall and sending pictures of it to MPs via his Instagram feed. They could do that, but I’m hard pressed to think of anything more likely to torch the last tattered rags of Tory Party unity and lead to an immediate Vote of No Confidence.

    No, strike that, there is one other thing he could do that would be even more incendiary. He could be a good little boy and toddle off to the EU meeting on the 17th of October and make the request for an extension on behalf of the UK Parliament, and then, acting as the head of government for one of the 28 constituent member states of the EU, veto the extension himself. Parliament would go ballistic, yes, but the natives of Gammon Island would erect giant statues in his honour across the hills and dales of their White Free State. One thing’s for sure, if Johnson goes all in on preventing Parliament from delaying Brexit by any means necessary, he leaves a good chunk of Tory MPs with no other choice than to use the only mechanism left available to remove him. We’d still get an Election, but one where an Interim Government holds the reins rather than the far-Right revolutionary cell currently holding the country hostage.

    Yeah, so, crazy things could happen. Meanwhile in the background we’ve had the revelation in the Torygraph by its Europe Editor that he has proof from private strategy meetings held by Johnson that his senior political advisor, Dominic “Kneel before My Giant Head” Cummings, was happy to admit that their entire policy of renegotiating anything with the EU was a complete sham designed to drag proceedings out until Parliamentary counteraction was ruled out. Bear in mind, the entire Government case against Tory Party rebels voting to prevent a No Deal crash-out is based on the claim that removing the possibility of leaving without a deal “cuts the legs out” from under the UK’s negotiating position. This morning the former Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer Phillip “Stiff” Hammond was on the BBC absolutely slaughtering this claim and pointing out that the Government isn’t actually ‘negotiating’ with anyone, so there are no negotiations to sabotage. And he’s right, it’s all obvious lies, but the idea that a Tory MP of his standing would actually say that on television left three BBC journalists in a state of tonic immobility and caused the Director-General to cancel his 11 a.m. spanking session with Madam Von Thwacky in order to apologise to Johnson directly via a tearful phone call and the couriered-over heart of his firstborn child.

    Oh, and let us not forget the trio of court cases being brought against the Government to stop prorogation and prevent a No-Deal through legal means. The Edinburgh case could be decided today and that alone could inflict another humiliation on the gobshite parade in Downing Street.

    What’s going to happen? Fuck knows. The current Parliamentary manoeuvres are all about pushing back the day of decision so Conservative MPs don’t have to make difficult decisions, but Johnson’s mob of nihilistic moral eunuchs seem to be following a program of maximum fuckery in order to close off any escape route other than the one marked Vote of No Confidence. He knows that his only pathway to a full term as PM goes through an Election campaign where he can claim to have been this close to forcing those European johnnies to surrender to British demands before the Remoaner majority in Parliament sabotaged it for everyone. Only with the majority of Tory voters and Farage’s BXP fascist-cultists backing him (with or without Nigel’s approval) can he hope to scrape back into Number 10 past a divided anti-Brexit vote, at which point he’s got a maximum of 5 years to enjoy the trappings of power and do favours for the right people. It’s all about the Benjamins, yo.

    So, expect fireworks, but not just yet, give it a few days. I’m sure the Prick of Pennsylvania Avenue will be along any minute with something to occupy y’all in the meantime. 8-)

    Oh, hang on.

    ++++++++++Breaking News++++++++++++

    While Flobalob was giving his latest package of lies and misused Classical allusions to Parliament the Conservative MP for Bracknell Phillip Lee stood up, crossed the chamber, and sat down on the Lib Dem benches.

    Tory majority down to zero. It’s gone. Now it’s a minority Government.

    Ha!

  32. 32.

    Yarrow

    There is a court case against prorogation (shutting down) of Parliament. I think the Scottish and Welsh governments have joined it. In any case,

    Really interesting detail that No 10 declined to give a sworn statement to court …..govt provided some emails and documents to court late last night instead https://t.co/gSZjVEIvSo— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) September 3, 2019

    So, Boris’s government won’t give sworn statements–possibly because they don’t have them ready or decided they wouldn’t be helpful. But could also be because the Minister could/would not sign it because it put them in legal peril.

  36. 36.

    Yarrow

    @rikyrah: Always. It’s bee the real issue behind the deadline and why they are so freaking determined to make Brexit happen, no matter what. Their dirty laundry will be discovered.

  37. 37.

    Adam L Silverman

    @trollhattan: Also, it, as we’ve seen with our own, eventually becomes a fetish object full of conjuring words that are practically pointless and used as shields to protect those who use it as a sword from legitimate criticism that they’re violating it and its spirit.

  39. 39.

    Another Scott

    @RaflW: Apparently it’s actually worse in the Philippines.

    One month before the recent midterm elections in the Philippines, a political Facebook page called PulitikaNgInaMo shared an article that said Chinese tourists were largely responsible for lawless behavior on the resort island of Boracay.

    The page called the tourists “dog eaters,” and referred to Chinese people as “ching chong.” It invited its followers to submit memes mocking them. The same page also posted a photo of what appeared to be a Chinese child defecating on a public street and called on its many followers to “fight together” against Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his close relationship with China.

    Three years after Duterte’s 2016 campaign rode a wave of false stories, paid trolling, and the resulting Facebook engagement to victory, opposition candidates who once lambasted the president and his legions of digital disinformation agents have adopted some of the same tactics. The result is a political environment even more polluted by trolling, fake accounts, impostor news brands, and information operations, according to a new study.

    […]

    Our near future if we don’t do something about it… :-(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  43. 43.

    stinger

    It’s not like Winson never left the Conservative party himself.

    I’ve read the post; now to read Tony Jay’s comment!

  44. 44.

    Tony Jay

    @MattF:

    You can take your simple math and you can shove it where Barry White stored his handkerchiefs, Coastal Elitist.

    tldr – Yes.

  47. 47.

    MattF

    @Tony Jay: I know, negative numbers are such a bother. “Minus times minus together make plus, the reasons for which we need not discuss.”

  49. 49.

    Tony Jay

    @Yarrow:

    Carole is wrong that Johnson can independently call an election. It requires a vote in Commons. BBC keeps getting it wrong.

    According to the people who know such things that’s not quite true. There is, apparently, a clause in the Fixed-Term Parliament Act that allows the Prime Minister to basically over-rule a failure to reach the 2/3 majority threshold and simply announce they’re ordering a new Election date because of reasons.

    Quite how this doesn’t render the entire FTPA null, void and pointless is a question I’d quite like answered too. Is it just bluster and bullshit from Johnson’s Dead-enders? We’ll have to see.

  53. 53.

    jl

    @Tony Jay: One thing puzzles me greatly about this mess is why serious commenters, as one did in a tweet posted in this thread, keep saying that it is illegitimate to not comply with the Brexit referendum? The referendum was nonbinding, and it plainly said so in black and white English text.

    So, now we have the bizarre and dangerous and sad situation of a government saying it doesn’t have to observe binding votes passed in Parliament, but it must observe a nonbinding referendum.

  55. 55.

    Yarrow

    That new Brexit plan going so well.

    EU diplomat gets in touch as Boris Johnson loses majority woth defection of Philip Lee.

    "Now he has lost his majority it seems futile to continue discussions. We can’t be sure that whatever were to come out of it will ever translate into reality."
    — James Crisp (@JamesCrisp6) September 3, 2019

  57. 57.

    TenguPhule

    @ruemara:

    Now, if we could just get a good libdem group going forward.

    The Lib-Dems were co-partners for the last round of Tory destruction of Britain.

  58. 58.

    zhena gogolia

    You guys, I was up until midnight trying to figure out why the Duke of Omnium had to resign as PM. I can’t take this in broad daylight.

  59. 59.

    HeleninEire

    Jesus, Adam. I thought that kid in the last tweet was gonna cut his own balls off. Really. Would have been the bestest metaphor.

  62. 62.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Joey Maloney: I thought the emphasis on disclosing intelligence for political purposes was offbase. Of course that it one of the uses of intelligence. It requires a calculation of whether sources are to be burned and whether that is worth it, but there is nothing new about stealing information and then releasing it to try to coerce an adversary.

    Israel’s problem is that it has no evidence that Iran’s nuclear weapons program continued beyond 2004 or so, which is what the consensus of intelligence services has been all along. So Bibi has to stretch things and lie, with the help of enablers in the US.

  66. 66.

    Yarrow

    @Tony Jay: There is this:

    As the Sunday Times revealed a week ago, you can get around the 23rds majority needed for an election in the Fixed Term Parliaments Act by passing a one line bill that says “notwithstanding the FTPA, we will have a general election on X date”— Tim Shipman (@ShippersUnbound) September 3, 2019

    They would have to get that legislation passed through both houses and can be amended in any way. Like, amended to block No Deal Brexit. Anything. It would be hard to get it passed quickly and especially with amendments like that. So, essentially no going to happen.

  68. 68.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ?

    @Yarrow:

    You should see the comments. “Don’t people have jobs?” “Can’t wait for kids to go back to school.” Sound familiar?

    Good god, yes it does. The idiots here and over there don’t understand the simple fact that not everybody has a 9-5, M-F job. Some jobs you work night shifts a few days a week but still get 40 hrs. And some people are shock of all shocks, either unemployed because they’re disabled, can’t find a job, or are retired. It’s such a crock and a really dumb argument

  70. 70.

    Jeffro

    It’s really fascinating:
    – attack a democracy, democracy roars back and rolls you right up (imperial Japan, Nazi Germany)
    – push on a democracy, democracy…eventually…pushes back, stops you, and then lets you crumble from within (USSR and its allies)
    – get a democracy fighting within itself, REALLY fighting with its own people…and they just sorta do the ‘crumble from within’ thing themselves (current UK and US)

    Putin’s like, “why do I even buy tanks anymore? I just need the internet/social media and a few well-bought politicians”

  72. 72.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud:

    No, he’s the hero of Trollope’s Palliser novels, Plantagenet Palliser.
    Trollope identified the BernieBro phenomenon back in the 1870s.

  73. 73.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Yarrow:

    You should see the comments. “Don’t people have jobs?” “Can’t wait for kids to go back to school.” Sound familiar?

    Good god, yes it does. The idiots here and over there don’t understand the simple fact that not everybody has a 9-5, M-F job. Some jobs you work night shifts a few days a week but still get 40 hrs. And some people are shock of all shocks, either unemployed because they’re disabled, can’t find a job, or are retired. It’s such a crock and a really dumb argument

  75. 75.

    Tony Jay

    @jl:

    Partly because the referendum, while non-binding, was the reason Parliament passed the EU Withdrawal Bill that ordered the activation of Article 50 and actually is binding legislation.

    Also because the Brexit process has proven so fucked-up and divisive that it’s politically easier for pro-Brexit MPs to put the responsibility for their choices on the sacred “Willadapeepul” rather than on a Parliamentary vote that is neither more or less sacred than a vote to fund public toilets in central Barnsley.

    Also, and centrally, despite the fact that the Referendum itself was compromised and full of outright lies and should never have happened, it did, and 17.4 million voted Leave. That’s a biiiiiiig constituency for an idea that very, very few people thought was anything but a fringe craze before the result came in. It empowered a lot of extremists and thrust them into powerful positions and over time the whole concept took on a weight and authority that only another Public Vote (this one giving Remain the majority) could properly dispel.

    Which is why, since Day One, rejecting another Referendum on the EU has been Commandment 1 through 10 of the New Brexitremist Bible. They do not want to lose their ‘mandate’.

  77. 77.

    Timurid

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The punishment was known as “being blown from a gun.” The British (in)famously used it on rebel prisoners during the 1857 rebellion and on a handful of later occasions. It was supposedly done in imitation of a punishment used in the Mughal era, but the actual origins are unclear (I don’t know of any earlier documented examples). I don’t know of any cases of the rebels using this method, but there was at least one incident where rebels carried out mass executions by herding groups of prisoners into a barn where cannon loaded with canister had been placed at the entrance. Blowing people from guns was meant to be a spectacle and lesson. Using a killing jar to eliminate large groups of people was simply efficient. Contrary to the conventional wisdom about Westerners being more ‘civilized’ and ‘rational,’ the British during that war were much more ostentatious and gruesome while committing atrocities (and much more likely to rape or torture their victims) while the Indians were typically cold, calculating and efficient.

  78. 78.

    justawriter

    And to think this all started because the EU insisted British sausages should contain meat.
    (Yes Minister reference in case someone wants to correct me)

  79. 79.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Timurid: Thanks. I was tracking on most of that, but I just seem to remember there was one British general that was blown from a gun as a turnabout is fair play thing. It is entirely possible I am misremembering that.

  80. 80.

    RaflW

    @Marcopolo: Great tip to follow this guy. Wow.

    Quite apart from my obvious prejudices for, you know, reason and liberalism and stuff, I honestly thought Johnson would be so much better at this stuff. Struck by how poor he is.— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) September 3, 2019

  81. 81.

    Sab

    @ruemara: Didn’t the Libdems join with David Cameron’s Tories, and all they have to show for it is the five year election rule. Not even a stupid t-shirt, just a bad, anti-democratic law. I know Brits invented modern representative democracy, but they sure do it strangely.

  83. 83.

    Tony Jay

    @Yarrow:

    Now that makes a lot more sense. Though it still makes a mockery of the FTPA in that a Govt with even a small majority that – did – want an Election could force the whole thing through (and do so stripping off unwanted amendments as it advances) despite united opposition from a minority that was a lot larger than 1/3 of MPs plus 1.

  84. 84.

    Yarrow

    @Tony Jay: Yes, but it still has to pass both houses, so maybe not as easy as it sounds if minority was staunchly opposed.

    Sky News has learned the Brexit negotiating team under Boris Johnson has been reduced to less than a quarter of the size of the team under Theresa May— Sky News Breaking (@SkyNewsBreak) September 3, 2019

    It’s clear they don’t want to negotiate.

  86. 86.

    RaflW

    @justawriter: Well, that just led me down a rabbit hole of the use of rusk to make Bangers more tasty. I’ll be in Scotland and the north of England Oct 17-23 (could be a fascinating moment to be over there, huh?). I hope to enjoy a meat+rusk sausage or two, though my occasional gout flares make me rather cautious.

    Oh, and if the end result of all this falderal is that Boris is disgraced, and then, a few years from now Scotland gives the UK the shove? I’ll find that even more delicious than seasoned pork and twice-baked biscuit crumbs!

  87. 87.

    Another Scott

    For our NC peeps. Twitter:

    Dan McCready Verified account @McCreadyForNC

    With Hurricane Dorian on the way, elections officials have encouraged everyone to vote today and tomorrow, before the hurricane hits! Find your polling place here and make a plan to vote! ?http://danmccready.com/voteearly #nc09 #ncpol

    6:45 AM – 3 Sep 2019 from Charlotte, NC

    Stay safe, everyone, but get out and vote!!

    (via LOLGOP)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  88. 88.

    Yarrow

    Labour chief whip Nick Brown just told PLP the party would not back PM's snap election bid. He said party wanted Johnson to "stew in his own juices" and be made to "own" his mess, one present says.John McDonnell didnt demur.— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) September 3, 2019

    Now this is some hardball politics. Make Johnson own his own mess.

  89. 89.

    Sab

    @Tony Jay: Thanks to you Brits for inventing modern representative democracy. What a weird animal your version is. Makes unicorns farting rainbows seem sensible and mundane.

    I get the feeling that you guys dont’t even know what the rules are, not from ignorance (yay USA) but because you haven’t quite finalized them in the last few centuries.

  90. 90.

    Tony Jay

    @Yarrow:

    They don’t and never did. It was always theatre and a show for their Base, walking the fine line between feeding the Gammon Mob red meat and molifying the non-lunatic elements in Press and Party with choreographed moves that approximated those you’d expect from an actual Government.

    It just turns out Johnson was only ever good at playing a canny politician pretending to be an idiot on TV and Dominic Cummings is a fucking menace who thinks he’s the Gauleiter of Occupied Englande.

    My tears, they weep.

  92. 92.

    Roger Moore

    @Jeffro:

    get a democracy fighting within itself, REALLY fighting with its own people…and they just sorta do the ‘crumble from within’ thing themselves (current UK and US)

    The key is that this isn’t something you can produce on demand. Putin has done an excellent job of exacerbating existing disputes within our societies, but he didn’t create those disputes in the first place.

  93. 93.

    Brachiator

    The opposition is being cheekily referred to as the Rebel Alliance. Does this make Boris Johnson Darth Vader?

  95. 95.

    jl

    @Tony Jay: Thanks for your informative commentary and response.

    I’ve been doubtful of analysis (including maybe yours?) that concluded Johnson was bluffing and thought the EU would come offer something to prevent a no deal crash out. Except then I remembered that, by all informed trade and economic analysis that I have read, the government has made little effort to actually be a country that manages its own trade and customs on its own again. Which is very odd, since the claim of the Brexiters seem to be that they want to actually be a country that manages its own trade and customs on its own again.

    So, they by their own inaction have prepared for the economic disruption that they claim won’t happen. Was this a kind of implicit threat to the EU that they better offer a better deal or their trade would have been seriously disrupted, the welfare of the British people be damned?

    It seems that way, now that news of secret planning for serious economic disruption after a no deal Brexit has been reported.
    If Johnson was not bluffing, the mindless, insensate, utterly oblivious fecklessness is mind boggling and inexplicable.

    Either way, not the course of the stereotypical ‘sound man’ the Tories are supposed to represent.

  96. 96.

    Timurid

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Almost all of the claims of torture, rape and unusually gruesome killings made against the rebels during and immediately after the war were fabrications (or projection). To be clear, most of the leading rebel factions committed war crimes and murdered large numbers of British citizens and Indian ‘collaborators,’ but they typically killed their victims in the most simple and expedient method possible. No British general was taken prisoner (except possibly for Wheeler, who may have briefly been taken captive before being shot at Cawnpore). ‘Blowing from guns’ may have happened before the British era, but its exact origins are unclear.*

    *I wouldn’t be surprised if Jahangir had somebody blown from a gun, because that guy was one sick fuck (who liked to experiment with methods of execution).

  98. 98.

    jl

    @jl: Instead of “So, they by their own inaction have prepared for the economic disruption that they claim won’t happen. Was this a kind of implicit threat to the EU” I meant to type

    “So, they by their own inaction have ENCOURAGED the economic disruption that they claim won’t happen. Was this a kind of implicit threat to the EU”

  101. 101.

    Baud

    Can you imagine if Susan Collins or Mitt Romney actually walked across the aisle because of Trump’s actions?

    Haha. I crack myself up.

  102. 102.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Jeffro: Guess Nazis didn’t have their act totally together or just didn’t go far enuff when they had Budh family and other US industrial leaders working for them (eg, Ford vehicles for making panzers, IBM method of record keeping for finding Jewish ancestry).

    Of course, there was no social media to bend and twist public opinion.

  103. 103.

    Brachiator

    @jl:

    I’ve been doubtful of analysis (including maybe yours?) that concluded Johnson was bluffing and thought the EU would come offer something to prevent a no deal crash out.

    The Tories seemed to believe this even though the EU never indicated that they were inclined in this direction. I even read some reporter insist that there must be back channel talks going on between UK and EU representatives, even though there was not a shred of evidence that this was happening. Not a hint or leak or anonymous comment not for attribution.

    There also seems to be an odd arrogance at play with respect to Ireland. To the Conservatives, Ireland is an insignificant irritation. Unfortunately, the Republic of Ireland is a full member of the EU, so that body cares about the nation and the integrity of the Good Friday Agreement than does the British government.

  105. 105.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Yarrow: Wasn’t that already the case? That’s what happened with May’s Deal – she had a majority and negotiated a deal with the EU that no one found to be acceptable because it was awful. It was probably also the best she could have gotten.

    It’s the same thing here. Whatever deal BoJo reached would almost inevitably fail when it got to Parliament.

  106. 106.

    Jay

    @jl:

    In the UK, like in Canada, the Civil Service does all the hard work of Government. The actual meat and bones, from proposals and reports, to legislation, budgets and enforcement.

    Amongst “Conservatives”, the Civil Service, (aside from their appointed Heads), are seen as dweebs, nerds, intellectuals and part of the Establishment, or worse, the Deep State, and are why “Conservatives” can never get their pet plans enacted, or why what they do manage to pass, turns up bollicks.

    Which explains why, despite Brexiteers sitting in the EU Parliement for decades, the Brexiteers have no idea what the EU is, does, or how it operates, or the British Government for that matter.

    So of course, they embraced bluffs, threats and fantasy as their negotiation tactic, because to do otherwise, would have required either cracking open a book or listening and acting on Civil Service advise.

    So, you get this bubble, of Brexiteers talking to Brexiteers, about how they imagine the EU, Trade, Governance works, that has no grounding in reality, and you get a self perpetuating bubble of idiocy.

  107. 107.

    debbie

    After having to deal with two stupid dr. appointments, this is very good news to come home to! Not sure if it will end well, but it puts the screws to BoJo, which can only be a good thing.

  109. 109.

    The Dangerman

    I’m lost (could be a caffeine level thing).

    Trump said Brexit would be great. He didn’t lie to us again, did he (of course, opens up the question of whether or not Sir Shart has ever told us the truth about anything).

  110. 110.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: Can you imagine if Susan Collins or Mitt Romney actually walked across the aisle because of Trump’s actions?

    I always thought Collins was weak, in the last six months or so I’ve been vacillating between “weak” and “profoundly cynical”, then recently I read an article that said she’s in line to chair appropriations if she– and McConnell– hold on to power. I gotta say, I bought into her principled-but-timid act for years, and I think a lot of people did, so she’s not without some talent.
    As for Willard, I remember that one brief moment of respect I had for him when he, I think alone among the 2012 primary candidates, he refused to make the pilgrimage to trump’s lair to pose for photos for an endorsement. Then a very short time later, they agreed to meet on neutral ground. I still take some pleasure in thinking how horrified The Lady Ann must have been at that birthday cake. (the BuzzFeed link tells me the cake was made by the star of “Cake Boss”; I’ve never seen the show and don’t know that person, but I’m thinking there’s at least a 50% chance that was a troll of a confection)

  111. 111.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Brachiator: Maybe that makes Boris Johnson into Director Krennic? Someone who’s smart and conniving, but ultimately just isn’t up to the task and is betrayed by his allies/rivals during his own moment of failure?

    @Roger Moore: If the leaks I’m hearing regarding Episode IX are true, then we really don’t want to compare Boris to Hux. :/

  113. 113.

    jl

    @Baud: Good chance Baud 2020! would stumble across the aisle by accident and not notice. Which shows you should vote for the virtual man, not the party.

  114. 114.

    mozzerb

    This is a link to the text of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act:

    http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/14/section/2
    (there are other sections, but that’s the main one)

    If anyone can see a way in that for the PM to pull an early election date out of his arse regardless of what Parliament has to say, you have stronger interpretive powers than I do, Luke.

    Basically, it looks to me as if the only ways to get an early election under the FTPA are (a) two-thirds majority of MPs vote for it, (b) PM loses a no-confidence motion and no one else can form a Government in the next 14 days. Also, the necessary wording of the motions in both cases is laid down specifically. So when BoJo says he can treat any motion he likes as a no-confidence vote, that sounds to me like his usual bullshit.

    (Yes, you can pass another Act that basically says “ignore the FTPA this one time, we’re having an election on this date”, but that’s not something the PM can do on his own.)

  115. 115.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Has David Cameron, who as I recall started this whole mess in a cynical attempt to distract people, managed to make himself completely forgotten in all this? I don’t follow this religiously, but it seems to me people are angrier at May than Cameron.
    Also, weren’t Cameron and Johnson in the same snooty club at Oxford, Bullingdon or something? Though I get the impression Johnson was the Chris Matthews to Cameron’s Tim Russert, with a lot of “NOKD” eye-rolling going on behind his back

    @TenguPhule: The last Star War I saw featured Sir Alec Guiness and was playing in a movie house, but I’m gonna go with Baja the Hutt, Jabba’s not-smarter younger brother.

  116. 116.

    Jeffro

    @Roger Moore: right…”get them fighting, REALLY fighting” = “exacerbate the divisions”. I think we’re on the same page here RM.

    Anyway…it’s so weird to be in an era where almost everyone thinks they have access to good information, which in most cases just means ‘info I want to believe’…which makes it easier to argue with others (and makes it easier for them to then dig in)…all aided by a confrontational, ‘infotainment’-type of news that’s not at all good at drilling down to actual facts…

    …and pretty soon we move from having an impression that country is strongly divided on a number of issues to the reality of the country being bitterly divided on most issues. Putin certainly ‘gets’ that, that’s for sure.

  117. 117.

    catclub

    @Jay:

    of Brexiteers talking to Brexiteers, about how they imagine the EU, Trade, Governance works, that has no grounding in reality, and you get a self perpetuating bubble of idiocy.

    hence the demand for a submarine made of cheese.

  118. 118.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Yarrow:

    Does Johnson losing his majority in the Commons have any major consequences, aside from that?

  119. 119.

    debbie

    @ruemara:

    I’d be happy if they could find a replacement for Corbyn so people would like Labor again.

    And who is this Carole chick?

  120. 120.

    Tony Jay

    @Sab:

    Convention, tradition, a certain ‘understanding’ that misbehaviour will not be tolerated by the people who can, oh so politely, shiv your puppy and burn your home and get away with it because they know where all the bodies are buried.

    As in America (and not just America) those conventions and traditions have been challenged and found wanting. Radical revolutionary movements tend to exploit all the weaknesses in democracies until they get Capital S stopped. Hopefully that’s what we’re starting to see happening now.

  121. 121.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @catclub:

    hence the demand for a submarine made of cheese

    Don’t forget it has to be named the HMS Subby McCheeseSubface ; )

  123. 123.

    Jay

    @Ladyraxterinok:

    The Nazis were very effective at manipulating media, history, and economics in the public sphere in Germany and abroad, to neuter opposition and create division.

    They were not as effective as the Russians, UAE, Sawdis and Israel, because they did not have the same level of insight collected over decades and studied over the targetted countries, nor quite as many collaberationists working inside the targetted Countries.

    They also tended to use violence, and threw their weight on one “side” only. In Czechoslovakia, they backed the borderland German population and did not attempt to leverage the other Czechoslovakian minorities, despite the deep seated resentments.

    The “let you and him fight” wasn’t really a Nazi tactic, even though that’s what happened on the ground in many places.

  124. 124.

    catclub

    @mozzerb:

    (b) PM loses a no-confidence motion and no one else can form a Government in the next 14 days.

    interesting. What if BOJO calls the no-confidence vote? Then in the competition to lose first, all the opposition votes in favor of the PM and all
    of the tories vote against the PM. Humorous.

  125. 125.

    Yarrow

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Well, it can be harder to stay PM when you don’t have a majority. He’s still PM but it could trigger a vote of no confidence or something else.

    @debbie: She writes for The Guardian and has been all over Russia and Cambridge Analytica’s involvement in the Brexit vote and other things. She has been right about some things and wrong about others.

  126. 126.

    geg6

    @Tehanu:

    Only if someone promises to translate it. I don’t understand 1/3 of what he’s talking about. And my grandparents were from England, so the weird phrases, insults and words don’t throw me. But I’m no expert on British government and law, so I have no idea what most of it means. I mean, I get that Boris is having a problem and has lost his majority, but I don’t see that it’s having an effect on anything at all, apparently. But maybe it is. I have no idea and I though I did before I read his comment. And now I have no idea what’s going on over there.

  128. 128.

    Calouste

    @Yarrow: The difference is that the 2/3 majority only requires a vote in the House of Commons, but anything else also requires a vote in the House of Lords. And no party has a majority in the House of Lords.

  129. 129.

    debbie

    Politicians have crossed the line from making promises they couldn’t keep to just flat-out lying. Considering who all is involved, I’m not convinced democracies can be pulled back from the brink at this point.

  130. 130.

    Yarrow

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Has David Cameron, who as I recall started this whole mess in a cynical attempt to distract people, managed to make himself completely forgotten in all this?

    Last I heard, Cameron’s book was scheduled to be published this month. It had been delayed. He received a massive advance for it and people were outraged over that. If it’s still going to be published this month then I think his role in this mess will again get plenty of attention.

  132. 132.

    Martin

    Cities in the US and UK need to take a lesson from Hong Kong. Generally shit is good in the urban areas. We have jobs. Cities are progressing. Pretty easy for us to sit back and expect the politics will just blow over. But it’s not blowing over. These idiots want us to revert back to when everyone was employed digging shit out of the ground. I’d rather throw rocks.

  133. 133.

    jl

    @Brachiator: Bizarre situation. Some of the Tories were hoping against hope something sensible was happening in secret, even though there was no visible evidence of it, and quite a bit of visible evidence against it.

    @Jay: What you say now is hard to believe. Could they really be that stupid, ignorant, and oblivious? Maybe so, for people whose experience with money consists entirely of people giving it to them in a nice package, either through inheritance or bribes and favors. Then, I suppose, if a person is truly and devotedly incurious and complacent, the issue of how money is gathered together in one place may escape notice.

    So, your statement suggests the scenario of a civil servant handing a Tory minister a list of things that have to be done to collect the money, like
    1. A truck come with food to our border
    2. You stop the truck
    4. You look at what is in the truck
    5. You compare what is in the truck to list of thingss that must be taxed.
    … etc….

    And the Tory minister laughed and threw it away. That is what you saying, basically?
    Impossible for me to believe. I’ll stick with the idea that the Bresiters had a crazy fantasy that the EU would view the chaos the Brexiters were planning with horror and deliver to them some vague and impossible deal what would help them out, A hard Brexit with all the hard stuff taken care of for the Brexisters? That is more plausible, but just be a very thin hair.

  134. 134.

    trollhattan

    @RaflW:
    Talk about burying the lede. This is the corker.

    I never fucked up harder than when I forgot to buy some of those little G&T cans when I came into work today.

    :-)

  135. 135.

    Tony Jay

    @Yarrow:

    Now this is some hardball politics. Make Johnson own his own mess.

    Yup. Labour wants an Election so they can deal with Brexit and the horrible policies that have led to it, but there’s no benefit to be had in backing Johnson’s motion until Parliament has ruled out No-Deal, and even after that it would be politically better (and safer) to get an Election via a Vote of No Confidence.

    There’s nothing Corbyn likes better than putting Tories on the rack, he’ll be in no hurry to let Johnson off. Two Tory PMs down, one to go.

  137. 137.

    Baud

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    then recently I read an article that said she’s in line to chair appropriations if she– and McConnell– hold on to power

    If it could make a difference, I bet Schumer would have offered that to her to switch.

    Too late now.

  138. 138.

    Yarrow

    @geg6: You’re not alone in not knowing what’s going on over there. Even the people involved don’t really know. Heh.

    Essentially, Boris and his cronies are desperate to make Brexit happen and they are using every parliamentary trick they can find to do things like prorogue (shut down) Parliament, force an election (that Boris thinks he/Tories can win), and run out the clock to force Brexit through by the October 31 deadline.

    Meanwhile, Labour has Members that represent constituencies that voted both Leave and Remain in the Brexit vote so it’s not as easy as ‘just vote Labour’ (the second biggest party). So the Liberal Democrats (LibDems) have seen an opening and have jumped in as the Party of Remain. They’re doing the best they can to get all the Remainers of all parties (including DUP, Green, etc) to join together to stop No Deal Brexit and maybe/hopefully Brexit itself.

    Today, several Tory Members of Parliament crossed the aisle or said they’d vote against the government. Boris lost his majority. There is a court case working to challenge the proroguing of Parliament. News came out that Boris and his chief crony Dominic Cummings have been lying about actually trying to get a Brexit deal with the EU. Boris was significantly challenged in Parliament on things he’s said.

    It’s moving really fast. There are legal and Parliamentary challenges and everyone in every party is working hard to figure out how to get what they want. Call a snap election? Can they? How? How can it be stopped? Vote of No Confidence? What are the consequences? Should x, y be done before or after z? It’s a crazy game of chess with the ultimate high stakes.

  140. 140.

    Tony Jay

    @jl:

    Either way, not the course of the stereotypical ‘sound man’ the Tories are supposed to represent.

    Very successful false advertising. Tories have always been about getting power and retaining power for the benefit of their donors until the public got wise to their open corruption and sick of their cruelty. The difference this time is that Brexit has forced the Tory Party machine to contort itself so far to the Right (in order to keep its radicalised voting base on board) that the extremism is making them shed the non-radicalised elements in increasing numbers because they can see that the road the Tories are on leads inexorably to economic ruin and social chaos for which they will take the blame.

    That’s just not on. Harrumph.

  141. 141.

    Yarrow

    @debbie: Yes, it’s the one in front of the elevator with the key players. I can’t remember them all, but Trump is there. Nigel Farage. Aaron Banks. If you follow her Twitter feed you’ll see all those people mentioned frequently.

  142. 142.

    Shana

    @zhena gogolia: Mmmmm. Pallisers.

    BTW, if you’re going to be in London you can contact the Trollope Society and arrange a walking tour of Pallisers’ London. Or you could a few years ago.

  143. 143.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @debbie:

    It’s not an approving photo. It’s Trump with a rogues’ gallery of Brexiteers, about whom Cadwalladr has been reporting the last several years.

  146. 146.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @schrodingers_cat:
    From your blog post:

    Actions taken in Kashmir this August are just the first steps in the RSS agenda. If you think all this does not affect you, you would be wrong because Hindu Sevak Sangh(HSS), the RSS offshoot in the United States has been propping up Tulsi Gabbard and has chapters all over the US.

    Are you saying that the RSS, through the HSS, would seek to impose their vision on Indians living in foreign nations as well?

  147. 147.

    zhena gogolia

    @Shana:

    I have to admit that although I feel I’ve lived in England thanks to Austen, Brontë, Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, and Trollope, I have never set foot there and have no immediate plans to!

  148. 148.

    Calouste

    @catclub: As far as I understand, only the Leader of the Opposition can call a vote of no confidence. So there is no option for the government to force an election without agreement of the opposition.

  149. 149.

    TenguPhule

    @debbie:

    I’d be happy if they could find a replacement for Corbyn so people would like Labor again.

    I’m sure that will happen right after Democrats denounce President Obama as being a drag on the party for being born black. //s

  151. 151.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: as I understand it, Snowe and Collins have over the years been offered the sun, the moon and the stars to switch, especially in the early days of Obama before it became clear McConnell’s strategy would hold. I think they were/are both partisans, Collins much more so, it would seem. Snowe just walked away from the mess she made.

    Somebody on the internet (so FWIW) said that Snowe’s grudge against ME Dems was personal, some nasty attack someone made on her family, but I don’t know.

  153. 153.

    Tony Jay

    @debbie:

    I’d be happy if they could find a replacement for Corbyn so people would like Labor again.

    Head. Desk. (repeat as needed)

    Cancel the laudanum, I need opium to deal with this.

    Ed Miliband would like a word. Something to do with “It’s not the man, it’s the coverage.” Screw that, have a word with Hillary Clinton or Al Gore, they might be able to cast some light on the role the Media plays in deciding who is “liked” enough.

  154. 154.

    TenguPhule

    @Baud:

    If it could make a difference, I bet Schumer would have offered that to her to switch.

    He’d be a bigger idiot then he is now if he had done so. She’s unsalvageable and goes into the burnable trash.

  155. 155.

    TenguPhule

    @jl:

    And the Tory minister laughed and threw it away. That is what you saying, basically?
    Impossible for me to believe.

    Boris Johnson was the Foreign Minister. What’s impossible to imagine after that?

  157. 157.

    TenguPhule

    @Tony Jay:

    Screw that, have a word with Hillary Clinton or Al Gore, they might be able to cast some light on the role the Media plays in deciding who is “liked” enough.

    I want everyone banging on Corbyn to post the same bangons about Hillary to at least be consistent.

  158. 158.

    TenguPhule

    @Yarrow:

    They’re doing the best they can to get all the Remainers of all parties (including DUP, Green, etc) to join together to stop No Deal Brexit

    Unless it involves Corbyn getting any credit for it. Then Lib-Dems will happily join the Tories in burning it all down out of spite.

  160. 160.

    debbie

    @Tony Jay:

    So, filtering out the hyperbole (tough because there is so much), are you saying it is the media who has made Corbyn seem a schmuck, not Corbyn or his own actions?

  161. 161.

    jl

    @TenguPhule: My apologies for skipping the 3. I suppose that would be “3. you climb inside the truck”
    I suppose by the time they got that far, the incomprehensibly horrifying concept of that much manual labor was too much and a standard very rich Tory minister who got all the dough through a big wad of money being handed to him or her would have to stop reading and go retch in the toilet, if they could make it that far.

  162. 162.

    Tony Jay

    @geg6:

    I have no idea and I though I did before I read his comment. And now I have no idea what’s going on over there.

    Exactly!

    My work here is done. 8-)

  163. 163.

    TenguPhule

    @debbie:

    are you saying it is the media who has made Corbyn seem a schmuck

    The British media railed against Corbyn for not attending a WWI event that he was photographed by that same media attending and talking to the veterans after the rest of the politicians there went to the free lunch. That’s the quality of journalism they give him unless its an election and they’re mandated to give him fair coverage.

  167. 167.

    Renie

    I don’t follow British politics other than knowing the major players and that Boris is their trump. Are the Tories like our GOP? Who are like our democrats and/or independents?

  169. 169.

    mozzerb

    @jl: We’ve had a Government minister who hadn’t quite grasped the idea that the Dover-Calais crossing (i.e. the shortest route between the UK and continental Europe) was very important for trade until this was pointed out to him. Another one has only just woken up to the concept that just-in-time supply chains are going to be trashed by no-deal and made an announcement to the effect “I say, we really ought to start looking at that”. So yes, they really are that ignorant of almost all the important practical details.

  170. 170.

    TenguPhule

    @Martin:

    Corbyn is an idiot.

    Who defeated his challengers in Labour twice, outlasted two Tory PMs and now is on the verge of becoming PM himself unless Lib-Dems decide to self immolate to preserve their purity. What does that make them then?

  171. 171.

    Fair Economist

    @Tony Jay: These are really funny, and informative. Are you posting them anywhere with a larger audience than BJ? If not, you should.

  175. 175.

    Tony Jay

    @debbie:

    Basically yes.

    He’s utterly despised by 99% of the British Media. They’ve lied shamelessly about him since day one and misrepresented the Party’s policy on Brexit to offend Leavers and Remainers alike. The difference during an Election is that different rules apply. All the Parties get equal time and ‘fairness’ is imposed on national coverage, so the Public get to hear about actual policies and the justification for them. I’m quite comfortable predicting that Labour’s policy towards Brexit will prove a lot less divisive once more people hear what it actually is rather than what the Party’s opponents (and Corbyn’s ideological enemies within the Party) say about it.

    They were 20 points behind a much, much stronger and unified Tory Party in 2017 and roared back to strip them of their majority. Different coverage really does lead to different results.

  176. 176.

    TenguPhule

    @Renie:

    Are the Tories like our GOP?

    Stupider and less competent.

    Who are like our democrats and/or independents?

    Labour, SNP & Greens would be the Democrats.

    Lib-Dems would be the Sanders/Stein Party

  177. 177.

    Another Scott

    @EthylEster: In chemistry labs there are things with parts called “glass frit” – it’s basically pulverized glass that has been smashed together in a press to make a fine glass sieve for filtering liquids, etc.

    It looks like it can also mean just the raw pulverized glass.

    I assume that’s the meaning he’s using here. Could be wrong though!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  180. 180.

    RaflW

    @trollhattan: Yes, that was also a good tweet.

    Still, as much as I’m enjoying his live-tweeting, I have to say that like many here, I’m not sure what is happening beyond the general but rather rapid sense of decay of a democracy (and putative ally of ours).

  181. 181.

    Jay

    @jl:

    Put it this way,

    Imagine that 40 years ago, you started saying, just for the political advantages, ( cuts to the social safety nets, smaller Government, deficits to prevent and major programs),

    “Tax cuts for the rich, will create investment, which will grow the economy, prosperity will trickle down, and this lower tax rate, applied to a larger economy, will increase Government revinues”

    With a straight face. So, you had to practice every morning in front of a mirror for a couple of hours, but soon enough you were saying it infront of other like minded friends who said a thousand other impossible things before noon.

    Eventually, enough people were saying it, that you got to put it into practice,……

    And the economy crashed, and a generation worth of wealth was transferred from the poor, to the rich.

    And the morning after, you stood in front of the mirror and said,…….

    Repeat every decade, for 40 years.

    After 40 years of drumming that message over and over, do you come to believe it and the other thousand impossible things your friend say every day?

    Are you stupid, or are you part of a Cult?

  182. 182.

    jl

    @mozzerb: Thanks for that information. I do say….
    Amazing.

    @Jay: Well, I suppose, the Tories are genteel version of the US GOP then. Not many actual businessmen left in our GOP, since they worry about inconvenient things like how to get money all together in one place, which is a bizarre detail that has never been of importance to a certain type of operator.

  183. 183.

    Tony Jay

    @Martin:

    I guess we don’t agree on that.

    Thankfully, General Elections force people to make a choice. I don’t care if people think he’s an idiot. Just put your X next to the Party that isn’t trying to destroy the country and we’re golden.

  184. 184.

    Fair Economist

    @Brachiator: One good thing about the Brexit mess is that it has strengthened the ties of the remaining 27. The EU has made it clear it will stick by Ireland even at subtantial economic cost, and vice versa. It’s also made leaving the EU look like a really bad idea and poll support for that in other countries has dropped substantially.

  186. 186.

    Yarrow

    And here goes some Labour breakout group, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

    Breaking -This is the full statement from the group calling themselves '⁦@UKLabour⁩ for a deal' They say parliament is being forced to choose between extremes. they want the(post-labour talks) Withdrawal Agreement legislation tabled again so MPs can avoid no deal but leave pic.twitter.com/KPt4cHWO4F— iain watson (@iainjwatson) September 3, 2019

  187. 187.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Dev Null: frightened is correct.

    I know Jacob Rees-Mogg is an arrogant prick but he has out pricked himself tonight. Watching the debate. After giving a lecture on the constitution to the Speaker in a speech that sounded like the medieval philosophical debate on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, complete with mandatory Latin quotes, he is now reclined across the front bench like a Roman aristocrat waiting for a slave to feed him a dormouse.

    Enough Conservatives have in favour of the motion for me to think it will pass, but there will be at least one Labour vote against, Kate Hooey has just spoken against it.

    We live in interesting times.

  188. 188.

    Tony Jay

    @Renie:

    Split the Republicans into the Teabaggers and the Cut My Tax factions, there’s your Brexit Party and Conservative Party.

    Split the Democrats into the Progressive and Blue Dog factions, there’s your Labour Party and Liberal Democratic Party.

    That is very rough and ready and not in any way an exact fit, but it’s basically a framework you can apply.

  189. 189.

    Fair Economist

    @Tony Jay: The problem is that in a FPTP system with two major parties on each side of the Brexit divide it’s very possible to end up with a Brexiter Parliament even with a strong majority for remainer parties. A GE is a huge roll of the dice at the moment and I think Boris’ desire to have one shows how risky it is for good government.

  191. 191.

    Tony Jay

    @TenguPhule:

    Indeed. I make the Corbyn = Hillary comparison all the time. Then someone says “But she lost” and I throw crockery at them. I’m bad that way.

    As for the Lib-Dems I am very much looking forward to someone asking them what their actual plan for stopping Brexit is, because they do have one. They’re not going to win a national election, all they seem to want to do is weaken Labour, so if their actions let a Tory/BXP coalition sneak back in and razorfuck the country for 5 years, how are they helping?

    Wankers.

  192. 192.

    RaflW

    I presume this was about Boris, but also about his good pal, I’m sure.

    No matter how much money you spend, how many colleagues you fire, how many deluded sociopaths you hire & how many critics you silence, you can’t make untruths true.— James O'Brien (@mrjamesob) September 2, 2019

  195. 195.

    debbie

    @Tony Jay:

    Thanks. I guess I’m surprised that the media’s negative coverage is as pervasive as it is. They must see Boris as their little pet.

    Meanwhile, the Guardian Live is saying there are 16 Conservatives who crossed over and will have their whips stripped (so to speak). Hope that turns out not to be true.

  196. 196.

    TenguPhule

    @debbie:

    I guess I’m surprised that the media’s negative coverage is as pervasive as it is.

    Most of Britain’s media are owned or connected to Murdoch.

  198. 198.

    Dev Null

    @geg6:

    don’t understand…

    Just sit back, relax, enjoy the hyperbole, and …

    … think of England!

    (To borrow gin&tonic’s locution from earlier today, I’ll let myself out now.)

  199. 199.

    TenguPhule

    @Tony Jay:

    Then someone says “But she lost” and I throw crockery at them. I’m bad that way.

    The secret is to aim a little high and to the left.

  200. 200.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    as ever, I am no wonk, but this rings true to me

    Lawrence Freedman @ LawDavF
    Still don’t understand why we in the UK are not supposed to be frightened of ‘no deal’ at the same time as this very same ‘no deal’ is supposed to scare the EU into major concessions.

    it’s like Johnson and his fellow travelers have reversed the old saw about one country sneezing and the rest of the world catching cold. Johnson is threatening to take up Camel no-filters to give the EU the risks of second-hand smoke. Or something.

  201. 201.

    Tony Jay

    @Fair Economist:

    It is a gamble, but General Elections always are, especially with the Lib-Dems apparently going all out as spoilers. OTOH, when we strip away all the bollox the central problem with Brexit is the Conservative Party. Nothing is going to get better unless they are removed from Government, and the only way to do that is the old fashioned way. There’s no way around it. This Parliament won’t (it should, but it won’t) vote for a Referendum and it won’t vote to revoke Article 50, the only way to get there from here is a General Election.

  203. 203.

    Betty Cracker

    @Tony Jay: That’s how I classify the factions when trying to understand the shit-show in the UK. Thanks for confirming that it’s a serviceable comparison.

  204. 204.

    Yarrow

    @NotMax: UKIP basically doesn’t exist anymore and all those folks went to the Brexit party. They like to pretend that’s not the case but it is.

    @TenguPhule: I know. I hope it’s just posturing for the constituents back home but if they fuck this up…

  206. 206.

    zhena gogolia

    @Shana:

    I love when he shows the radicals teaming up with the arch-conservatives even though they share none of their goals, just so they can stick it to the moderates who are trying to actually govern.

  207. 207.

    Tony Jay

    @Yarrow:

    And here goes some Labour breakout group, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

    Cannot be deselected soon enough for me, every fucking one of them. I can understand fearing for your job because you represent a 60/40% Leave constituency, but resurrecting May’s Zombie Deal now?

    Wankers.

  208. 208.

    trollhattan

    Turns out there’s a “John Baron” in Parliament. Has Trump been phoning in?

    “Donald Trump, great guy, super smart, the ladies love him, really, they just mob him everywhere he goes. And they’re all beautiful. He also loves Brexit.”

  209. 209.

    Dev Null

    @Sloane Ranger:

    Rees-Mogg

    Yeah, I have the Guardian’s live blog open in a window, and hooboy, he sure sounds like a twit. Liz Kendall (Labour MP) says JRM is “visibly enraging MPs.”

    Someone else on her twitter feed writes of JRM’s oration that:

    It’s a virtuoso performance and I can only assume he’s gone rogue and is now working for the other side.

    In related news, Tim Shipman of the Sunday Times reports that

    Tory chiefs say there are 16 Conservative rebels tonight. They will all be stripped of the whip this evening

    This puts BoJo’s majority at what, -30?

  210. 210.

    Tony Jay

    @NotMax:

    When you say “Brexit Party,” is that interchangeable with saying UKIP?

    In a sense. Nigel Farage dropped UKIP and ran for the hills as soon as the Referendum result took away his meal-ticket (now leaving the EU was Tory orthodoxy, what use UKIP?) and in his absence the UKIP brand became tainted by out and out fascism and barely veiled racism, with a side order of proud Islamophobia.

    The ‘Brexit Party’ is a limited company of which Nigel Farage is the sole shareholder (that we know of) that has the same voter base as pre-2016 UKIP with the addition of swathes of Tory Brextremists. It franchises out its name to z-list celebrities and other n’er do wells to stand as candidates on the same One Issue platform that UKIP exploited, except this time it’s force a No Deal Brexit rather than force a Referendum.

    Hopefully they’ll split the pro-Brexit vote in the Election and deny the Tories a lot of seats they might otherwise pick up.

  211. 211.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Dev Null: Yeah, I have the Guardian’s live blog open in a window, and hooboy, he sure sounds like a twit. Liz Kendall (Labour MP) says JRM is “visibly enraging MPs.”

    I remember reading in I forget which book that when he was in the House, Arthur Balfour would project his aristocratic nonchalance by slouching in his seat to the point where he seemed to be sitting on his shoulder blades. I wonder if Rees-Moog read the same passage. (He’s a wanna-be aristocrat, right?)

  212. 212.

    Tony Jay

    @Sloane Ranger:

    I know Jacob Rees-Mogg is an arrogant prick

    Quoted for total truth. His performance on LBC sneering at the doctor who wrote the Government’s own reports on problems with post-Brexit medical supplies was so vile even many Tories recoiled.

  213. 213.

    John Revolta

    Parliament is supposed to vote shortly about taking control from the Government. If they succeed then tomorrow they will attempt to force a delay of Brexit until January. This is what the Tories are dead set against because in January, new rules go into effect in the EU that expose their offshore bank balances. As I look into this it seems that this might be what Brexit was all about from the start.

  215. 215.

    Dev Null

    @Tony Jay:

    performance on LBC sneering

    Yeah, I saw extended quotes in the Guardian or mebbe the Independent. I don’t remember the exact language, but the good doc said something like “I’ll remind you that I wrote the gummint’s report” on med supplies post-Brexit and JRM sneered “well, if that’s the best you could do, you’re not good at your job, are you.” (Paraphrasing in lieu of a web search for the exchange, but that was the content.)

    Rather reminded me of Trump.

  217. 217.

    Sloane Ranger

    Motion carried by 27 votes. Boris at Despatch box spewing sour grapes. Says if Commons vote for the Bill tomorrow, he will table a motion for a General Election. Corbyn says bring it on

  218. 218.

    Tony Jay

    @debbie:

    The British Media love them some Bumbling Boris, they created him after all. The way his much vaunted Premiership is buckling like a paper airplane hitting concrete is genuinely perplexing to them, you can see it in their eyes.

    And all the Tories voting against Johnson’s wishes are not going to be Tories for long. Majority? What majority?

  220. 220.

    Another Scott

    @Dev Null: Tracey Ullman has JRM’s number. She was merciless in mocking him on her BBC and HBO shows. It was hilarious, and I’d never heard of him before seeing that.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  221. 221.

    Dev Null

    @debbie: That was Jim…Literalist’s comment, not mine, but yeah … it aint playin’ well. But that’s who Rees-Mogg is. And has always been, AFAICT.

    There are cool pix out there of JRM campaigning for Parliament with his nanny at his side.

    A twit, IOW.

  222. 222.

    Tony Jay

    @Betty Cracker:

    That’s how I classify the factions when trying to understand the shit-show in the UK. Thanks for confirming that it’s a serviceable comparison.

    Yeah, there’s no like-for-like, but it more or less works. It helps that at their core all Rightwingers are effectively the same greedy, self-serving gobshites.

  224. 224.

    debbie

    Ha Ha.

    Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Wesminster, says Johnson has a 100% record when it comes to losing votes in the Commons.

    Let’s hope that record continues.

  226. 226.

    Tony Jay

    @Dev Null:

    Equally arrogant, entitled and convinced of his own superiority on zero evidence. I don’t think there are many pay-offs to prostitutes in the Heir of Slytherin’s resume, though. More likely to enjoy blinding beggars with a dagger once owned by Torquemada.

  227. 227.

    Dev Null

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    wanna-be aristocrat

    Well, most of what I know about JRM I learned by reading comments on this blog (and LG&M), but let’s crank up the InterToobz:

    Rees-Mogg is a controversial figure in British politics. He has been characterised as socially conservative and praised as a conviction politician whose anachronistic upper-class mannerisms and consciously traditionalist attitudes are often seen as entertaining;[10][11][12] he has been dubbed the “Honourable Member for the 18th century”.[13] Critics view him as a reactionary figure, some of his positions having made him the target of organised protests.

    and:

    Rees-Mogg was born in Hammersmith, London on 24 May 1969, the younger son of William Rees-Mogg (1928–2012), a former editor of The Times newspaper, created a life peer in 1988, and Gillian Shakespeare Morris, his wife, a daughter of Thomas Richard Morris, a Conservative party local government politician and Mayor of St Pancras in London. blah blah blah

    So yeah, “wanna-be aristocrat” … bingo!

    And a twit. :-)

  228. 228.

    Tony Jay

    @Jay:

    I did mention the fascism, didn’t I? The other hatreds are only to be expected. They’re completists when it comes to their obsessions.

  231. 231.

    Tony Jay

    @Sloane Ranger:

    Bring it on, but only after the legislation blocking No Deal (and requesting a further extension from the EU) passes. Turning the screw quite nicely.

    How does it feel, Flobalob? Is it everything you hoped it would be? (cackles)

  232. 232.

    Dev Null

    @Tony Jay:

    convinced of his own superiority on zero evidence

    More from wiki:

    Rees-Mogg read History at Trinity College, Oxford, where he graduated with an upper second-class honours degree in 1991.[26][27] Almost immediately after arriving in 1988, Cherwell nominated him for the title of “Pushy Fresher”, printing a photograph of Rees-Mogg speaking in a suit with the caption “What more need we say?”.[28] While at Oxford he became president of the Oxford University Conservative Association with what Cherwell described as a “campaign for world domination and social adequacy”. Rees-Mogg was a member and frequent debater at the Oxford Union and elected Librarian, but Damian Hinds defeated him for president of the Union.[29][30][28] Reflecting on his time at university, Rees-Mogg regretted not having studied Classics.[31]

    Somehow I get the feeling he was not universally liked. Just a guess…

  233. 233.

    trollhattan

    This, from the Ian Dunt recommended earlier, is the most hopeful thing I’ve read about the Brexit mess in months.

    Right that’s that. Good result – really good. And not just for what it means for Brexit. But for what it shows: Britain’s constitutional arrangements holding firm against a sustained threat. Parliament standing up for itself. It’s not that late, have a glass.

  234. 234.

    jl

    @Yarrow: I guess a small consolation, a symbolic attainment of just a little something special from the grandest days of Empire. Not quite what the Brexiters expected, though.

  236. 236.

    Tony Jay

    @Dev Null:

    Somehow I get the feeling he was not universally liked. Just a guess…

    You are perceptive. Even the Pope doesn’t like him, and it’s mutual.

  239. 239.

    Fair Economist

    @John Revolta: The real Brexiteers are not idiots, they are corrupt. Rees-Moog, for example, is all set up to profit from Brexit with business in Ireland. Hiding laundered money is 100% a big part of that.

    There would be big money in wrecking Britain and the Brexiteers don’t want to miss it.

  241. 241.

    Annie

    @Betty Cracker:

    I can’t get behind the paywall so I haven’t read read the piece but despite supposedly admiring him, BOris Johnson has not learned a thing from Winston Churchill.

    1. Churchill did not want to go it alone in World War II; he just didn’t want to surrender to Hitler’s Germany. He tried very hard, in his first days as Prime Minister, to get the French to stay in the war, and even more time trying to persuade the U.S. to come in. He also supposedly said, “the only thing worse than having allies is not having allies.”

    2. Among many other threads and proponents, you can trace the European Union back to Churchill in a way. In the 1950s, Churchill made a speech saying something along the lines of “why should Europe not form a United States of Europe?” He did not go into any details about how it would be set up, or what its powers would be (he was out of power by then), but IIRC the reason he thought this was a good idea was that it would give Europe more power and standing on the international stage.

  242. 242.

    Miss Bianca

    @jl:

    So, now we have the bizarre and dangerous and sad situation of a government saying it doesn’t have to observe binding votes passed in Parliament, but it must observe a nonbinding referendum.

    Well, when you put it *that* way, the whole thing does start to sound a little bonkers, doesn’t it?

  243. 243.

    Tony Jay

    @Yarrow:

    They tried to enforce a Reign of Terror, but it turned out all they had was the fearsome gravity of Cummings’ gigantic head and that’s… not so frightening.

    This kind of reminds me of one of those barely remembered reigns in the mid-period Roman Empire. I’m sure that when Flobius Blobius took the offer of the purple he thought he was going to be a new Marcus Aurelius, turned out he didn’t make it a year and didn’t even merit a broken statue in the Forum.

  244. 244.

    trollhattan

    @Tony Jay:
    Interesting how, from over here (8 time zones to be precise), even the accent can’t mask what a poor liar Boris is with the cameras rolling. He should be standing in front of an idling helicopter from now on. That really works.

  245. 245.

    Yarrow

    @Tony Jay: Boris looks totally out of his depth. And this made me laugh:

    Dominic Cummings has just proved himself a genius in the same way that I’ve just proved myself Olympic 100m champion.— David Schneider (@davidschneider) September 3, 2019

  246. 246.

    Yarrow

    Oh! Even funnier!

    Andrea Leadsom tells me Tory rebels have another chance to stay in the party if they vote with Government tomorrow. Has PM got cold feet? #brexit— Vicki Young (@BBCVickiYoung) September 3, 2019

    Chickenshit Boris. Can’t even follow through on a threat.

  247. 247.

    jl

    @Yarrow: Can the Tory rebels go for that without completely and irreversibly ruining their political careers? Or is being a craven stooge as good for Tory politicians as for GOPer congresscritters here in the US?

  248. 248.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @debbie:

    I’d be happy if they could find a replacement for Corbyn so people would like Labor again.

    Part of Corbyn’s job security is his deputy / chief opponent Tom Watson. The media love Watson as a ‘moderate’ but he’s also a nasty backstabbing piece of work. A while ago he threw his weight behind a series of fake historical sex-abuse allegations, in the hope that they would damage the Tory party, resulting in a massive multi-million-pound inquiry that ended with a perjury conviction of the guy making the allegations (who turned out to be a pathologically-lying pedophile scammer).
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/01/tom-watson-face-calls-resign-extent-ties-nick-revealed-underacted/

  249. 249.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @Yarrow:

    Chickenshit Boris. Can’t even follow through on a threat.

    Not a good look for the Great Brussels Negotiator to collapse like an IKEA wardrobe the moment his bluff is called.

  251. 251.

    sdhays

    @Tony Jay:

    They were 20 points behind a much, much stronger and unified Tory Party in 2017 and roared back to strip them of their majority. Different coverage really does lead to different results.

    I just check on these things once in a while, but this is what made me pretty skeptical of all of the “Corbyn is a disaster” coverage. When people actually heard him, it turned out that they liked what they saw. And now, anymore, everything about Corbyn is nitpicked to the point of being “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”, which just means they’re criticizing him for the sake of criticizing him.

    Let’s see how he functions as PM and then talk about how idiotic he is. I’ll bet quite a lot of money he wouldn’t be the disaster old Boris already is.

  252. 252.

    jl

    @sdhays: It’s my understanding that Johnson has managed a historic parliamentary defeat that hasn’t happened in 125 years. I doubt Corbyn can match that feat.

  253. 253.

    Tony Jay

    @trollhattan:

    He’s really not good without a script and an audience that has paid to see a bumbling and nonthreatening semi-professional politician field softball digs on a TV panel show. Put in a situation where he’s facing hostile questioning from all sides and he simply can’t handle it. He knows he’s lying, but when people won’t let him get away with it because he tells a joke… not fit for purpose.

    It’s worth pointing out that all of Johnson’s Prime Ministerial ‘successes’ have occurred while Parliament has been on holiday and he hasn’t had any adult supervision. It took less than a day for all that to go splat. So much for the inevitability of Brexit.

  254. 254.

    Tony Jay

    @Yarrow:

    Ha!

    Can you smell that? That’s the smoke from a bonfire of unearned credibility.

    OTOH, watching the BBC where the two ‘experts’ on to talk over tomorrow’s headlines are from the Torygraph and the Wall Street Journal. I wonder how they’re going to cover the issue? (rolls eyes)

  256. 256.

    Tony Jay

    @Sm*t Cl*de:

    The second I get a chance to prise Tom Watson out of that Deputy Leadership post I will run, not walk, to do so. I hope that in a post General Election Labour Cabinet he gets kicked to the curb or, even better, asked to seek re-election before he gets to call himself Deputy PM (because he will). He’ll be out of a job faster than the Flash takes a shower.

  257. 257.

    Dev Null

    @Yarrow:

    … Tory rebels have another chance to stay in the party if they vote with Government tomorrow.

    Last I looked (an hour ago) that was quickly contradicted… they’ll be defenestrated (or what ever you call being deselected. Oh, right…. “deselected”.)

    Admittedly, that might have changed yet again.

  259. 259.

    Tony Jay

    @sdhays:

    Preach it. I couldn’t have gone through the shitstorm Corbyn has suffered without dragging some braying fucker out of the media pack and gutting them with a spoon on a weekly basis.

    Bring on the Election, I like our chances.

  262. 262.

    Dev Null

    Oooo, this will smart …

    Referring to the state of the party, [Ken] Clarke added:

    It’s been taken over by a rather knockabout sort of character, who’s got this bizarre crash-it-through philosophy … a cabinet which is the most right-wing cabinet any Conservative party has ever produced.

    They’re not in control of events. The prime minister comes and talks total rubbish to us and is planning to hold a quick election and get out, blaming Parliament and Europe for the shambles.

    I have to decide whether to vote Conservative if Boris Johnson is still the leader. That’s my next problem. I am a conservative, of course I am … but this leader, I don’t recognise this. It’s the Brexit party, rebadged.

    Thinking “knockabout” might not be complimentary in this context.

    From here.

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