In a thread this morning, Tony Jay broke down the latest on Brexit for us so well, I had to front page it:
Brexit News – Gather your children and run.
Oh it’s all going off now, isn’t it? Brexit, that genius plan to turn the United Kingdom into a bigger, juicier Bluestar Airlines en route to going full-on Airstrip One has hit a tiny, wee stumbling block. Turns out that Parliament, that wacky bunch of grey-suited mavericks and jobbing Executive Vice-Presidents for Arranging Contracts and Dat while Golfing, have decided that they don’t too much fancy the very likely prospect of being roasted for their meat by dispossessed proles in the smoldering ruins of Chipping Norton Conservative Club and would quite like to, maybe, I don’t know, exercise a bit of that ‘Parliamentary Sovereignty’ all the Leavers were banging on about non-stop back in the days when being humiliated and sent home from European capitals was more the preserve of our national football teams than our national government.
In a vote last night on an amendment put forward by Regency beau and racist jelly-mold Oliver Letwin a majority of Parliament chose to push the Government aside and hold a series of indicative votes on other options. Things like Revoking Article 50 (Brexit is sent to bed with a cup of hemlock), having a straight 2nd Referendum (Brexit has to re-apply for its job), a Norway style semi-membership (Brexit pops on a Viking helmet and is told “Ingen Sjance, Froken Brit!” by Norway), or whatever the Speaker decides is non-Unicornesque enough to get serious support. How the votes will take place, how they’ll be weighed, will they be subject to whipping (always popular amongst the Tories and their public schoolboy contingent) is all still up in the air, but the fact of the matter is that after three years of embarrassment and abuse Parliament has had just about enough of this Government’s blatant contempt for the democratic process and has, with a quivering jaw and mascara-streaked face, torn the Enoch Powell biography from Theresa May’s cold, dead hands and screamed “You will listen to me!” into the sudden, bewildered silence.
And what has Queen Theresa made of all this? Well she’s telling everyone who’ll listen that she’s not bothered. Just like she’s not bothered about the two hammering defeats her deal has already suffered, or the humiliating failure of her last display of British steel and diplomatic finesse in Europe, or even the Speaker’s refusal to let her deal get another vote without something more momentous than the font changing. None of it matters to Queen Theresa because she’s in a better place now, somewhere disagreeable impediments like votes and negotiations and basic reality can be safely disregarded because She’s the Queen of the Land of Do As You Please and everything else is noise. She can state, via her shrinking supply of pot-grown junior ministers, that no responsible Government can be expected to enact important legislation affecting the future of the country without knowing the desired end-point and process in advance with a blithe lack of even the most basic self-awareness. Not bothered. She can lecture Parliament on thinking it can force through revolutionary changes to centuries of constitutional tradition without reflecting for a moment on the fact that her Government is only still technically ‘in power’ because her predecessor’s Parliament made revolutionary changes to centuries of constitutional tradition with its Fixed Term Election Bill. Not bothered. She can even stand there and declare with a more-or-less straight face that No-Deal is both on and off the table at the same time, like a Schrodinger’s Cat of a policy, except this cat is ten feet long, long in tooth and claw and weighs the same as a small family house. She. Is. Not. Bothered.
Probably, it appears, because the Grand Wizards (no, really, that’s their term, because why not, eh?) of the Brexiteerean Jihad look like crumbling under the pressure of Reality and voting for May’s Deal de la Merde as the worst possible option they can hope to foist upon the country before the cock crows and everyone starts sobering up in the cold light of Brexit day. It’s like she’s spent so long huffing their ultra-high leaded emissions in pursuit of their votes that she hasn’t even noticed the way the Parliamentary math has shifted around her. Or, to put it in an even creepier way. She’s spent the whole of the School Leaver’s Party following Jacob (Call me Kyle) Reese-Mogg and his gang of Emo-Goth Randians and Ulster Exchange Student Militia around, laughing at their crap racist jokes and doing anything and everything she can, however degrading, to get them to come back to her house for an invite only After-Party, but, just as she’s finally got their muttered ‘okay, maybe, whatever’ in the bag, she turns to see that everyone else has got bored waiting and left to go and see what the beer is like at the Free Oompah Band and European Folk Music Festival in the local park. And now, in a final swipe of the dirty dishcloth of (what Western popular culture erroneously believes to be called) karma across the face of her dreams, Theresa learns that the only way anyone will even consider going to her party is if she’s not there.
How unfair, said nobody else.
Basically, it boils down to this. Parliament can indicative vote until it’s blue in the face, but it can’t force the Government to do anything the Government doesn’t want to do. OTOH, the E.U. has given May only one week to get her Withdrawal Deal passed, and if it doesn’t, well, there’s a hard deadline of April 12th for Britain to come up with an alternative that Parliament – can – support and – crucially – the E.U. will accept. The balance of power has slowly, steadily shifted under the crushing weight of glacial reality so it’s no longer May’s Government stuffing her deal in the face of Parliament and saying “Vote for this or the country gets it”, but rather Parliament itself deciding on a version of Brexit enough of them can coalesce around (crucially, probably, I think, with a Confirmatory Public Vote rider tagged on to bring the anti-Brexit rationalists on board) and then shoving – that – into May’s face and saying “Let this get a free vote or the Tory Party gets it”. Remember, the entire concept of British Parliamentary democracy revolves around the idea that the faction that can harness and provide a majority for legislation gets to be the Government. No majority, no Government. Claiming to be the Government while refusing to enact the will of an – actual – majority, ooooh, now, that’s the kind of genuine constitutional crisis we never got before the stupid Fixed Term Election Bill and one that has only one answer, a resounding vote of No Confidence and a General Election.
Interesting days.
Now, back to your scheduled countdown to the release of the – actual – Mueller Report rather than the hastily scribbled customer review put out by the guy being paid to protect Trump.
I will tell you, Brexit confuses me much like the election of IQ45 must confuse our allies…but I sure enjoy Tony Jay’s hot takes on it. I look forward to many more.
Steeplejack
Definitely worth front-paging. Maybe some of the blog’s other Brits will weigh in with nuance and explication.
Omnes Omnibus
Oliver Letwin. That is a name i had never stumbled upon before. Christ, what an asshole.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@ TaMara (HFG) ad Tony Jay: Thanks to you both for this.
@Omnes Omnibus: That about sums it up.
pluky
If snark wasn’t already a thing, it would have to be invented for this post.
hells littlest angel
Does Putin have a Theresa May pee tape?
Barbara
I have been following the live feed at The Guardian and I am having a hard time making sense of it – is that no Brexit deal or is that no deal Brexit? — but as far as I can tell, you have summarized it the way it seems to be shaking out. It is marginally less depressing in that it is less personally consequential to me, so I find it easier to follow closely without wanting to scream. So like, thanks for the diversion and I hope it works out.
ETA: while on a cruise I had a chat with an elderly pro-Brexit couple (their children were still pissed with them) and we did agree that David Cameron has to be one of the stupidest people who has ever lived.
rk
I wrote earlier in the thread below about a podcast/show on you tube talking about Brexit. It’s called “3blokes in a pub”. They talk about a no deal Brexit and it’s implications. It’s going to be pretty horrific for England and they’re going to drag Scotland and Ireland down with them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx4AF-3Rd44
Adam L Silverman
@hells littlest angel: Doesn’t need it:
Barbara
@hells littlest angel: It is not Putin subverting her loyalty to the nation, but her determination that no matter what else happens, her own party will be captain of the ship of state, even if it turns out to be the Titanic. This is what it looks like when you put party over country and May and Cameron have both flunked patriotism 101.
hells littlest angel
@Adam L Silverman: Huh. I guess porno movies have always been subject to Poe’s law. It’s impossible to tell if that is for real or not.
PsiFighter37
If we didn’t have the clown in the White House being a national embarrassment daily, Brexit would make the UK the laughingstock of the world. What is sad is that Labour, under Jeremy Corbyn, is an absolute mess. Can you believe that despite not being in charge of this train wreck, that the Tories have more support than Labour now, and more than during the last general election?
It’s absolutely bananas. The UK is in deep shit no matter what, largely because Labour is so absolutely dysfunctional in and of itself. As I’ve said many times before, that is what will happen to the Democratic Party if Bernie and his minions were ever in charge.
Adam L Silverman
@hells littlest angel: It’s a documentary. Here’s Nigel Farage endorsing it:
p.a.
Who knew they wanted to be so much like us? We take their old ‘rotten boroughs’ initiative and raise them a whole electoral college! The US always innovates.
B.B.A.
Is there any way Hard Brexit doesn’t happen on Friday? Because I don’t see it.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
So I’ve been following this closely, partially to get my politics fix and get some distance from the howling maw of terror that is our OWN political situation to look at the howling maw of terror that the UK has gotten into. And I ran across this you-tuber: A different Bias .
I’d suggest him, he talks like what I think a frontpager would talk like if we did vlogs.
oatler.
The Brexit instigators/fomenters are all sitting pretty, financially.
Joshua Gone Barbados
Mike in DC
I’d expect a 2nd referendum to vote Remain by about a 55-45 margin, and only that close because folks are stubborn about admitting mistakes. Revoking Article 50 would similarly end Brexit for good, because there’d be little political will to open up this can of worms again. Corbyn’s support for Brexit is political malpractice.
dmsilev
@Mike in DC: As far as I can tell, the best thing that can be said about Corbyn is that he isn’t quite as incompetent as May. Needless to say, that’s a low bar to clear.
HumboldtBlue
I counted a 105-word sentence. That’s fucking lovely.
HeleninEire
So to stay on topic. Across the pond. I am sitting here in an Irish pub in Queens listening to live Irish music. I miss my Irish friends.
Off topic. I told you all a few months ago about my mom’s friend Isabel. They met 50 years ago when Isabel immigrated to America from Scotland and my mom immigrated from Ireland. They became fast friends. My mom died when I was little. And Isabel took up the slack. So now Isabel is in hospice. Dying from colon cancer.
Fuck.
Mary G
Good luck with that, Tony.
James E Powell
This afternoon driving east on the 105 (Los Angeles) I saw a digital billboard showing two separate pro-Brexit messages. One said the EU = Tyranny the other said EU – we keep voting till we get the result we want.
Why they hell do they have billboards for this in Los Angeles?
B.B.A.
@James E Powell: Obviously, they want the US to leave the EU.
JWR
Tony Jay, so glad you made it, and I love your nearly as confusing as Brexit writin’ style! More, please!
OnkelFritze
As a German, I really don’t want a second referendum. Of course it’s a shitshow and everybody is going to be worse of after Brexit, but things have got so far that the only thing worse than the Brits dropping out is them staying in. I’d rather see that level of disfunctionality on the outside. Maybe 20 years from now after everybody has sobered up we can talk about reversing this nonsense.
Suzanne
@HeleninEire: I’m so, so sorry, Helen. Hugs to you, and Isabel.
Mnemosyne
@HeleninEire:
I’m so sorry. But this is probably another reason it was good for you to move back to the States. Now you can spend all the time with her that you need.
Sab
@oatler.: Wow. I haven’t heard that song in years.
Jay
@HeleninEire:
Sorry Helen,
Fuck Cancer.
Adam L Silverman
@HeleninEire: Keeping good thoughts for your friend Isabel.
mdblanche
@Omnes Omnibus: And he’s one of the good guys!
Amir Khalid
@James E Powell:
Does the City of Angels by any chance have a lot of resident expatriate Britons?
Mary G
@HeleninEire: I am so sorry.
FelonyGovt
That’s some great writing, Tony. How did both our countries take such boneheaded wrong turns?
@HeleninEire: I’m so sorry about Isabel.
Jay
The Brexit Blog by Chris North is good reading.
http://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/?m=1
The Pete North Brexit Blog, especially the early stuff is a great
exploration of the lunacy of the Brexiteer.
http://peterjnorth.blogspot.com/?m=1
FelonyGovt
@Amir Khalid: Yes, there are a lot of expatriate Brits here in Los Angeles, but I still wouldn’t think enough to warrant a billboard on the freeway. ???
Mary G
@James E Powell: Cambridge Anal, under a new name and led by Steve Bannon, are operating in a number of countries trying to turn the whole world right. Their bitch about globalists is projection.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: lol @ “Angular Merkin”
mdblanche
@B.B.A.: Hard Brexit will not happen Friday. If only because the hard Brexit date has been pushed back to April 12.
James E Powell
@Amir Khalid:
I’m guessing that there are significant ex-pats from the UK but I don’t know that the community is large enough to warrant a billboard, especially on that part of the 105 East, that is, not on the LAX to DTLA path.
Major Major Major Major
@HeleninEire: Ugh, so sorry to hear that.
HeleninEire
Thanks to you all.
@Mnemosyne: Yes. There are many reasons why I am back and that is one of them.
Jay
@James E Powell: k
When you are rolling in rubles, location, location, location doesn’t really matter much.
Ohio Mom
@HeleninEire: It’s a lot of slack that needs picking up when disability is involved, so even more credit to Isabel for seeing to your sister. She did good.
I hope her transition is peaceful and my condolences to you.
jl
I clicked on the link at the top of the post to read the Tony Jay piece, and I saw a flash of the Liberal Redneck, then to top of the comments. So, Jay and Liberal Redneck the same person? Damn.
I have to go read up on how the UK government works, since from the Jay piece, I do not rightly know since the advent of fixed term elections.
I thought it said that Parliament can bring current May Government down if enough people get sick of the BS? I hope so.
HeleninEire
@Ohio Mom: Thank you. Mary loved Isabel. They were tight.
Brachiator
Not a Brit, but I have been trying to make sense of this.
PM Theresa May seems to have no political skills at all, and like Trump with his Wall, seems insistent on her deal or nothing at all, even though it has been rejected twice by the Commons.
Strangely, no one, not even British journalists seem to understand the idea of politicians acting outside their party or coalition. So even though the MPs have rejected May’s deal, they have been pointlessly fighting for their own interests, even though this goes nowhere and accomplishes nothing.
So, here is where we seem to be. No one in Parliament wants a new referendum, even though this might have been the rational thing to do months ago.
They are going to vote on other options, even though May has indicated that she is not obligated to accept or to act on any of them.
The EU has already rejected some of the proposals out of hand, and has indicated that they will only negotiate with the recognized head of government, Theresa May.
Some of May’s fellow Tories have suggested that they might support her plan if she steps down, but no one wants the most obnoxious of these goons to replace her.
This last is the craziest thing. People are still jockeying for power even though the BREXIT clock is ticking. And they are acting as though they can magically get the EU to accept whatever nonsense they cobble together.
So, nothing has been accomplished and it’s hard to see how anyone will achieve a breakthrough.
Jay
@jl:
They won’t bring May’s Government down.
1). None of the “powers that be” want 10 Downing as long as Brexit isn’t settled.
2). There is no majority of MP’s “for” anything. Some are for Hard Brexit, some May’s Not Really a Deal Brexit, some Remain, some the non-existant Norway Option, some the fantasy Canada Option, some the German Carmakers will Save Us Nonoption, some rarer rainbow skittles farting flying pink unicorns.
The only thing a majority agree on is hating May’s Not Really a Deal Brexit.
B.B.A.
@mdblanche: I thought the UK parliament had to agree to the delay, and these days they have trouble agreeing that 2 + 2 is somewhere between 1 and 7.
Yutsano
@HeleninEire: Much peace and love to both you and Isabel.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@James E Powell:
OMG, did you have to go to LAX? You poor soul.
ETA: Oh that stretch of the 105, a anti-Brexit sign in Compton, that’s odd.
Suzanne
@Brachiator: It’s been absolutely mindblowing to me how, despite all of the institutions and guardrails of governance, both the US and the UK have managed to fuck everything up so badly.
Lesson: expecting people to not be stupid assholes is less of a guardrail than we thought.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It took me a while to remember that the 105 is the Century Freeway. I couldn’t figure out where the 105 was among the freeway spaghetti of LA.
joel hanes
@FelonyGovt:
How did both our countries take such boneheaded wrong turns?
Rupert Murdoch has done more damage to Great Britain, the US, and Australia than Al Queda, ISIS, and SMERSH combined.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: It’s officially the Anderson Freeway(named after a former Congresscritter, not the guy who replaced Mayhew); of course, no one in LA calls it the Anderson freeway or the Century Freeway, just The 105 as is our way here*.
*But you already knew the last part. I was on the President Barack Obama Freeway today(it’s the 134 between the 210 and the 2).
ETA: The old joke about the Century Freeway is that it was named that because it took a century to build.
eemom
@HeleninEire:
My condolences as well.
I lost an old friend to cancer last summer, and his last weeks were in hospice. If there is anything positive to be said about the horrible experience of seeing someone you love waste away from that godawful disease, it’s that good hospice care (as my friend had, and I hope Isabel does) keeps the person comfortable and allows those who love them to be there with them in all ways possible for all the time that remains.
Yutsano
@mdblanche: April 12th if there is no deal that Parliament can agree upon that the EU can also accept. May 22nd if there is a deal that needs to still have details worked out. Right now the April 12th deadline is looking more and more likely especially after Bercow shot May down for a third bite of her deal.
mdblanche
@B.B.A.: They’ve already got the delay until April 12. If they agree to May’s deal by then they can get an extension until May twenty-somethingeth. If not, it’s no deal Brexit unless the UK can present a viable alternative plan that may involve an even longer extension. If it does involve a longer extension, then the UK will be required to participate in elections for the next European parliament that are being held in May, which is why the deadline dates are what they are. Does this all make sense to you now? Because if it does, could you please explain it to me?
Jay
@mdblanche:
April 12 for May to get her Not Brexit Passed.
May 22 for the Brits to put legislation in place if May’s Not Brexit is Passed.
The EU position is May’s Not Brexit, or Hard Brexit,
Either way, they don’t want UK scumbags in the EU Parliament.
With a hint that if the UK has a Peoples Choice or tears up Article 50, they might be allowed to remain in the EU.
Emma
@HeleninEire: I am so sorry. I’m at the age where I’m seeing the older generation pass, and it’s heartbreaking. When it’s someone like Isabel, it’s devastating.
catclub
@Brachiator:
anybody who has survived as PM for nigh on three years, while in a no-win situation,
the entire time being told that she has no political skills, but has won both a no-confidence vote in her party and a no-confidence vote in the parliament, is pretty damned skilled in my view.
She has been continually underestimated. After the rest of the Conservative party is a smoking ruin, she will still be around.
catclub
@Brachiator:
I view this as Theresa May taking HL Mencken very seriously vis a vis the brexit referendum:
Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and should get it good and hard.
Jay
@catclub:
Nope, she’s fixed term. Out in 2022.
Nobody wants the job until Brexit is settled.
She “managed” the Brexit process, which mostly consisted of sending negotiation teams to the EU to ask for the impossible, then having them return to the UK to slag the EU in the press as “punishing” Britain.
Omnes Omnibus
@catclub: It is comparatively easy to keep a job no one else wants. If there were an upside to being PM right now, she would already have been shivved.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
Political sense or sense of self-preservation? ?
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yup.
She’ll be toast well before 2022.
Sab
@HeleninEire: I am so sorry for you and her.
Thank God for hospice. I have lost my mother, my favorite aunt, and my sister in law in hospice in the last few years. I lost other friends and family before hospice. Thank God for hospice.
Jay
@Mnemosyne:
Stupidity, ignorance, racism and hubris.
dm
So, has this made the rounds here, yet?
“How many Brexiters does it take to change a light bulb?”
All of them: One to tell us how bright the future will be.
And the rest to screw it up.
Jay
@dm:
Did you catch the French Foreign Minister one?
“Nathalie Loiseau told Le Journal du Dimanche that her pet meows loudly to be let out each morning, but then refuses to go outside when she opens the door.
He wakes me up every morning meowing to death because he wants to go out, and then when I open the door he stays put, undecided, and then glares at me when I put him out,” Ms Loiseau said.
So I named him Brexit!”
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/brexit-france-theresa-may-deal-nathalie-loiseau-cat-a8828026.html%3famp
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
@Brachiator:
In a nutshell, which should be SHOCKINGLY familiar, is that the only thing worse for the conservative coalition in the UK than driving their entire country off a cliff, is letting dirty non-conservatives run the country.
Brachiator
@catclub:
Fair point. And yet, she has had more ministers resign on her watch than other prime ministers and picked a mediocrity to be her chief BREXIT negotiator. And he quit on her as well. Apparently she irritates a EU official known to get along with anyone.
And here it is, not much time remaining at all to get anything done, and she has not been able to budge anyone from their opposition to her deal.
Viva BrisVegas
@joel hanes:
When you have a widespread disease you look for the common disease vector. Rupert Murdoch, American citizen.
Jay
the library haunter ??❄
@SketchesbyBoze
VOTERS: we want to give a boat a ridiculous name
UK: no
VOTERS: we want to break up the EU and trash the world economy
UK: fine
9:16 AM · Jun 24, 2016 · Twitter Web Client
11.8K
Retweets
13.7K
Likes
Sean
@Barbara: Labour leadership has been feckless as well. Jezza is less popular than May (and that says a lot) so a GE is no panacea without a Labour leadership change – you may end up with an ERG loon PM like Boris, Raab or Rees-Moos. And although close to 70% of Labour support is Remain, it is far less riding by riding. Another country screwed by first past the post elections.
Sean
@James E Powell: ironic given the latter sentiment is May’s only tactic in parliament.
Sean
@joel hanes: yep, a point I constantly make.
The Pale Scot
Tony, be sure to clean your blade before you return it to its scabbard.
Tony Jay
‘Pon my soul, you go to bed shaking your weary head at the rampant arseholishness loose in the world and you wake up front-paged on Balloon Juice. I couldn’t never have done it without the love and support of my good friend Snark and the bitter emotions of rage and disenfranchisment evoked by Brexit, that catch-all metaphor for all that’s twatty in the state of Britishness.
Insert obligatory clip of Father Ted Crilly’s speech on winning the Priest of the Year award.
HeleninEire, it’s just rank, isn’t it? Fuck cancer.
Doug
@Jay: “The EU position is May’s Not Brexit, or Hard Brexit,”
If I may offer a slight clarification from Berlin… The EU position is that the other 27 members spent two years negotiating with the duly constituted UK government, and thisagreement was the result. If the UK government was not, in fact, able to negotiate on behalf of the UK, then what have we been wasting our time on these last twenty-odd months?
So yes, it’s either This Deal (with possibly a little trimming and polishing around the edges) or No Deal, and that’s because the whole post-referendum period (except the time that the UK wasted by calling a general election, among other wholly gratuitous time wasters) has been spent hammering out This Deal. The time to aim for a Different Deal was right after invoking Article 50. And the time for the UK to have decided what kind of a Different Deal to aim for was before the referendum. But did they? Did they, fuck. And so the rest of the EU, rather sensibly, takes the position that the UK’s unwillingness to prepare is Not Really Our Problem. Which means that it’s This Deal, No Deal, or No Brexit.
Jay
@Doug:
No quarrels. The EU bent over backwards, and in exchange, got shit posted.
Ther’re at the “fuck em” stage of the divorce.
Fully understandable.
Once Article 50 was triggered, the EU responsibility was to the EU, which no longer incuded the UK.
Another Scott
Thanks for the great post Tony Jay, and TaMara for FPing it.
I still don’t understand how anyone thought Brexit was ever going to work when it came to the Ireland/NI border, what with the Good Friday Agreement and everything else requiring an open border. And the Brexit idiots wanting a hard border with the EU to keep all the nasty foreign brown non-English people out. And the DUP position that Brexit must happen and NI has to be treated exactly the same as the rest of the UK seems insane to me since it shares an island with a country that will remain in the EU. Since May is only still in power because of the DUP, then she’s in an impossible position when it comes to trying to forge a logical position that the UK and the EU can accept.
But rather than accept reality, she continues to plod along, like a prizefighter who is down 15 points in the last round but is willing to risk death rather than stay down.
It’s stupid and infuriating.
Here’s hoping that Parliament steps up and does its job for the country.
Good luck.
Cheers,
Scott.
pat
I read somewhere that a lot of people didn’t even know what the EU is or does. Sounds like a bunch of Fox viewers.
mg_65
dayum. That’s some good writin’. Cheers to Tony Jay!
Barney
@Omnes Omnibus: Oliver Letwin was rather a knob in the past, but at the moment, he’s a ‘voice of reason’, actually working to get some kind of decision from the Commons.
@Jay: I’d never thought of May as channeling Catherine Tate’s Lauren ‘Not Bovvered’ Cooper before, but you’re right, it fits. I don’t think the Fixed Term Parliaments Act is having any particular effect at the moment, though – a vote of no confidence can still be brought and passed by the opposition – it’s the DUP who are propping May up, just as they would have before the Act (they know they’re doing a shit job for their constituents, what with having no NI government, and going against the NI wishes for no Brexit or as soft a Brexit as possible, so there’s no way they’re voting for an election). We need a few more Tory MPs to realise how crap the party is now and switch to the Independent Group (though I’m not certain the ex-Tories in that would vote ‘no confidence’ either).
Ken
@Another Scott:
I just re-read China Miéville’s The City and the City, but never expected to see anyone propose trying it in real life.
Barbara
@Mike in DC:
I am not sure I agree with this. Corbyn has actually been a Euroskeptic (not a leaver, but having significant issues with aspects of the EU) for a long time. Think back to 2008, when the TARP bill needed to be passed to forestall an even deeper banking crisis. At that time, both parties knew what needed to be done, but many Republicans decided during the course of the vote to try to make it pass only with the votes of Democrats, so that, even though they were in the party that had been responsible for the deregulation that actually caused the crisis, they would be able to accuse Democrats of bailing out banks in the soon to be held election. Yes, well Nancy Pelosi was smarter than all of them combined, so that didn’t work out, but that’s approximately the position that Corbyn is in. The referendum wasn’t his idea, he didn’t support it, Theresa May has done everything but take out a billboard to make it clear that she has no regard for Corbyn and will not take under advisement any ideas Labour has that might prompt Labour members to support a deal, and yet, people like you are “bothsidering” Corbyn for the impending disaster that is Brexit. Corbyn does not have the power to stop this and it’s not his responsibility to bail out May, who, literally, does not even want his help.
Jude
That really was an amazing post. Thanks for FPing it. Here’s an upvote, @Tony Jay!
Alien Radio
A lot of the Framing of Jeremy Corbyn as useless commits a number of errors. 1. Relying on reporting from the UK press where even the ostensibly Liberal publications, Guardian (very middle class, champagne socialism) and Independent (owned by a Russian) Spend more time attacking the dangerous socialist jam maker than the Tories because he hangs around with the wrong kind of Jews. The Right Wing Press have gone moved on from mocking and are now Raging.
Honestly there’s a hate campaign against him to match the one against Hillary.
2. Very little of it acknowledges the degree to which Labour relies on areas that are strongly pro leave (economically devastated by the Tories so the turkeys vote for Christmas, sound familiar?) There’s a needle to thread here.
3. The opposition have very little power. so we’re at the level of Bully Pulpit Green Lantern Theory Punditry. I think you remember how covered with glory the USA’s punditry class were when they applied that to Barack Obama?
4. people mistake Action for strategy. common mistake. The Tories own this shitshow, Allowing them to tighten the screws on themselves and not giving the papers a target to scream betrayal at is top level gamesmanship.
Aardvark Cheeselog
There should be an upvote button I can click for this.
Silver Wolf
I am so grateful that I live in a country (Canada) where our politics are as boring as celery.